Marian Devotion： The Secret To Protection, Joy In A World Full Of Chaos
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Summary
Greg and Jennifer Willits are some of the original Catholic podcasters, and they are senior at this game like no one else. They talk about their love for a lady, their marriage, and their faith in God. They also talk about a special project LifeSite News is doing in partnership with St. Joseph's Partners, and a limited edition coin that commemorates Roe v. Wade.
Transcript
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You know, I had a priest tell me one time, I went in, I said, I just don't feel very happy.
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He said, but are you joyful? And I went, I don't know what you're talking about.
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I said, I'm not happy. He said, yeah, but are you joyful? Are you living in a state of grace?
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Do you know that you're living the life that God wants you to be living? He says, then you're
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joyful. Don't worry about being happy. You're not going to be happy all the time, but be joyful.
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And so even in the midst of depression, we have no doubt that God loves us. We have no doubt that
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we're on the right path, that he's going to take care of us, our marriage, our children,
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Hey friends, I just had a fascinating conversation with Greg and Jennifer Willits. They are probably
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some of you know them, but they are some of the original podcasters, some of the original
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Catholic podcasters ever. Now they're not a hundred years old. Podcasting is not that old,
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but they are senior at this game like no one else. And they're just awesome.
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It's a great conversation because when you work with pros, it's really easy to talk and
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these guys talk and they are just incredible. It's going to be a great conversation. They're
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going to tell us about their love for a lady, their love for one another. And there's a very
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special thing that the two of them are related to LifeSite about, and that is we employ their
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son. For whom we're very grateful. You don't know him because he's not often in front of the
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camera. He's behind the scenes all the time. His name is Walter Willits. This is the John
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Hunter Weston Show. You're going to want to stay tuned for this one.
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Hey there, friends. I just wanted to tell you about something in case you didn't already know
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it. LifeSite is in partnership with a group called St. Joseph's Partners, because in today's day and age
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where things are getting more and more strange out there, we want to be sure that we have some
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reserves of gold and silver so that if debanking happens, which has happened before and seems to
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have gone on with the truckers and everything else, that we at least have some backup. And so
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there's been a lot of investing in gold and silver. We wanted to find a company, though, that we could
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trust with our investments like that. And St. Joseph's Partners is such a company. Obviously,
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by their name, you know that they're Catholics and we know that they're very, very faithful.
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Indeed, you can go check out the shows I did with Drew Mason, who is the founder of St. Joseph's Partners.
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But also I wanted to tell you about a neat little project we did. And this is really for both support
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of LifeSite News, but also for gifts for those people who sort of have everything and you wonder
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what you can get for them. Well, we minted a coin, a silver coin, and it's a one ounce silver round,
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they call it. It has LifeSite on the front for our 25 year anniversary that we're celebrating.
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But also on the back, it commemorates the overturning of Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision.
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So it's a collector item coin and encourage you to grab one for yourself. Grab one as a gift for that
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person who seems to have everything else. They might like it very much. And please support us
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at LifeSite News by getting our coin. We've just printed under 10,000 of them. So it's a collector
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item, a limited edition. God bless you and thank you. Greg and Jennifer Willits, welcome to the
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program. Thank you so much. Super glad to be here. So great to be here. We're very excited.
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Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father and of the Son
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and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Amen. Amen. So, as I said in the intro, I'm speaking with some of the
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originals, some of the original Catholic podcasters on the planet. Now, you don't look old enough to be
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my senior even, but there you are. You started doing this decades ago. Tell us about that to start with.
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Yeah, it was really funny. The first time I ever heard the word podcast was actually Patrick Madrid
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used to have a blog, Envoy Magazine, and someone buried about 20 comments down said,
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are you guys going to ever podcast? And I was like, what the heck is a podcast? So this was probably
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February of 2005. And within a month, we had launched the very first Catholic podcast by a Catholic
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organization, Rosary Army podcast. And literally to this day, I'm going to out my wife right now.
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To this day, she's never heard the first episode of that podcast. It was so bad. I recorded it like
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on a little tin can microphone up in my office, had no idea what I was doing, what it was. But there
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were no, there weren't a lot of podcasts out there and Apple had not even added it to iTunes yet.
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Well, iTunes existed because that's where the iPod idea came from, but recorded it,
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put it out there, had no idea what would happen. That was, excuse me, just the month before
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Pope St. John Paul II died. So suddenly, you know, if you're a Catholic podcaster at that time,
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you wanted to hear other Catholic podcasters. So you had a choice of about five other people
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at that time. And so we all banded together. There was a group actually at that time called
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Disciples with Microphones is what we were calling ourselves. And we all did tributes to
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John Paul II at the time. When the Terry Schiavo incident was happening back in 2005, we all recorded
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podcasts for Terry. And we're all just trying to figure out how do we do this? And then around the,
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I think, seventh or eighth episode, I was still working in the IT industry at the time. And I got
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laid off and I was really angry. And I took my recorder and I just podcasted about it and put it out
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into the ethernet. And that's when things really changed because suddenly we started hearing from
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other Catholics and other non-Catholics saying, I heard that podcast and listening to you was like
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hearing my own thoughts brought out. And it just gave me so much peace to know I'm not alone. And
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that really is what started resonating with us. And Jennifer soon joined the program shortly after
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that. We ended up, I don't know, within the first 20 plus episodes, having our first miscarriage.
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And again, we had people praying for us that were listening. And so we podcasted about that
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experience literally the day that we lost that child. And for years, literally years after that,
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we kept hearing from people saying, thank you for sharing that because I just lost a child.
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Thank you for sharing that because I've struggled with this in the past. And so we really learned
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the power of podcasting. And in those early days, really what it was, was community. And so many
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people wanting to grow deeper in their faith, but not knowing who they can reach out to, to share
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that journey with. And so that was the early days of podcasting for us and finding just so many
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comrades in arms in the church militant, you know, of Catholic podcasting in those early days.
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We had everyone from a priest in the Netherlands to a neurosurgeon in Kansas City to another priest at
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Franciscan University. We're all banded together. And our friendships still to this day are very strong
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from that experience of being very blessed to have been among that initial crowd of people just
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trying to figure out how does this technology work and how could it help the church?
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We're very grateful to you at LifeSite because you've trained and brought to us someone who's
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very special to us. Behind the camera, behind the scenes, in fact, behind the computer most of the
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time is your son, Walter Willits, who has just been fabulous for us. He was able to bring us the vast
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We're very proud of that. Well, of all of our kids, of course, but it's really been amazing
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watching Walter choose the path that he chose and to see it go down a pathway that leads him to
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serving Jesus in this way. It's been a pretty amazing thing to see. So thank you for employing our son.
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It's our great privilege. You guys have been doing this many, many years,
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but you've chosen to focus right now on Our Lady. You did Rosary Army. Well, tell us about
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Well, that's another, you know, stumbling into an amazing thing that could never have planned it.
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Literally went to confession one day. The priest was sitting there in the confessional. No one
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was waiting to go to confession. So I walked in, the priest was praying the rosary, and he had a
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single decade knotted rosary using really thick rope. I just remember seeing it, thinking that's
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really kind of cool, forgot all about it. And then literally two months later, I was sitting in my
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little cube in my IT job and remembered that and looked all over online trying to find instructions
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for making one of those things. I found some printed instructions. I need pictures. I'm not the
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smartest guy when it comes to trying to figure out stuff like that, but I found some written
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instructions. I went to every craft store around, finally found some ugly macrame cord and cobbled
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together one of the ugliest rosaries that you've ever seen in your life. It was my first
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all twine knotted rosary, but I was hooked instantly and started making them, got better
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twine that we have been recommending people use for all these years, started making them
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and going to church and just would see someone and feel compelled by the Holy Spirit to give
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them that rosary and just kept giving them and giving them and giving them. And then people
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started asking, well, how are you doing that? And how are you making them? So started making
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them, I was praying it more and then giving them away. And that became the motto of Rosary
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Army, gave a talk to a bunch of teens, literally it was 20 years ago this month. And during that
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talk about the rosary, about John Paul II, talked about this compulsion I had just a few months
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before in September of 2002 to start making these rosaries. And then literally the next
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month, John Paul II declared the year of the rosary. And it just rocked my world that these
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two things were happening at the same time. And then a few months later, I'm teaching these teens
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and I told them that when I started making them and then the year of the rosary was declared,
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and then I started seeing these other rosary ministries popping up all over the world,
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I started to realize this isn't just something that I'm doing, but it's literally like an army
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that's being brought up. And those kids, I taught them how to make these rosaries that weekend
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and taught them the initial knots. And then they went off and worked on it their own.
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And all weekend long at that retreat, those kids kept coming up to me with their finished
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rosaries and saying, look, I'm in the army now. Look, I'm in the army now. I went home that night,
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March of 2003 and registered rosaryarmy.com. It's 20 years ago. Millions of rosaries have been
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distributed either directly from our apostolate since then, or from the countless thousands of
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people that have learned how to make them since then. You see them on college campuses, youth groups
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make them all the time now. And it's just been an amazing thing for us to see. So that's the
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beginning of rosary army. But it just led to so many other things over these last 20 years.
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It's amazing. 20 years to the date right now. That's really providential for us to be talking
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now. That's a very significant anniversary of being able to share. My dad referred to the rosary
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as the umbilical cord to your heavenly mother. And beautiful, beautiful thing. You are embarking on
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a new project called School of Mary. What is that?
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Well, School of Mary is actually another one of my husband's great loves. And it really, it all
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starts with him. And I have just tried to be a responsive and attentive Catholic wife and pay
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attention to the work my husband is doing, because one of my prayers is to be married to a holy man at
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all times. And my husband is really growing in this area. And he was very quickly drawn to St. Louis
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Montpert and this total consecration, which also got on our radar about 20 years ago, right around
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the years of the formation of Rosary Army. And everything kind of began with my husband. But I
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very quickly saw that I needed to join him in these initiatives. I needed to grow with my husband in this
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spirituality of our Catholic faith. And so 20 years ago, we both decided to just take a leap of faith
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and try this total consecration discipline of prayers of which we didn't know much about.
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But we had a really good priest at the time saying, you need to do this. You need to trust Mary and
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just wait and see what will happen when you do. And so we just trusted and we started praying and
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surrendering. Again, not really knowing a whole lot about what we were doing because we're kind of
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Okay, we're in our 30s. All right. So you think about when you were 30 and where you were in your
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faith life. Okay, you know a whole lot more now than you did 20 years ago. So Mary worked with that,
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you know, with how immature we were in our faith. And we realized this was something really special.
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And it started to transform our lives for the next 20 years. And so we realized we needed to
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somehow promote this, that we, as we looked at the state of our world, just spiraling downward and
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its morals and impurities. And the world needs to remember Mary and get back to her. So it's like,
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all right, well, let's promote total consecration. So how do we bring this into our modern audience?
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Because we don't want to water down or modernize something beautiful in its traditional state.
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It needs to lift people up and bring you to the higher place. So we need to keep it intact. That
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was really important to us. And we love how St. Louis de Montfort was challenging. And it's classical
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in the way that it's written. And it's like written centuries ago. And so you really have to wrestle with
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his language and use of words. But that's part of the appeal. And that's part of what calls you up to
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that higher standard. So we wanted to do this. And we thought, School of Mary is a term I believe
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that St. Louis de Montfort had used often in his writings. And we really loved that phrase,
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sitting at the feet of Mary. And so we knew that the phrase was very special. It's very inviting and
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comforting. And so we wanted total consecration to have a really good place to sort of exist,
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to appeal to a wider audience. And so that's really where the School of Mary is right now. It's not
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completely ready to launch to the public, but it is actively being fleshed out and built right now.
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And I just have to give credit to my husband for really seeing this mission through. It's been a
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long, long time that he has loved this idea of School of Mary. And we're so close to being able
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to launch it to the world. Yeah. And so what we envision it to be is a learning platform and a
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community. And because we hear from people all the time that while we already have total
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consecration resources on our website, they oftentimes feel alone or they feel lost. We
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encourage them to stick with St. Louis Marie de Montfort's words and his instruction. But we
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also understand, like Jennifer said, that difficulty sometimes to understand it. So right now we're
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rerecording not only the prayers, but we're doing a daily reflection and commentary on it to help people
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to have a better understanding of what does this mean in the 21st century and to not be afraid of words
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he uses like slavery to marry. Or when we say that we're going to completely give up all that we
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have, our family, whatever it might be, it can be terrifying if you think about it in modern day
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definitions. But it shouldn't be a scary thing because we also see very clearly where he talks about
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how she who is full of grace is going to completely take care of our needs and we have nothing to be
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afraid of. And so really making sure that people are seeing that and that we also are providing a
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community place so that other people that are going through not only total consecration,
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but many of the other programs that we have planned for down the road, many of which will deal with
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other works of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, as well as we do another podcast called Catechism Class.
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That's going to be incorporated into School of Mary and other things that we'll announce over time.
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But all these things for people to come in and find a place where they can grow in their faith,
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know that they're going to have traditional reverent materials. That's also fun. I mean,
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we can't help it, but to joke around and laugh and we enjoy, we enjoy our faith. We actually find it
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fun and interesting. And sometimes we'll hear something and we'll make a joke about it, but
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people know how seriously we take the faith at the same time. We'll die for our faith. We would do
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anything for our blessed mother and for her son. And we want to help other people to get to that
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place. And so that's what we envision School of Mary being. Truly, Rosary Army is the entry point.
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The rosary being, here's this core way for you to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ on a daily
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basis. We all need the rosary, but you can't help but to want to go even deeper when you pray the
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rosary. The more you pray the rosary, when you make it a daily practice, you're going to be pulled in
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to want more from the faith. And so we hope the School of Mary is going to be able to do that.
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We're working very hard to try to make everything that we're going to make available for free to
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people because this is so critical for them to have access to these resources. And so we're just
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trusting Mary. I mean, we've been living on loaves and fishes for the last few years. We keep telling
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people, God has never let us down. We're trusting him to provide everything that we need. And so far,
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we're exactly where we need to be in making this project happen. So praise God for those things.
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One of the neat things about you too, if I might say, is that that joy aspect is really evident.
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And watching you interact on your show brings a lot of joy. It really does inspire. If you ever
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wonder at people thinking to talk to you, don't, because your joy, your interaction with one another
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is so loving. It's infectious. So that's a great witness all by itself right there. What brought you
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to that place? Obviously, I mean, married couples go through a lot. And, you know, it's sometimes hard.
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But you share an evident love and joy with one another that's really touching.
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Where do you think that came from? Or how do you keep that going?
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Well, I think I would attribute it to the early podcasting days. That was our first real
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venture into communicating in this very unique way. Okay, so you have to go back 20 years. And just
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to even unwind the technology clock a little bit, it's, you know, Facebook wasn't around,
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YouTube was just starting to like get out there, but nobody really knew what it was yet. So this is
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kind of the world we're in. And so my husband and I are trying to podcast and it like nobody would know
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what we were doing. But we're talking to this plastic microphone in our closet. And we're sharing
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really deep things to this unknown void of whatever. But in doing that, we were sharing so authentically
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from our hearts. But how could we not benefit from that as a married couple, we were practicing
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communicating in a very safe and intelligent and in a considerate way. I highly recommend married
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couples if you want to get into an argument, put microphones in front of you and then start talking.
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And imagine there's an audience right there. You're going to play nice automatically. And you start
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automatically just nicer. You will play nicer. It just tempers your passions. And that is key to
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growing in holiness. It's about controlling those passions and looking out for one another. But still,
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we're human. There were times when we were working for the Catholics next door for the Catholic
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channel a few years ago, where we were doing live radio. So this is three hours of live radio,
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five days a week. Things can get a little unpredictable in that format of broadcasting,
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where we had live callers. And there were times when we would step on each other's toes,
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live and on the air. And there was no way out of those situations. And there were times,
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because I'm a female, I'm just saying, I would be sensitive. He would step on my toes.
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Now, thankfully, there was no video component. So I could use sign language. And I would just go like,
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but there were tears, you know, there were tears at times on the radio, you know, and he was like,
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okay, don't look at my don't look at her. I just can't look at her right now. And that was but we
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got through it. And we grew through those struggles. And we know that we love each other. And we know that
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we want the best for each other. And so doing this, literally weekly, for almost 20 years has
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made a difference. We are in it now. We are so committed to our work. We're so committed to
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serving our Queen, our Lady, that we're all in. It's like, I don't care. She's got it. What do we
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have to worry about? We're all in now. And it feels so wonderful to be united in this calling as husband
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and wife. It's amazing. I remember in the very early days of Rosary Army, there was news and in
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the Catholic world, and just a couple of there were some Catholic couples that got divorced. And it was
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just such a shock. And it really hurt our hearts. And as Rosary Army was starting, it became a cautionary
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tale for us as well, that we really have to make our marriage strong. The devil would love to rip us
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apart. The devil, it would just be such an incredible victory if Greg and Jennifer Willits,
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who, like she said, on The Catholics Next Door, on SiriusXM for all those years, the Catholics Next
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Door, if they got divorced, if the devil could tear us apart, if here's this family that has been
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promoting being open to life and following the church's teachings in that regard, if the devil could
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rip them apart, how glorious that would be for the devil, right? And so we've always had that
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cautionary, you know, devil sitting on our shoulder and that warning. And I think so much about one
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marriage in particular that I remember reading about in those early 2000s, and just feeling so
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sad for that situation, because it was a devoted Catholic couple, and then this happened to it. And
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then we saw, you know, even some priests that we loved dearly fall and give up their priesthood,
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and so they gave up their vocation. And to see those kinds of things, so we know that it can happen.
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And so we've worked very hard to make this commitment, this sacramental marriage. This
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isn't just marriage. This is the sacrament. This is holy matrimony that we're engaged in.
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And we have to keep that at the forefront of our personal lives. And as long as we do that,
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as long as we, I mean, listen, we're going to receive graces from this amazing holy sacrament,
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right? We receive graces. We need to take advantage of those graces to be able to do this work and to
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trust Jesus and Mary to protect it, protect our marriage as well. So thank you for making that
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comment about the joy. It's not easy. I mean, people that listen to our show know, particularly
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in the last five years, a topic that we never talked about was mental health issues. And in
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the last five years, that's something that I've had to be transparent about, that I have suffered
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from that for most of my life. But it has been God that has seen us through, and our marriage has,
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I think strengthened as a result of her struggles, Jennifer's struggles with having to deal with me
00:22:47.480
in periods of really deep depression and anxiety. And then how thankful I have been for her and try
00:22:54.600
to lift her up when I can, because of the way that she takes care of me in those times. And so again,
00:23:00.660
in sickness and in health, you don't always think about mental issues, but that I actually think
00:23:05.360
that God has blessed us by giving us that cross, that illness for these last almost 28 years of
00:23:12.060
marriage, that when she came into this, she didn't realize that was there. And it became really evident
00:23:17.000
when two couples living together after marriage, and you can't hide that kind of stuff anymore.
00:23:22.000
And it's just amazing how God can take even this huge thorn of mental health issues that I'd carried
00:23:27.320
my whole life and can help us become stronger, a stronger couple, and actually still do amazing
00:23:32.200
things for the church. And so we add that mental health topic. You know, we mentioned when we had
00:23:37.740
a miscarriage, people responded to it, or unemployment, people respond to it. Since we
00:23:41.600
started talking about mental health issues a few years ago, it's amazing not a week goes by where
00:23:45.020
we don't hear from a Catholic who's dealing with it or has a spouse that's dealing with it. And it's
00:23:49.480
an area that we just need to talk more about. But that's a roundabout way of saying we're very aware.
00:23:54.540
It's not always joyful. But, you know, I had a priest tell me one time, I went in, I said,
00:23:59.620
I just don't feel very happy. He said, but are you joyful? And I went, I don't know what you're
00:24:03.420
talking about. I said, I'm not happy. Yeah, but are you joyful? Are you living in a state of grace?
00:24:08.200
Do you know that you're living the life that God wants you to be living? He says, then you're joyful.
00:24:12.440
Don't worry about being happy. You're not going to be happy all the time, but be joyful. And so even
00:24:16.400
in the midst of depression, we have no doubt that God loves us. We have no doubt that we're on the
00:24:20.580
right path, that he's going to take care of us, our marriage, our children, and this apostolate.
00:24:24.580
But working in active apostolate has often been said to be able to transfer the faith to your
00:24:31.580
children much more easily. It's somehow, that's why pro-life activists have a better success rate
00:24:38.420
with their children in terms of raising them in the faith, because that the very activism in the
00:24:43.840
faith tends to do something for the faith of the kids. Have you found that yourselves?
00:24:48.460
Well, yes. And I would have to say that all of our children are still active in their Catholic
00:24:55.680
faith. So praise be to God. But I'm always, as mother, I'm always watching and praying. And if I
00:25:02.500
see a concern, then I just pray harder for that particular child. But we have four boys and our
00:25:11.020
youngest child is actually a girl. So we're very blessed to have finally experienced the joys of
00:25:14.820
having a daughter. And she's 14 right now, but already there's conversations about the possibility
00:25:21.980
of a vocation into religious life. And that is a fruit that I never thought I would even witness
00:25:28.280
this early on in the parenting, you know, life. And I really had to come to terms with that because
00:25:34.040
selfishly, when I first had her and I loved her so intensely as mother and daughter, I was like,
00:25:39.960
yes, finally, I'm getting the daughter. You know, when I entertained the thought of her being a nun,
00:25:44.920
I bristled in my selfishness. I was like, but no, but I, I want her. I want her to follow my foot.
00:25:52.280
So I mean, the I and the me, it's like, oh, it's awful. Now I'm like, oh, what a gift it would be.
00:25:57.380
What a gift it would be for the church if she would fulfill that desire and dream. And if the Lord calls
00:26:03.560
her to be a nun, that would be such an honor. But seriously, all of our children, we're so proud of them.
00:26:08.940
They're, they're very active in their faith. And, but I know it's not, you know, their lives are not
00:26:14.000
over yet. There's still, I think a lot of seeds that we planted. Our home, we've tried very hard
00:26:19.720
to make it a very Catholic looking home so that there's no doubt of our Catholic faith. When you
00:26:25.060
walk into our home, there's always pictures, there's Mary, rosaries, you know, there's just an
00:26:28.880
exterior signs everywhere. I know that's doing something too. So then when they go and they start their
00:26:34.760
own homes, they'll have that as a reference point where they can maybe want to draw upon that and,
00:26:39.720
and take that in their futures as they build their families. So it's interesting to see what will
00:26:45.020
happen. I appreciate what has happened, but I know life is so full and long. But my prayer is that they
00:26:51.800
always stay on the righteous path no matter what.
00:26:53.960
Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to try and get you guys to rewind even further because your faith
00:27:00.380
is so strong. Where, how did you get there even? Because this is a struggle. I mean, you guys are
00:27:07.920
probably around my age. Wasn't an easy time to have the faith, let alone maintain it.
00:27:16.080
Well, I know what's really helped in the last year and a half. That was, we made a big switch on
00:27:24.380
where we went to Mass. And it actually, I mean, talk about providential, like a timeline of events.
00:27:34.680
During the early months of the pandemic, I watched you interview Dr. Scott Hahn about his book,
00:27:42.140
Hope to Die. I, I don't think I ever saw you before that day. I didn't know who you were.
00:27:48.160
And this is before Walter, you know, started working with you. But I was so drawn to that
00:27:54.040
interview. And then in that interview, Dr. Scott Hahn made a reference to Bishop Athanasius Snyder.
00:28:01.360
And I was like, well, who's that? Because he really impressed Dr. Scott Hahn. And I don't know who
00:28:05.220
this, this bishop is. And so I was led to him and that Christus Vincent book. And then,
00:28:09.900
you know, it was just a cascade of events. And then I started realizing that my reception of
00:28:14.780
the Eucharist could be more reverent. And I didn't realize that receiving in the hand was improper
00:28:19.780
and that what's this about wearing a veil? I mean, like I was totally waking up. I was like,
00:28:25.520
just coming alive to this deeper reverence option during the pandemic, you know, the early time of
00:28:32.080
the pandemic. Are you going to tell the story about the email that you sent?
00:28:35.400
To Bishop Snyder? Yeah. So my wife wakes up in the middle of the night.
00:28:39.900
And she does what most wives would do, right? She's concerned about her reception of the
00:28:45.680
Eucharist at the church that we go to. It was an unusual situation. I won't go into that.
00:28:49.240
So here we are in the state of Georgia, the United States, and my wife just
00:28:52.820
goes into the closet or whatever and gets her computer and writes out an email to Bishop
00:28:58.880
Athanasius Snyder asking for clarification on something.
00:29:01.640
In my defense, I will say that I wanted an authentic answer that I could trust on the
00:29:09.040
reverence of the Eucharist. And I thought, who do I know in the entire world that I would
00:29:14.640
trust the answer? And he was the only man to come to mind was this man, Bishop Snyder.
00:29:20.360
He's holy. He's reverent. It's him. It's got to be him. So I'm just going to send this email.
00:29:25.180
I'm just going to Google whatever. How do I find him? And if he answers, he answers. If not,
00:29:29.740
if I'm one of a million emails he gets, then he won't answer. No harm, no foul.
00:29:34.120
Within 10 hours, he responded like a good father, just so kind and loving. And he set me straight.
00:29:40.820
He did not mince any words and he gave me the truth. And I'm like, okay, that's what I needed
00:29:45.480
to hear. And he corrected me lovingly like a good father. And it's like, all right, now I know.
00:29:49.620
But that was the beginning of chasing reverence. And very soon after we discovered the Latin mass.
00:29:57.040
And that was, that put us on a whole new trajectory of reverence. And I feel like I'm
00:30:03.200
trying to live an ad orientum life. That's my goal now, just to always face God, no matter what.
00:30:08.920
But going back before that, you know, like you were mentioning, we're probably about the same age,
00:30:13.380
70s and 80s. I have lived in eight different states, many parishes in many other states.
00:30:19.620
And I would say that it wasn't until the last few years that I did find a parish where I was truly
00:30:26.700
at home, where I felt like the reverence I've been seeking for all these years was there.
00:30:31.120
I oftentimes lament that it wasn't until after I was married. Jennifer, I think Jennifer was pregnant
00:30:37.600
with Walt the first time I ever went to Eucharistic adoration. And how in the world did I attend all
00:30:45.060
these parishes in all these different states? And that was never introduced to me until that
00:30:49.560
time. So that would have been 1998, 99, sometime around that timeframe. How have I been Catholic
00:30:55.920
my entire life? But, you know, growing up, because catechesis was so loosey-goosey, I remember
00:31:02.220
very clearly when I was in first or second grade, seeing the priest explain how we're going to switch
00:31:09.120
and everyone's going to start receiving in the hand. That same parish, I remember on Palm Sunday one
00:31:13.940
year, they had us throw streamers in the middle of mass. And we went to another parish where for Palm
00:31:19.540
Sunday, they had us with those giant balloons you see at concerts and literally throwing the balloon
00:31:24.760
around during mass. And so that was kind of my idea of the mass is supposed to be like this. And then
00:31:30.800
I'd go somewhere else and it'd be something different. And so I was very confused. And then I also would
00:31:36.700
hear a teaching of the church, like not using contraception, but then know what I considered to be very
00:31:42.760
solid, good Catholics that were using it or had even been sterilized. And so a lot of confusion.
00:31:48.880
It's like, what am I supposed to believe? And what am I supposed to do? All these things. And then when
00:31:53.940
Jennifer and I met in our mid twenties, it was really important to me to go to Sunday mass, but I would
00:32:00.420
say I was not a good Catholic at all at the time. I joke, but it's a truth. I remember one time that when
00:32:07.700
I was in college, the college I went to, the team made it to the final four in basketball. I'm not really
00:32:12.720
a sports fan, but I knew I was going to go to someone's house on that Saturday night and watch
00:32:16.760
that game. So I made sure that I went to the Saturday evening vigil because I was going to be
00:32:21.620
too hung over the next day to go to mass. I mean, that was my thinking. I went to mass, but I'm going
00:32:25.640
to get really stinking drunk tonight. I mean, so it's like, what was I thinking? Right. I had no real
00:32:31.840
solid idea of how to live out my faith. And it was after we got married. And, you know, this is the
00:32:37.740
great thing about the sacraments. I mean, when you receive the sacraments, the graces of the
00:32:41.840
sacraments start going to work. And so when we got married, when Jennifer was younger,
00:32:48.960
her parents actually left the Catholic church just a couple of weeks before her first communion.
00:32:53.360
So she never completed the sacraments of initiation. And so when we got married, she wasn't Catholic,
00:32:59.640
but it was important to me to get married in a Catholic church. She agreed. Our first couple of
00:33:05.200
years of marriage, we're just kind of stumbling through things. And it wasn't until after we had our
00:33:09.500
first son. And he was almost a year old before she agreed to let him be baptized in the Catholic
00:33:14.560
church. And once he was baptized, now I'm telling her story. You should feel awful for that.
00:33:22.680
Once he was baptized, you know, and I'm telling your story for you. She said, you know, she felt like
00:33:32.740
She started to feel that pull. She needed to complete her sacraments. And so she started
00:33:38.380
going through. And I don't know if you knew you were pregnant with Walt.
00:33:43.340
But when she was confirmed, John Henry, you'll appreciate this, Walter, who works for you,
00:33:46.800
when she was confirmed, Walter was in her womb. And that's a pretty amazing thing for us to know
00:33:55.100
that. And we may not have known it at the time, but that's the case.
00:33:58.860
Easter Vigil 99. I was just two weeks pregnant with Walter, but I didn't know it for another few
00:34:07.520
But in the next few years, I mean, when we got married, we were a contraception couple
00:34:10.940
because we didn't know. We didn't understand. We thought things were optional. And it wasn't until
00:34:15.480
a very, very brave deacon gave a homily and explained the teachings of the church and explained
00:34:22.520
the immorality of contraception. And I remember going home that night and saying to Jennifer,
00:34:27.240
I said, I think we need to talk. She goes, we're not talking about anything.
00:34:29.960
Well, we talked. We listened to Dr. Janet Smith's tape, contraception, why not?
00:34:35.840
And two weeks later, she was pregnant with our third child. And since then, we've had two more
00:34:41.480
children join us on this earth. We have five kids on earth and five in heaven. And we're very
00:34:47.780
thankful for that openness to life. And going back to one of your original questions, where does that
00:34:51.800
joy come from? I think openness to life definitely has played a huge role in that. It's made us
00:34:57.080
understand the gift of sexuality that God has given us in our marriage. And it's helped us to
00:35:02.580
appreciate and respect each other more. It's blessed our children with siblings that they wouldn't have
00:35:07.700
had because we would have stopped. We would have quit having kids. The blessings have just been
00:35:12.580
innumerable. And so I really, you know, now that we're in our 50s, we don't think and talk about
00:35:18.740
that as much as we used to. But in the early days of podcasting, that was natural family planning and
00:35:23.080
that kind of topic. That was a regular conversation for us. People used to joke, anytime we would do a
00:35:28.060
podcast about natural family planning, she'd be pregnant within a couple of weeks. So that happened
00:35:34.320
a lot. Amazing. You know, what's really good about the church crisis today is that there's never been
00:35:42.320
more teaching about contraception, because as they're fighting it, it gets talked about. So
00:35:48.180
we finally got the teaching of the word out on the Catholic Church is supposed to be against
00:35:53.180
contraception. Although growing up, you'd never have known that. Any parting words for us?
00:35:58.360
We'd love to, if you don't have a rosary, we'd love to give you one. We have free audio rosaries on
00:36:03.380
our website that have been downloaded millions of times. If you need someone to pray with,
00:36:06.640
come to our website and pray with us. We'd be happy to do that. And go over to
00:36:10.520
schoolofmary.com and sign up and we'll let you know as soon as all of our total consecration new
00:36:15.320
resources are available and so much more. We'd love to accompany you in your journey to growing
00:36:19.920
closer to Jesus through Mary. It kind of sounds like we're ending one of our shows. I feel like
00:36:23.760
you need to tell everybody, don't forget to pray a rosary every day and do whatever it takes to be
00:36:28.700
holy. God bless. Goodbye. Amen. It's going to automatic mode all of a sudden. But thank you,
00:36:34.380
John Henry, for having us on your program. It's an honor to be here, to finally get to speak to you
00:36:39.140
after all this time. And we have so appreciated this. Oh, God bless you guys. Thank you. And
00:36:44.800
God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
00:37:09.140
with all the latest life, family, faith, and freedom news. Thanks for watching and may God bless you.