The John-Henry Westen Show - How this Father of 17 Keeps his Family Faithful in Today’s Crisis

00:00:00.000 Why would a family be different than every other organization on the planet and not need an

00:00:06.520 authority structure? My friends, welcome to the John Henry Weston show. We've had this fellow

00:00:14.460 on before. It's the only one I've ever interviewed in my life where there was a joke around. You

00:00:20.400 know, I remember meeting a guy who had eight kids one time, one spot at a time when I only had four

00:00:25.380 and he said, oh, you're halfway to crazy because he had eight. And I was like, wow. Then I had eight

00:00:30.240 children and I felt all good. Now I'm with a guy who can still do that joke on me because I'm still

00:00:34.860 halfway to crazy compared to him. He has got 16 soon to be, well, actually we're pro-life, right? So

00:00:41.500 it's already 17, but one's on the way. We're with Connor Gallagher of 10 books. You're going to want

00:00:47.180 to stay tuned for this one. Connor, thank you so much for joining me on my show in your studio.

00:00:52.580 This is awesome. I'm honored to have you and be on your show. It's fantastic.

00:00:57.920 It's amazing. You've got a beautiful place here and a most beautiful family. About a year ago,

00:01:04.540 we got together for a show and you talked all about your book, The Well-Ordered Family. And I think

00:01:10.700 a ton of people loved it. And you have thousands and thousands of people who benefit from not only the

00:01:17.000 book, but you have the whole basically toolkits of how to do everything the way you do them.

00:01:25.660 I'm going to get you to do a snapshot of what it is that The Well-Ordered Family book,

00:01:31.940 but also the toolkits, the website to help families.

00:01:35.020 Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, when I started having a whole bunch of kids, I had no idea

00:01:39.560 that I was going to be a business guy. I thought I was going to be a lawyer. Okay. And then quickly,

00:01:44.180 I was learning that being an hourly worker was not for me, which is what a lot of lawyers are.

00:01:52.540 So I, through the grace of God, I mean, I could never, ever have planned this. I ended up working

00:01:57.280 at TAN. Okay. And so I had no business experience, John Henry. I had never taken a business class. I'd

00:02:03.740 never taken accounting class. So one thing that lawyers know how to do is self-educate. Okay.

00:02:08.480 So I read every business book on the planet and I had a master's in philosophy. So I kind of always

00:02:15.000 looked at things from a philosophical standpoint. So what I found is that there were natural law

00:02:20.780 principles built into all of these business books that the authors didn't even know it was there.

00:02:25.260 I saw certain key principles that I think are instilled into the universe by the divine author

00:02:32.620 of the universe that says, okay, if you want to run anything, well, anything, if you want to run a

00:02:39.020 business, a hot dog stand, a fortune 500 company, an athletic team, a small little Catholic publisher,

00:02:47.740 a nonprofit apostolate that defends the unborn or a family, there are certain key principles that

00:02:56.960 every human being must follow to get certain things done. And so I started really looking for

00:03:03.220 those natural law principles for business. And I started bringing some of this stuff home every

00:03:08.140 now and then say, wait a minute, if my business has a vision statement, why doesn't my family have

00:03:12.940 a vision statement? And again, I looked at this philosophically and I said, a family is a group of

00:03:19.440 people trying to reach a certain goal, heaven. Okay. That's our goal. And a business is a group of

00:03:26.560 people trying to reach a certain goal, you know? So kind of even that most fundamental thing is the

00:03:31.880 same. So I started breaking down this natural law principle into six key steps. Uh, it's like a,

00:03:39.820 it's like a, it's like a pie. And the first is vision. You got to have vision. And I think families

00:03:45.580 need to have vision and to be able to articulate that and be on the same page about what that vision

00:03:49.960 is. And then you have to have unity. You see, if you, if you, 99% of success is unity around the

00:03:57.640 vision, 1% is vision. Like, you know, it's easy, as you know, it's easy to like write a beautiful

00:04:03.840 mission statement for life site news, but if you don't get the team rallying behind it, it goes

00:04:08.940 nowhere. So unity around that vision is the second step. Third is systems. You've got to have good

00:04:15.520 systems. Fourth is metrics. I mean, you have to measure things that matter. You have to figure

00:04:20.800 out what numbers to pay attention to. And every single hugely successful person in the history of

00:04:26.840 the planet, anyone who has achieved tremendous success in any area, like if they're an Olympian

00:04:32.360 athlete or a great musician or a great chef, whatever it is, they learn to measure things with

00:04:37.680 precision. So if you want to be truly great at something, you start measuring with precision,

00:04:43.280 usually by centimeters, by inches, by tiny little measurements makes all the difference in the

00:04:47.980 world. Right. I mean, the difference between a Warren Buffett and every other investor is actually

00:04:53.060 fractions of a difference, fractions of a difference, just compounding over time. Right. So if you're

00:05:00.620 running a family, what do you want to measure? If you want to be really good at this family thing,

00:05:04.660 what is it that you should be measuring? And we're not just angels. God put us in this corporal body.

00:05:10.660 We live in a corporal universe, so we have to measure things that are material, right? Whether

00:05:14.760 it's screen time, whether it's how many rosaries a week you praise a family, how often you get to

00:05:19.120 confession, you know, whatever it may be. There's a lot of things. Debt pay off because that's real.

00:05:23.680 The more debt you pay off, the more charitable you can be. What are you going to measure? Right. So we

00:05:28.380 help people figure what that is. And then also relationships because there's people involved and

00:05:34.720 family would be really easy if people weren't involved, but it's really hard. And so there's

00:05:39.920 temperaments, God-given temperaments. There's assessment tests, you know, like maybe if you've

00:05:43.960 hired somebody, you've given them assessment tests, see what their strengths and weaknesses are.

00:05:47.980 Isn't it funny that we pay more attention to like these assessment tests for people at work

00:05:52.240 than we do for our own people at home? Now, I've experienced where I care much more about

00:05:58.760 the interpersonal skills and communication skills and how I'm presenting myself to a stranger or to

00:06:03.460 employees or to clients or customers than I do to my own family. So this helps me remember,

00:06:09.580 you know what, why don't you pay attention to the relationships at home? And then the sixth one

00:06:14.140 is discernment. That's how do you make decisions? You have problem solving, which is why do I keep

00:06:20.720 having the same conflict with my 14-year-old daughter? That's a root cause analysis, like figuring out

00:06:26.200 what's going on and business tools. There's all kinds of business tools for like finding that root

00:06:30.600 cause of something. Manufacturers have been great at this, like figuring out why does the Toyota truck

00:06:35.900 keep having this problem and the bearings, like they're masters at this. Well, I guess the same

00:06:41.060 thing happens with the 14-year-old daughter. So problem solving and then decision-making. Do I buy

00:06:45.480 the 15-passenger van or do we get like too many vans, you know, or do we go in a little bit extra debt

00:06:53.540 but have a great vacation or not? Like there's decisions where it's like choose A or B and maybe

00:06:58.840 both are good. Maybe one's good or bad, but you have to make a decision. And so stress and family

00:07:04.560 life usually comes from being really bad at making decisions. And think about it, how many divorces,

00:07:09.840 how many, how many nights has a guy slept on the couch? How many, how many, how much conflict has come

00:07:14.860 just because mom and dad can't figure out how to make decisions together? Like that, when people talk

00:07:20.580 about communication, usually as they're not handling a stressful situation, usually which

00:07:26.160 involves a decision about a kid or about a parent or about what they're going to do with their time

00:07:29.920 or money or energy, they stink at making decisions together. But when they go to work, they're really

00:07:37.240 good at it. And when they come home, they're really bad at it. So that's the six parts, vision, unity,

00:07:43.040 systems, metrics, relationship, and discernment. And so I contend if you do these six things

00:07:49.440 a little better than you did yesterday, you're on your will to being well-ordered. Does it mean

00:07:54.260 you're perfect? Does it mean you're always happy? No, but you're at least well-ordered,

00:07:57.980 meaning your soul is ordered towards the good, true, and beautiful. And ultimately that's where

00:08:02.120 happiness comes from. So let's pick on the last one, discernment, because I think a lot of family

00:08:09.800 discord comes from that. It starts all great and then you get to a decision point or working out of

00:08:16.760 a decision point and it becomes really sometimes very, very difficult. How do you play that out

00:08:23.900 and how does it work out in end game and how are you supposed to come together when you're pretty

00:08:30.540 much at odds? Well, let me just use as an example from my own family life, right? I mean, so you can

00:08:35.520 easily imagine that the Gallagher family, given all our kids and now grandkids, our fourth grandkids

00:08:41.220 on the way, you know, and they, and thankfully our kids, even who go to college still live on my

00:08:48.640 property. There's this little guest house. I bought this, this house that had a little guest house so

00:08:52.720 that my kids commute to Belmont Abbey. So my point is when they go to college, they don't even leave.

00:08:56.260 They're still there. And so thankfully they bring their friends over. So I can have literally at any

00:09:02.160 given night, 20 plus people in my house, like easily. Right. And this isn't even like a family

00:09:08.200 reunion. It's just a Tuesday, you know? So it's easy to imagine that the Gallagher family's kitchen

00:09:15.400 has been demolished, right? I mean, the cabinets have been ripped off because little guys are 1.00

00:09:19.560 climbing up on them to get on the countertop. They've just, they've just been beat to hell.

00:09:23.320 Right. Also our living room just does not hold us. We don't have a big house. People say, oh, you must

00:09:28.860 have a huge house. No, we don't. We, we have a house that's probably, you know, made for six

00:09:33.320 people or something, you know what I mean? And they all cram in, you know? So we've been talking

00:09:37.860 about redoing the kitchen and we've been talking about converting the garage into a bigger living

00:09:44.200 area. Well, that means then we don't have a garage. So, I mean, I'm not weird given the

00:09:48.420 amount of people that we're discerning this, right? But we don't have just cash laying around

00:09:52.500 to do this. This is a major financial thing. A, do we want to do it? Which one's more

00:09:57.140 important, you know, for us is the kitchen because we don't have cabinets and it looks,

00:10:01.580 looks kind of ghetto. Like you come to my house, like we're going out to dinner tonight, 0.99

00:10:05.080 but if you went to my house, it'd be a little embarrassing. Like, well, I don't even have,

00:10:09.160 you know, cabinet doors. They've been ripped off. Um, uh, so do we want to fix the kitchen

00:10:14.280 or do you want to fix the, turn the garage into a big living area to where we can all watch

00:10:19.140 football together and we all gather together? It's a beautiful thing. So I have to, so this

00:10:23.220 is a, this is a big stress point because we're talking about none of this is cheap, costs a lot

00:10:28.260 of money. Uh, which one's more important? Can we do one now? Can we do two now? Uh, do we save

00:10:35.100 money? Do we take a second mortgage? Like how do you handle these? Everybody deals with something

00:10:39.100 like this on some scale, right? Making a family decisions. Well, I've noticed that my wife and I

00:10:44.840 can go around and around around on that, you know? And so she can go and get quotes and I can look at

00:10:49.460 the quote, not understanding anything about it and saying, how in the world is that so expensive?

00:10:53.680 It's cabinets, you know, you know, but I don't understand it. She understands it better. Um,

00:11:00.800 so when you start feeling that kind of tension, anyone who's been married for about 12 minutes

00:11:06.640 understands that this kind of thing can happen where you just have a misunderstanding on this.

00:11:11.180 So I say, okay, time to get out a tool. So I have a number of different tools, worksheets,

00:11:16.380 right? And they're on wellorderedfamily.com. And one of them, uh, we can take one, for example,

00:11:22.080 is, um, a decision matrix, a decision matrix. So a decision matrix is you have multiple options,

00:11:29.920 right? You have option, uh, a of get a kitchen option B get, uh, a living room option C get both

00:11:38.900 option D get neither, you know, now those are like four options. Just like if you're going to

00:11:43.980 look four different cars, do I want to, do I want a Toyota, you know, I want a Ford, do I want

00:11:48.400 a Chevy, different options, but if you have multiple options running down the left side of

00:11:52.400 the page, you have criteria. Okay. Like financial criteria, uh, benefits to the family, you know,

00:11:58.860 you have to make up these different criteria. Okay. So maybe it's a financial issue. How do you rank

00:12:03.380 that as a level of importance? Um, how do you rank something like, um, the, the, the convenience

00:12:08.760 for the family? Um, how do you rank something like, um, the construction process? Like that's

00:12:15.600 a major stress factor. You know, she's about to have a baby. Is this like the absolute worst

00:12:19.880 time to ever do this because she's going into the third trimester or do you hustle to finish 1.00

00:12:24.240 it quicker? So you even write like the pregnancy is a factor in these decisions. So John Henry,

00:12:29.340 why we write these things out and you have to fill out the tool is because they're all of

00:12:34.880 these issues, everything from the pregnancy to the money, to all of these things, they're

00:12:39.360 turning around in your head. And when you work together, look, you take the kids, you say,

00:12:44.640 get out of here for a little bit. Mom and I need to sit down here, have a cup of coffee.

00:12:48.080 We work out this tool and we say, honey, what are the decision points, money, time, energy,

00:12:53.760 whatever it is. We write that down. What are the different options that we can do with this?

00:12:57.260 Right. And we write that down. The tool allows you to fill it out. And then we talk through

00:13:00.960 it and we fill it out together amazingly. But I've had so much firsthand evidence in my own life

00:13:06.420 and in my friends. When you sit down to do that and literally get on the same page,

00:13:13.000 that's why we have that saying is get on the same page. Well, I created the page for you.

00:13:17.260 So you go through this, not that it solves all of your problems, but what it does is you start

00:13:22.880 speaking the same language. You stop spinning the same issues round and round in your head.

00:13:28.080 It cuts the texting down. It cuts the emails down. It cuts the little snippy terminology back and

00:13:35.640 forth, but you don't understand. You don't understand whatever it may be. It cuts all

00:13:38.620 that stuff down and you end up acting like adults trying to make a real concrete decision.

00:13:44.020 It cuts the stress down, way down, not necessarily making the decision for you,

00:13:48.760 but all of a sudden when the stress decreases, then you can start loving each other again in a much

00:13:55.060 more direct way. Um, because that stress kind of, it creates barriers. It creates emotional

00:14:01.180 distance. That's what this stress does. The best definition of stress I ever heard is stress is

00:14:07.260 thinking about something when you don't want to. It's just thinking about something when you don't

00:14:11.980 want to. So it's like, it's not that I'm totally and completely against thinking about cashflow

00:14:17.060 problems, you know, uh, at, at work, that's part of business. I don't want to think about it at

00:14:22.020 10 o'clock when I'm going to bed. And likewise, it's not that I'm against, um, talking about

00:14:27.000 whether we, whether we get a kitchen, but I don't want to text with my wife about it when I'm in a

00:14:31.380 business meeting. Like that's the wrong time. Stress is thinking about something when you don't

00:14:35.380 want to. So these tools and this example of my kitchen or a living room, it, it, it, it cuts down

00:14:43.080 on all the noise and enables you to communicate in a very direct and simple way. Again, we do it at

00:14:49.440 business. Why not do it at home? Yeah. I think that's really fascinating because the,

00:14:54.140 just the concept, the, I think calling it getting on the same page is completely brilliant,

00:14:58.620 but it's so true that when you're, and you'll call it arguing, but you're not really arguing,

00:15:04.720 you're discussing, but it gets heated and whatever, but you're so often talking around each other and

00:15:11.220 making assumptions of you're thinking this, you don't say that. If you did, that might help. You just

00:15:18.000 know that's what she's thinking or that's what he's thinking. And so these assumptions are made

00:15:23.780 there because they're not written. They're not there. Bingo. They're just made. And then the

00:15:28.360 whole conversation is, it's stilted because you're not on that same page. Going back to Plato. He said,

00:15:34.540 define your terms, always define your terms. So when you write it out, look, I had an employee issue

00:15:39.640 here just the other day. And I, I looked at it being, I had the convenience, John Henry, of being

00:15:46.880 like not in the day to day of it. And I saw, Oh, I have two employees here. I heard her side of the

00:15:52.500 story. I heard his side of the story. I'm like, they're not on the same page. They're not, they're

00:15:55.600 using the same, they're using the same words in very different ways. It's like, come on, we get,

00:15:59.600 we get in a conference room, get the marker on the whiteboard and start literally defining your

00:16:03.560 terms. It's incredible. Something magical happens when pen hits paper, because before that, we're

00:16:09.480 not defining terms the right way. We're not saying the same things in the same way. We're talking

00:16:14.200 about things. We're really contradicting ourselves and we don't even realize it. Something, if you get

00:16:19.380 nothing else out of this, it's something magical happens when pen hits paper. It's, it's, it's, it's,

00:16:26.940 it's, you know what it is? It's the word becomes incarnate. You know, it's like when we start putting

00:16:33.060 these things in our family life, whether it's a vision statement. Oh, we know what our vision is.

00:16:37.820 Time out. Everyone sit around. Here's a piece of paper, write your vision down. And then you're

00:16:42.340 going to, if there's eight people in your family, I'm going to get eight different vision statements.

00:16:45.340 There's no way you're on the same page unless you've really been intentional about doing that.

00:16:49.180 You know, if I get the average family, it's great families. I'm not saying they're bad,

00:16:52.740 but great families say, Hey, what's your vision statement? The dad might say, well, we're going to get to

00:16:57.260 heaven. And mom might say, well, we want a very joyful home. And the kids might say,

00:17:00.900 you know, something totally different. It's important to actually start saying the same

00:17:06.280 things. This is why there's, there's like canon law. It matters. This is why we talk about the

00:17:11.180 canon of scripture. This is why the words made flesh and dwelt among us. So this is, this is like

00:17:17.900 this sub creation, you know, that we talk about, like Tolkien talks about sub creation. You were able

00:17:22.140 to create, and that's a powerful thing monkeys can't do. You know, we have this, we have this ability.

00:17:29.280 We're made in the image and likeness of a God who became man. We're able to put things into words.

00:17:34.640 You know, the second person, the Trinity is the word of the father. We're able to do this in our

00:17:39.460 own family life. So that's even a deeply theological reason to put things into words on paper. It's

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00:18:16.300 through crafting a solution for your family.

00:18:20.400 The difficulty, I guess, because even if you work through all these things and you do them this

00:18:26.980 way, you don't always come to agreement. And that's where things also, I don't think they

00:18:36.740 ever get to that kind of, in your modern day, most people don't even get to that stage where

00:18:42.740 they've written it out and understand each other. But even when you do, sometimes you can still

00:18:48.500 disagree. And then, especially in a family, how is that supposed to work? The reading of the

00:18:58.020 catechism, I was reading the Roman catechism, the catechism of the Council of Trent the other day,

00:19:03.180 and someone actually sent me, actually, I heard a guy speaking about it. And I was like,

00:19:08.460 where is that quote from? And I looked it up. It's from the Roman catechism. So I read the whole

00:19:13.300 section of the Roman catechism on the duties of marriage. And I was like, oh, that's very

00:19:20.640 different than anything we've ever heard in the modern church, if you will. In fact,

00:19:29.200 the section's so startling that I was like, whoa, because it's a lot about the word that's never

00:19:38.420 said, obedience. And you're like, whoa. Tell me about that as you've reflected on it, as you've

00:19:47.260 reflected on family, because it's one of those things that's just, it's way out there, it's not

00:19:52.160 talked about. A lot of people, though, do talk about it as one of the underlying causes of our whole

00:19:57.820 collapse of family and therefore culture. All right. Let's look at it this way. We can even

00:20:02.860 leave the faith out of it for a minute. We're in football playoff season. My kids and I love

00:20:08.260 watching football. Why don't we just, we have an offensive coordinator. We have a defensive

00:20:14.760 coordinator. We have special teams coordinator. Why the hell do we need a head coach? There's only

00:20:20.400 three parts of the game, offense, defense. Come on. If we have offense, the offensive coordinator's in

00:20:25.440 charge. If we have defense, the defensive coordinator, what's the problem here? Every

00:20:30.240 sports team in the history of sports has had a head coach. Why do you need that? You got coordinators.

00:20:36.860 Why do companies need CEOs? Why? You have a head of marketing. You have a chief financial officer.

00:20:43.300 You have a chief technology officer. If technology is involved, just let the technology guy decide.

00:20:47.620 Come on. This should be simple. Why do Navy ships need captains? Doesn't people know what their jobs

00:20:56.420 are supposed to be on the boat? Come on. They're military. Why do you need a captain? Well,

00:21:02.180 wouldn't it be better if we had three captains and then they had votes? Isn't more minds better than

00:21:10.260 one mind? Why do we need a pope? Why do we need a pope? Can't we just have local churches?

00:21:17.620 Synodality, huh? Why can't we just have synodality? It'd be much better to have 10,000 popes than one.

00:21:24.620 Every part of nature requires hierarchy and an ultimate decision maker. And as soon as you try to

00:21:32.800 get out of that, people have tried this. By the way, whenever you hear somebody, whenever you hear

00:21:38.100 somebody talking about they don't need authority or an authority structure, they don't need someone

00:21:44.440 who's actually really in charge, you very quickly go from that to a communistic kind of mindset.

00:21:51.120 And what happens then, as soon as somebody starts talking about that, the very next thing that always

00:21:56.920 follows is total and complete tyranny. So I sit on boards and stuff and I've learned whenever somebody

00:22:03.360 starts talking about the sacredness of procedure and everybody having their input, I know tyranny's

00:22:12.220 on the way. I know tyranny's on the way, right? So my point is this. Why would a family be different

00:22:21.060 than every other organization on the planet and not need an authority structure? It does. God instilled

00:22:30.740 this in every part of life, okay? Now, a lot of people against me would say, probably not too many

00:22:39.900 of your listeners, but a lot of people would say, well, this is a sacramental marriage and it's not

00:22:45.240 a business and it's not a football team and it's not a Navy ship. So we should be able to rise above

00:22:51.980 that and to become one flesh. Therefore, the authority structure falls apart. You don't need

00:22:59.240 it anymore. So no, I don't accept that. I believe wholeheartedly that God, you know, in his infinite

00:23:08.100 wisdom, I'm not going to, even though when I look around, I see women are very often the strongest, 1.00

00:23:14.880 the smartest, the best, and so many things. And that us men are feeble and frail and we act tough,

00:23:21.800 but usually we lack backbone. I mean, just look at the church. I mean, the people that usually get up

00:23:26.680 and go do things are women. Despite all of that, despite all of that, the Lord in his infinite 0.78

00:23:34.160 wisdom has decided that the man is the head of the family. Now you can debate till the cows come home,

00:23:39.100 which I don't want to do about what the, what does that mean? The head of the family. Okay. And the

00:23:45.020 reality is if anybody came into the Gallagher family and sat around for a while, we just asked

00:23:49.460 my teenage kids, you ought to have them here, but like, you know, who's in charge of the Gallagher

00:23:53.460 family? They say, well, dad, you know what I mean? Cause I, I am and they know it, but my wife is

00:23:58.740 going to make most of the decisions. It's her, it's largely her domain. I'm here. I'm here with you.

00:24:02.220 She's at home right now getting stuff, you know, actually she's getting ready to meet us for dinner,

00:24:06.400 but she's making sure the house is running smoothly. I mean, she is like, she runs that

00:24:10.760 household. And so in my family, yes, yes. I'm sorry with all my imperfections. I'm sorry. I feel

00:24:18.060 like embarrassed about it, but I'm in charge of the family. I'm in charge of the Connor Gallagher

00:24:21.840 family. I am the head of this family. I'm the spiritual head of the family. And you can talk

00:24:27.120 about the head and the heart and my, you know, that there's truth in all those metaphors,

00:24:30.480 but the reality is spiritually, let's, let's go even deeper. If my kids have an issue, whether it's

00:24:39.760 a, you know, an emotional issue or an ailment, a physical ailment, and they need, they need to

00:24:47.900 be prayed over. Yeah. My wife can do that. Mine matters more. Sorry. If I pray over my children,

00:24:54.140 I have a greater authority in this house, given by God, not given by Connor, I have a greater

00:25:01.160 authority over the powers of darkness in my household. I do. I mean, the church has been

00:25:08.540 very clear. Connor, you can go pray over your children in a very special way, in a very special

00:25:12.520 way. And I have, I have done that to where if I think my kids need to be prayed over, I can do that.

00:25:17.080 I'm not a charismatic. I'm not. This is steeped in tradition too. I can pray over my children. I'm not,

00:25:21.100 I'm not a Roman Catholic priest. Certain things are left to the authority structures, left to the

00:25:27.000 sacraments and to the priestly orders. But within my house, within the natural realm, I have certain

00:25:31.580 authority and I absolutely can pray over them. And my wife can too, but I have more authority over

00:25:36.560 them. And so do I have authority over my wife? Yeah, sure. I'm sorry. God gave it to me. I can't

00:25:42.360 argue with a 2000 year tradition on that, but the reality is I'd be an idiot. I'd be a total moron

00:25:48.100 if I unseathed that sword all the time and tried to debunk my wife's, you know, reign over her own 0.99

00:25:54.620 house. In fact, women, the whole, you know, Chesterton was, was, you know, this is, I think

00:26:01.240 like the absolute most brilliant and funniest statement. And maybe I shouldn't say it on the

00:26:05.940 air, but I'll say it anyway. It's Chesterton said, you know, women looked at their husband. He was

00:26:12.100 great in talking about like the feminist movement that was kind of like starting. Right. But he said,

00:26:16.000 women, modern woman looks at her husband and says, I will not be dictated to, and then go 0.94

00:26:20.620 and become a stenographer. It's like the funniest line. It's the funniest line. I'm not against women

00:26:26.120 working. I'm not, I'm really not. I'm not, that's not the point. But, but I, but we know

00:26:31.280 that women, in fact, I was hearing Tucker Carlson talk about this just the other day on a podcast.

00:26:35.720 He had a Matt Gaetz. And at the end of the podcast, they actually started talking, they were talking

00:26:40.140 about Israel and stuff most of the time, but then they started getting to talking about women and Tucker

00:26:44.280 Crossan was making the point. And he's not a traditional Catholic, you know, but he's a

00:26:47.960 pretty traditional guy, but he's saying, you know, women want, want to be home with their

00:26:54.560 children. That's what they want. And they're, they're often very, you know, they're forced

00:26:58.660 to go work a lot of times. I'm very sympathetic towards that, but very, very rarely do they

00:27:04.120 get, you know, satisfied with that. And we have an, we have a, we have a pandemic of single

00:27:10.400 women who can't find men, you know, and women are, they're usually out there, they're getting 1.00

00:27:14.180 their degrees. Unfortunately, they're, they're getting $150,000 in student loans. And so they

00:27:20.140 don't even start looking for a husband until they're 33. There's a problem. I've been very

00:27:26.360 blessed that my kids have gotten married young. So, so let's tie it back to well-ordered family.

00:27:32.980 So, um, I would advise, you know, if you want your, if you want to set up your kids, this

00:27:38.680 is me just giving my own personal advice, my own personal opinions. This is not gospel

00:27:41.980 truth. It's not that. If, um, you want to help your kids get set up for success, especially

00:27:47.440 your, your daughters, be very careful. Of course, I think women should get educated. Of course,

00:27:52.600 there's a lot of different ways to get educated, but be very careful at encouraging your daughters

00:27:57.960 to go off to, uh, college and grad school and rack up $150,000 of student debt. Because when

00:28:05.300 they do that, when they get that law degree or they get that medical degree, again, I'm

00:28:09.040 not saying don't let them go to school. That's not the point. We can be a lot more creative

00:28:12.340 today. You can find ways to get cheaper education and maybe not going to Duke and go into some

00:28:17.620 lesser, cheaper school might be better. Maybe online school to keep the price down. There's

00:28:22.040 a lot of creative ways, but I've seen many, many times when this young, good woman ends up

00:28:28.760 being 30 years old and she's still working to pay off her student debt. And she's been too

00:28:32.760 busy working to, to find any kind of suitable husband. It's, it's a pro it's a problem. The

00:28:37.740 whole economic structure around this is problematic. So we just have to be very careful. I, I don't

00:28:43.460 want my sons to grow up with debt either, but especially my daughters. So we're very, we're

00:28:49.740 very, just very practical and very careful about that. Not everyone is called to get married.

00:28:54.260 You know, not every, that doesn't happen to everybody, but I think mom and dad need to be

00:28:58.300 looking down the road in a way that an 18 year old girl can't necessarily and help

00:29:02.560 structure their life, their educational system, their social environments, all of these things

00:29:08.340 so that if they are called to a holy marriage with a young man and have children, it's easier

00:29:15.680 to do. And I think mom and dad in the last 50 years have been horrible at protecting their

00:29:22.640 children, both young men and women, but particularly women from this onslaught of modern lifestyle,

00:29:29.640 delaying the childbearing years and increasing the financial debt. The whole formula is screwed

00:29:38.960 up. Mom and dad need to be really creative in how they, they help their children get into

00:29:43.860 adulthood and to find their vocation. We could be a lot better at that than we are.

00:29:47.200 How many girls, how many boys?

00:29:51.700 Incredibly. We have eight boys, eight girls.

00:29:53.980 Yeah. I always will work out to be even over time and you have that experience. Of course

00:29:58.940 you will.

00:29:59.060 The new one is a boy in utero. Number 17, he broke the tie. Little Gabriel Bernard broke

00:30:05.520 the tie.

00:30:06.600 Awesome.

00:30:07.200 Yeah.

00:30:07.560 So what's your advice for your sons in terms of picking a wife? 0.92

00:30:10.520 Um, I have told them, and again, a lot of parents disagree with this. Look, look, the

00:30:19.740 most important thing in my life, John Henry is my Catholic faith. God, Ashley, kids. It's

00:30:29.520 just work, friends, other stuff, you know, hobbies, you know, somewhere down there, you know,

00:30:37.700 smoking a cigar is way down the road, but it's on the list, but it's way down the road. Um,

00:30:43.520 so I, and I have, I have, we've all known, we've all known people, um, who are sometimes

00:30:49.740 saintly, but we all know people who carry a tremendous cross throughout their entire marriage

00:30:58.240 and their children carry the cross a little bit with them because they married someone of a

00:31:02.400 different faith. And I've seen this, it's worked, but it's a, it's a cross that's usually just not

00:31:11.080 necessary. And so I personally, not everybody agrees with me. I have told my children that if this

00:31:19.720 is not, I told my sons looking for a young woman and one's founder, uh, the other one, uh, just

00:31:26.360 discerned out of seminary. So he's going to probably get back on the dating scene soon.

00:31:30.840 The other ones look like the next two got girlfriends. Okay. So I'm kind of an, you know,

00:31:36.400 I'm dealing with quite a few numbers here. If they were sitting here, they would say,

00:31:41.900 dad has always said, do not waste your time, even dating someone that would not be a very good wife.

00:31:53.660 And that, I think the most important, the number one foundational aspect of that is,

00:32:00.760 are they a sincere, authentic, devout Catholic who is going to support you in your Catholic manhood

00:32:08.980 and raise your children in Holy Mother Church? And I just, I, I look around and I see so many

00:32:16.300 wonderful, beautiful, articulate young Catholic women. You got, you got to, you got to fish in

00:32:23.880 the right pond. I mean, if you go to some crazy secular woke school and hang out at the Bernie

00:32:29.500 Sanders club, you're not going to find the right girl. So you got to be smart and fish in the right

00:32:34.420 pond. And I do fish with my sons. So you got to fish at the right time in the right place.

00:32:38.800 But if you do, the amount of fish are plentiful. You know, it's, it's, it's like, it's like Peter

00:32:45.500 and Jesus with the boat and the net, like it's filling up and it's tipping over the boat. There's

00:32:49.200 so many good young Catholic women, boys go get them, you know, but the faith is the number one 1.00

00:32:55.740 thing. You have to marry somebody. Don't even date. Don't, don't play with fire. There's too many good,

00:33:00.780 beautiful Catholic girls out there. You meet them at the right place. You got to hang out at the right

00:33:05.700 Catholic churches. You got to go to the right social environments. You have to have the right

00:33:09.500 kind of friends. You got to go to the right kind of college. You got to get in the right groups at

00:33:13.200 the right colleges. And if all of that, by the way, again, just a personal opinion. I've told my

00:33:19.520 sons, I've told my sons, the, and my daughters, I've only had one daughter go to college. I had,

00:33:24.340 I had one daughter up in the first half and I have a bunch of little girls. So I haven't as much

00:33:29.740 experience with the girls. So I like to say, as I got older, I got in touch with my feminine side.

00:33:33.940 That's why I had more, more girls, but John Henry, you know, um, I I've, I've told them

00:33:41.040 the, the number one reason you're going to college. I'm not even saying everyone has to

00:33:45.100 go to college is to find a spouse. That is the reason you're going. Oh, a biology degree.

00:33:52.260 So you can go be a doctor. That's a benefit. Yay. But I've had to graduate. The third's about

00:33:57.940 to, but the two graduate and they both graduated with good degrees and spouses. And I got grandbabies

00:34:05.420 out of it. So again, I'm not saying that we do everything right. That's not the point,

00:34:09.140 but let's, we've got to get really fundamental here. Guys, girls, you're going to college to

00:34:14.200 find your vocation. Okay. Capital V. And that means religious vocation or marriage vocation. 0.90

00:34:20.780 And so if you don't think that you're called to the priesthood or religious life, you better start

00:34:25.540 looking for a spouse. That's your primary reason for going there. The second reason is to get the 0.97

00:34:30.420 education. And I'm, and then when you start dating, they like, like my son, Jude, he's, uh, 18, 19. I

00:34:38.100 don't know. They change every year. And he said, he said, Hey, I'm, I, you know, I got a date tonight.

00:34:42.780 I'm like, okay, well, this is his first girlfriend, first girlfriend. First of all, I don't,

00:34:46.980 I do not want them dating in high school. What's the point? You can't get married yet. I mean,

00:34:52.000 I guess you can. I mean, if you're going to adopt the philosophy of we're going to get married right

00:34:56.120 out of high school at 18 years old, which I'm not necessarily opposed to that, you know,

00:35:00.360 that's fine. Maybe you start dating at 16, 17, but, but don't date at 16 or 17. If you're planning

00:35:06.680 on going to college and getting a degree, unless you're going to do this online and have a job and

00:35:10.820 support your spouse. So you have to think this through. So I tell my kids, if you're going to college,

00:35:14.420 you should not be dating until college. And I frown upon dating freshmen and sophomore year,

00:35:21.860 you know, maybe some loose dating sophomore year, because you can't get, practically speaking,

00:35:27.320 you shouldn't get engaged until you're close to getting finished with school, unless you've got

00:35:31.400 some other alternative plan. You know, so I'm very, very like, my point is, is this ideology that we

00:35:36.960 have, this faith, this long-term vocational thing that we have and our Catholic faith and all of

00:35:42.900 planning this family life, true family planning. Um, uh, all of this has practical ramifications

00:35:50.740 of what kind of debt are you getting? Where are you going to school? When do you start dating?

00:35:54.540 Do not start dating unless you're getting very close to where you can get engaged and do so. And

00:36:01.480 you can't get engaged until you're very close to getting married. Do not have a year long engagement.

00:36:07.400 It's just a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for so many disasters. A, it's a sexual temptation

00:36:14.300 because you just, you think you're so close, you might as well. And B, it ends up being Bride

00:36:20.160 Zillow focusing on the wedding versus the marriage. So I'm in favor of relatively short dating later in,

00:36:28.660 later in quote unquote, later in life and meaning the way you're close to ready to get to,

00:36:33.360 to be married, short engagement. Do, do, do the minimum of what the Holy Mother Church says with

00:36:39.440 pre-cana. It can be beautiful if done right. And then get married and, and don't do this. And,

00:36:44.620 and, and if you're not ready to start having children, then you're not ready to get married.

00:36:48.760 So I have to be very clear on that. It's not like, oh, we get married and then we just practice NFP

00:36:53.220 while I go off to do law school for three years. No, I don't think that's how Holy Mother Church

00:36:58.500 intends NFP to be used. I mean, it, there's legitimate reasons and there's illegitimate

00:37:02.740 reasons. And too many traditional Catholics even use that as, as, as a big fat excuse to just not

00:37:08.280 have kids. So I think that's overused as well. So in terms of practical advice, I, I, I really think

00:37:15.180 mom and dad need to be thinking long-term because we know the 18 year old brain isn't capable of doing

00:37:21.440 that. The decisions that you're letting, that mom and dad are making right now when the kid's 16,

00:37:25.780 17 and who they're dating or 18, 19, where they're going to college, 18, 19, how much debt they're

00:37:31.300 taking on. All of this has serious, serious ramifications for when they get married, who

00:37:36.680 they marry and what those early years of their formative life together is going to be like.

00:37:42.080 Mom and dad get to wake up and be way better at this. And I, you know, I think that more needs to

00:37:48.000 be written and talked about that, but to answer your question, like that, that's how we do it.

00:37:52.740 That's how I try my best to do it. Absolutely. Beautiful. Last question for you. And this is

00:37:57.820 probably a difficult one. It, so you're in the midst still. I mean, I am too, in a way I'm although

00:38:04.220 our youngest is now 14, believe it or not, um, of dealing with raising your children

00:38:12.180 at a time that is unlike any other time in history. And I'm not talking about the technological

00:38:22.020 revolution and all of that because all that's there. We talked on our last show. I encourage

00:38:26.880 you to go see it a lot about, um, the digital monster and how to deal with it. I loved your

00:38:34.620 story about break the phone. Oh, that's right. I told you that. They've got to check that out.

00:38:38.180 Yeah. But the elephant in the living room that very few talk about is the state of the

00:38:46.940 church. Yeah. The state of the church has never been this way. We've never had two successive

00:38:52.020 popes that just say things that aren't Catholic. That the James Martin phenomenon that used to

00:38:58.900 be, yeah, there's some liberal bishops do that. Oh gosh. But if he met, you know, the Holy

00:39:02.940 Father, he'd be in big trouble. No, no. Now they're invited into the Vatican. Their books

00:39:08.020 are endorsed. Their homosexual masses are endorsed. Um, and not only by Francis, by Leo. Leo welcomes 0.99

00:39:17.140 the pilgrim, the LGBT pilgrimage into Rome and meets with James Martin. We're in the most bizarre 0.91

00:39:25.060 time of the church's history. There's no comparison because at the helm, we have people who are giving

00:39:34.540 the most confusing, I don't call it teaching because it's not, it's just confusion that's

00:39:40.380 leading people astray real time. How in the world do you deal with this with your children?

00:39:46.640 All right. I think there's a supernatural answer and a natural answer. I think we have to always

00:39:54.320 approach situations like this with both, you know, the supernatural is, um,

00:40:02.900 I think parents spend more time. Let me go back. Ambrose, Bishop Ambrose of Milan looked at

00:40:12.060 Monica, Augustine's mother and said, if you spent as much time praying for your son, Augustine,

00:40:18.200 as you do complaining about him, he would already have converted. So, um, I think there's a lesson in

00:40:25.940 that. And, um, you know, it's, it's, it's very easy for someone like me who kind of stays in like a

00:40:35.740 perpetual state of aggravated church and people in the church. And it's just, you know, and my,

00:40:42.060 my perpetual aggravation is interrupted with moments of pleasure, but then I get right back

00:40:48.200 to being frustrated. I can't let my kids see that. So my kids need to grow up in a joyful home.

00:40:54.080 And so the joy, so the supernatural side of this is we need to pray that our children have a joyful

00:41:02.840 home and we need to seek to raise our kids in a joyful home, not in an angry home. They need to

00:41:09.860 hear us talk clearly and articulately about the problems in the church. And then we need to laugh

00:41:16.460 somehow, some way. So we show them that this is not tanking, uh, our, our joyful home. If kids don't

00:41:23.600 grow up in a joyful home, they will improperly, but they will say, I don't want that whole Catholic 1.00

00:41:31.440 faith that mom and dad tried to cram down my throat because they weren't happy. They weren't joyful.

00:41:36.660 And my evangelical buddy down the street who prays together and laughs together and, and whose,

00:41:44.840 whose church is more joyful. When I went with him one Sunday, I want that because they know the person

00:41:51.080 of Jesus Christ and mom and dad, traddy Catholic, grumpy conservative doesn't know the person of Jesus

00:41:59.460 Christ. So we better make sure that, that we are, uh, in a sense competing with the joyful environment.

00:42:07.640 We have to, we have to be as joyful as anybody. Otherwise our kids are going to gravitate away.

00:42:13.780 So from the supernatural level, um, we need to pray for our children and for their own state of

00:42:20.260 holiness. We need to pay attention to, um, this, we need to raise them in the sacraments. We need to

00:42:25.220 raise them in the church. Um, uh, we need to, when our kids are getting, especially when they get older,

00:42:31.480 this isn't per se about the, about the church per se and the problems there. But I think parents

00:42:36.980 are terrible at this. Um, I think one of the most powerful things dad can do for his children is fast

00:42:43.320 for them. I mean, we're, we're self-indulgent monsters most of the time. And so a little fasting

00:42:48.640 wouldn't hurt us anyway. I don't know about you, but I'm talking to myself. So we'll see how you eat at

00:42:53.180 dinner tonight. We'll see. We'll see. But you know, um, we have to fast for our children when we

00:42:58.160 see them going through things. So there's a supernatural side of raising our children in

00:43:02.720 the faith. Okay. Prayer and fasting for them. Um, in terms of the natural order, um, I think that

00:43:11.760 what comes to my mind, John Henry is smallness. So yeah, in the, all these problems in the church,

00:43:18.300 the examples you just listed, James Martin, the LGBTQ garbage, the woke Vatican stuff. I mean, 1.00

00:43:24.240 um, but that's not happening in my parish right here. You know, we can't choose the Pope,

00:43:30.440 but you can choose your pastor. You can choose your religious community that you, that you raise

00:43:34.280 your kids in. And well, older family, I talk about the ecosystem. We create, you create the Weston

00:43:41.100 ecosystem. There is a Weston ecosystem. And that has to do, I call it the strep test,

00:43:47.420 because every family deals with strep. So it's social, your social environment,

00:43:52.200 technological environment, religious environment, recreational environment, educational environment,

00:43:57.880 and professional environment. We don't have time to go through all those now, but

00:44:00.140 all of those are environments. And what you do as the head of your family is that you,

00:44:05.640 you push your family to be in a good social environment, to have the right technological

00:44:10.180 environment, to have the right religious environment, meaning your, your parish, where you go. What is

00:44:14.760 their, what are their friends? Like, what are the families that you're letting your kids be around?

00:44:18.520 Like, do you allow travel soccer to overtake your family, hijack your entire family, which a lot of

00:44:23.880 families do. You have to make all these decisions. And it's, it's a, the conglomerate of those

00:44:29.140 environments that make your ecosystem and ecosystem is many little environments together. That's what an

00:44:33.860 ecosystem is. So we don't, so the ecosystem doesn't really include the Vatican. It, it includes your

00:44:42.660 parish. It includes your pastor. It includes whether your kids get exposed to good religious

00:44:47.720 sisters. So your daughters have somebody to look up to it. And I, and I would say like, if, if you're,

00:44:54.560 if your parish is not a good environment, if your pastor, if the liturgy that you're going to is not

00:45:00.480 good, pick up and move, pick up and move. I mean, so you can't control the Vatican. You can control

00:45:06.900 the religious environment, the ecosystem of your whole, of your children's social life,

00:45:11.380 their technological life, their religious life. You can control that. I tell parents a lot.

00:45:19.280 You can, everyone listening to this, they have the power tomorrow to begin the process of selling

00:45:25.300 everything that they have and moving out to Wyoming and living in tents off the grid. You could do that.

00:45:31.880 You, you have the power to do that. You don't need to do that. So if you have the power to do that,

00:45:37.400 do you think you can get out of the travel soccer that's destroying your life? Do you think you could

00:45:42.180 change your parish to find a better one? Do you think you could drive extra far to have a good

00:45:45.720 liturgy? Do you think you can get control of your cell phone, your kids, your 14 year old kid's cell

00:45:50.580 phone? Do you think you can get the video games out of your house? Do you think you could start

00:45:54.420 praying the rosary at night? Do you think you could get to confession once, at least once a month?

00:45:58.680 Yes, you can do that. If you can move to Wyoming off the grid, you can do these things and you must

00:46:04.640 do these things. So the natural answer to your question is the mother and father together, led by

00:46:12.180 the father, have to create this very strong, joyful, comfortable ecosystem. Now, critics call it a bubble.

00:46:24.420 And I call it a community. It's a beautiful bubble. Yeah, we live in a bubble. You know what? My kids

00:46:32.160 are getting great jobs in bubbles. They're meeting spouses in bubbles. They're having so much fun in

00:46:37.280 bubbles. They're homeschooled, but they have these vibrant athletic and social environments. We have

00:46:43.280 restrictions. If you raise your kids in a parking lot, you have to watch them like a hawk. If you raise

00:46:53.460 your kids with walls, you can let them run free. So build your ecosystem to where your kids are only

00:47:01.560 hanging out with the right people. Get the technology constraints. Have a great parish. Have a great

00:47:07.660 priest. Have a great liturgy. Have a great homeschool environment or a Catholic school environment, which

00:47:13.240 those are hard to find sometimes. There's a lot of good hybrid schools popping up and everything. Good little

00:47:18.520 classical academies. Those are good, but usually diocesan schools stink. You have to creatively, assertively

00:47:26.300 go and find those things. And when you do that, you're able to give your kids incredible autonomy because

00:47:32.100 everywhere they go, it's safe because you structured this environment. You build up these walls. Put your

00:47:37.500 kids in the bubble. It's a big bubble. It's a happy bubble. It's a joyful bubble because when they

00:47:43.300 leave, they leave when the little bird flies out of the nest and they go out, they'll form their own

00:47:48.700 bubble. And then when they're outside of the comfort bubble, they've been so well-formed that they can

00:47:54.140 evangelize. You cannot evangelize until you're well-formed. I think, honestly, I don't think I'm dodging

00:47:59.960 your question. The way to deal with the problems in the church, yeah, you got to talk about it,

00:48:05.980 especially with your older kids. And I talk about it all the time with my older kids, the problems in

00:48:09.620 the church. But I'm not going to allow it to hurt the joy that we've created in our ecosystem.

00:48:18.100 That is the anecdote because they're experiencing authentic Catholicism from our parish, from our

00:48:24.820 friends, from our education, from our devotional life, at home, every night when we pray the rosary,

00:48:30.880 when we go stand in line for confession, when they see me praying in the morning, when they come down

00:48:36.180 early in the morning before he wakes up, they see their dad sitting there with a cup of coffee

00:48:40.540 and Holy Scripture. This is where the church is seen and heard and felt. And what Pope Leo does in

00:48:50.740 Rome has very little to do with what the Gallagher children are growing up with. 0.81

00:48:56.900 Absolutely beautiful. Connor, thank you so very much.

00:48:59.480 Thank you.

00:49:00.020 God bless you, my friend.

00:49:00.940 Thank you for everything you do in the church, man. You're a hero.

00:49:03.220 Praise God. And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.

00:49:07.140 Hi, I'm Liz Yor. I'm really urging all the audience to continue to follow LifeSite News for all

00:49:18.540 information, news about life, for a great perspective on all the breaking news in the world.

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The John-Henry Westen Show - January 21, 2026

How this Father of 17 Keeps his Family Faithful in Today’s Crisis

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