#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest

Father Stephen Gadberry is a priest in the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas, ordained on May 28, 2016. Born and raised on a farm in the Arkansas Delta, he enlisted in the Air Force after high school, serving in Texas, Germany, and Central Iraq during the mid-2000s. With degrees in philosophy and theology from St. Joseph Seminary College and Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, he’s a scholar and a shepherd. As Word on Fire Institute fellow, he’s also hosted EWTN’s Breaking Bread and tackled obstacle courses on American Ninja Warrior. When he’s not leading Mass at St. Theresa Church in Little Rock, he’s lifting weights or coaching CrossFit, he spends time with his dogs, Murph and Shorty. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.tryarmra.com/SRS https://www.betterhelp.com/SRS This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://www.boncharge.com/SRS https://www.meetfabric.com/SHAWN https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.helixsleep.com/SRS https://www.lumen.me/SRS https://www.patriotmobile.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Father Stephen Gadberry Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/fatherstephenjgadberry “The Making of a Catholic Priest” documentary - https://youtu.be/HumCsGbVAp4 Ministry with Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire IG - https://www.instagram.com/bishopbarron IG - https://www.instagram.com/wordonfire_catholicministries Mayhem Hunt IG - https://www.instagram.com/mayhemhunt Saint Theresa Catholic Church IG - https://www.instagram.com/sainttheresalr YT - https://youtube.com/@sainttheresacatholicchur-kb8cn Saint Theresa School IG - https://www.instagram.com/stscougars Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:30Speaker 03

  Espolón Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead.

• 0:36Speaker 03

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• 0:54Speaker 01

  Espolón Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Campari America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.

• 1:00Speaker 04

  We're coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like on the dashboard of the truck. We took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard. So he leaned over to grab it. When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went in the ditch and cut a culvert and started doing cartwheels.

• 1:13Speaker 05

  What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?

• 1:16Speaker 04

  All this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question. We don't know when it's coming. We know it's coming, and we can't control that, you know? And so that terrifies us. And so we do all these things to distract us from that. The life of faith is really preparing for a good death.

• 1:36Speaker 05

  Father Stephen Gadberry, welcome to the show, man.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  Thanks a lot.

• 1:40Speaker 05

  Glad to be here.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  But, uh, yeah, you know, I found you. Actually, I don't remember how I found you, but I ran across your Instagram profile one way or another. And, uh, I just, I saw what you're posting, working out on your cycle, lots of hunting, shooting your bow. And I just, I think that's, um, I don't want to sound offensive. I think it's really cool.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  That you're a priest displaying like, like raw masculinity like that and, and making it cool and, and I mean, I think, I think that masculinity has, masculinity has damn near disappeared in the world uh over the past 10 to 15 years and, and we just spoke, we think it's making a comeback, but, but on top of that, you just, you just don't see priests doing that kind of stuff and uh, and I think everybody, I mean, I grew up Catholic and you just, you just don't, you don't think of a priest out hunting big

• 2:49Speaker 05

  game or doing grueling workouts or shooting their bow or cycling or really any of that. Everybody kind of thinks of them as, yeah, what do they do? Pray all the time and do the rosary? But uh, but so I just, I thought that was really cool and that's what, that's what drew my attention uh to you and so I think I've been following you for about a year, maybe a little longer and um, and so yeah, I just wanted to, wanted to get you on the show. We had my friend, Father Dan Rehill on and uh, and that was a fascinating interview and so yeah, I kind of want to do a little bit of a life story on you and then dive into the, some of the stuff with the Catholic Church. I got a ton of questions

• 3:33Speaker 05

  and um, but yeah, thanks for coming.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks for the invite. I only work on Sundays, so I got all the time you need to, not really. Yeah, no, it's uh, it's, you know, in the Catholic Church, the, the pastor, the leader is called father, uh, cause you know, like being the spiritual father, you know, a father is one that generates life and if you're gonna, if you're gonna generate life, you gotta have some energy in you and I think we have a lot of uh, men out there who aren't fathers because they're not generating energy. They're just, they're stale, they're stagnant, uh, they're, they're too closed in on themselves, but I mean, we got a fire in us and God just wants us to spread that thing, you know, so yeah, just try to do that through the social media stuff and day to day life. I crash and burn all the time, but that's just part of the fun.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Well, it's pretty cool, man. It's really cool to see it.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  But uh, yeah, so everybody starts out here with an intro. Actually, you wanna uh, you wanna kick it off with some prayer?

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  All right.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Good and gracious God, we give you thanks for this day and the gift of life. Just pray that you send your spirit upon us, give us a double portion of your spirit, that we may open our heart to you and be faithful disciples. Help us to be, yeah, to follow your word, follow your voice, to be man. After the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, that we may follow his example and be willing to die, to make sacrifices for the love of others. Amen.

• 4:58Speaker 05

  Amen.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  And everybody gets a gift, but I'll give you your main, one of your gifts later, but this will be pretty fitting. So that is, um, my friend Dom Razzo, uh, I think he collabs with a company to make these, but he calls it the Warrior's Rosary. And, and so Dom is a, is a former SEAL Team Six sniper, um, good friend of mine. We were at SEAL Team Two for a long time and he's a, he's a very devout Catholic and has been a spiritual mentor of mine. And so I gave, uh, I gave Jim Caviezel, I used to only have one, and then I gave it to Jim Caviezel when he came on. We talked about,

• 5:48Speaker 05

  um, Jesus and the movie The Passion and stuff. And so he sent me a couple more and I just thought, I thought you'd like that.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  This is cool, man. Thanks.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, you're welcome.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  I did bring some little toys for you, if you want them now or later.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  I love toys. Let's do it.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  First one is actually Bible, but I did a lot of stuff with Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire. I don't know if you've heard of him. Does a ton of stuff in evangelization.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  We started this project a number of years ago with Word on Fire to create a series of the Bible. And the goal in this is not just to read the word of God, but to experience the word of God. And so there is a course of scriptures. This is the Gospels, the four Gospels. And then it's got commentary from the church fathers, from saints, from Bishop Barron. Um, it's just a beautiful text.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  Thank you. Wow. Thank you.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  This is, this is, I think you'll like that.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  I just got into making knives.

• 6:56Speaker 05

  You're making knives now?

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I made that one for you.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  It's kinda sharp.

• 7:02Speaker 05

  From scratch?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  I got the blade already, like, pre-forged and treated and everything, heat-treated, but I shaped it and did the handle. There's two engravings on there. Ajy quod Ajy's, we may talk about this later, it's like a motto that I go by from Anacis Loyola. It means like, do what you're doing, that's the literal translation, but the sense of it is, don't half-ass it, like, whatever you're gonna do, just give it hell, like, don't half-ass it.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  Go all in.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then the other side of that is Hebrews, I think, 4:12, I don't remember the verse exactly. But it's the word of God, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing the heart and soul, bones and marrow. That's a two-edged knife, so I thought it was kinda fitting.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  Oh, man, that's, I'm framing this.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Enjoy it, yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  I'll make you another one, you can use.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  Right, right on.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Got some shirts here, too, we can, you know, you always need more gear, hats from our hunt group, Mayhem Hunt, but, uh, so.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, thank you.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  Can I have too many t-shirts?

• 8:05Speaker 05

  That's one of our very cool shirts, yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  I'll wear this stuff. Man, I appreciate it.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks, man.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, enjoy it. Those are, the Bible and the knife are really cool, man.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  So is the gear, but, well.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  That's really good.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  There you go, that's the main, everybody gets these, except doctors, sometimes I don't give them to doctors.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Really?

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Cause I'm self-conscious. It's Vigilance League gummy bears, made here in the USA. They taste amazing, you're gonna pass your drug test, there's no funny business in there. But, uh.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  I'll make you some later.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Cool, cool, but, um, yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  I feel really, they feel good, like, they feel.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  Go ahead, rip them open, try them, try them.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  They smell darn good.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  It's good.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  It's a good gummy bear. They pass the test. I've never thought of saying that in my life. It's a good gummy bear. Do you know who Vivek is by chance? Vivek Ramaswamy? Yeah, yeah. He came in and ripped him open. Yeah. Yeah. He ripped him open before I could tell him anything and I said, "Yeah, so the effects of those will kick in in about thirty minutes."

• 9:16Speaker 05

  And he was, he was like, "Oh, God." It was hilarious. But, uh, oh shit. But everybody, everybody starts off with a introduction, so here we go. Father Stephen Gadberry, you're raised on a family farm in the Arkansas Delta. After graduating high school in 2004, you enlisted in the United States Air Force and worked in logistics in Texas, Germany, and central Iraq. You entered seminary in 2008 and majored in philosophy and liberal arts at St. Joseph's Seminary College in Louisiana.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  You completed your graduate and postgraduate theological studies at the Pontif- How am I, how do I say this? Pontifical? Pontifical Gregorian University and Pontifical- Augustinianum, that's a big one. Woo, university. You have to have masters just to read that. In Rome, Italy. You were ordained in 2016 and are currently the pastor of St. Teresa Catholic Church and school in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is a 10,000-member church and pre-K through 8th grade school. 10,000? That's weird.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  95% of your congregation is Hispanic? That's interesting.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  You are an avid hunter and outdoorsman, as we covered earlier. You're an accomplished athlete and were on seasons 10 and 12 of American Ninja Warrior and recently completed the Leadville 100.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  Is that Leadville? Yeah. You're a part of, reading's not my strong suit, obviously. You're a part of the Mayhem Hunt Crew led by Rich Frowning, where the team has combined their love for hunting and fitness to develop a hunting and backcountry specific fitness training program. Additionally, you have two dogs, you play the harmonica, and you recently started making knives, as we just saw. And, and like I said, I ran across your IG profile. I thought it was really cool, like all the stuff that you're doing. In addition, in addition to being a priest and kind of spreading, you know, in a...

• 11:37Speaker 05

  It's just a good way to spread masculinity, man. You just have cool hobbies. Uh, it's cool that you're, that you're doing that as a priest. You're not like, you know, like a lot of these guys who like ramming masculinity down people's throats, because I think that stuff is stupid. And, uh, you're, you're just a good example. And, um, and I like, you just, you, you seem to lead by example. And I think, uh, I think that in itself is also becoming a lost art. So.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Thanks, man.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Thank you for being there.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  Thanks. I had a lot of good examples in my life and just try to... Yeah, we're on this journey and it's rough. It's a, it's a tough, you know, life is brutal. And, uh, you know, if, uh, if we're gonna get through it, we gotta like put the nose to the grindstone. But to have the fullest life as we're going through it, like you've gotta, you gotta confront reality. You know, it's, you know, you only find God in reality, not in fantasy. And by finding God, you find the fullness of life. And so if you want the fullest life, I mean, you gotta be real. And that requires like, like, don't be fake, you know? And like, be real, be authentic, you know? So.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Just try to share that.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, we, we were talking about hunting and, and downstairs and, yeah, I killed my first deer. And then we started talking about going on an elk hunt. And I'd have a couple of invites to go elk hunting. And I'd love to do it, but we were talking, I was like, man, I can't. I have a real problem leaving business, especially for a week. I get super anxious. I feel like I have to be working. I think it goes back to my time in the SEAL teams. If you're not, if you're not training, if you're out playing grab S, the enemy's training to kill you.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  And they'll be advancing while you're over here fucking around.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  And, uh, and I've kind of carried that through the rest of my adult life. But you had mentioned that, that you also have,

• 13:38Speaker 05

  you know, one pace.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  And it's, and it's all in and, uh, I'll just let you pick it up from there. You had some good stuff to say about that.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Just like a dog chasing the ball. That's what I do. I wake up and just chase it and, uh, you know, too fast and asleep are my two speeds. Um, yeah, you know, we live in such a fast-paced life world and, and, uh, that's good. That's a good thing. God made us to be creative. He gives us this energy and, um, you know, this productivity is a, and this desire to work is a blessing. It's a superpower from God. God made you to be fruitful and multiply, to have a family, and have a family requires you to take care of them. So like the hustle here, the work that you do every day is, uh, providing for the family. So that's, like, that's good. The most primal way of providing for the family is going out and killing an animal.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Like, and so that's just, um, you know, you can provide now by, you know, getting a check and, and buying the stuff you need. Another way to do that is like go out and get an animal, put some food on the table. Um, but it's, there's so many studies out here. You got a bunch of really cool friends and, uh, I'm sure like they, they could chime in on this. Like I'm thinking of Huberman. I'm sure he could. There's some science behind this, but of like disconnecting for a second, um, for the sake of productivity. We can get so zeroed in on the stuff that we're doing, uh, this tunnel vision, um, it can, can shut us off of a lot of stuff. And so when, when you rest it, like you rest for a little bit, it just allows the brain and the heart to breathe a little bit. Um, those, when I go hunting, for example, because that's what we were talking about,

• 15:11Speaker 04

  I'll go out for a couple of weeks at a time every fall and, uh, It's a nice disconnect. It's terrifying. I mean, you're out there alone in the elements, maybe with a couple of friends, but you know, I do a lot of it alone, too. And so you just, you go into those dark places that you've been, you know, putting aside for the last year, two years, the rest, you know, your whole life, whatever.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  You've got to wrestle with that stuff. But the silence is a sacred thing, man. And our culture is terrified of it. I'm scared of it.

• 15:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  You know, but, but because it's in the silence that you wrestle with your demons. But beyond that, it's in the silence that you hear the voice of God. And while demons like will scare us, um, and rightly so they should, something even more terrifying is the voice of God. And what I mean is like, in that silence, God can ask you to do anything. You know, drop your nets and follow me. And it could reveal itself. He could ask you to do anything, you know? Move across the world and do this project, or whatever it may be. And I, then the ball's in our court. And that scares us. Because if we truly open our heart up to the Lord, man, we don't know what he's gonna ask. We can lose control, but like, we don't really have the control to begin with. Anyhow, so many different ways we can take this, but the silence.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  Well, hold on. So where I was going at the beginning, as you had mentioned Satan, Satan can use that against us.

• 16:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  That, basically, that drive. And that's kind of where I was going. But you're talking about, you're, and I can disconnect. It's hard for me to make time, but I will make time. And I make time for my wife. I make time for my kids and, you know, stuff like that. Making time a week to go out west, that's, that's a little hard. I'd like to ask you about psychedelics, too, but you're talking about opening up and, and grounding and being in the elements and hearing the voice of God. And so I think a lot, I mean, I'm always, my, my relationship with Christ and God has been growing at a exponential rate.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  It's growing so fast and I'm, I'm really learning to lean into my gut. And, and, and to me, that's my gut is, that is God telling me, yes. And I feel like he gives me these little affirmations, like, that's right. That's, that's what I'm telling you to do. And so I'll give you an example. I talked about.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  I don't want to go into the whole story for time's sake because I've told it a bunch of times, but I had this really big experience in Sedona. And that's kind of what brought me back to Christ. And like I said, I had grown up Catholic, joined the SEAL teams, contracted for the CIA, acted like a total bachelor idiot for 20 years. And then, you know, basically pushed God and Christ to just push him aside. And not that I didn't believe, but I just didn't care. Sure. And anyways, so had this really profound experience.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  Basically, it was God smacking me in the face like three times right in a row. Totally different experiences, but all within about 15 minutes. And then I started seeing these number, these reoccurring numbers all the time. And the first one was 444. It was everywhere I looked. And sometimes multiple times, three, three, three times at once. Like, first time it happened to me, it was 444 on the clock, 444 miles left to empty. And four hours and 44 minutes after a conversation that I'd just had with a very good friend

• 19:01Speaker 05

  of mine about how guardian angels are watching over me. And I was like, whoa, okay, it just happened again. And so now if I'm, if I'm, if I'm iffy about something, or here's an example, I just went and I interviewed this guy, Coline Georgeescu in Romania. He's running for, he's running for president of Romania. They basically shut the election down. There's a possibility that he's under Russian influence. There's a possibility that they're just using Russian influence to not get him elected. Very, really confusing and complicated situation. And I wanted to, I was like, man, am I, am I doing the right thing by giving this guy

• 19:46Speaker 05

  a voice? All I'm doing is giving him a voice. And.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  I start seeing the reoccurring numbers everywhere I look and to me, I'm like, I'm doing the right thing. And I had, I had sent this tweet out and it was, it was, "The truth is like a lion, set it free and it'll defend itself." Right as I did that, this woman comes around the corner in the airport and she has a big, glittery lion head on her shirt. And I was just like, okay, like that's, to me, to me, that's God's voice or that's God telling me, "You're doing the right thing, Sean. Just lean into it." Like, "I'm showing you, yes." I mean, so I'm, I'm curious, when you say you get out

• 20:35Speaker 05

  there and you're hearing the voice of God and he's telling you to do different things, what is that like? What, what is that to you?

• 20:44Speaker 06

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• 21:13Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 21:24Speaker 07

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze in there, that's what...

• 21:34Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. For me, one of the way that it comes about is just like clarity from like all the stuff I've been going through before. So it's almost like a retrospective, like just time to reflect. So going back to like the, the work stuff is a superpower that God's given us, like men in particular, to provide. Like, we're the providers and we gotta do stuff. And if you don't, your family dies, the village dies, society dies, the world dies. Right? So we gotta, we gotta put stuff out. We got, we gotta be producers, you know?

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Satan likes to use that because if we can be so task, if we get too task oriented, then we forget about like making time for the, for the main things, for the important things. So you were talking about these different little signs or affirmations that God would give you. Whenever you're just working like too fast or too much, like you're gonna miss them. I'm sure there's 444s that are, that you walked by, you know, before, like when you're just on a mission, just going, they were there the whole time. But what's, what's going on now is like you're more aware of it. And the more aware of it you become, the, the more you'll see them and you'll, then you'll really, really realize like how present God is in your life.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Setting time aside to, to like, to slow down, to be still and know that God is God is like, it's a sacred moment. If you think about Sunday, like the Lord says, keep holy the Sabbath. Don't do a bunch of serve all labor. Doesn't mean like sit, you know, you can't do work. But it's first day of the week, it's like a proper orientation to God. If we can set aside work for a moment, it's not laziness, but it's actually an act of faith. Because what, what we're doing is saying, God, I can bust my ass, but if I take this hour, this day, this week, to be with you, be with my family, to do whatever, like I'm recognizing that you're God and I'm not.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  And so capable of doing this work, capable of doing this stuff, but you know, you could end my life right now. Like I exist because you're holding me in existence. And so whenever we take these little breaks, it's like a, you know, profession of faith that God is gonna take care of us. And so for me, to bring it back to the, the, the last question that you made was like when I'm out in the woods, out in the mountains, it's just time for me to stop and like let the dust settle from the rat race that I'm always running and then just get clarity. And for me, it doesn't take long. I mean, it could be an afternoon hunt, like going out to hunt whitetails. It could be a drive in the truck when I have the radio off, you know, nothing at all, a 20 minute drive. Could be working out, uh, just for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  But a little bit of space to decompress and let the thoughts fall in line. That, for me, that's kind of how the Lord speaks. They feel.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  I got all these puzzle pieces that I've been picking up. Whenever I take that time of silence, I can put all those little puzzle pieces in order and then, then I get the big picture. So I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. It's, it's, I think what you're saying is clarity. Yeah, mindfulness is all this stuff. It's, it's, it's all over pop culture. You know, it's all over the place because there's something behind it. Definitely the clarity. What were you saying? How does Satan take advantage of this? Yeah, um, so what most simply put is like, he'll allow us to fall so deep into our own endeavors that we begin to believe that we're God of our own life, that we can save ourselves. If I can work this hard and make this kind of income and do all these things,

• 25:05Speaker 04

  whether it doesn't even have to be an income. It could be productivity of any sort. Could be whatever you're doing. But whenever that becomes the main thing, we end up worshiping that, an idol. Um, and then the lie that we begin to believe is that we're self-sustaining. You know, I, I can take care of it. I don't need God. You know, and we begin to believe that we're in control of everything. Like we're, yeah, like we're God. So that's, that's the way that Satan will do it. Um, it's, it's a very tactical way of him to get us off, off path. Because if he knocks on the door, you know, Satan appears like in a way that you can't deny that it's Satan. You're gonna say like, no, get behind me, you know, in the name of Jesus, be gone. Because it's gonna be so obvious.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  So therefore he likes to hit us where we're strong. He goes to our talents and then from there he starts, you know, up in the pride and the ego. And that's the root of all sins, pride, you know? So that's kind of, kind of a simple way of putting how he manipulates it. Well, how can people keep a balance? How do they know when they're going too far? Yeah, um, I'd say look for the fruits of the spirits. I mean, if, if your marriage is crumbling, uh, or what's the most basic things? If you're not doing the most basic things, then you need to put stuff in order. So marriage, if your marriage is, is falling apart because this thing is now your wife? If the work that I'm doing becomes my wife? Or if I'm a dad or a mom and, uh, and I got kids, but I'm never with them?

• 26:34Speaker 04

  That's something I'm always on the guys at, at the church. Got some hardworking people in my church and. They'll be gone Monday through Friday and then be home Saturday and then have to leave again on Sunday, Sunday evening, so they can go to their Monday through Friday job way out of town. They're spending the whole day Saturday sleeping and recovering. And then they got basically Sunday to be with the family. Like, yeah, you're working to provide, provide stuff for your family, but at the end of the day, your kid just wants to be with you. Hey Dad, will you play with me? You know, like, um, so what do the relationships look like? Is the work that you're doing supporting that, those relationships or is it getting in the way of them? That's, that's kind of a simple way.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Also, another way would be like, um, like, look at your own vices and sins or, you know, addictions, for example. Um, yeah, so I'd say look at those, those secondary signs, relationships, and then just your own, your own virtues or the lack thereof.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  Do you have any vices?

• 27:42Speaker 04

  I got a bunch.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  What are some of your vices?

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Man, work.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Work?

• 27:47Speaker 04

  It's hard to, hard to stop. I just, cause I love going. I love going, that's one.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  What do you do for work? Other, I mean, what does your work consist of outside of Sunday Mass?

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so outside the Sunday Mass is, uh, you know, got this large community, so it's, I'm essentially in charge of all the operations for the, for the, for the community, for the, all the members of the parish, but then also all the buildings, the structures. So it's a little bit of everything. It could be, of course, preparing for Sunday services, preparing people for marriages, doing marriage counseling, doing funerals, um, going to the prisons, um, hiring contractors to do work. We're starting a lot of development at our school right now. We're just, the school is exploding. And, and so it's cool, but it's making some, some problems, like some good problems. We got to do construction, so I'm talking to contractors and doing building plans and calls to the hospital.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Uh, finance has got to oversee all the books and everything. I have a bookkeeper who does that, but I mean, I'm over her, so I gotta make sure that she does that.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  You're a CEO.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Essentially, yeah. Yeah, that's kinda how we operate. All the pastors, all the Catholic priests at their churches are, it's our little village.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  Interesting. You have over 10,000 members?

• 29:06Speaker 04

  It's wild, yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  Where at in Arkansas again?

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Little Rock.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  Man, that's a, that's a, that's a lot of people.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  It's cool, man.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Ninety-five percent is Spanish?

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  What do you give the mass in?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Uh, Spanish and in English. Uh, we have seven masses over the weekend. Two of those are in English and another five are in Spanish.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's still growing, man. People are still coming. The community's growing.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  What's bringing them in?

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Work. A lot of it's work. I mean, Little Rock, just like so many other cities in the US are growing, especially these conservative states. You know, people are leaving the more liberal states to go to these conservative places and Arkansas is gonna, you know, very conservative state. Um, and so this just requires the growth and developments.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  Well, that's not exactly what I meant. I meant, I didn't realize Arkansas was growing. I heard Bentonville is

• 30:00Speaker 04

  It's wild.

• 30:01Speaker 05

  Going crazy, but, um, but

• 30:06Speaker 05

  It seems to be this wave of Christianity of people coming to Christ.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  So they're moving there, but why they come to church?

• 30:13Speaker 05

  Are you, are you saying that?

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay, I get your question now.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  It happened to me. Happened to a bunch of people I know.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. We're at the point now where like, we realize the, the juice that the world's giving us doesn't satisfy our thirst. It doesn't quench our thirst. And so like, we're going deeper. We, we're realizing that like, the passing things of this world, as good as they are, they're not the best thing. We can use them, as long as they take us to something higher, something greater, something outside ourself. And people are aware of that. We live in a world now that's so divided. Everything is so political, or, is that the word? Political? Like, it's on these extremes, um, that, I mean, everyone's on edge all the time, you know, and it's exhausting. It's so exhausting. And so people are just wanting some time

• 31:01Speaker 04

  to breathe. And so they, that naturally opens up this spiritual side of people, which then leads them to ask big life questions. And whenever you slow down in this crazy life, like you realize

• 31:14Speaker 04

  After all the work, after all the stuff I do, after this life that I live, I'm gonna die. And ultimately, like, all this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question. We don't know when it's coming, we know it's coming, but we don't know when, and we can't control that. You know, and so that terrifies us. And so we do all these things that distract us from that. So, the life of faith is really preparing for a good death. Memento mori, I don't know if you've heard that before, I'm sure you have. Like, remember your death. Memento mori, it's a Latin phrase. And it's just an ancient Christian reflection. A lot of times you'll see Christian art and there'll be a skull, like, in the corner of the painting, or on the table, or something.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  And it's a reminder that, you know, you're gonna be six feet under someday. And so, we have to live every day, like, so that we, you know, prepare for a good death, basically. When we go to meet the Maker and give that final account.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  Do you see a lot of spiritual warfare? Mm-hmm, yeah. It's pretty hidden. Like, it's not like the movies, the stuff that I see isn't like you see in the movies. It's pretty hidden. A lot of it's marriages. Satan is going after families, that's where he's going. And I see that all the time, so many broken families. I've done three funerals over the last month, over the last few months. Two of them within a week, and one back in November. Of seventeen-year-old, nineteen-year-old, and twenty-four-year-old that got shot. You know, they were just violence. Gangs or drug stuff, or whatever the reason.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Like, I see that. I see marriages falling apart, I see infidelity, I see kids just losing their mind. Because they don't have, you know, good parents. And the parents are just lost and confused. And so that's how Satan... He can't destroy the world, or, I mean, he could.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  But like, he'll do it one family at a time if he's gonna do it.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  And to take it back to the whole work thing, like, he, he, he goes after dads. You know, if a dad is not there, then it's a, he's the, he's the cornerstone of the family, you know?

• 33:33Speaker 04

  Moms are necessary, of course, the women are necessary, so is dad, the men, but, um. So when it comes to warfare, spiritual warfare, I see it like that. That's the biggest place where I see it, families being broken apart.

• 33:48Speaker 05

  I see, I think I see, I never really thought of that as being spiritual warfare, to be honest with you, but.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  I, I, I think that there's a lot of things happening in the world that are coming to light that are grabbing people's attention, like, I'll, I'll bring something up, like, like that. Like the Last Supper skit at the Olympics.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Did you see that?

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I feel like people see something like that and they're like, me in particular, and they look at that

• 34:25Speaker 05

  and they think, holy shit, okay.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  That is satanic. If there is, if satanic is that shit, is that prevalent?

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  For them, it's the others real.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 05

  And so, you know, and a lot of this stuff was really making me angry, like, like last year, Easter.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  You know, the White House did the, the Trans Visibility Day.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  Which, which, whatever, they said they put that in a long time ago or something, and then it just happened to fall on that day.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Conveniently fell on the day.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, but then you look at the letterhead and it had little Easter bunnies and all this other shit on there, you know? And to me, I'm like, wait a minute, they're, they're perverting the day of the resurrection.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  And so, as much as that upsets me

• 35:16Speaker 05

  in seeing things like the Olympics and, and, and mutilating kids and all these other things, you know, you could, we could line them all up here, but.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  It, it, it almost, in a weird way,

• 35:35Speaker 05

  it gives me, it, it's almost proof that God exists. Because if it's that bad, and it is satanic, and that's where it's coming from, then that means that the others, that the good side exists as well. And so now, when I see stuff like that, it actually, it actually strengthens, strengthens my faith. Does that make any sense?

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Totally, totally.

• 36:02Speaker 05

  Does this stuff fall under spiritual warfare?

• 36:04Speaker 04

  A hundred percent. It's all disordered, you know. It's all disordered, yeah, and most simply put. And, and God created universe, the universe, everything in it, like, in a proper, ordered way. Like, logic is like, like, people don't argue with numbers. Two plus two is four. Like, there's some, like, objective truths. Like, it's a simple thing for, for that. But like, evil comes in, and he, Satan, he can't make stuff. He doesn't create things. He just distorts what's already there. So he'll manipulate the truth. He'll manipulate, um, what is real. So he'll manipulate, like, the way that we see identity, or, uh, gender. Say, you know, this is what, for all of humanity, it's male

• 36:47Speaker 04

  and female. But now, now it's like, no, it can be whatever you want it to be. It's like, no, you're, you're turning something that's good into something that's bad. You're distorting it. You know, you, it's a lie. He just flips all this stuff on its head. So, uh, one of the words that you use, like, just these perversions, that's a, that's a good word for it. It's just perverting the truth. It's twisting it around and saying two plus two is five. And it's all over.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I mean, how much, how much, so that's another, this is something I think about all the time, you know, especially with, with the...

• 37:23Speaker 05

  The growing existence of AI, stuff like Neuralink.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  I mean, and then you, and then you, you know, I brought on you, Father Dan Rehill, Lee Strobel, John Burke, like I'm, I'm super interested in the subject, but you know, that everybody talks about how Satan is the, is the master of deceit. He's the master liar. He, he, he can manipulate things and make it appear as something else. And so I'm just curious, I mean, how much, so this makes me think, how much of everything we know today is a complete lie? How much, how much is, how much is a lie? Are we even, you know, you hear people talk about, oh, are we in a simulation?

• 38:13Speaker 05

  This is a false reality. AI, we talk, I talked to Huberman about Neuralink.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  And he had, he had, I said, well, he, he was talking about how they, it could help blind people see. And I said, well, if it can help blind people see, then could they create a, an entire false reality inside of your head? And he said, oh, yeah. If they can make you, if they can make blind see, they can, they can manipulate all the other senses, taste, smell, touch, emotion.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Wild.

• 38:49Speaker 05

  All of that stuff. And so it makes, it just makes me wonder, you know, how much of what we know today, or what we think we know, is a lie? And will this all get revealed at death?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Good question. How mu, it's a lot, I would bet. Is there, it seems like there's a lot around it. Man, I just keep going back to freedom. Freedom, like that's, all this stuff is bad in as much as it takes our freedom away. God wants us to be free, to be a saint, to be in the presence of God, and that's perfect freedom. That's the fullness of life. Um, anything that takes away our freedom, our free will, our consciousness.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Like is, it gets us away from that, you know, but freedom is, is, that's ultimately what, when God made Adam and Eve, he made them perfectly free until they started doubting and questioning, and then kind of not thinking that they were free enough. So they tried to make their own freedoms. The forbidden fruit, you know, like the scripture will, will tell us that, just the image of the forbidden fruit. But it's about freedom. All these other things are bad in as much as they take our, our free will away from us. So AI is a good thing, man. It's here, you know, it's, it's not gonna go away. So how do we move forward with it ethically? And morally, like, and as much as it helps us with productivity and, and to be more free, that's great.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  But if it takes away our freedom, what I mean is like if it, if we rely on it so much that we're not creatively thinking and making decisions on our own, and then, then it's bad. Cause ultimately that's what it's all about. Like God wants us to be, to be free. And what's the ultimate freedom? Like this radical creativity. So going back to the work conversation. Work that's done like freely, um, and properly ordered is, is a creative act. That's what work is. It's you're, you're creating stuff. You're, you're cooperating in the creation of the, of the world. So there's a lot of dignity in work. Um, but yeah, just freedom.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  So in, in a way that all this stuff around us takes away our freedom, it's not from God. Um, what is the freedom? The freedom is to do the right thing, to do what's right. Not the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. It's the freedom to do what's right. Um, I'm not free to go out and rob 15 banks today if I want to. Like, that's not right. I'm not free to go out and just drink a 30 pack of beer and then drive around town. Like, that's not good. You know, I'm not free to kill somebody, like just out of cold blooded murder. Like that's not, that's not freedom. If there's a, you know.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  You're saying you have freedom to make the choice?

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  That's, is that what your definition of free will is?

• 41:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, to make the, to make the, to make the right choice. We're free to make the right choice.

• 41:41Speaker 05

  You have, you have the free will of whether to choose good or to choose evil?

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, so you mentioned psychedelics just in passing, we can jump into that a little bit later or whenever you want, but like, something with that, or alcohol, or drugs, or like, anything like this is like, um, it would be bad inasmuch as it takes our free will. Thomas Aquinas talks about alcohol, for example, and like, you know, how much can you drink? And he says, "To the point of hilarity." That's kind of like the way he, like, just, because to the point of hilarity means that, like, you still have full use of your reason. But as soon as something takes away your faculties, then you're not free in that. And that's where Satan wants to come in. Because if we don't maintain the proper use of our faculties and reason,

• 42:30Speaker 04

  then that's because we've surrendered it to someone else. And so anytime that we surrender that, like, if we're under the influence of something to the point where it takes away our faculties completely, we've surrendered that free will to somebody else. And at that point, they're free to make decisions for, in our name. I mean, to really simplify it, like, think of a parent raising a kid. The parent's gonna make decisions for the kids because it's their proper, you know, like, it's their right thing to do. You know, a power of attorney is another example. You give someone else the freedom to make decisions in your name. But that can be a slippery slope if you give the freedom to the wrong person. They can abuse that power eternally and just screw you. And then if you take another step further into the spiritual realm,

• 43:14Speaker 04

  if you, if you, uh, give your freedom to some spiritual being that's not God, then that's how Satan makes his way in.

• 43:26Speaker 05

  Is our destiny chosen for us?

• 43:30Speaker 04

  I don't think it's chosen.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  So if God knows everything that's going to happen,

• 43:35Speaker 05

  then how is it not?

• 43:38Speaker 04

  So, God's knowledge, it doesn't necessarily predetermine,

• 43:46Speaker 04

  you know, where we'll end up. He may know where we're gonna end up. That's not because he's predestined, it's because like, he just, he knows all things. God's outside of space and time. God's all-knowing.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  The, the foreknowledge of God is, I guess, kind of a simple way of understanding this. Saint Augustine, or Saint Augustine, depending on how you say his name. He talks about this, free will and predestination and everything. And it's like, God's foreknowledge

• 44:11Speaker 04

  is that which guarantees us the freedom to choose rightly in that moment in the future. So it's like, he knows all this stuff, but it's just like a, a parent leading their kid, you know, through something in life. And you walk with the kid and you say, "Okay, we're here now. Let's make the decision. I've taught you all this stuff up. To this point, now you're gonna make the decision. What do you make? If it's a wrong decision, you help your kid learn from it and then move on? If it's the right decision, they keep going." So God's foreknowledge is kind of like a parent walking with, with a kid. So, yeah, it's the kind of simplest way I could put it for, might get too theological with it.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  Do you think he knows if we're gonna wind up a believer or a non-believer?

• 44:50Speaker 04

  He wouldn't, yeah. I mean, God would know, he knows all things, so he, he would know that.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  But,

• 44:59Speaker 04

  for him to know if we're gonna be a believer or a non-believer, if we're gonna be in heaven or hell, does not mean that he would have predestined that. God cannot predestine,

• 45:10Speaker 04

  or like, it, it's not in God's nature to, to will something bad for somebody.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  God is love. And so, God would not create any of us, like with the plan of sending us to hell. It would be the choice that we freely make in that regard.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  What are your thoughts on psychedelics? You know, I just, I found a lot of healing through them. A lot of my friends have, um, that have been to war. And, you know, it's always a very,

• 45:48Speaker 05

  very controversial subject within Catholic Christian world. A lot of people say it's demonic. A lot of people say it, it, it, it opens up, you know, people are trying to open up their third eye and that's how demons come in. It's like a window. A lot of people say that, you know, it's, it's, it's a false reality that you experience. But I've seen a lot more good than bad come from this stuff. Way more good. And so I'm, I've, I've heard that some people use psychedelics to open people up before exorcisms. Uh, I'm just curious, what, what are your thoughts on psychedelics?

• 46:31Speaker 04

  This initial thing is like, how much of your free will can be maintained in that? And if it is surrendered in the use of that, who is, who is rightly going to be your, your guardian during that moment? That's kind of one thing, that's kind of a high, like a high thought or whatever, but they're doing a lot more studies, I think with, with more of these studies, like, we'll have a clear understanding of the morality of it and the ethics of it and everything, which is good. So we have to do the studies and everything and figure out more. The big thing is like, can it be, like, how can you can control the consistency of it? Like if, like in a beer, you know how much alcohol is in there. Now, like, um, with, yeah, do you know how much is in it?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  And then if you can measure it and know how much is in it, then you can control how much you take, which we can control the facts and...

• 47:20Speaker 05

  What about, what about from a spiritual standpoint? You know, a lot like with, with, with people that's saying it's, it's demonic. It's demonic forces. You're opening yourself up to, to, to the spiritual realm. I mean, what, what are your, what are your thoughts on that? Is it, is it spiritual suicide?

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Hmm, that's a good question.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  Man...

• 47:45Speaker 04

  I'm still, I'm still learning more about it myself, you know. Now, if you compare psychedelics to crystal meth or something, I think those are two totally different creatures, you know, cocaine or whatever, like some, like a, like one of these man-made drug or something versus like something that is naturally derived. I think, I think that in itself is an argument that needs to be explored more. To answer your question, like, does it open you up to the demonic stuff? I think, I think it can. I think it can. No, just in the shortest answer.

• 48:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  It gives me the jibbies. I don't wanna, I don't know if I'd wanna do it.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  Have you ever done it?

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Hmm, I haven't done psychedelics.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  No.

• 48:31Speaker 05

  Is the spiritual realm right here amongst us?

• 48:34Speaker 04

  It always is.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  We can't, there's so much more in this world, in this universe, in this life than what we can just sense, you know. Um, what would be an example? I mean, you can look up something on Wikipedia and you can read one article, but there's still all the rest of Wikipedia that's still there and exist, even though you haven't read it. We have our senses that allow us to take information in, um, but think of those senses as just experiencing like one Wikipedia page of what this life is all about. That's kinda like a horizontal kinda way of understanding, but if you take that vertically, like to the spiritual realm, uh, yeah, I mean, it's all, it's all around us. Just a day, like, life experiences will reveal, life experiences will reveal that there's, there's more to

• 49:22Speaker 04

  this life than just the things we can touch and see and smell. I mean, every human being has had a good day and a bad day, you know. We've all done stuff that has changed our mood and make us happier, or sad, mad, or angry, whatever it may be. We've all had people say something to us that, it's a word that we hear in our head, but it does something inside us. It can piss us off, or it can make us feel loved and consoled. Um, it's all around us. It's, it's all around us. We gotta be aware of it, respect it. But at the same time, we can't get hung up on it. What I mean is like, God wants us to live, live life, like, be in reality.

• 49:57Speaker 05

  Do you think there's ways to access it?

• 50:02Speaker 04

  Prayer, it's like, it initially comes to mind. I don't know, like a shortcut. I'm just, I'm a little, I'm a redneck from, from the farm.

• 50:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah, there's definitely ways to access it.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  There's definitely ways to access it.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  Well, let's dig into your life story. So, real quick, one thing I forgot. Sorry about this. Um, so I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account. And, um, they've been with me since the beginning. We've grown quite the community in there. And, uh, one of the things I offer them, the opportunity to, to ask each and every guest a question. And so, it's a long question, so I'm gonna summarize it. It's from Brian Duff. But Brian was born and raised Catholic, and basically, he's a,

• 50:55Speaker 05

  he's a paramedic, combat veteran, experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of evil, a lot of inhumane stuff. He's lost a lot of friends to suicide. And he says, after a long description, "While I believe in God, I guess what I'm asking is, how do I not be angry with Him, because I'm pissed at Him? If He is all-powerful, as we're taught, why would He allow such things to happen?"

• 51:24Speaker 04

  Fantastic question, Mr. Duff. Brian, was that his name, Brian?

• 51:28Speaker 05

  Brian.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, good question, Brian. Man, first thing I would say is, like, be pissed at God. He's a big boy. If you're mad at God, like, the only way to encounter God is in reality. I mentioned that earlier. I think I did. Um, if not, I was thinking it. But yeah, like, the only way to encounter God is in reality, not in fantasy. So if you're pissed at God, tell Him. I mean, He already knows what you're feeling and thinking. He knows what's in your mind. He knows what's in your heart. He knows all the stuff that you saw. He was there with you. And that's the beauty of Christianity, that God is, I mean, it's the message of the cross. Like, God doesn't sit on some, you know, crystal throne and gaze on us like a, you know, somebody watching fish in a tank.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  He was crucified, like he's been to the depths of hell. He knows better than us what that is. And so, first thing is meet God at that spot. Because it's only through reality and in reality that you're going to encounter God. So, start with that stuff. Man, and then from there, everything else just kind of snowballs. What was the second part? So, why, the last question that he said?

• 52:36Speaker 05

  How do I not be angry with him? Because I'm pissed at him?

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  If he is all-powerful as we're taught, why would he allow such things to happen?

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Okay, so, yeah, just, it's okay to be mad at God. I think a lot of people have never been given that freedom to be mad at God. Some of the best prayers that I've had, I chewed him out. And then afterwards, he like, he brings some light to it, a meaning to it. So start there. And then, uh, he's so good, like, why do these things happen? That's the, that's the typical question of suffering. If God is so good, why is there evil in the world? Uh, and it's because of, because of his love. And I'll explain that, because it doesn't make sense. Like, if God loves us, then how can that be the reason for the evil?

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Like, love is always proposed and it's never imposed, right? God doesn't spiritually rape us. He always intimately invites us to a deeper relationship. He gives us the full free will to respond however we want to respond. Because love is, again, is not forced on somebody. It's an offer. It's an invitation that's given, and then we respond to that. We're broken people, man. And so therefore, we make dumb decisions. And those dumb decisions can be here and now, or they could be generational things that you could, I don't want to make it more than what it is, or like, kind of like...

• 54:08Speaker 04

  But like you could do something now, I'm thinking like the butterfly effect. Like it's not really the butterfly effect, but you could do something now that's gonna like cause like something evil 50 years or 100 years down the road.

• 54:22Speaker 00

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• 55:08Speaker 04

  Like what? So just an image that would come to mind, let's say I'm a father, got some kids, let's say I had a long work week. I come home and just hammer some beers and then I get in a fight with my wife and I'll punch her in front of my kids and the kids start crying and then I kick them and tell them to shut the hell up. And then like the next day, like everyone's quiet, we get through the week and then like there's some reconciliation. Wife didn't leave, I apologize and all this stuff. The kid had some trauma. And the kid's gonna grow up, go through their stuff and they may see something, you know, when they're in their 50s. Let's say they're, they're in their 60s, they got their kids now and then some little, uh, they got their first grandkids. And then, um, maybe, maybe it's the guy's daughter just had their first grandkid.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  And then the guy hears that from his daughter that the husband was abusing him or something and he goes home and shoots him. Goes to the house and shoot him or something like, that would be an evil act, you know, murder.

• 56:05Speaker 04

  And like, kinda like a seed was planted years before, does that kinda make sense? So we can, we can do things now that have effects in the future. You're, you're talking about creating.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Generational trauma through poor decision making.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And if that happens at the physical level, it also happens at the spiritual level, too. Um, and so the, yeah, the free will stuff is, it's like that, you know, it's, but it's here now. Like, it doesn't have to be a generational thing. I can make a bad decision. I've made a ton of them. I'm gonna make more of them in the future. I don't want to. It's not like I plan on it, but I know I'm a broken human being. And so,

• 56:43Speaker 04

  you know, emotions can get the better of us, and then we just do stupid stuff. And that's why, and to bring it like back to the God thing is like, it's because he gave us free will. We're just, we're getting malinformed, or we follow our emotions instead of using our reason, instead of thinking stuff through. We say stuff we don't wanna say, we do stuff we don't wanna do, shouldn't do, and

• 57:06Speaker 04

  it's because God loves us, and he gives us that free will. And whenever we make dumb decisions, it affects the whole community.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  So that's, that would be kind of the answer I'd give Brian, like, kind of twofold. First of all, the thing, first part wasn't a question, but I would just, I'd directly respond to the anger thing. Be mad at God. Whatever emotion you got, bring it to God. And then two,

• 57:28Speaker 04

  not to make it just too much, too easy of an answer, but like, bad stuff happens because we do dumb stuff. And we do dumb stuff because God has given us free will. To, you know, ultimately do the good, but whenever we don't choose the right, there's consequences.

• 57:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, let's dig into your story a little bit here. So,

• 57:52Speaker 05

  there's a lot, a lot of hard questions there, but, um,

• 57:54Speaker 04

  Like a punch in the face. I don't know if any of that made sense.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  No, I mean,

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Some heavy stuff, all those.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  Did I come too hard at you?

• 58:00Speaker 04

  No, it was good. Like, I, I like the shock and awe. Catch my breath, so if I'm mumbling or stumbling,

• 58:08Speaker 04

  knock the wind out of me.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Um,

• 58:10Speaker 04

  I'm getting warmed up, though.

• 58:11Speaker 05

  So, you grew up in a small town in Arkansas, correct?

• 58:14Speaker 04

  Win is the name of the town. Little bitty old town, around the, it was around nine thousand, eight thousand people growing up, which is kind of wild, going back to the church thing. I'm leading a church now at thirty-nine years old. That's bigger than the hometown I grew up in. It's like the mayor of that town, you know? That's kind of weird. Um, yeah, I grew up in Win, Arkansas. It's a farming community. I grew up on a family farm. We got rice, soybeans, wheat. Um, two hundred acres or so. Just a German family. Grew up in this German family. Hard work and family. We're a poor family. Everyone in the family is poor, just, but hard work. Hard worker. So I didn't, although I didn't inherit wealth or anything from my family, I damn sure inherited a work ethic.

• 58:58Speaker 04

  And just put the nose of the grindstone and get stuff done. And that's something I learned growing up, do that work. I'm the second oldest of five kids. And thirty-nine, I mentioned that earlier, I was born in eighty-five. When I was eight years old, my dad and older sister died in a car wreck. And I was in the truck with them, my little sister was in the truck with us. It was a one-car accident. We stayed at my dad's parents' house the night before, and we were driving back to the house the next day to get ready for school. Dad was gonna go to work, take us to school and everything. And it was about a mile and a half down the road from our house.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  We were coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like on the dashboard of the truck. And we took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard. So he leaned over to grab it. When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went in the ditch and cut a culvert and started in cartwheels. My older sister Courtney, she was eleven. The truck landed on her, she died immediately. My dad, he was thirty-two, which is wild, you know, I think that. He died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Punctured lungs, stuff like that. I had just some cuts and scrapes, a broken ankle. My little sister, she was three. I was eight.

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Little sister was three, she just got crushed. She was sitting on my dad's lap. None of us were wearing seat belts. And she was sitting on my dad's lap. And so whenever we hit the culvert, she just got crushed between my dad and the steering wheel. So everything like from the waist down was just crushed. Collarbone also, and her arm. She was in a body cast. I remember that mom, you know, pulling her around in a little wagon for that. But I remember, you know, dad was there, just kind of breathing heavy. And I remember sitting on his chest, and I am groaning about it. Now I know why, you know, punctured lungs. You wouldn't want someone sitting on your chest if you had a punctured lung. And then... Yeah, you know, for an eight-year-old, that's some- Do you remember that? Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  May 5th, 1994, you know, it was probably around, I don't know,

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  six or so, 5:45, 6:15, somewhere around there, maybe. Ah, probably later than that, probably around 6:15, 6:45 in the morning. It screws a little kid's brain, you know, um.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  So, talking about little signs from God, I remember just the week before, running up on the, so we're on the farm, my uncle, who ran the farm, he, just the week before, he was saying, "Hey, Steven, if you ever run on the tractor and you need to stop me, just, you know, come out, just wave your hands and I'll know to come, you know, come check on you, come see what you need, 'cause I won't hear your voice." So, just wave your arms, so. Like, I realized, like, shit wasn't good, like, truck's upside down, it's like something out of a movie scene, you know, and a war zone, and so then I hobble my way up to the, the side of the road and, um, little car's coming, so I flag 'em down, and I say, "Yeah, here's the phone number."

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  And then they went up to, I don't know if he called, I guess he called, and Mom, yeah, answered the phone and we live, you know, on the, we live on the farm, my grandparents lived on the farm as well, still, you know, they're deceased now, but, so Mom calls my grandpa and says, you know, they were in a, they were in a wreck, and so she turns the corner and picks him up, and then they come to the scene, you know, they, they wouldn't let her up there, though, I mean, it's a small town, my dad worked at the radio station, big personality, everybody knew him, so he was well-known in the community, Mom, too, you know, because of him, and, uh, um, the cops wouldn't let her come up, just, just because they knew how bad it was, and so, I mean, you can just imagine what go through

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  Mom's mind, you know, with that stuff, and, um, my sister's airlifted to, to Memphis, it was about 45 minutes away, an hour away, and I was taken to the hospital there, and then taken by ambulance to the Children's Hospital in Memphis, and, yeah. Man.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember being at the children's hospital and they were, uh, that's when they, everyone was there. The, the priest came, drove over from, from, you know, where we lived. And there was a nun who was at the other church, she was there too, and family and I remember them telling me like, you know, your dad and sister died and like, I didn't know what that meant, but I just remember kind of being a little mad at that, like angry and like hitting the, hitting my hands on the, on the, the hospital bed, but.

• 1:03:46Speaker 05

  Eight years old, huh?

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  Man.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  Mom was pregnant, she had, she was pregnant, she knew that she, her and dad knew that, and they knew they were pregnant. She goes to the doctor, a couple of weeks later, you know, week later, whatever, for a checkup, it's a lot of trauma, didn't know, checkup for the baby and for her and, um, the doctor was like, you know, I've got some news for you and she's, you know, did I lose a baby or what is it? And the doctor said, no, you got twins. So, she was pregnant with twins, man. So then, um, I basically helped mom raise the, raise my siblings and everything. So the little eight-year-old boy, I remember carrying, felt like a strong kid whenever I, cause I, to, to be able to carry both of the little, uh, baby, what do you call them? Baby carrier, baby bucket, whatever you put the little thing in, carry baby. What do you call it? I don't have kids, I'm not home, no wife.

• 1:04:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  Baby carrier.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  Maybe a, a bassinet, I don't know, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  Whatever, whatever you carry a baby around in.

• 1:04:44Speaker 05

  Something like that.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  Um, so yeah, so that was childhood, that was a big, big thing.

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  How long after, after your dad and your sister died were the twins born?

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  Uh, later that year, uh.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  Just a couple of months, I mean.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it was, it was still very, they just found out they were pregnant. All of us were like, um, I think we were April.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  So about?

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  March or April is whenever, I guess mom and dad was.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  Six, eight months later.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  It was a really fertile time, we were all born in November, December, they were born in December, my brother.

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  Wow. Wow.

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  I don't know what to say to that.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Not much you can.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  I was like, damn. I still don't know what to say. You know, it's kind of cool, like, we were talking about different things for ministry and suffering and that's been like a like, it's cool how God uses that. Because whenever people come to me after the shit hits the fan in their lives, and they're like, "Father, like, I need an answer." There's not an answer. And so it's given me the ability just to sit with them. So like, sometimes, like, not an answer is okay.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  You don't have to have a reason. And it's a because I don't know, I'll never understand why, you know? And I go through waves of just like, being angry or indifferent or mad at God. But...

• 1:06:08Speaker 05

  Well, who took over that role for you? Who did you look up to?

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  Good question. Um, my grandpa, my mom's, um, my mom's dad was probably the biggest one. Quiet man, his name was Herman. Herman Joseph. Um, he's deceased now. Um, quiet, hard-working guy. It's funny, he smoked cigarettes. Uh, then he had a heart attack, so he had to quit. But he was one of those guys that I'd quit. But he kept smoking, so he'd go in the bathroom every night and smoke cigarettes, with the bathroom open, think that we couldn't smell it in the rest of the house. It's kind of funny. But yeah, so he did it. A couple of uncles also stepped in and kind of took me under their wings. Different they all fathered me in different ways. Um, no one can replace a father.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  You know, I had a lot of good examples, but I never had a dad. Um, one uncle taught me just a lot about just hard work, physical labor, just kind of being raw. He was the farmer. Um, the other one, just a lot about like humor and just just living life, having fun, you know? There were some other good people too that kind of took me under their wings, friends, parents, you know, Boy Scouts, there was a scout leader, a couple scout leaders that that took care of me and helped me a lot too. So, it took the village to raise me.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  How long did it?

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  Is there anything in particular that helped you

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  that helped you deal with that situation, or was it just time?

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  I think just time, and even now, like, I'm still working through a lot of this stuff. You know, and going back to the work subject. Um, I'm a typical dude, like, just bottle it up, do work, and that'll distract me from it.

• 1:07:56Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  Um, so I'm still processing it, to be honest with you. Yeah, I'm still, I started doing, like, some counseling stuff in January, and that's been really phenomenal. Working through, just working through a lot of different stuff. And, um, that's been helpful. But yeah, I just put my nose to the grindstone and just, just kept going. That's kind of what's, that's what's got me through life. It's kind of like fake it till you make it kind of thing. Work, work until you figure something out.

• 1:08:22Speaker 05

  How's your mom?

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Good. We're hell raisers. Like, we, but, um, she's good, and she's a, she lives by herself, she never remarried. Gave herself, just completed us, doing everything she could to raise us. Um, she lives in the same house that we grew up in. And it was a house that my grandfather built when he was at high school, in the 40s. She still lives in it, old, old house. Um, she still lives there, and...

• 1:08:51Speaker 05

  How are the twins?

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  They're knuckleheads, man. One is in Washington State, not much contact with him. Another one is in Arkansas. He, uh, is a mechanic, like, uh, he works in guidance systems on farm equipment.

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. His sister, she lives in Detroit, just outside of Detroit. I think Southgate's the name of the little area, and she's got a few kids.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  You guys grew up Catholic?

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, yeah. Born and raised, that was always, that was a non-negotiable. Um, there was something good about that. Uh, now that I'm older, I'll hear challenges from people, like, saying, "Oh, well, you know, it's not right for your parents to impose that on you," or, you know, "They should have given you the choice." Well, like, little kid shits in their diaper, like, mom's gonna change the diaper. You don't ask the diaper, you ask the kid, "Hey, you ever change your diaper?" You know, same thing with the food. There's some basic human needs that, that other people who are rightly in charge of, you're responsible for, you make decisions on your behalf, for your good, your well-being. And our spiritual well-being is same thing, you know? Which would include, like, virtue, you know, being a virtuous person. Um, but we grew up...

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  All the farmers went to this little Catholic church there. We were, we were a faithful family. We weren't like super holy, like we didn't pray all the time. I mean, we would always pray before meals. We'd try to pray the rosary every now and then, but it usually would end up with us falling asleep or the, you know, us fighting, the siblings fighting, and then mom or grandma yelling at us and it just kind of unravels quickly, you know, kind of real life prayer. Went to mass every Sunday. That was a non-negotiable.

• 1:10:27Speaker 04

  It was just a simple, steady presence is what it was. And that's one of the graces that I took from it, just a point of stability and all the stuff around us that was always changing, ebbing and flowing. It was a point of stability. And so it set that foundation for my life, like even now, faith is, is that bedrock. It's that place of encounter where I encounter the Lord in the midst of the storm. So yeah, grew up Catholic.

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  What, what advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Find some, find some good examples, some good role models and ask them to take you under, under their wing, you know? You don't have to explicitly ask them, but surround yourself with good people. You know, you're gonna do the stuff that you see other people do. So find a, find a good, good role model. That's the simplest thing.

• 1:11:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  So moving on, what, what'd you, what'd you like doing as you got older?

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Just playing stuff. I love playing. I'm a, I'm just a boy. Now I'm a big boy in a grown man's body. So grew up, we were very poor. We didn't have internet or TV or, or we had TV, but didn't have internet, didn't have cable TV, didn't have video games or anything. But we had a big farm, so I'd just go out and play with stuff. Shoot a little BB gun, you know, shoot robins and cardinals and stuff, you know, the typical boy hunting outside.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  I would just play. I loved, I played a sandbox in the backyard and I'd go out and play with that. We had a bunch of Legos. They were my dad's, so I'd play with Legos a lot. Just creative stuff. Um, I was a good kid. I wasn't bad. I had a lot of energy. Um, but I was a good kid in class, good kid in school, was respectful. I did Boy Scouts. I was in Boy Scouts, uh, my whole life, from Tiger Cubs, I think it starts at first grade or whatever, to Eagle Scout, which was in high school. So did that. Did sports, played sports, football. Kind of sports. Football, track and golf. I wasn't real good at, um, cause I was small. I've always been a small guy.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  And, uh, but I had some grit. Could just go to some dark places and just, like on the football team, I wasn't good enough to start, um, but I had enough grit to, like, I was, like, coaches always calling me in to, to run the plays, like, against the starting offense or defense. They'd knock the tar out of me and I'd get right back up and, um, which is kinda fun. We would always, Friday night football in Arkansas is like a religion. Well, it's like Tennessee here too, I think, but, um, Mondays, we would always watch the film of the Friday football game. And I remember one time in particular, I was on kickoff team. I was flying down the field and one of the guys on the other team, I didn't see him, he knocked the tar out of me, just

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  knocked me out of the sideline. I was right on the, I was on the, right at the sideline anyways, and he hits me so hard that I go into like all of my teammates and I just disappear. Then I reappear like fifteen yards down the field chasing after the ball. It was just kinda funny. Um, yeah, football, track. I did golf. Uh, we didn't have a membership at the country club. We were too poor for that, but I had a big farm, so I was always out hitting golf balls. Nice. That farm was nice, yeah. Had a little green in the front yard that I mowed, so. What got you interested in the military?

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  I just wanted, I don't know, at the time, there was no reason. I went to college for a year and I hated that. So, I didn't go to the military to, for college. It wasn't to leave home because I loved being at home. There was just, there was an itch in me to go explore. I just wanted to go explore. Had some cousins and some friends that joined in the military and, um, um, yeah, so I went. Went in the Air Force. It was 2005 when I went in there. I was pretty pumped. I wanted to go as fast as I could. So, I went to the recruiter and, uh, this was, yeah, you know, height of OIF. And so, I was like, what can get me out of here the fastest? And they needed SER instructors, the Survival Evasion, Resistance and Escape guys. Um, so I was like, okay, yeah, I'll do that. So, I did

• 1:14:46Speaker 04

  all the prep for that, the pre-training and pre-test and everything. Go to basic training. Long story short, I get washed out of that and then get put into a logistics job. We can unpack all that. But it was fun. The military was really, really fun. So, basic training, I would love to go back through it now. I don't know about you, but...

• 1:15:03Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, just being like older and knowing the mind game that it is. It was so fun. Part of like my coping mechanism is humor. And, uh, it was, yeah, that got me in so much trouble in basic. I remember our instructor, Terry Shirley, we had a lady, there was our flight and we had a sister flight. We did a lot of training together. And she did a lot of instructors with us. She had a chip on her shoulder, man. She was just like every instructor, but, um, she, I was like, one of her favorite ones, which made it bad for me because she was just picking on me nonstop. She, like, Jackass was the name that she gave me. And so, anytime we were training, she just said, "Jackass." Like,

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  everyone's like, "Gadberry, she's gone. You go, you gotta go." Um, but she was always just on me, always. I did so many pushups. I was one of the fittest guys in the, in the flight at the, at graduation. She also knew I was, wanted to do this, this SER job. And so, she knew I had to be in good shape. So, she was helping with that. She was trying to help me, uh, like with mental toughness as well. I was the guide bear or the guide on bear, carrying the flag and everything and up front marching. I remember one day, we were on the... On the drill pad training. And it was just a bad day, like, nothing was working. And I was just, I just was, I kept getting, I kept messing up. And of course, you know, you're in the front of the group. So if you take a wrong step, everyone behind you is off too.

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  And she, um, man, over and over and over, I kept messing up. And then she got in my face and she's like, "Damn it. When we go, like, we're gonna start marching and we're gonna turn left. We're gonna start marching and we're gonna turn left, all right?" Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am. "Oh, uh, ah, left face, ah." You know, so we're going. And my dumb ass went right, right after she told me that. And, golly, she flipped a switch and it wasn't good there. Um, but that was, that was kind of a fun thing. Um, I just wanted an adventure. Yeah, it's about military. Went down that little bunny hole. I just wanted an adventure.

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  I found it and there was a lot to do there.

• 1:17:20Speaker 05

  I'm sorry of backtracking, but, you know, you had mentioned you're still struggling with, uh, the loss of your father and your sister.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:29Speaker 05

  What are you struggling with?

• 1:17:43Speaker 04

  So when that happens, like, like, immediately I had to start providing for the family. I was an eight-year-old boy, so I didn't get a childhood. So one of the ways that I'm struggling with it now is like all the, it's kind of like the shrapnel of the bomb. I didn't get a childhood, so I had to grow up, like, overnight, almost. My mom has zero income, like, a very little income. She didn't have a college education, so she doesn't make a lot of money. So as soon as I start working, or as soon as I could start working, I had to start working to make money for the family. I just had to provide. Um, as a kid, little kid, you can't do much for provide, but I babysat, helped mom a lot of stuff in a lot of ways. As I got older and started working, I helped a lot financially and doing more to take care

• 1:18:27Speaker 04

  of the family. The way it's messed with me is like, is currently now with boundaries, like, not telling people no. It's hard to say no. It's hard to stop working. It's hard to turn off, because I didn't really have a choice as a kid. Um, and, uh...

• 1:18:45Speaker 05

  How does that, how does that affect your ability to say no?

• 1:18:51Speaker 05

  I struggle with that too.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 05

  I've gotten a lot better at it, but.

• 1:18:54Speaker 04

  It's tough.

• 1:18:55Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:18:57Speaker 04

  How does it affect my ability to say no?

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  Like, I'm not naive to the tight situation that, that we grew up in. And like, the fact that mom couldn't do it, and so someone had to help her. We had family that would help, but like, in my mind, I was like, well, that's, it's my job to do. I gotta stand up and do it. And so anytime I see a problem now.

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  You feel responsible.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And, uh, so I feel like I gotta fix it for people. And I'm good at it, like, I'm really good at what I do. And that's part of like the superpower. But then, uh, one of the ways that it is not good is like, people come to me just for an easy solution and, and I'll fix it and.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  Man, I'm, I'm, I just started this therapy stuff in January, and so I'm, I'm working through all this right now. It's, uh, it's tough. Why do I do it though? Like it, um.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  So as a child, there were a lot of, a lot of moments whenever, like,

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  like I didn't have a voice, like I would wanna go play or something, but I couldn't go play or, um, the answer would always be no, or.

• 1:20:10Speaker 04

  I just felt like it.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  If I wanted something, I just had to do it. Um, if I wanted something done, I had to get it done. If there was something fun that I wanted to do, like, I didn't ask. I learned pretty quick to not ask to do much stuff 'cause most of the time I couldn't. Um, I don't know, that's just trickled in now to.

• 1:20:27Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  To what we're doing.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  When you say, you know, it's, it's, it's really hard for you to say no, and that's becoming a problem. Is that building resentment?

• 1:20:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, that's, that's big. Yeah, the resentment can be big. It's something that, well, this last month, it's been good to work on that. And the way that.

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  So like if someone comes and like wanting, wanting help with something,

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  I can get the resentment in there because it's like, whenever they ask me, I feel like I have to say yes. I feel like I can't say no. So I don't, I feel like I don't have this freedom to say what I need to say.

• 1:21:13Speaker 04

  And also there's some resentment there because it's like, I had to figure out life and I'm still figuring it out on my own. Now I'm getting a lot better with like doing it with friends and other people, you know, but as a child I had to figure it all out on my own. And that taught me a lot, but I get the resentment because I can,

• 1:21:33Speaker 04

  I judge people for being lazy or not motivated, or I just wanna say, "Figure it out." Wrestle with it a little bit, struggle with it. I love the struggle of life. I think a lot of people don't. And so I get the resentment there whenever like they're not willing to, to struggle a little bit.

• 1:21:50Speaker 05

  Do you feel resentment for the time that it takes?

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. In a way it's like, going back to the work stuff, we were talking about this earlier, like it's, it's a, like it gets in the way of my other projects. Or it's like, if I do stuff, I want it to be efficient. Let's get it done, let's be productive, let's do it efficiently. So therefore like it can be harder for me to do some of the stuff that just takes time. With people, some of these counseling sessions or times I'll be with, meeting with the family or something.

• 1:22:22Speaker 04

  For them, the healing that they need is gonna come through them just kinda telling their whole story. And, but in my brain I'm just like, what's the, what are the, what are the main points? Give it to me in a minute and a half. Let's, let's get it done.

• 1:22:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  So, yeah, the time thing is a big thing.

• 1:22:40Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I can relate to that. Big time. I've really struggled with that. And I'll tell you the one thing that's, that's helped me is, somebody told me,

• 1:22:56Speaker 05

  When you say yes to somebody, you're saying no to somebody else.

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  Hmm, yeah, that's a good.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  And so, the way I took that is, it's the same thing. I think you've listened to the show, you know how deep we get. And, uh, it, it, I can't help everybody. And it's okay to say no. And, you know, but I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't fucking say no.

• 1:23:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 05

  And then, somebody told me that, and I realized, every time I'm saying yes to all these people, I'm saying no to my wife, to my son, to my daughter, to my mom and dad, to everybody that I really, really love. And, you know, when you kind of painted in that perspective, that, that, um, that helped me a lot.

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  That's, that's a good.

• 1:23:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  I like that. It's interesting, whenever I would be in these situations, whenever I feel like I'm, for example, like if someone asked me a question, like, I, I feel like I have to say what they want to hear. Um, and so I'm not free in that. And so what happens is like, psychologically and emotionally, I go back to the eight-year-old Steven. And like in my mind and my heart and my brain, I'm just thinking like, I'm thinking like a kid. And so now, what I'm trying to do is like, rationally think through the thing and say what needs to be said

• 1:24:24Speaker 04

  as a mature Steven, instead of the little boy Steven. And so that's hard, to, to say what needs to be said, but I know that's the right thing. So for example, it's like, instead of saying yes to somebody, saying no. What's interesting though, is that whenever I do that, a lot of times, I'll see them like, almost flip a switch and they'll start acting out of their child. So like the no that they hear, takes them back to a childhood trauma. Uh, you know, whatever sort. And then they'll start acting a certain way, or getting defensive, or this excuse, or whatever it may be. But, it's almost like a, a switch being flipped, and then they'll start acting a different way to me, out of that childhood trauma. But the neat thing now is, is, you know, with ministry is that... I can then love them in that situation.

• 1:25:06Speaker 04

  The response that they're giving is out of a trauma that they have from whenever someone didn't love them properly. And so then they respond to me out of that childhood mentality, and then I can love them in it. And there's some healing that the Lord does through that, if that makes sense. So it's just kind of neat to, through like, by me having healthy boundaries, like, the Lord is healing people, people through me, you know? Because it forces them to bring to light stuff that they're struggling with and then let the Lord into that.

• 1:25:37Shawn Ryan?

  I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilanceelite. That's patreon.com/vigilanceelite.

• 1:26:18Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force-feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show, and some of the stuff

• 1:27:02Shawn Ryan?

  that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would... Contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's gonna be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

• 1:27:46Shawn Ryan?

  But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 1:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break and I think we're at, I think we're at SIR training. Had a good, good chat downstairs about kinda diving in a little bit deeper about saying no and which morphed into psychedelics.

• 1:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, I don't know, I feel weird like advocating for psychedelics to a priest.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  No, it, it makes sense. It makes sense. I, like, I don't wanna give definitive answers on, on it either way, just because I don't have all the knowledge yet.

• 1:28:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:38Speaker 04

  And also I know that I'm like an authority figure when it comes to like religious things. So like, this isn't a religious thing, but people would see me as, as an authority figure. So if I give an answer on something, they'll take it as, as the gospel, you know?

• 1:28:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  Um, sorta like if you spoke about self-defense, you know, you know, arms training or whatever it may be, like, people are gonna listen to what you say, like, if you know what you're doing. So, so if I, if I, um...

• 1:29:04Shawn Ryan?

  I understand, I mean, you, you have a...

• 1:29:10Speaker 05

  Tremendous amount of responsibility for the people that that are listening to this and 10,000 people that go to your go to your church. And, um, I mean, I feel, I feel the same thing doing this. I mean, we have a massive audience and I never want to lead them in the wrong way, but it, but also, you know, I don't know. I mean, to me,

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  people have to be, you know, they have to be,

• 1:29:38Speaker 05

  how do I say this?

• 1:29:41Speaker 05

  So many people are trained to just be told what to think nowadays.

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Speaker 05

  And I'll, you know, on this show, I like to leave it up to them. Like, here's all these different things we're talking about and it's up to you to like decipher, you know, what, what, what, what aligns with your values and your beliefs and, and I'm not here to tell you how to think.

• 1:30:02Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:02Speaker 05

  You know, I'm here to explore my own curiosity and

• 1:30:08Speaker 05

  take my audience with me, but, um, but I do understand what you're saying. I would.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  There's more to explore there. Like, I, I want to know more about the psychedelics. I mean, the reality is, is like, they're here. More people are opening up to them. They're starting to do studies and everything with it. Uh, I think it's gonna be good to get some objective data, you know, that to make those choices, but then it's, it's a natural thing. Like, it's, it's, it's a fruit of the earth. Um, I'm, I'm just ignorant about it. I'm, I'm curious about it. I want to learn more. Um, I wouldn't be opposed to trying them sometime, but like it, like it would be a specific context, a time and place and, I mean, we,

• 1:30:49Speaker 05

  It's very obvious that, that your father and your sister that have passed in the car accident.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:30:53Speaker 05

  Um, that you really struggle with that.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:58Speaker 05

  And, you know, I went through a lot of examples, a couple of examples downstairs of what it, what it's done for friends of mine, a lot of friends of mine, what it's done for me personally. And you know, I mentioned it, I see way more good than bad that comes out of it.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:17Speaker 05

  And I don't, I just, you know, it has the ability to

• 1:31:24Speaker 05

  I don't know what exactly it does in these traumatic experiences. Some people, some people re-experience them.

• 1:31:35Speaker 05

  I don't really re-experience them. I might think about them, uh, when I'm there. But it, I thi- I think what it does is that, you know, you, you can get to this point where they call it an ego death. And your ego leaps.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  That's a good thing.

• 1:31:56Speaker 05

  It is, but it's-

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  If you lose your drive, though, it could be bad.

• 1:32:01Speaker 05

  I wouldn't say that. So, so I did, when I did the I began experience, that was one thing. And basically, it, it, that was like brain maintenance. And then I did this other thing, that's like a 12-hour thing. And then I did this other thing called 5-MEO DMT. It's a toad venom that you smoke. And it's a, it's a death experience. You die. Like, in your mind, if you allow it to, a lot of people fight it. And that's terrifying. In the first, I don't know, 15 to 30 seconds-ish,

• 1:32:44Speaker 05

  you are 100% certain in your mind that you are going to die. And you will fight that with every, I mean, you will fight it. And then it's the most anxiety, it's the most fear, it is the most horrible, it's, it's the most horrible 15 to 30 seconds of your life. Because ev- when I say an ego death, I mean, you're letting ev- everything go.

• 1:33:14Speaker 04

  Does it go fast or slow, those 15?

• 1:33:16Speaker 05

  It goes, it seems, I don't know how to describe that. It's almost like time isn't a thing.

• 1:33:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  But first you feel like you're gonna die and then all these thoughts, all of your attachments to earth or the world that we live in now start coming into play. So for me, it was like, okay, I'm gonna die. This is scary, scary as fuck, but alright. And, but then it's, oh shit, I'm leaving my son behind. I'm leaving my wife behind. Who's gonna take care of them? And you're having these conversations that, these conversations in your head that are going in like milliseconds. You know, like full conversations are like milliseconds. And by that, and that's, that's like, for me, that's the last part of my ego.

• 1:34:09Speaker 05

  I am comfortable with death. I am not comfortable with leaving my wife and my kids behind without a provider. Does that make sense?

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  Total sense.

• 1:34:29Speaker 05

  And so you let that, you eventually, if you want to do the crossover thing, which is the bliss part of this, you have to let that go. And like I said, you, you are a hundred percent sure that you're dying. And then you do this crossover. And that's, that's where it seems like it's like this spiritual realm. It's like, it's like a sixth sense. You are just so intuitive with, with,

• 1:35:12Speaker 05

  it just seems like a spiritual world, man. You can feel the presence of maybe people that have passed. You can feel the presence of God. You can feel this energy. But anyways, it's, it is the most healing thing I've ever done.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't have the objective like to make a definitive answer on it, but it sounds like such a sacred experience. And putting everything in perspective, like you said, it starts with death. And pretty much from there, it's like, okay, well, I've died. So can't get much worse than that. And so everything else falls into line. Earlier, I was talking about this whole thing of memento mori, like remember your death. It's the exact same principle. Like, we would pray or go on a retreat or something like that. And you could come to one of these points. This is like a medicinal way to come to that same point. And so I think, you know, I can't make the definitive answer, but I think there could be an argument in the future, once we get more information or more data on it, to where we could say there may be a place for it,

• 1:36:16Speaker 04

  you know, in people's daily life. I don't know if you want to do it daily, once or whatever, but there could be a place for it,

• 1:36:26Speaker 04

  to take us to that point of putting everything in perspective. Because I'm thinking like, when someone's sick, they take medicine to get better physically, right? Whereas you could say, well, if they were just healthy, if they ate healthy and worked out before, they may not have gotten sick. But you get to a point where, okay, you need medicine to break this sick cycle. Like psychologically, it sounds like the exact same thing happening. Like, it's just, you're, it's in this,

• 1:36:51Speaker 04

  I think you mentioned like that, like this circuit that's just a closed circuit.

• 1:36:54Speaker 05

  Default mode network.

• 1:36:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so like a defibrillator. Like, it's, it stops the heart so that then it can go back into rhythm and everything. And that's, you know, we would do that physically for the body, with the heart, with medicines. So I think there could be a place for this in the future.

• 1:37:10Speaker 05

  I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to like push this on you or anything. I just, I'm curious. I want to learn more. I just don't know. You know, it's, it's,

• 1:37:21Speaker 05

  so kind of what I'm getting at is it would, it might take you back to the accident.

• 1:37:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 05

  But it would, it would remove your ego and the attachment to your, it would potentially, I'm not saying this is what would happen, but it would potentially remove your ego from that day. And it would shift your perspective into a way that you can look at it from.

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  From an angle where you're completely detached emotionally from the situation. And it makes it, in a weird fucked up way, it makes it okay. And it brings, it brings like this certain understanding as to why it happened. Or it's okay that it happened. It was supposed to happen. Everything that has happened to you is, is, is what was, it was what was supposed to happen.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Speaker 05

  And um, it brings like a, it brings like a certain peace to things like that. At least it does for me and it does for a lot of my friends, you know? The argument is, I mean, and that some very good friends of mine think this. Uh, who are also SEALs. Who've seen the benefits that it does and, and some of them say it's spiritual suicide. Some people say that, that, that this is the, this is the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

• 1:38:51Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:38:52Speaker 05

  That, because what did they say? It was like, it gave him a certain knowledge?

• 1:38:56Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:56Speaker 05

  Or something? Well, I mean, that's kind of maybe what I'm describing. I don't know. I struggle with it.

• 1:39:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:02Speaker 05

  But I, you know, I'm like, is this good? I mean, I feel like it's good. It's doing a lot of good things. I don't think God would have put it here if it weren't. It's natural. It's a natural occurring substance that, that grows in fungus.

• 1:39:15Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:16Speaker 05

  I mean, or, or the root of a tree. I don't know why, and then there's other people that say that, you know, some of the prophets, there's, there's parts of the Bible where they talk about, you know?

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  I don't know it, uh, but I've heard people say, you know, that, that, that's maybe, uh, the burning bush. He ate something before. He saw that and, and kind of opened the mind up to be able to. I, I keep mentioning, it's, it's almost like another realm and I don't know. I don't know what to think of it. That's kind of what I'm, I'm more curious on your thoughts of, of the spiritual side of it and less on the, less on the, the studies.

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:59Speaker 05

  Studies are there.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. On the spiritual side, man, I'd.

• 1:40:04Speaker 04

  If I'm in doubt, I don't mess with it. Like it's, you know, I'd hate to, it's playing like Russian roulette, you know, you'd hate to, you'd hate to get the bullet, you know, it's like, well, you may, you may get a bunch of clicks, uh, but if you get the bang, then you're screwed. And it's, so this could be a similar thing, like, man, it maybe not, but a- at this point, in the future, it may be different, but at this point, like, there's just no definitive answer of saying, yes, it is demonic or no, it's not. So, so therefore, like, my, my advice on that is always, like, just go in with caution. I'm not saying do it or don't do it. I'm just saying, like, just with caution and prudence. But, yeah. I'm really curious about that.

• 1:40:42Speaker 05

  What do you think about, have you ever heard of remote viewing?

• 1:40:47Speaker 04

  Like a?

• 1:40:48Speaker 05

  Remote viewing?

• 1:40:49Speaker 04

  Like on a computer screen or something?

• 1:40:50Speaker 05

  No, no. Remote viewing is, uh, it's, it's almost like psychic type stuff. It is psychic like stuff.

• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:00Speaker 05

  You ever seen, like, the, the TV show where the, the guy's, like, thinking and he's like, oh, it happened over in the room over there and it was with a pair of scissors and he threw it in the dumpster.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 05

  And they go in the dumpster, like, holy shit, here's the scissors with the blood on it. That's kind of like what remote viewing is. And I've, so that's a real thing. And, um, like, documented, it's real. And see, I use these, it's called Project Stargate. And, uh, it's a fascinating subject. I've had a lot of the, those type of people on and, and, um, handful of them. And, and once again, it's like, is it demonic? I don't know. I mean, the Christian crowd sure as hell doesn't like it. They get blasted every time I talk about it. But, um, you, I guess if you haven't heard from it, you don't have an opinion on it.

• 1:41:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  But anyways, let's get back to serious school. So you went to serious school?

• 1:42:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, finished basic, went to serious school. I didn't even make it to the whole course. I was just doing the end doc before they send you off to Seattle or wherever the training, you know, somewhere in Washington State. Um, Fairchild. Is that Alaska or Washington? It doesn't matter. So, uh, before they send you off to the, to the actual school, which is about a year and a half of that, it's a long training. You have a end doc course, it's sort of like, um, Buds, you know, it's not that long, but it's just two weeks of getting kicked in the face. So it started that and got to the second to last day and got washed out. It's for multiple demerits. It was really deflating. So I was really excited about it. I was physically strong, ready to go, but mentally I wasn't strong enough. Not because I was trying to

• 1:42:43Speaker 04

  be weak, but because I hadn't, I just hadn't gone to that spot mentally before, like to that dark of a spot. I mean, I grew up with some dark stuff, but they were all kind of exterior things, but that internal drive to push into the point of discomfort, even though I'd worked hard my whole life and I still do, like at that time, I didn't understand what it meant to like to push a little bit deeper, go past that point of comfort. Just got multiple demerits. Like, you know, for example, one night we had to make tent stakes. I don't know, it was like for buds, but you're doing PT all day long and then they give us projects to do at night. So you're getting sleep deprived, you know, so you're, or if you do sleep, you'll come refreshed, but you didn't get your work done. So they're,

• 1:43:28Speaker 04

  you know, it's, you're gonna, you're gonna pay for it somehow. So one night we had to make tent stakes and I didn't make them long enough. I think they had to be like 16 inches long or something. Mine were 14 and 15. So that, I had a shovel, one of my shovels was, had dirt on it for the morning inspection. So that was another one. We had to make sleeping bags out of pieces of parachute. We had to, you know, sew it up at night. Had to have six to eight stitches per inch. And if there was more or less, it would be another demerit. And so I had some spots on there where it was, you know, didn't meet that criteria. And it sucked because, so if you had this little window of stitches, let's say I had 10 of them in this inch space. I was only supposed to have eight. They would measure it and say, oh, you got 10. And then they would go like every little stitch in that

• 1:44:12Speaker 04

  inch and count another stitch and say, oh, you got 10 demerits on this, whatever. So that.

• 1:44:20Speaker 04

  What else was I think? I think those were, yeah, the shovel, the sewing.

• 1:44:24Speaker 05

  So where'd you go, what'd you go when you left?

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  Um, got reclassed into another job. It took maybe-

• 1:44:31Speaker 05

  You went to Iraq?

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, so after that, had to wait two weeks to get another job. Uh, no, it was about three weeks. You just put in cleaning detail until they put you in another school so that I did logistics. They put me in a, um, a school to learn logistic planning. So people and stuff had to move it. Uh, did cargo. Most of that time was, was cargo movement, which is really fun. The, that time in the middle, after I got washed out of SER, uh, which sucked, man. But it was a good kick in the face, like, cause I, I wanted to do it so, so bad. And I thought that I was prepared for it. But it was, it broke me in a good way because now it's, one of the things I took out of that was like, the need to like dig even deeper, be more alert, pay more attention. Get put in that logistics job while we're waiting, we're just cleaning every day.

• 1:45:18Speaker 04

  You probably remember that, like, I mean, like if you don't just sit around and do nothing, they make you do something. So we had to clean every day, the same barracks over and over and over. But dude, idle time is like a bad thing when it comes to the troops. Like, you can just do some dumb stuff, like, you don't need bu- uh, booze or drugs if it's just a bunch of, you know, meatheads together. We would, uh, uh, like overnight, we'd stay up all night, just being dumb asses. We would do like demolition derby, we'd put guys on office chairs. And one on, one into the hallway, one on the other and just, you'd run them and crash them into each other. Just stupid stuff like that. One guy had a bowling ball one day and, uh, I don't know where the hell he got a bowling ball from, but it was in the dorms and so the guy was just rolling it up and down the hallway.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  And so I picked it up my time and I threw it and they all got out of the way and it hit the emergency exit and the fire alarm went off, so I had to call them and like make up a story, like, I was talking to my mom. And I leaned against the door, set it off, scared, man. Um, did logistics, did that training, that was down in Lackland. I got assigned, uh, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. That was cool. Um, that was the, that was my first time out in the real world, you know? Growing up, I was always in the family, then the military, they're always watching you. But at Ramstein, I was, I was like on my own, you know? Of course, you get the base, got your work, but I was making decisions on my own. And that was one of the first times I really feel some autonomy and, uh-

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  Like making free choices for myself. Um, people are big advocates of that and that's good. We do need to make our own choices. But sometimes it's to the detriment of family and community life. Like, so growing up, the family was so close. Um, I didn't have a lot of freedoms because well, this is what the family's doing. So that's what you're gonna do. Um, and it sucked as a kid, but one of the good things that it taught me is like how to be a team player. There's a lot of, there's gonna be a lot of stuff in life that you're not gonna wanna do, but you gotta do it because that's what love requires. So just do it, you know? So then in the military, Germany, I get that freedom. It was really cool. Just right out of training, I got a car and I did, um, quality control. When the people were PCSing, I would go and be the liaison between the German moving

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  company and the troops just to make sure everything was, was going well. That was cool. Got to drive all over Germany, meet all kinds of people from E1s to, you know, OTNs and everything in between. So that was fun. That gave me a lot of time alone, a lot of time in the car. I'd pray, just driving silence, just think, you know? God really started working on me then. How? Silence. I just shut the hell up and then like 444. I became aware of all these little bitty things around me and it would be little, little affirmations. I can't even think of a concrete example right now, but it was just peace. I was experiencing peace. You shut the chaos off around you and my soul could breathe a little bit and, uh, and

• 1:48:14Speaker 04

  I, I fell in love with that. So I wanted to do it more and more and more, spend more time in silence and, um, eventually got transferred out of that into the cargo side of this, this office. And that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that because I drove a big forklift every day, worked in the warehouse. We were knuckleheads. We, there was a big tire that we were shipping one day. My dumb ass got into it and convinced my, the other guys to roll me around the warehouse. I was rolling around and the chief comes out and just chews us out. Um, it was one of those things where like he could, like we were good troops. We worked hard, but we just did, just did that stuff. So he, he yelled at us, but he wasn't too mad.

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  I remember one time we, uh, this kinda guy, chief was like, um, I got in a box and he called this emergency meeting for the whole flight and they all came down. I was in this cargo box, no, you know, nobody knew he did. And, uh, so in the middle of his briefing, I jumped out and scared everybody. That was kinda funny. We would, um, sometimes we would have cargo to take to the, to the airport. And, uh, it would be like, we'd have to take it on the forklift. As one of these big center pivot, you know, ten, ten K, ten thousand pound forklift. So we'd drive across the base to drop the cargo off. With me and my buddies, we would have a competition to see who could take the longest route back. So we would be driving back to the housing area of the base on the, the big forklift.

• 1:49:36Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  Just doing stuff. Yeah, so, so that was fun. While I was in that cargo unit, that's when I deployed. I was at Belad Air Base. It was a smaller compound on Anaconda, LSA Anaconda, Belad Iraq. Um, huge base, basically a logistic hub. You, you, you may have passed through there, I'm sure you did. Um, uh, that was fun. That was one of the funnest times in my life. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't kicking in doors. So in that way, I was like, like I was blessed, you know? Uh, cause that's a, that's a, a big thing to carry, you know? And, and that, you know, being out there. That being said, man, rockets and mortars were coming in every single day. I remember the, one day I walked out of the office, you, you know, we got those, the concrete,

• 1:50:22Speaker 04

  like, walls or barriers or whatever that around all the buildings and stuff. And I would come out the front door of the office and right there beside the door is a, is a bullet, you know, and hit the concrete. It's, you know, it's not a big deal, but for me as a, you know, nineteen year old kid, I see that bullet for the first time and I'm like, oh wow, like, this is real, real stuff, you know? And then so many of our guys are experiencing that. You know, nineteen years old, I'm preaching to the choir, you, you know, most of the people listening, they, they get it. I think most of society doesn't though. And I, I think that's it. Um, I had a great experience in the military, up to the day I left. I loved it. But one thing really frustrated with is like, the way that a lot of veterans are, are treated. I mean, nineteen, twenty, twenty-five year olds.

• 1:51:08Speaker 04

  The brain is still being formed and the stuff that they're doing. And they're doing it proudly and they do a good job. And then they'll get their discharge, dishonor- or honorable discharge, you know, finish their enlistment or whatever and that's kind of like, well, you're on your own now. I mean, like the addictions and so many veterans, just the struggles that they have. It's kind of like, a lot of promises fed, fed to them that aren't delivered after the fact. That kind of frustrates me. So like the bullet that I fired doesn't compare at all to, to like what so many other guys and gals have done, you know, so.

• 1:51:47Speaker 05

  I remember watching an eighteen-year-old kid kill his first man.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  And cheering him on.

• 1:52:06Speaker 05

  But we all wanted to kill over there.

• 1:52:10Speaker 05

  But.

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  I said.

• 1:52:15Speaker 04

  I've never been in that position. In ministry, I've been with a lot of people who've been in that position, not, either whether it be military troops or murderers, you know, in prisons or murderers who are, you know, maybe not caught yet even.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  But this in the military, I think it's a different, you know, you mentioned cheering them on, like it's, I think a lot of people don't understand that, like what that means.

• 1:52:42Speaker 04

  It's something that is done for duty, for duty's sake. And there's like not a, I don't know, I'm not in the situation, but I really don't think there's like a lot of joy in like, like the individual life that was taken, like the person, you know, the, the name. But more so like the actions that have been stopped that they were doing, you know, and that's, I think a lot of people miss that distinction.

• 1:53:08Speaker 04

  It's no small thing.

• 1:53:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:13Speaker 04

  So, yeah, so I was over there in Iraq. It was, it was, it was a good experience for me. And I don't take it lightly. We were shot at a lot, but again, what I went through doesn't compare to at all anything. But other guys, and so it's just like a walk in the park. Um, but like when it came to work, it was just, we didn't stop. It was just logistics, moving stuff all day long. And so those are, those are, those are neat experiences. But then also to support, support you guys, like the ones that were, were out there. I mean, because we would get, all the cargo came through our office and we would get, if a shipment came and it was wrapped in all black plastic, we knew, like it went to the, the guys that didn't, like, they didn't have a name.

• 1:53:57Speaker 04

  Like there's some guys across the flight, well, there's y'all, you know, the, the different spec, special ops guys. And, um, like it would come in and there was no questions asked. Like you, you just call them, say, hey, we got a package. And they would come over and, and get it. Like it was, it was, you know, mission critical stuff. Um, a lot of it was like really big, intense stuff. Um, you know, weapons of different sorts, sorts, gear. I remember one time though, like, we got this big shipment and, um, I was wondering, I was like, what is in there? Like I'm curious, I was always wondering. They bring the big flatbed truck over and they, we load it all up. And then, uh, all the guys climb onto the trailer, start cutting open the boxes.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  You know, it was like, uh, it was pallets of gummy bears and, uh, and it wasn't chocolates, but it was a bunch of candy. And, uh, they just drove all over the base, just like Christmas. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. But it was a lot of fun. Um, so yeah, I was over there. That was oh seven. It was just one short deployment.

• 1:54:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 04

  Um, I want to go back to Iraq.

• 1:55:03Speaker 05

  You want to go back to Iraq?

• 1:55:04Speaker 04

  Not, not for the sake of war, but like.

• 1:55:09Speaker 04

  I just love, I love people, I wanna hear people's story. Here, we may get into this a little bit later, but this puts it in perspective, like, so when I, later on, you know, years down the road, when I'm in seminary in Rome, I had a classmate who was living just miles from the base where I was at over there. He was a Chaldean Catholic, I think it was Chaldean Catholic, it's, you know, part of the Catholic Church, one of the lines in there, but he was from, he was from central Iraq. And we're sitting in class, learning about God, talking about putting things in perspective.

• 1:55:49Speaker 04

  Like, we're sitting beside each other, when eight years before, like, we were within miles of each other. Isn't that wild?

• 1:55:57Speaker 05

  That is crazy.

• 1:55:58Speaker 04

  It's wild. And so, like, when I say I wanna go back to Iraq, it's like, I, I just wanna, like, see people, and like,

• 1:56:08Speaker 04

  like, their lives, like, the good people. There's some good ones over there, like, the farmers, I had the, the best fruit I've ever had in my life was when I was in Iraq, the melon, some cantaloupes or watermelon, something.

• 1:56:20Speaker 05

  You, you, why do you wanna go back, though? You wanna go back for curiosity? You wanna, you wanna go back to talk to who?

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  See the people, no one in particular, there's no individual person that I, that I met, but just like-

• 1:56:30Speaker 05

  You just wanna experience the culture there?

• 1:56:32Speaker 04

  Hear stories, yeah, and hear, experience the culture, yeah.

• 1:56:35Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:56:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36Speaker 05

  Do you think you'll do it?

• 1:56:38Speaker 04

  I don't know. I'd be open to it, but, I don't know, probably not, but, yeah. So it was, it was oh seven, quick deployment. This whole time, I'm growing a lot in my faith and praying a lot more, and this idea of priesthood comes.

• 1:56:52Speaker 05

  How did the idea of priesthood come?

• 1:56:56Speaker 04

  Started as just a random idea, like, when I'd be in the car driving around, doing the quality control stuff, or on the forklift working, or in the warehouse, be at the gym, be doing other stuff, and out of nowhere, you know, like, this idea of being a priest would come to my mind. Where'd that come from? It's kinda random. And then, just like, wouldn't think much about it, and I'd go back to what I was doing, and a few days later- It would happen again. I'm like, that's, it's kind of random. You know, I would be doing, I wouldn't be doing anything that would trigger a thought like that. It wasn't, like, I wasn't reading the Bible. I wasn't at church or anything. I was, you know, loading up munitions. I was driving a forklift, whatever it may be. And this thought would come. Then it's sort of like the whole 444 thing. Like, it just happened more and more often. And I was like, oh, okay, I gotta pay attention to this.

• 1:57:41Speaker 04

  And once I started paying more attention, I started getting more signs, more affirmations. Like, one thing, for example, when I was in Iraq, I went to mass one day. It was one of the first days I was there. Finished up mass. There was a guy who came. His name was Joaquin. And, um, he comes up to me after mass. Never met him. He's never met me. Didn't know each other. And he didn't say, hi, I'm Joaquin. Good to meet you. What's your name? He just came up and said, you're thinking about being a priest, aren't you? And I was like, what? Yeah, just out of the blue, complete stranger. And that was, little things like that. You know, people making comments.

• 1:58:15Speaker 05

  That's not a little thing.

• 1:58:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a big thing.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  Some random person.

• 1:58:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:22Speaker 05

  Wow. What do you think that was?

• 1:58:24Speaker 04

  That's the Holy Spirit working through him. You know, and, uh, yeah, so putting all those different.

• 1:58:31Speaker 05

  Did that freak you out at all? Have you told anybody?

• 1:58:34Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Yeah, I've shared it.

• 1:58:36Speaker 05

  No, I mean, have you told anybody before?

• 1:58:38Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 1:58:38Speaker 05

  Anybody around that person?

• 1:58:40Speaker 04

  No, no, there's no reason why he would have known it. I'd just gotten there. I was the only one from my unit that was deployed at that time. To that, to the, you know, so everyone else was new to me. I didn't know anybody that didn't know me.

• 1:58:52Speaker 05

  And that guy didn't know you?

• 1:58:53Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:58:54Speaker 05

  See, this is what happened to me in Stona.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:58:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, they didn't tell me to be a priest.

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  They said, make gummy bears.

• 1:59:04Speaker 05

  This guy, no, this guy, so a bit, so this, a lot of stuff was really bothering me. I had, I had a rough slew of interviews that were some of the heaviest ones I ever did. I interviewed this guy, Tyler Andrew Vargas. He was blown up at Abbey Gate. Twenty-four years old, watched a hobble up my stairs, one leg, one arm. And, um, the interview before that was this, this hacker, Brian Montgomery, who had uncovered a big, like... A big pedophile website and could have saved, tried to save a twelve year old girl, but FBI fucking blew him off and she got gang raped and, and, and, yeah.

• 1:59:46Speaker 05

  And a really good friend of mine died here in Franklin that week. God. And it was, it was, uh, and, and, and then all the, the butchering, whatever you wanna call it, the trans stuff with the kids, the, the, the gender surgeries. Yeah. It was like really bothering me and so it was like all this stuff happened at once. Anyways, um, I like, I couldn't get this shit out of my head. I smoked a joint, told my wife, let's go for a hike, tried to get it out, just tried to like get it out and, um, and I felt like I was like surrendering.

• 2:00:31Speaker 05

  I was like, Sean, why do you even give a shit about this stuff? Nobody else cares. You're the only one to, out speaking out about this stuff. I wasn't, but that's how I felt. I felt very alone, like I was the only one that was trying to fight against a lot of this shit that's, you know, the, the sex trafficking and the pedophilia and the gender surgeries that were taking place for eight year old kids and, and the state taking people's kids if they don't do it and, um, from the parents and it was just like, what's happening? And, um, anyways, I, I've, I had like gone on this hike and had a kid, I, I, I felt like I was surrendering. I was like, why do you even give a shit about this anymore? Nobody cares.

• 2:01:16Speaker 05

  You're the only one fighting for this stuff. Like you're the only one speaking out against it, just doesn't even affect you, just let it go. And, uh, I felt like I was like surrendering my soul to the devil or something. Mm-hmm. But I, but, and, um, I walked through this gate, this gate, and I'd been there for a week and, um,

• 2:01:44Speaker 05

  And a lot of the gate guards knew who knew who I was for my show. They're big fans, a lot of them prior military, dah dah dah dah. And so I would stop and talk to all of them and have short conversations and I walk through, this is the last night I'm here, and this guy comes out of the guard shack. And, and I pay attention to this kind of stuff too, like who's watching over them. It's just because of what I used to do.

• 2:02:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:12Speaker 05

  This old guy comes out,

• 2:02:15Speaker 05

  starts trying to talk to me. I don't want to talk to him. I'm obviously in a shit mood, right? And um, kind of like talking to him over my shoulder like this, because I don't want to give him the body language that's like, oh yeah, let's have a full-blown conversation. Like, hey, leave me alone. I'm not trying to be rude, but leave me alone. My wife starts talking to him. So I turn and square up to him.

• 2:02:38Speaker 05

  And he, he read my mind from front to back.

• 2:02:43Speaker 05

  And it's like, all this stuff with the, all this stuff with China that you're worried about, that's not your fight. All this stuff with gender stuff that you're worried about, that's not your fight. And it freaked me out. And then he went through my whole, everything that I was thinking about on that entire hike. And told me that wasn't my fight. I need to let that shit go. I don't even remember the rest of the stuff he had, because I was thinking, holy shit, how the fuck is this guy inside my head right now? I've never even seen this dude. I've been here for a week. I know every gate guard that's been in here, except this random guy that just comes up. And um, and that was the first, I told you, I got slapped in the face like three times. That was the first one.

• 2:03:27Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:03:27Speaker 05

  So I mean, sounds like you, it reminds me of that.

• 2:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:32Speaker 05

  What happened to you?

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's cool.

• 2:03:35Speaker 05

  What do you think that is? Is that an angel? Is that God? What is that?

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39Speaker 05

  Have you ever seen that person again?

• 2:03:40Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've seen him again. We've been in contact, actually.

• 2:03:44Speaker 05

  Really?

• 2:03:44Speaker 04

  Afterwards, yeah. Yeah, because it does, very beginning of the deployment, so as the deployment went on, we talked more and, you know, established a friendship and everything. But he lives in Oregon.

• 2:03:55Speaker 05

  Well, did you ask him how he knew that?

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  Um, excuse me. Uh, no.

• 2:04:01Speaker 05

  You never asked him how he knew you were thinking about becoming a priest?

• 2:04:05Speaker 04

  He was a very holy guy, so I knew it was like the Lord put it on his heart. Was he a Catholic too? Uh huh, yeah. This was right after church on one day, one of the days, first days I went there was, I went to mass and he was there. And so the first words out of his mouth are? You're thinking of being a priest, aren't you? Wow. Yeah. You know, I think that there's a, this stuff happens all the time, but we're just not paying attention to it. We're all in our own little worlds. God's still working, man, like he's all around. We just gotta open our eyes, get out of our little bubble. We also gotta be bold. You know, we, we, I think at the very beginning, we talked about boundaries and saying no. We've talked about it outside too.

• 2:04:47Speaker 04

  Whenever we say that, whenever we speak the truth, like God works through that. So I, I think not only do we need to be more aware of how God is working around us, we need to be aware of how he's working in us and like be bold in the way we talk. Like you can say some stuff that's gonna be awkward, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna be, not gonna be comfortable, but it's what needs to be said. Um, that's a terrifying thing. Um, so yeah, so he, that was, that was an example of like all these, I say little things and they were big things, but they just kept adding up one after another. And then eventually I contacted the, the diocese of Little Rock, which is where, where I live.

• 2:05:29Speaker 04

  Catholic church, we got, if you think of it like a state. The geographical region of a group of churches would be called a diocese, which is what we call it. Um, so I contacted the area of where I live in Little Rock and telling them, hey, I'm interested, you know, in being a priest, can I come visit, talk to you guys? So I flew back and just visited with them, went to visit the seminary. And that kind of sealed the deal. Once I came and met with the, with the bishop and everything and then visited the seminary. So I was like, this is cool. It, as much fun as I was having in the military, I had so, so much fun. You know, I'd enjoy going back in, it'd be fun to do it again, you know? Um, but, um, as much fun as I was having, there was a different kind of joy that I experienced

• 2:06:13Speaker 04

  whenever I came back for that meeting. It was just like a deeper peace. Like I was having fun before, but then I experienced a peace. Sometimes I'll, I'll have peace in the fun that I'm having, but fun, being happy is just a passing emotion. But the peace and that joy, that's a, that's a deeper thing. And, uh, and I experienced it and I was like, okay, this is it. And I went in the cemetery. That was 2008.

• 2:06:36Speaker 05

  No hesitations?

• 2:06:37Speaker 04

  No, not really. I mean, once it, once I connected all the little dots and all the little, the little invitations became the big invitation from God, like, I was like,

• 2:06:49Speaker 04

  why wait, you know?

• 2:06:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:06:51Speaker 04

  Get off the pot. Like, okay, well, God, if you're this clear with me, like, why would I, why would I wait? Like, no need to sit around and say, oh, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. Like, no, he's called you, Steven, so go. I dropped my nets and went. It was fun.

• 2:07:09Speaker 05

  Is there any hesi-, was there any hesitation that you could not have a intimate relationship with a woman?

• 2:07:15Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was there. Yeah, definitely. And, and, and it's, so, yeah, so we, we don't get married. We, we give our life completely to the church. Also part of that is like, intentionally to pre-, like, to prefigure, to live now what life will be like in heaven, like, what we're, it's just us and the Lord, like, that radical intimate relationship with the Lord alone, you know?

• 2:07:41Speaker 04

  But, yeah, no, that thought definitely went through my mind. And it's, it's probably harder now than it was then.

• 2:07:48Speaker 04

  I don't mean hard, like, in a way that's creating a crisis, but, like, all of my buddies have kids and kids and stuff, you know? And so, like, I'll, I'll see them and, and part of my brain will think, like, what would it be like to have a wife and kids? You know? It's never in a way where I'm thinking, like, oh, I want to go find a wife, you know? I want to go make babies or something, but it's just like, it's written on the heart. It's, it's, we were made for that, which is why, like, the desire is there, so it's good. Um, yeah, so, yeah, that's your question. It definitely came.

• 2:08:21Speaker 04

  But, you know, it'll still come, but the same, it's kind of like any other commitment, like, if someone is, once they get married or something, like, they, they say their I do's. Doesn't mean you stop seeing beautiful women, like for the men or for the ladies. It doesn't mean that she won't see other handsome guys.

• 2:08:36Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:37Speaker 04

  But like you can say, wow, like she's pretty, like he's a handsome guy. But the commitment's been made. So that's kind of what it's like for me now. Like I've made the commitments. And there's a lot of freedom in that. There's a lot of freedom. So while I may see a pretty lady or something, or see a family and think, oh, I wonder what it'd be like to be a family. It doesn't register as an option because it's not. It would be the same if I was married and then saw other beautiful women. Like, well, no, I already made my free yes to her.

• 2:09:04Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 2:09:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:05Speaker 05

  What was, uh, what was seminary school like?

• 2:09:08Speaker 04

  That was some of the best years of my life. My whole life has been fun. It's been a kick in the face every day.

• 2:09:14Speaker 05

  What's the, what's the average age of the, of the student body?

• 2:09:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we were, some guys were 18 right out of high school. Some guys.

• 2:09:23Speaker 05

  Eighteen?

• 2:09:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, right out of high school. Just going straight into seminary. Some guys like me, you know, early twenties. It's in the military, but as you know, I mean, it doesn't matter what job you do. Like you grow up fast in the military. So, you know, a lot of life experience there in the military. Um, up to 40s, some guys in their early 40s, uh, late 30s. There, every now and then you'll get some guys that are older in their 50s or something that'll go to seminary. But most of the guys were between, I'd say 18 out of high school up to late 30s. So it's an eight-year process, um, four years of philosophy and four years of theology. I did my philo- my philosophy in Louisiana. You read that at the beginning. It was at St. Joseph's Seminary,

• 2:10:08Speaker 04

  um, in Covington, Louisiana with the Benedictine monks. Um, that was a cool place. Cajun country. Have you been to Louisiana?

• 2:10:19Speaker 05

  Only once.

• 2:10:20Speaker 04

  Some cool people.

• 2:10:21Speaker 05

  There's some fishing down there.

• 2:10:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's fun. I went alligator hunting there a year ago.

• 2:10:26Speaker 05

  What?

• 2:10:27Speaker 04

  You need to go. It's so fun.

• 2:10:28Speaker 05

  Well, how do you alligator hunt?

• 2:10:30Speaker 04

  Uh, I use my bow.

• 2:10:32Speaker 05

  You, what?

• 2:10:33Speaker 04

  Put an arrow like at the base of their skull or a pistol. You can use a pistol if you want. But that's pretty cool.

• 2:10:40Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 2:10:40Speaker 04

  Those things are mean. They're like, they have, they just wake up pissed. They're dinosaurs. But yeah, so Southern Louisiana, that's where Theo Von's from. He's from Southern Louisiana? He like, I think from Mandeville or Covington, Louisiana. But that's where the seminary was. I didn't know it. He just, yeah, so we were talking about him earlier. He seems like a cool dude. Um. He is a cool dude. Maybe we'll all, let's all go alligator hunting together. Let's do it. It would be fun. Um. Down there with the Benedictine monks, you know, so cool. They have this big old monastery. Um, you know, they're walking around in their black robes and everything. We would just wear, you know, we had a uniform, like suits. We'd wear a suit every day to class.

• 2:11:25Speaker 04

  Um, but that was fun, man. Studying philosophy was fun. I fell in love with education. I fell in love with learning. Um, so it's fun to study the philosophy, fun to be with those guys. It was fun to be at that place, you know, the, with the monks. The motto for the Benedictines is, is, um, ora et labora, pray and work. And, um, that was really ingrained into me, growing up. And, and there it was really clarified. Just work and pray, work and pray. If you do that, like, God will provide. So bust your ass and do everything you can to stay holy, to be holy. And like, work hard and toe the line. Like, it makes sense, you know, it makes sense. And there's a lot of freedom in that. And you don't get lost in this other, all this stuff.

• 2:12:09Speaker 04

  One of the, um, good people too. Most of the guys there were from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, just good old boys, a bunch of foreign boys and stuff. We would do a, uh, every year we'd have a big football game around Thanksgiving. Mm-hmm. And, um, we would have a big bonfire. And that was always a lot of fun. I made a, I was in charge of building the bonfire, me and a buddy of mine, Brian Phillips, he's a priest in Austin, Texas. We were in charge of building it every year. We'd run up, we'd, we'd go out, scout for trees, cut the trees down, haul the wood up and then just start building it. The last year we did, it was thirty-three feet tall. It was twenty by twenty foot, thirty-three feet tall, mass. So, so the day starts, we have, we have mass, all of us have mass together at midday.

• 2:12:54Speaker 04

  Then we go out and play a football game. Uh, and then after that, we just have a big meal and light the fire. It's really cool. Um, the seniors are the ones that light the fire. We all go out. The seniors, when you're a senior, you, everyone marches out in this line with these big torches and then you put it in and then just hang out until. Till the next morning.

• 2:13:17Speaker 04

  What? Do you learn the history of the Catholic Church? Yeah. Where did it start?

• 2:13:25Speaker 04

  We believe with Peter, right? Peter and the disciples. Yeah, so with Jesus Christ.

• 2:13:32Speaker 04

  Short answer. Can you go into the long answer? Yeah, yeah. So, the, uh...

• 2:13:40Speaker 04

  The beautiful thing about the Catholic Church is, is the important thing that we really focus on is apostolic succession. Meaning like, coming from the apostles. So, Jesus comes. He loved everyone, he healed everyone, but he also called a very specific group of people to follow him, to learn from him, and then to continue the mission that he started. And he gave them gifts, anointing, to continue all the things that he did. You know, the apostles and disciples. And then, but we've got, you know, we can follow apostolic succession from Christ to Saint Peter,

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  through all the popes, up to Pope Francis right now. So, we've got the genealogy of it. Am I saying all of them are good? No, there were like corrupt times in the church. That doesn't take away from the fact that, um, people can be corrupt while the institution still maintains its dignity. And so, although, um, you know, we've had some good popes, we've had some bad popes, we've had good Christians and good, and bad Christians, you know, everything in between, but... So, it comes back to apostolic succession. You know, just that line of popes. And then the people who are... So, Peter was the first pope? Mm-hmm. The apostle? Yeah.

• 2:15:02Speaker 04

  And then now, like, apostolic union, uh, it's like the connection to the Holy Father. And not so much him, we don't worship him, but we recognize him as the father figure of the church. Who, he followed Pope Benedict, who followed John Paul II, who followed, uh, John Paul I, and then, uh, Paul VI, and then John XXIII, and then all the way back. And so we go back to that, to the lineage of the popes. And then under them would be all the bishops who are in communion with the pope. And then, under the popes, or the bishops, would be all the priests who take care of all the faithful around the world.

• 2:15:44Speaker 04

  There's not, every square inch of the world is delegated to some Catholic diocese, which is kinda cool. Interesting. Yeah, it's like for the sake of salvation of the souls. Like, there's somebody spiritually designated to, somebody designated to have spiritual authority over every soul on this earth. So, although there's 10,000 people in my parish, I'm a pastor of a general area. My parish is not just my church, my parish is the whole area, the whole geographical area where I'm at. So I'm of course responsible for taking, responsible for taking care of the Catholics at the church.

• 2:16:24Speaker 04

  But also, every other soul that lives in my area, whenever I die and I meet the Lord, one of the things that I've gotta answer is like, how did I serve all the sheep in my, in my area? And so it's like, this spiritual authority, we pray and make sacrifices for them and try to bring them to Jesus Christ. Interesting. So, yeah. That was, one of the things that really opened my eyes up to the universality of the church, that's a, that's a big thing. Catholic, in the small c, like, the big capital C Catholic refers to like, the Catholic Church, but, um, means universal. It's like, worldwide, you say that, and, you know, but what does that mean? My theology, after I finished seminary in Louisiana, I went to Rome.

• 2:17:06Speaker 04

  I was in Rome for four years, which was a phenomenal experience. And I really had a universal experience, or an experience of the universal church, people from all over the world. Um, I did my... Graduate studies in theology at the Gregorian University. It's the university that was founded in 1551 by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. So to go to a seminary that's, you know, that old, 500 years old.

• 2:17:30Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 2:17:30Speaker 04

  Was really cool. And the people in my class, there was around 120 students, men and women from all over the world. As I mentioned earlier, like the classmate, one of my classmates was from Iraq, just miles. We were miles apart. And then we were sitting inches apart a little bit later. Yeah, and like little things like that. I keep saying little things, that's a very big thing. But it's those things that really shows the greatness of our, of our God and like the plan of all this. Like it's, there's so much, so much to unpack. You know, it's a big deal.

• 2:18:06Speaker 05

  When did the...

• 2:18:09Speaker 05

  So the first pope was Peter the Apostle?

• 2:18:12Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:18Speaker 05

  When did the Bible come in?

• 2:18:21Speaker 04

  Um, so like the canon as we have it, that's what, that's what we would call it, the canon of scriptures. Like one of the official books of the Bible. It wasn't until around probably the 3 and 400s. Christianity wasn't legalized until 313. Um, so even before then, it was illegal to be a Christian. So they were killing people left and right. They didn't even have the Bible before then. So it was around the 3 and really into the 400s, not until the 400s that the actual canon of scripture as we have it now was, was established. Um, and so that in itself points out like apostolic succession, you know. A lot of people talk about just scripture only.

• 2:19:02Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, of course we need the scripture, but I can't be the only thing because like that was the fruit of the community's relationship with God. And so that would, that calls in tradition. So Catholics, for our authority, we don't just refer to the Bible, we also refer to, or make reference to tradition as well. Scripture and tradition is, is how we, um, you know, where we go to for authority. Um, so, yeah, so Bible 400s. So.

• 2:19:36Speaker 05

  Does the Bible mention the Catholic Church at all?

• 2:19:40Speaker 04

  No, there's no reference to any of them. There wasn't, there really wasn't an understanding of the Catholic Church as it is now. I mean, like, there was. But it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that there were, there were other sects that, that, that then broke off, you know, Protestantism. Then all the different churches that, that flowed out of Protestantism.

• 2:19:59Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. So up until then, like, if you were a Christian, you were Catholic.

• 2:20:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:20:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. And even, yeah.

• 2:20:08Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:20:09Speaker 04

  Up until the 1500s, so was, you were, if you were a Christian, that's, that's what you were.

• 2:20:16Speaker 05

  So I'm, one of the, one of the big questions I have about Catholic churches is kind of like the middleman. And, you know, I'm no biblical scholar, so it's just, it's just questions. But, um, you know, when Jesus roamed the earth, it seemed like everybody had a direct line into him. He didn't really have to go through anybody. And it seemed to me that he was preaching that everybody has a direct relationship with God. And so, in, in, everything seemed very against the Pharisees.

• 2:20:59Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:00Speaker 05

  Right? Which is a, which is what? A, like a rank structure of humans to God, correct? Would that be?

• 2:21:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:09Speaker 05

  Fair to say? And so, it seems like, to me, it's very similar to the Catholic Church.

• 2:21:20Speaker 04

  The Pharisees?

• 2:21:21Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:21:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:21:23Speaker 05

  Am I wrong?

• 2:22:09Speaker 04

  I would, yeah, I would, I would say so. I would argue against that. So I would agree, we do need a direct relationship with Jesus Christ.

• 2:22:16Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:22:17Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. How do we have that physical relationship with Jesus Christ now? It's through the church that He established. The church that He established and instituted with the apostles, that He gave all authority to continue the ministry that He did, to carry on the preaching of the, the good news, salvation, eternal life. Through Him, only through Him. So how do we maintain this physical relationship with Jesus Christ? It's through the church that He established, in particular through the sacraments that are administered through that church. So whenever the Catholic Church, one of the things that we, we talk about all the time, it's our, the meat and potatoes, it's what it is, it's the sacraments. So, to celebrate the sacraments,

• 2:22:59Speaker 04

  to celebrate the Eucharist, for example, you have to be a validly ordained priest. A priest that was validly ordained by a, a valid bishop who is in communion with the Pope. And he would be in communion with all the Popes before him, which would take us back to the lineage of, back to, on the line, back to Jesus Christ. So what he handed on, they handed on. Jesus walked and talked with the apostles. Spent time with them, touched them. They called their successors, spent time with them, walked with them, put their hands on them for the, for the, for the ordinances. That's continued for all the ordinances to the priesthood and the episcopacy, to be a bishop. To now,

• 2:23:40Speaker 04

  all validly ordained bishops have been consecrated by a bishop that came before them. All priests are validly ordained by a bishop that was validly ordained. And so there's an actual physical touch. Like when the bishop put his hands on my head and an order in my hands, an ordination. There's an actual concrete, physical touch that, like, one hand to the next. Two thousand years. That's pretty cool. And so, how do we have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Yeah, we can talk to the Lord in prayer, but that's a spiritual relationship with, with Him. If you're, earlier we talked about, like, going to the mountains and how that'd be hard for you, to go for a week. You know, you, you mentioned getting away from work, but I think more than that, I don't think you want to be away from your wife and your kids for more than a week. You want to be with Him.

• 2:24:25Speaker 04

  So if you were around the world... You could call her every day, you could do FaceTime with your kids, but it's not like walking through that door and picking them up and hugging them. There's, there has to be physical touch, which is why God became man. Like, because to, to, to save us completely. God's not, he's not removed from this experience that we have. Um, it's a, it's a physical thing. It's raw, man. It's raw. Which makes it so real, which goes back to the question that Brian had at the beginning. Yeah, you're mad at God? Okay, be mad at God. Like, let him have it. Like, it's only in reality that we encounter God, which includes everything that we live day in and day out.

• 2:25:07Speaker 04

  So, for me, like, that's one of the most convicting things of the church. I mean, yeah, I've studied all the theology, you know, there's so much there. I can remember a lot of it, what I don't remember, I can easily look up. Like, the reason I'm sticking with it is because it's so damn real. There's a physical touch to Jesus Christ through this faith that I'm living. What is the physical touch? Through the sacraments. In the sacraments, Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacraments. The sacraments, those celebrations or those rituals that we'll do, in which Jesus Christ becomes truly present in a supernatural and sacred way. It's like the Holy Eucharist, um, we believe.

• 2:25:47Speaker 04

  And we live around the fact that that's the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. And it's, um, the Eucharist is only, can only be celebrated again through a priest who's been ordained, and, you know, the whole line that I pointed out a second ago. Um, can't be, just be Joe Schmo that does it. You know, it's gotta be someone who is in communion with the church. So, that's the, kind of the tradition element, like, it's handed on. You know, if that makes sense, but... What are all the sacraments? You got seven of them. The first is baptism. That's what cleans, washes us of original sin, makes us beloved sons and daughters of God.

• 2:26:27Speaker 04

  We're no longer just a creature of God, but we're a son and daughter that's greatly loved, welcoming to his family. After that, you've got the, um, you know, if you take the sacraments of initiation, you've got baptism. You got the Holy Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ, which we talked about that. John 6, you know, it's, we can go and read about that. Um, the bread of life discourse, Jesus says over and over and over, "I am the bread of life." "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you." Like a...

• 2:26:56Speaker 04

  At no point does he say, "I'm just the image of, you know, "the bread and the wine is an image of me." He says, "I am the bread of life. "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you." And so like, what he ended on was the Eucharist, in that, in that. Paul speaks of that. "Take this, this is my body. "Take this, this is my blood. "Take and eat, take and drink." So, it would be asinine for Jesus to say, "You have no life in me, "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood." And he doesn't make that possible. So we got the Eucharist, that's the second one. The third one is the confirmation. It's where we receive the fullness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, we receive God's love, God's, you know, life in the Father.

• 2:27:41Speaker 04

  But confirmation is kind of like what, what really opens up the full use of those sacraments. It's like having a bunch of firearms. You get them at baptism, but then after, after all your training, then you know how to actually shoot them. You know how to use them. So confirmation is, is that supernatural sacrament that God gives us to unlock all those, you know, it's the magazines he gives us, so to actually use the weapons, you know. So then you have, you have the sacrament of reconciliation, through which our sins are forgiven. There's a lot of people argue with this one, or say, "Well, I can just go to God and tell God I'm sorry." It's like, yeah, you can, you should. We should do that every night. But our sins also have a communal effect.

• 2:28:23Speaker 04

  No sin that we commit is just between me and God. Because we are people of community, there is necessarily, like, the healing for any wrong that we do, sin, must have a communal element to it, because it affects the community. And so that's where, that's where the sacrament of reconciliation comes in. We're on behalf of Jesus Christ. Like, the priest speaks those words of forgiveness, of absolution. "I absolve you, in the name of Thessalonians 1:11, Holy Spirit." You know, so, it's, it's the very minister of God's sacraments.

• 2:28:58Speaker 04

  In the name of Christ, on behalf of the community, like grants that pardon for the communal elements. So that's the sacrament of reconciliation. We've got the sacrament of anointing of the sick. So whenever people are sick, physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, there's an anointing that will give them with some sacred oils, pray some prayers over them. James talks about that, letter James, of sending the elders to anoint them with oil to the sick. And what that does is allows us to unite our suffering to the cross of Christ. It gives meaning to it. So you're not just suffering, you know, depression, or a physical ailment, or whatever. But now through that suffering,

• 2:29:39Speaker 04

  you're united to Christ. So therefore, your suffering is saving souls. Like, it's a prayer that's offered up to God. You're united to the pains of Christ on the cross. And He works through that for the sake of sanctifying the world. So then you become, you don't become a burden to society, you become a beacon of hope and a blessing through which the Lord comes through your brokenness. That's anointing of the sick. Then the last two, and this isn't, they're not in order, numerical order like this, but the last two I've mentioned would be the sacraments of marriage, or holy orders. Or what? Holy orders, priesthood? Okay. Yeah. So, both of those are sacraments of a vocation, or calling. What they do

• 2:30:17Speaker 04

  is commit us to, to a way of life. It makes us, gives us a vow. And so, we all have free will, and God wants us to love most fully with that. And the best way to love is to love perfectly, which would be a love till death. And a civil contract does not bind that. You know, there is a binding element within that, but it's through the sacrament that it becomes a supernatural, supernaturally bound vow. Okay, so husband and wife, for example, or a priest, I guess, you know, till death do his part. So, the sacraments, you mentioned, through all those.

• 2:31:02Speaker 04

  This is gonna bring it back to how this started was like, that allows us to have a true, actual, physical contact with Christ because in all of those, we receive Christ Himself

• 2:31:14Speaker 04

  in a very distinct way, through the baptism, through anointing of the sick, through confirmation, through the holy orders, priesthood and ordination. But there's an interesting thing with the Eucharist. These other ones, you receive it once and it's like something that happened, kinda like it unlocks God's grace in those moment, and then you move forward. With the Eucharist, the presence remains in the bread. The presence remains in the wine, it's been consecrated, it becomes the body and blood of Christ, which is why all churches, Catholic churches, keep a tabernacle where we keep the Eucharist. Kept over like a lock and key because it's a sacred thing. We don't want people to, you know, do anything with it, you know, anything sacrilegious with it or anything like that.

• 2:31:59Speaker 04

  That presence remains. And, uh,

• 2:32:03Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 2:32:05Speaker 04

  Sacraments.

• 2:32:07Speaker 05

  So when somebody once forgiveth us, why do they have to go through a priest to get that forgiveness?

• 2:32:16Speaker 04

  Good question. It would be what I referenced earlier, the, um, for the, one for the communal element, like the sin that's been done is, it affects the whole family, even if it's a private sin. But then also just the surety of hearing the forgiveness, of knowing that it's, that the Lord's forgiven, forgiven us. And, uh, wish I could explain it better in that regard.

• 2:32:51Speaker 05

  Do you think God forgives if they are truly sorry and they don't go through a priest?

• 2:32:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, nothing prevents God from forgiving us. Uh, then, like, how would you know, though? Or like, that's, that's a very simple answer. And it's not like, I'm not trying to make a cop-out answer or something, but like,

• 2:33:13Speaker 04

  what's the surety of it, that it's been forgiven? You know? We can pray it, and we can believe it. Like, how do we know it? Of course, we can have faith that we're forgiven, but what's the actual physical guarantee? I guess to bring it back to the flesh. What's the actual physical guarantee that it's been forgiven? Because you can pray about it, and it still kind of will linger in your head, like, you know, what if it wasn't? Or maybe, uh, you know? But through the words of the priest, like, we're physically forgiven. Because God comes to, like, he wants to save all of us, not just our souls. Like, he wants to save, at the end of, end of time, we'll, we'll be raised up, body and soul.

• 2:33:48Speaker 05

  But aren't we already free from, I mean, aren't we already forgiven before we even commit them? I mean, that's, isn't that the whole reason that Jesus died on the cross?

• 2:33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we still have free will, too, so we, we're still capable of messing up again. That's the, the mystery of salvation on the cross. Like, it's one dependent on a moment when we're all forgiven. It's been done.

• 2:34:11Speaker 04

  It was a concrete moment in space and time, 2,000 years ago. It's also a supernatural reality that's still being played out every, every moment. We are being forgiven. Like, the very fact that we're being held into existence is by God's sheer act of mercy and love. It's His grace that keeps us alive. So we have been forgiven, that actual event 2,000 years ago. We are being forgiven, like, constantly, because we're not worthy to live. Like, it's God's grace that's, that's making it possible. So that, that could be equated to forgiveness, like, actually here and now. And then we pray to be forgiven, like, at the final judgment. So it's like, all three can be true. Which, which then just reveals to us, like, like, layers. You were asking earlier about angels and stuff like that. There's a lot of layers.

• 2:34:56Speaker 04

  There's a lot of layers. We can compartmentalize a lot of things in life, but you can't compartmentalize, like...

• 2:35:00Speaker 05

  What do you mean, layers?

• 2:35:02Speaker 04

  I mean, like, uh, like, angels. So, we got the physical realm around us. Um, but also, there's like a supernatural element around us. Like, there's angels and demons around us. There's so much stuff going on, and, um...

• 2:35:17Speaker 05

  Like what?

• 2:35:18Speaker 04

  Spiritual warfare.

• 2:35:21Speaker 04

  Satan and all of his angels and all of our angels.

• 2:35:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of forces at play. We're not just, we're not just roaming around this earth doing our own little jobs and living our own little lives. Everyone doing their own little thing on this, this big ball. You know, there's like, there's gotta be something more. There has to be something more than us just

• 2:35:46Speaker 04

  living our eighty years and then dying after eighty or ninety, you know, whatever, sixty.

• 2:35:54Speaker 04

  And that gives meaning to life. That's why we struggle. That's why.

• 2:35:59Speaker 05

  What are they doing in this room?

• 2:36:02Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:36:03Speaker 05

  What do you think they're doing? How do you envision it?

• 2:36:06Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 2:36:06Speaker 05

  Were they just sitting there chilling?

• 2:36:07Speaker 04

  No, I envision like all the demons, like just trying to get us off path, anything that they can do to get us off track.

• 2:36:16Speaker 04

  To create us to sin, to create more doubt in, in who guided us, to have more pride, to, to be more independent. And what I mean is like not depending on God. So they want, they're doing everything they can to distract us and separate us from God. And so the angels are doing everything they can to help us stay focused on God. It's all about ordering everything to God. That's what it means to live a virtuous life and, and, you know, struggle for holiness every day.

• 2:36:50Speaker 05

  Do they interacting with each other? Angels and demons?

• 2:36:53Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. That's a, it's a battle. We would see them.

• 2:37:00Speaker 04

  But also like, you know, I don't know. I don't see angels. I don't see demons. I know they're real, but they exist in a different realm than us. Like it's, it's, they're not bound by space and time.

• 2:37:13Speaker 04

  And so they don't like sit around a desk and, and try to like negotiate. Like we can't even fathom that what the, what that battle looks like. Sparks going against each other. I don't know. But it's just like, there's, there's two forces pulling, pulling this world and everything in it two different directions.

• 2:37:33Speaker 04

  Good and bad, light and dark, heaven or hell, whatever you want to call it. Like, there's, there's two forces that are at play. Even for someone that doesn't believe in God, or doesn't want to believe in anything, any kind of higher power, like, if you are like somewhat conscious and somewhat aware of life in the world, like, you would, you would agree that there's like, there's a tension here. There's gotta be something. There's gotta be more than what we're just seeing. And there, there's a constant pull between, you know, this good and bad.

• 2:38:08Speaker 04

  I wish I could explain it better.

• 2:38:15Speaker 04

  How was the Pope chosen? Through, uh, it's the, um, it's at a conclave, that's what it's called. And, um, the, all the Cardinals from around the world will come together, and they'll pray, and then they'll, they'll cast ballots, and then, when a certain number of those votes are passed, then, uh, then, uh, then that Pope is determined to, but it's through the, like, a voting process of the different Cardinals.

• 2:38:44Speaker 04

  I was there in, uh, 2013, whenever Pope Benedict stepped down, and, uh, Pope Francis was elected. That was a cool experience, man. There were, I don't know, 20,000 people, 30,000 people there at St. Peter's Square, probably even more than that. But there were so many people. It was the most energetic thing I've experienced in my life. It was so cool. We're all out there, and, uh, you know, whenever the Pope is elected, they're all in the Sistine Chapel. There's a bunch of movies out there, some, a lot of it's just like Hollywood stuff, but they do go in the Sistine Chapel, they vote, and then the smoke will come out, either the black or the white smoke. Whenever the white smoke comes, um, it means, you know, a Pope has been elected. So, we're all out there, everyone hanging up, hanging around, just waiting.

• 2:39:27Speaker 04

  Because they meet in the morning and then they meet in the evening. And they continue to meet and vote until the pope is elected. And then the white smoke will come in and they choose one. So when they were meeting that evening and it went late. So we were like, something's going on. And finally, the white smoke comes and it just, it went crazy. I'm so much energy. He comes out, gives his initial greeting. This is a really cool thing. And he said, you know, like something along these lines, you know, I'm your holy father. Like I'm the new pope, but like I'm just paraphrasing it. Basically, if you want me to, like, I need your prayers. So before I can even start this ministry to pray for you and lead you, you got to pray for me. So we'll just do this right now. And so like there was dead silence.

• 2:40:12Speaker 04

  You could hear a pen drop. It was crazy. Everyone was just praying. Yeah, so I was there for that. But it was through that, the process of the Cardinals coming together from all over the world. And they'll cast their ballots until the numbers, the numbers, like, till one is chosen. I don't know if it's 50 plus one or if there's got to be a percentage, 80% or something. I don't, I don't know.

• 2:40:37Speaker 04

  That's not my pay grade.

• 2:40:38Speaker 05

  What was Vatican II?

• 2:40:40Speaker 04

  That was the Second Vatican Council. It was in the sixties. The whole, the whole, um, in the church, because it is a human institution. It's like anything else is, can be politicized. But the Second Vatican Council was a gathering of the bishops and the cardinals and some representatives, labor representatives from, of Catholics from all over the world. Uh, they come together for, for a number of years. And with the goal of identifying the needs of the times and, and.

• 2:41:18Speaker 04

  Essentially, kind of laying out what's going to be the next steps forward. Realizing that scripture and tradition, we don't do that again. We have to follow the word of God. Nothing that we can do, that we do, can contradict the word of God.

• 2:41:35Speaker 04

  But also, the way that we're living is not the way that we were living 2,000 years ago. So Peter and Andrew, James, and John, when they were fishing at the Sea of Galilee, they weren't saying, "Hey, which AI do you use? Do you use Google? Do you use Gemini? Or do you use Copilot? Claude, what do you use?" Like, AI wasn't even there, on their radar. They weren't talking about in vitro fertilization. They weren't talking about Iba game. Actually, I would, I would bet that they'd be talking about Iba game before, before AI or anything like that. Because it, that could have, that could have been around. But the point I'm making is like, we have to address things now that weren't issues 1,000 years ago. That weren't an issue 20 years ago, you know?

• 2:42:19Speaker 04

  So this was, this was in the 60s. So they were addressing, calling out the issues that needed to be addressed that had not been addressed before, so that we can gain some understanding from sacred scripture, how to live in this world that we're living in. Does that kind of make sense? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it was a gathering of... What were some of those issues?

• 2:42:40Speaker 04

  Let's see, there were...

• 2:42:43Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think. There were, there were like all sorts of stuff. One of it was like, the role of the people in the church. One of the problems that we noticed was like, in some ways, like, too many priests were getting, you know, big head, getting power hungry. And so it was like, well, hold on, like, you are the priest. You have been ordained for this. This is true. But also, you got to recognize that your flock have a voice as well. So recognizing like, the role of the faithful. And that was, that was one of the biggest things from Second Vatican Council. There's a million different, I say million, not a million. There were a bunch of different things that came up, but the shortest, most concise way of putting it is like, it was addressing...

• 2:43:24Speaker 04

  How priests need to be more pastoral in the preaching of the gospel. And whenever I say that, I don't mean like watering the gospel down to make people feel good. What I mean is like recognizing that we have a job to preach the gospel to all people. So it's calling us, telling us to do our work. And with the, it was also pointing out the fact that the lay faithful, that means the people that aren't priests or deacons, like they have a voice and they have to go out and preach the gospel to. That's kind of the shortest way of putting it. But it recognizes the needs of the time. That's kind of a simple way of putting it. Some other things were like liturgical reforms.

• 2:44:08Speaker 04

  The Mass used to always be completely in Latin. Part of the, some of the changes were doing some of the stuff in the vernacular, which means the language that the people speak. And so, doesn't mean getting rid of Latin completely. That's a beautiful thing. A lot of churches still use a lot of Latin. But it wouldn't make sense for me to preach to my people in Latin if they don't understand it. I need to preach to them in English or Spanish, you know, whatever language they understand. Yeah, it's basically coming to the times with the gospel. The gospel that doesn't change. Bringing that gospel to the people today and the questions that they have.

• 2:44:49Speaker 05

  What do you think about some of the traditions that are changing in the Catholic Church? Are they taking kneelers out?

• 2:44:58Speaker 04

  Some are. You know what's really cool is like there's a resurgence in those. Part of, there was a, one of the unfortunate things that came about in council is there were some, there were some people who were out there who took it and just did what they wanted to with it. They interpreted it the way that they wanted to. So they stripped their churches, like got rid of all the, all these traditions, like the kneelers, for example, bad or music or art.

• 2:45:27Speaker 04

  Terrible liberties to interpret the stuff that they wanted to, the way they wanted to interpret it.

• 2:45:35Speaker 04

  And it went to an extreme. So what we're seeing now is like, so for example, the liturgies. It was just like, take the kneelers out, take the sacredness out of it. And make it more like a social gathering. Is how a lot of people responded to it. What we're seeing now, though, is like more people are coming back to those traditions and saying like, there is a social element, but it's gotta be a sacred moment. If we wanna hang out and just listen to fun music, we can put on iTunes or something, or Spotify. Or we can, we wanna hear fun, like we can go to concert, we can go out to a restaurant, go to Pizza Hut or something. But if we wanna encounter God, there has to be a sacred element. So people are putting the kneelers back in, bringing sacred music back.

• 2:46:18Speaker 05

  I mean, who's making these decisions? And if this goes all the way back to Peter, the apostle, and he set the traditions, and he was, I mean, next to Jesus, then who are these new people 2,000 years later that are making up their own rules? Going, oh, we don't need this anymore.

• 2:46:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:46:43Speaker 05

  Get rid of that.

• 2:46:44Speaker 04

  Well, that would be the, some of the priests or the bishops that, that were just doing what they want and not following the tradition. So they weren't doing what the church was teaching in those moments, it was just disobedience.

• 2:46:56Speaker 04

  There was really no other answer to it other than that, just like they, like they weren't doing what they were told to do.

• 2:47:04Speaker 05

  Are there evil forces at play within the, within the church to take those traditions?

• 2:47:10Speaker 04

  Oh, I think so. I think so. I mean, we're, we're all sinners, we're all broken people. Some people are intentionally, some people, well, all of us mess up. Some people are like intentionally acting badly, you know, against those. I don't have a lot of experience, you know, with that, like that. You know, let me, let me back up a step, like I was in Rome for four years, I was at the Vatican all the time. Got to meet the Pope a number of times, a bunch of cardinals and bishops from all over the world and stuff. So like, I know a lot of people in power.

• 2:47:43Speaker 04

  And I've never met anyone that's like intentionally trying to burn the place down.

• 2:47:48Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:47:49Speaker 04

  There are, but there, there are, you know? Who are the, I don't know who they are, but...

• 2:47:56Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna be naive and say they don't exist.

• 2:47:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:48:00Speaker 04

  But they're coming to light. They're, they're, they're, uh, everything comes to the light. So, yeah, they exist, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, Scripture says.

• 2:48:20Speaker 05

  Not to change the subject, but I forgot. When did you wind up on the Ninja Warrior show?

• 2:48:27Speaker 04

  For, like, in placing or what?

• 2:48:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:48:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I did it twice, 2018, 2020. I didn't, I didn't make it through the first round.

• 2:48:38Speaker 04

  They, they just invited me on. I was like, well, sure, why not? Like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but, uh, um, just, I gave it a shot. It was fun. One of them was in Dallas, the other one was in St. Louis. You know, cool thing about that, like, you mentioned the Instagram page earlier. Um, I don't put a lot of ministry stuff on there. It's not like I'm hiding the priesthood. It's actually, like, quite the opposite. I don't put a lot of pastoral ministry out there because the souls of the people that I'm with are sacred. Like, people, your soul is sacred, John. Like, mine is. Like, the human soul is a sacred thing. God dwells within that. And whenever I'm privileged to have an encounter with a soul in my church,

• 2:49:20Speaker 04

  a sheep, a sheep of my flock, I take that seriously. And so, like, I don't put that stuff on social media. Like, I'll share some stuff every now and then, like, some school stuff. I'll share some things with the school. Um, other things in ministry, but it's not a, it's not allowed because that's such a sacred thing. I share a lot of my own personal life. I, I don't hesitate to share my soul with people. So the neat thing with the Ninja Warrior, I did that. I got a lot of pushback from people, a whole bunch of pushback.

• 2:49:47Speaker 05

  From who?

• 2:49:47Speaker 04

  Um, priests, some other priests.

• 2:49:49Speaker 05

  Why?

• 2:49:50Speaker 04

  Um, for life, also some of the people in the church as well, because it wasn't a holy thing. Like, you should be doing holy stuff, like praying, or, you know, studying or stuff like this. You shouldn't be wasting your time going on TV and doing the Ninja Warrior thing. But you know what was really cool about it was to bring it back full circle. Like, this connected to the Vatican II stuff. We gotta be... In the world, but not of it. We have to go out and preach the gospel boldly. So I did the, I ran the course of my clerics just like this. They had a little clip on there that told a little bit of my story. You know, I crashed and burned, you know, so that was, whatever, that, that doesn't matter. But people saw a priest doing something that they don't see a priest doing. And you would not believe how many phone calls and emails I got.

• 2:50:35Speaker 04

  Not people to say, "Hey, congratulations, good job," or like, "Oh, you're a loser, you fell in the water." But calling to say like, calling, sending emails, sending letters in the regular mail. "Hey Father, I saw you on Ninja Warrior, that was cool, but my marriage is falling apart." You know, this, this, and this, and this. "What advice would you give me?" "Hey Father, I saw you on TV, you know, that was neat." "My kid's on dope. What's a way that I can be with him?" Or like, "Hey, I was abused as a kid." It's fun watching Ninja Warrior with, with my kids, but I'm always thinking about this trauma from my childhood. Like, how can I get healing from that? And so by me doing that, it opened up a lot of avenues of communication with people, which is really cool.

• 2:51:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:51:21Speaker 04

  Same thing with like, uh, fitness and the hunting stuff. Those are two things. I love CrossFit. Love hunting, and I share those stories, and it's the exact same thing.

• 2:51:28Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I think what's cool is, I mean, we talked about the masculinity stuff a little bit, but I think what's cool is you're showing that you're, you're, you're a regular person. And you're with the people, you're competing, you're working out, you're hunting. You're doing all these things, and, and you just mentioned, you know, a lot of the priests that put themselves on a pedestal. And I think that, I think that, I don't think, I know that kind of stuff turns a lot of people away. And, and when you see somebody who is out there in their community with people, doing shit that people like to do.

• 2:52:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:52:10Speaker 05

  I mean, it, it makes you, it humanizes you, makes you an approachable person. It's, it's, makes you somebody that people can relate to.

• 2:52:19Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:52:20Speaker 05

  Something, strike up a conversation about something other than the Catholic Church. And I think that's important.

• 2:52:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:52:28Speaker 05

  And, um, I mean...

• 2:52:31Speaker 05

  In and out, I mean, you just said it. It works.

• 2:52:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:52:34Speaker 05

  I mean, Jesus was out with the people, right?

• 2:52:37Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:52:38Speaker 05

  So why aren't the rest of the priests out with the people? Or pastors, or ministers, or anybody?

• 2:52:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we can't sit in our little palaces. You know, we gotta get in the trenches with the people, you know? And if I'm gonna preach effectively, like, I gotta know what they're living. I gotta be with them out there, you know? Like you just said, that's what Jesus Christ did. This God who's beyond all things, this God who made space and time, is beyond space and time, entered into the confines of space and time to be with us. Like, he was, he did miracles, yeah, but also he walked and talked with them. He had to have cut up, you know, with them. Jonathan Rumi, he's just the chosen? Have you seen the TV series? I heard of that?

• 2:53:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:53:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:22Speaker 04

  And, like, there's a lot of stuff in that show that's not in the Bible, but it's plausible, like, he's joking around with them. That stuff, I think, really happened, even if it's not in Scripture. Jesus, they had to have cut up. They had to joke around, you know? Sure, they got, you know, ate some, you know, I don't know, roasted lamb or something, got heartburn, or, you know, wasn't cooked enough, and diarrhea or something, I don't know, but like, we're humans, you know? And we should gotta continue that with ministry, you know?

• 2:53:53Speaker 05

  What are your thoughts on...

• 2:53:57Speaker 05

  We have a huge veteran audience. There's a suicide epidemic going on. It's like up to forty-something a day.

• 2:54:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:54:07Speaker 05

  What are your thoughts on suicide?

• 2:54:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:54:17Speaker 04

  It's, I got a lot of thoughts.

• 2:54:24Speaker 04

  There's a lot to unpack here. First of all, no one commits suicide because things are going all right. No one does that because, because life is worth living, right? So there's, they're, they're broken. There's a lot going on there.

• 2:54:40Speaker 04

  Internally, there's also problems externally. Support systems that are not in place that should be. So I, I recognize that element of it. But also, like, and this is like, I, I, I'm not saying this lightly. And I don't want any listener to take it lightly or anything, but like, I think it's a cowardly thing to do.

• 2:55:04Speaker 04

  They've got so many burdens that are pushing them into the grave. And they wanna,

• 2:55:11Speaker 04

  like, it's just almost too much to bear. So they'll end their life, but in doing that, that burden is handed over to someone else to sort out or figure out, you know, and

• 2:55:24Speaker 04

  I don't know, like, it, it, it's just a, it's a complicated thing to unpack. I've had, you know, people at the church commit suicide, or family members, things like that. Not my own family members, but like, family members, church people, done funerals and stuff like that. It's tough, man. Like, I, I wish I could give an answer. It's just, it's a messy thing.

• 2:55:48Speaker 04

  Do they go to heaven? God's, God's grace is, is big. God's grace is big.

• 2:55:59Speaker 04

  God can get anyone to heaven that he wants to get to heaven, you know? And in those situations, you know, in, in years past,

• 2:56:08Speaker 04

  it's kind of like a thing from Second Amendment counsel, you'd ask him about that. Like, it was, if somebody committed suicide, it was immediately like,

• 2:56:16Speaker 04

  there was a teaching for a long time that they were just immediately condemned to hell. Because it was murder. You're murdering yourself. Thou shalt not kill. And you've killed yourself.

• 2:56:26Speaker 04

  But, but the act of murder happened. Like, you, you committed that act of murder, even though it was yourself.

• 2:56:33Speaker 04

  Now the church recognizes, like, it's a lot more complicated than that. Now that we understand psychology and, and, and the human mind and everything. And so, we recognize how, like, God sees the brokenness in that person. And it's God's desire to save, you know, broken people.

• 2:56:52Speaker 04

  It's kinda hard to say that like, yeah, short answer, can they go to heaven? Yeah, they can definitely go to heaven. Does it definitely mean they're going to heaven? No, I don't know. I don't know who goes to heaven or who goes to hell. It's up to God. I don't wanna sit here, though, and make it an easy out for somebody.

• 2:57:11Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 2:57:11Speaker 04

  You know, and that's, that's, um, in some ways, like, I don't... This is something I'm struggling with. This may have come up on one of your recent episodes, um, on this subject of like, how do we talk about it, um, like, in a way that doesn't give it a blessing, but like, actually addresses the cause? You know? And in a way that doesn't create like a heroism in it? Does that... I don't know if that makes sense.

• 2:57:47Speaker 05

  Man, I don't ever think anybody thinks there's heroism in it.

• 2:57:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, yeah. And this is just a lack of words, like, so...

• 2:57:55Speaker 05

  I think you talk about the burden that's been passed on.

• 2:57:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:58:02Speaker 05

  Because I think a lot of people do it because they feel like they are the burden.

• 2:58:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's what needs to be addressed, like, they're not. So how do we get to the heart of that? Like...

• 2:58:16Speaker 05

  It's a bigger burden to kill yourself.

• 2:58:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. But even in my own life, like, not to the point of suicide, but like, one of the reasons, we were talking earlier about boundaries and stuff, it's hard for me to ask for help because I don't wanna be a burden. I grew up in a poor family, everything, like, it was hard to get by with everything. And I didn't wanna be another burden. And so that's so ingrained in me that it's hard for me to ask for help. So like, I can't understand what it's like to... Like not want to burden somebody. Um, so how do we tell them like, you're not a burden, buddy? Like, you're not a burden. You may be screwed up, that doesn't mean you're a burden. You still got dignity, man. We're all screwed up. We all like fight with stuff. We wrestle with stuff. I say screwed up in a loose way.

• 2:59:01Speaker 04

  So, um, it's just a tough thing. People just want to be loved, man. We just need to walk with people. You know, how do you? This goes, a lot of the stuff we were talking about earlier, man. I'm just, I'm trying to figure this thing out myself. I've been to a lot of school. I have a lot of experiences. That don't mean I know what I'm doing. I'm just a lost fool in this thing called life. Every day waking up saying, God, help me to not be as like a little bit less of a loser today than I was yesterday. In any way that I can help other people around me be a little bit less of a loser today than they were yesterday. Like, I'm doing what God's called me to do. And that just means like I have to be willing to sit with uncomfortable stuff. So then how do we?

• 2:59:42Speaker 04

  I think that's where the, where we can improve is sitting with people in those moments when we don't have an answer. Cause we want an answer. We want something to fix it. We want a treatment. Unfortunately, a bullet or a pill is like often like where the mind goes to. Um, and gosh, I think it, I think it may, I don't know if it was one of your episodes or not, just a recent one. I was just listening to it on the drive over here. Um, but how like somebody can be under the influence of something. You're not thinking clearly in that moment, you know? Um, and it's so easy to make a permanent decision in that split second, you know? And, but how do you sit with somebody in that moment and say, listen? I don't have an answer for you.

• 3:00:24Speaker 04

  I can't imagine how much it sucks for you, but I'm going to sit with you right now. Whatever we gotta do, I, we'll do it. And that's hard because it requires us to surrender control because we want to fix it. Especially for guys, we like to fix stuff. We don't want to be a burden. We want to get it done now. We don't like to ride things out. So there's so many things that go against the way that we're built. So many things that are pushing against our own DNA, the way we operate as men. Just, but for us to just sit there in that, um, in that, in that tension, in those crosshairs and like, or that crossroads is, um, not having an answer.

• 3:01:08Speaker 04

  I think that's where we start. Like, what does that look like? I don't know. Um, but it's a messy thing. I wish we didn't have it. I wish this wasn't a thing.

• 3:01:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:01:20Speaker 04

  But it is, and it's hurt a lot of people.

• 3:01:23Speaker 05

  Yes, it is.

• 3:01:25Speaker 04

  Anyway, yeah, anyone like, if there's any way I can help anyone, you know, I know a ton of people listen to this.

• 3:01:32Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:01:33Speaker 04

  Reach out, you know, like, like I just said, I can't, I can't answer anything. I can't be a savior, but I'll, I got some grit, and I'll just send it out with you.

• 3:01:42Speaker 05

  Have you ever...

• 3:01:47Speaker 05

  Do you think that your...

• 3:01:50Speaker 05

  How do I... Do you feel that your father or your sister has ever reached out spiritually to you?

• 3:02:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:02:02Speaker 05

  Have they ever tried to make contact?

• 3:02:07Speaker 04

  No, but I haven't paid attention that. Someone asked me a similar question a few weeks ago. And before, I'd never thought of that until they asked it. And I kind of forgot about it until just now you asked, so short answer is no.

• 3:02:22Speaker 04

  I'm sure they have, and I just wasn't paying attention. Or maybe they have, and I was, but I didn't know it was them.

• 3:02:31Speaker 05

  Well, we're kind of wrapping up the interview here, but I want to, I want to, I want to end on Mayhem Hunt. What is it?

• 3:02:39Speaker 04

  Uh, it's a group of us, just knuckleheads that like to work out and hunt. Um, so Rich Froning, one of my best friends, he's big in the CrossFit world. Um, just lives up the road here.

• 3:02:51Speaker 05

  Is he big in the CrossFit?

• 3:02:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:02:54Speaker 05

  Who's he?

• 3:02:55Speaker 04

  He's old and, he's old and washed up now. Uh, no, he's still a fit guy, super strong. Um, him and a few of our best friends, like, we started hunting a number of years ago. We've always been passionate in fitness. And, um, from that, like, we, we just wanted to get more people, you know, ready to hunt. Hunting's a, it's a tough thing physically. And so just created a training program to do that. And, uh, it's still new. We're still getting off, off the ground and everything, but yeah. Training program to get people ready to hunt, uh, Mayhem Hunt.

• 3:03:31Speaker 05

  Right on. You getting ready to do any big hunts?

• 3:03:34Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, this... Hoping to do a bear hunt this late summer or late spring. Um, then this fall I'll go elk hunting again.

• 3:03:42Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 3:03:43Speaker 04

  September, probably Montana this year, maybe.

• 3:03:45Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 3:03:46Speaker 04

  I want to take you and alligator hunting. We're gonna go alligator hunting.

• 3:03:49Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 3:03:49Speaker 04

  You and me and Theo Von.

• 3:03:51Speaker 05

  Let's.

• 3:03:53Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 3:03:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, the suicide thing, that's a tough one, man.

• 3:03:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:03:59Speaker 04

  Um, like, I see it from both sides. Like, I understand, I don't understand it yet. Cause I'm not in that situation, but from like my perspective, I can see the broken. I should have mentioned this in the talk or just second ago, like, I can see the side of the individual and their brokenness. Like, no one does that because things are fine, you know? But also I've been with the victims or the family, the families afterwards, and I see all the, everything that they go through too. So, and I see that and it's like, ah, it's just so much pain all around, you know?

• 3:04:33Speaker 05

  What, what, what is, um, what do you, what do you think about, what is purgatory?

• 3:04:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. So purgatory is like, we would believe whenever we die, before we have the full beatific vision, that's the, that's heaven, seeing God face to face, like, we're still not worthy to be in the presence of God. We, we, because we still have imperfections from this own life that, that have to be worked out. That have to be purified of. And, and so purgatory would be like that time that would, that final purification, that, that would make us fit to see the face of God and not die, not be overwhelmed, but be freed from anything that, that could hold us back.

• 3:05:21Speaker 05

  So what happens there?

• 3:05:23Speaker 04

  Um.

• 3:05:24Speaker 05

  Do they, do they, they don't talk about it at all, or?

• 3:05:27Speaker 04

  No, like, uh, no, it do. It's just, I don't know, a time of purification for any wrongdoings. I, I, I don't know. There's no, no like formal teaching of saying like, well, here's the protocols or here's the things that happen there. I don't know.

• 3:05:40Speaker 05

  Is it like time limits or?

• 3:05:42Speaker 04

  No. Um, yeah, because then you'd be out, outside of time. Like, it wouldn't be like the same time constraints that we have now.

• 3:05:51Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 3:05:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, yeah. I feel like a complete.

• 3:06:00Speaker 04

  I've had a bunch of schooling, I promise, but like I revert to Farm Boy. I wish I could give some better answers for a lot of this stuff.

• 3:06:09Speaker 04

  It's like, "I don't know, mama just said go," and so I'm doing it. Jesus said work, and so I'm working.

• 3:06:14Speaker 05

  Right on. Well, Father, I appreciate you coming and it was an honor to interview you and get your story. And I just want to say God bless.

• 3:06:25Speaker 04

  Thanks, Sean. God bless you, David.