How this Father of 17 Keeps his Family Faithful in Today’s Crisis
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Summary
Conner Gallagher of 10 books joins me on The John Henry Weston Show to talk about the importance of a family unit. He talks about his journey to becoming a father, how he became a father and husband, and why a family needs to have a leadership structure.
Transcript
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Why would a family be different than every other organization on the planet and not need an
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authority structure? My friends, welcome to the John Henry Weston show. We've had this fellow
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on before. It's the only one I've ever interviewed in my life where there was a joke around. You
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know, I remember meeting a guy who had eight kids one time, one spot at a time when I only had four
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and he said, oh, you're halfway to crazy because he had eight. And I was like, wow. Then I had eight
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children and I felt all good. Now I'm with a guy who can still do that joke on me because I'm still
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halfway to crazy compared to him. He has got 16 soon to be, well, actually we're pro-life, right? So
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it's already 17, but one's on the way. We're with Connor Gallagher of 10 books. You're going to want
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to stay tuned for this one. Connor, thank you so much for joining me on my show in your studio.
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This is awesome. I'm honored to have you and be on your show. It's fantastic.
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It's amazing. You've got a beautiful place here and a most beautiful family. About a year ago,
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we got together for a show and you talked all about your book, The Well-Ordered Family. And I think
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a ton of people loved it. And you have thousands and thousands of people who benefit from not only the
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book, but you have the whole basically toolkits of how to do everything the way you do them.
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I'm going to get you to do a snapshot of what it is that The Well-Ordered Family book,
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but also the toolkits, the website to help families.
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Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, when I started having a whole bunch of kids, I had no idea
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that I was going to be a business guy. I thought I was going to be a lawyer. Okay. And then quickly,
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I was learning that being an hourly worker was not for me, which is what a lot of lawyers are.
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So I, through the grace of God, I mean, I could never, ever have planned this. I ended up working
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at TAN. Okay. And so I had no business experience, John Henry. I had never taken a business class. I'd
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never taken accounting class. So one thing that lawyers know how to do is self-educate. Okay.
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So I read every business book on the planet and I had a master's in philosophy. So I kind of always
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looked at things from a philosophical standpoint. So what I found is that there were natural law
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principles built into all of these business books that the authors didn't even know it was there.
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I saw certain key principles that I think are instilled into the universe by the divine author
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of the universe that says, okay, if you want to run anything, well, anything, if you want to run a
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business, a hot dog stand, a fortune 500 company, an athletic team, a small little Catholic publisher,
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a nonprofit apostolate that defends the unborn or a family, there are certain key principles that
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every human being must follow to get certain things done. And so I started really looking for
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those natural law principles for business. And I started bringing some of this stuff home every
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now and then say, wait a minute, if my business has a vision statement, why doesn't my family have
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a vision statement? And again, I looked at this philosophically and I said, a family is a group of
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people trying to reach a certain goal, heaven. Okay. That's our goal. And a business is a group of
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people trying to reach a certain goal, you know? So kind of even that most fundamental thing is the
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same. So I started breaking down this natural law principle into six key steps. Uh, it's like a,
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it's like a, it's like a pie. And the first is vision. You got to have vision. And I think families
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need to have vision and to be able to articulate that and be on the same page about what that vision
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is. And then you have to have unity. You see, if you, if you, 99% of success is unity around the
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vision, 1% is vision. Like, you know, it's easy, as you know, it's easy to like write a beautiful
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mission statement for life site news, but if you don't get the team rallying behind it, it goes
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nowhere. So unity around that vision is the second step. Third is systems. You've got to have good
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systems. Fourth is metrics. I mean, you have to measure things that matter. You have to figure
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out what numbers to pay attention to. And every single hugely successful person in the history of
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the planet, anyone who has achieved tremendous success in any area, like if they're an Olympian
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athlete or a great musician or a great chef, whatever it is, they learn to measure things with
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precision. So if you want to be truly great at something, you start measuring with precision,
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usually by centimeters, by inches, by tiny little measurements makes all the difference in the
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world. Right. I mean, the difference between a Warren Buffett and every other investor is actually
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fractions of a difference, fractions of a difference, just compounding over time. Right. So if you're
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running a family, what do you want to measure? If you want to be really good at this family thing,
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what is it that you should be measuring? And we're not just angels. God put us in this corporal body.
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We live in a corporal universe, so we have to measure things that are material, right? Whether
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it's screen time, whether it's how many rosaries a week you praise a family, how often you get to
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confession, you know, whatever it may be. There's a lot of things. Debt pay off because that's real.
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The more debt you pay off, the more charitable you can be. What are you going to measure? Right. So we
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help people figure what that is. And then also relationships because there's people involved and
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family would be really easy if people weren't involved, but it's really hard. And so there's
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temperaments, God-given temperaments. There's assessment tests, you know, like maybe if you've
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hired somebody, you've given them assessment tests, see what their strengths and weaknesses are.
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Isn't it funny that we pay more attention to like these assessment tests for people at work
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than we do for our own people at home? Now, I've experienced where I care much more about
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the interpersonal skills and communication skills and how I'm presenting myself to a stranger or to
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employees or to clients or customers than I do to my own family. So this helps me remember,
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you know what, why don't you pay attention to the relationships at home? And then the sixth one
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is discernment. That's how do you make decisions? You have problem solving, which is why do I keep
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having the same conflict with my 14-year-old daughter? That's a root cause analysis, like figuring out
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what's going on and business tools. There's all kinds of business tools for like finding that root
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cause of something. Manufacturers have been great at this, like figuring out why does the Toyota truck
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keep having this problem and the bearings, like they're masters at this. Well, I guess the same
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thing happens with the 14-year-old daughter. So problem solving and then decision-making. Do I buy
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the 15-passenger van or do we get like too many vans, you know, or do we go in a little bit extra debt
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but have a great vacation or not? Like there's decisions where it's like choose A or B and maybe
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both are good. Maybe one's good or bad, but you have to make a decision. And so stress and family
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life usually comes from being really bad at making decisions. And think about it, how many divorces,
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how many, how many nights has a guy slept on the couch? How many, how many, how much conflict has come
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just because mom and dad can't figure out how to make decisions together? Like that, when people talk
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about communication, usually as they're not handling a stressful situation, usually which
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involves a decision about a kid or about a parent or about what they're going to do with their time
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or money or energy, they stink at making decisions together. But when they go to work, they're really
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good at it. And when they come home, they're really bad at it. So that's the six parts, vision, unity,
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systems, metrics, relationship, and discernment. And so I contend if you do these six things
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a little better than you did yesterday, you're on your will to being well-ordered. Does it mean
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you're perfect? Does it mean you're always happy? No, but you're at least well-ordered,
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meaning your soul is ordered towards the good, true, and beautiful. And ultimately that's where
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happiness comes from. So let's pick on the last one, discernment, because I think a lot of family
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discord comes from that. It starts all great and then you get to a decision point or working out of
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a decision point and it becomes really sometimes very, very difficult. How do you play that out
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and how does it work out in end game and how are you supposed to come together when you're pretty
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much at odds? Well, let me just use as an example from my own family life, right? I mean, so you can
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easily imagine that the Gallagher family, given all our kids and now grandkids, our fourth grandkids
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on the way, you know, and they, and thankfully our kids, even who go to college still live on my
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property. There's this little guest house. I bought this, this house that had a little guest house so
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that my kids commute to Belmont Abbey. So my point is when they go to college, they don't even leave.
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They're still there. And so thankfully they bring their friends over. So I can have literally at any
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given night, 20 plus people in my house, like easily. Right. And this isn't even like a family
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reunion. It's just a Tuesday, you know? So it's easy to imagine that the Gallagher family's kitchen
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has been demolished, right? I mean, the cabinets have been ripped off because little guys are
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climbing up on them to get on the countertop. They've just, they've just been beat to hell.
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Right. Also our living room just does not hold us. We don't have a big house. People say, oh, you must
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have a huge house. No, we don't. We, we have a house that's probably, you know, made for six
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people or something, you know what I mean? And they all cram in, you know? So we've been talking
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about redoing the kitchen and we've been talking about converting the garage into a bigger living
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area. Well, that means then we don't have a garage. So, I mean, I'm not weird given the
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amount of people that we're discerning this, right? But we don't have just cash laying around
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to do this. This is a major financial thing. A, do we want to do it? Which one's more
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important, you know, for us is the kitchen because we don't have cabinets and it looks,
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looks kind of ghetto. Like you come to my house, like we're going out to dinner tonight,
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but if you went to my house, it'd be a little embarrassing. Like, well, I don't even have,
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you know, cabinet doors. They've been ripped off. Um, uh, so do we want to fix the kitchen
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or do you want to fix the, turn the garage into a big living area to where we can all watch
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football together and we all gather together? It's a beautiful thing. So I have to, so this
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is a, this is a big stress point because we're talking about none of this is cheap, costs a lot
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of money. Uh, which one's more important? Can we do one now? Can we do two now? Uh, do we save
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money? Do we take a second mortgage? Like how do you handle these? Everybody deals with something
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like this on some scale, right? Making a family decisions. Well, I've noticed that my wife and I
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can go around and around around on that, you know? And so she can go and get quotes and I can look at
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the quote, not understanding anything about it and saying, how in the world is that so expensive?
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It's cabinets, you know, you know, but I don't understand it. She understands it better. Um,
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so when you start feeling that kind of tension, anyone who's been married for about 12 minutes
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understands that this kind of thing can happen where you just have a misunderstanding on this.
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So I say, okay, time to get out a tool. So I have a number of different tools, worksheets,
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right? And they're on wellorderedfamily.com. And one of them, uh, we can take one, for example,
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is, um, a decision matrix, a decision matrix. So a decision matrix is you have multiple options,
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right? You have option, uh, a of get a kitchen option B get, uh, a living room option C get both
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option D get neither, you know, now those are like four options. Just like if you're going to
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look four different cars, do I want to, do I want a Toyota, you know, I want a Ford, do I want
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a Chevy, different options, but if you have multiple options running down the left side of
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the page, you have criteria. Okay. Like financial criteria, uh, benefits to the family, you know,
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you have to make up these different criteria. Okay. So maybe it's a financial issue. How do you rank
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that as a level of importance? Um, how do you rank something like, um, the, the, the convenience
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for the family? Um, how do you rank something like, um, the construction process? Like that's
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a major stress factor. You know, she's about to have a baby. Is this like the absolute worst
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time to ever do this because she's going into the third trimester or do you hustle to finish
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it quicker? So you even write like the pregnancy is a factor in these decisions. So John Henry,
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why we write these things out and you have to fill out the tool is because they're all of
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these issues, everything from the pregnancy to the money, to all of these things, they're
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turning around in your head. And when you work together, look, you take the kids, you say,
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get out of here for a little bit. Mom and I need to sit down here, have a cup of coffee.
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We work out this tool and we say, honey, what are the decision points, money, time, energy,
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whatever it is. We write that down. What are the different options that we can do with this?
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Right. And we write that down. The tool allows you to fill it out. And then we talk through
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it and we fill it out together amazingly. But I've had so much firsthand evidence in my own life
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and in my friends. When you sit down to do that and literally get on the same page,
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that's why we have that saying is get on the same page. Well, I created the page for you.
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So you go through this, not that it solves all of your problems, but what it does is you start
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speaking the same language. You stop spinning the same issues round and round in your head.
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It cuts the texting down. It cuts the emails down. It cuts the little snippy terminology back and
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forth, but you don't understand. You don't understand whatever it may be. It cuts all
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that stuff down and you end up acting like adults trying to make a real concrete decision.
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It cuts the stress down, way down, not necessarily making the decision for you,
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but all of a sudden when the stress decreases, then you can start loving each other again in a much
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more direct way. Um, because that stress kind of, it creates barriers. It creates emotional
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distance. That's what this stress does. The best definition of stress I ever heard is stress is
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thinking about something when you don't want to. It's just thinking about something when you don't
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want to. So it's like, it's not that I'm totally and completely against thinking about cashflow
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problems, you know, uh, at, at work, that's part of business. I don't want to think about it at
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10 o'clock when I'm going to bed. And likewise, it's not that I'm against, um, talking about
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whether we, whether we get a kitchen, but I don't want to text with my wife about it when I'm in a
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business meeting. Like that's the wrong time. Stress is thinking about something when you don't
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want to. So these tools and this example of my kitchen or a living room, it, it, it, it cuts down
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on all the noise and enables you to communicate in a very direct and simple way. Again, we do it at
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business. Why not do it at home? Yeah. I think that's really fascinating because the,
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just the concept, the, I think calling it getting on the same page is completely brilliant,
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but it's so true that when you're, and you'll call it arguing, but you're not really arguing,
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you're discussing, but it gets heated and whatever, but you're so often talking around each other and
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making assumptions of you're thinking this, you don't say that. If you did, that might help. You just
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know that's what she's thinking or that's what he's thinking. And so these assumptions are made
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there because they're not written. They're not there. Bingo. They're just made. And then the
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whole conversation is, it's stilted because you're not on that same page. Going back to Plato. He said,
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define your terms, always define your terms. So when you write it out, look, I had an employee issue
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here just the other day. And I, I looked at it being, I had the convenience, John Henry, of being
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like not in the day to day of it. And I saw, Oh, I have two employees here. I heard her side of the
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story. I heard his side of the story. I'm like, they're not on the same page. They're not, they're
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using the same, they're using the same words in very different ways. It's like, come on, we get,
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we get in a conference room, get the marker on the whiteboard and start literally defining your
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terms. It's incredible. Something magical happens when pen hits paper, because before that, we're
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not defining terms the right way. We're not saying the same things in the same way. We're talking
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about things. We're really contradicting ourselves and we don't even realize it. Something, if you get
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nothing else out of this, it's something magical happens when pen hits paper. It's, it's, it's, it's,
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it's, you know what it is? It's the word becomes incarnate. You know, it's like when we start putting
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these things in our family life, whether it's a vision statement. Oh, we know what our vision is.
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Time out. Everyone sit around. Here's a piece of paper, write your vision down. And then you're
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going to, if there's eight people in your family, I'm going to get eight different vision statements.
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There's no way you're on the same page unless you've really been intentional about doing that.
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You know, if I get the average family, it's great families. I'm not saying they're bad,
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but great families say, Hey, what's your vision statement? The dad might say, well, we're going to get to
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heaven. And mom might say, well, we want a very joyful home. And the kids might say,
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you know, something totally different. It's important to actually start saying the same
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things. This is why there's, there's like canon law. It matters. This is why we talk about the
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canon of scripture. This is why the words made flesh and dwelt among us. So this is, this is like
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this sub creation, you know, that we talk about, like Tolkien talks about sub creation. You were able
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to create, and that's a powerful thing monkeys can't do. You know, we have this, we have this ability.
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We're made in the image and likeness of a God who became man. We're able to put things into words.
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You know, the second person, the Trinity is the word of the father. We're able to do this in our
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own family life. So that's even a deeply theological reason to put things into words on paper. It's
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beautiful when you think about it, even theologically. It is. Protecting your money doesn't have to be
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The difficulty, I guess, because even if you work through all these things and you do them this
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way, you don't always come to agreement. And that's where things also, I don't think they
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ever get to that kind of, in your modern day, most people don't even get to that stage where
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they've written it out and understand each other. But even when you do, sometimes you can still
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disagree. And then, especially in a family, how is that supposed to work? The reading of the
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catechism, I was reading the Roman catechism, the catechism of the Council of Trent the other day,
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and someone actually sent me, actually, I heard a guy speaking about it. And I was like,
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where is that quote from? And I looked it up. It's from the Roman catechism. So I read the whole
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section of the Roman catechism on the duties of marriage. And I was like, oh, that's very
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different than anything we've ever heard in the modern church, if you will. In fact,
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the section's so startling that I was like, whoa, because it's a lot about the word that's never
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said, obedience. And you're like, whoa. Tell me about that as you've reflected on it, as you've
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reflected on family, because it's one of those things that's just, it's way out there, it's not
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talked about. A lot of people, though, do talk about it as one of the underlying causes of our whole
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collapse of family and therefore culture. All right. Let's look at it this way. We can even
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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
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coordinator. We have special teams coordinator. Why the hell do we need a head coach? There's only
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three parts of the game, offense, defense. Come on. If we have offense, the offensive coordinator's in
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charge. If we have defense, the defensive coordinator, what's the problem here? Every
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sports team in the history of sports has had a head coach. Why do you need that? You got coordinators.
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Why do companies need CEOs? Why? You have a head of marketing. You have a chief financial officer.
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You have a chief technology officer. If technology is involved, just let the technology guy decide.
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Come on. This should be simple. Why do Navy ships need captains? Doesn't people know what their jobs
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are supposed to be on the boat? Come on. They're military. Why do you need a captain? Well,
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wouldn't it be better if we had three captains and then they had votes? Isn't more minds better than
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one mind? Why do we need a pope? Why do we need a pope? Can't we just have local churches?
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Synodality, huh? Why can't we just have synodality? It'd be much better to have 10,000 popes than one.
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Every part of nature requires hierarchy and an ultimate decision maker. And as soon as you try to
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get out of that, people have tried this. By the way, whenever you hear somebody, whenever you hear
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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.
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And what happens then, as soon as somebody starts talking about that, the very next thing that always
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follows is total and complete tyranny. So I sit on boards and stuff and I've learned whenever somebody
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starts talking about the sacredness of procedure and everybody having their input, I know tyranny's
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on the way. I know tyranny's on the way, right? So my point is this. Why would a family be different
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than every other organization on the planet and not need an authority structure? It does. God instilled
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this in every part of life, okay? Now, a lot of people against me would say, probably not too many
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of your listeners, but a lot of people would say, well, this is a sacramental marriage and it's not
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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,
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
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
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
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
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.
00:29:53.980
Yeah. I always will work out to be even over time and you have that experience. Of course
00:29:59.060
The new one is a boy in utero. Number 17, he broke the tie. Little Gabriel Bernard broke
00:30:07.560
So what's your advice for your sons in terms of picking a wife?
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
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.
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
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
00:39:17.140
the pilgrim, the LGBT pilgrimage into Rome and meets with James Martin. We're in the most bizarre
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
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,
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.
00:48:56.900
Absolutely beautiful. Connor, thank you so very much.
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.
00:49:26.880
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