Media Boss Comes Out as Trad Catholic： Why Young Men Are Converting – It's the FUTURE!
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Summary
Jordan Schwarzenberger is a 28-year-old entrepreneur, media executive, and venture capitalist. He s also a devout Catholic, and has publicly declared his faith for the first time. But how did he go about it? And why does it matter?
Transcript
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What if I told you one of the biggest names in online media, the man who actually manages
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the huge YouTube presence called The Sidemen. It's a YouTube collective with more than 23
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billion views. That's billion with a B. This guy has come out as a traditional Catholic.
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No, I kid you not. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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So, he's not come out as some spiritual but not religious, not as a casual cultural Catholic
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like some celebrities and politicians we know very well. Nope. He is explicitly and openly
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and even with conviction and a lot of smarts staked himself out as a traditional Catholic.
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And from the way he talks, you know that he actually knows what he's talking about. His
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name is Jordan Schwarzenberger. Now, you might not have heard of this name. He's 28 years
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old. He's the manager and co-founder of Arcade Media. He's recently started speaking openly
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about the Catholic faith and he's been laying it all out from original sin to the Second
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Vatican Council. So, today we're going to look at who he is and what he said and why this moment
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matters, not just for the church but for the whole online world that shapes our whole culture today.
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So, first of all, for those of you who don't know, particularly in America, who are the Sidemen
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and who is Jordan Schwarzenberger anyway? So, to understand the significance of this story,
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we need to know who Jordan Schwarzenberger is and who the Sidemen are. So, if you don't know,
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you haven't heard of them already, the Sidemen are a wildly popular British YouTube group.
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Essentially, it's a superstar collective of internet personalities. They're known for their comedy skits
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and challenges and gaming videos. If you've been on YouTube and you've seen advertisements for videos
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by Mr. Beast, it's the same sort of thing. So, across their various channels, they have millions
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and millions of subscribers and even more views globally. In the UK and beyond, the Sidemen are
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basically, they're a household name for most young people. Their influence on internet culture
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is really hard to overstate. Jordan Schwarzenberger is the man behind the curtain helping to run this
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empire. He co-founded Arcade Media and began managing the Sidemen brand and its business. Now,
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despite being only 28 years old, he's already a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur and even serves
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as an advisor on the British government's Small Business Council at 10 Downing Street.
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Before Arcade, Jordan cut his teeth in digital media as a creative at, and get this,
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vice and lad Bible. Um, yeah, that's not exactly bastion of Catholic virtue. And as a talent manager
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at YMU. In other words, he's been deeply immersed in the secular media world for years. And he wasn't
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a Catholic at that time. In short, he is a high-achieving young executive in mainstream entertainment,
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managing some of the biggest online stars of our day. It's precisely because of Jordan's prominence
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in the digital entertainment space that his recent public statements about embracing traditional
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Catholicism is making waves. Not so many yet, but it's going to. And this isn't some guy starting a
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Catholic YouTube channel and generating an audience. No, it's the manager of one of the world's
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biggest YouTube groups, a well-connected media insider. And he's sort of, you might say,
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suddenly proclaiming deep, orthodox, counter-revolutionary Catholic beliefs. It's
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incredible on a whole new level. So how in the world did this all come about? Well, it was on a BBC
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interview in which Jordan's faith became public. Very unlikely place, BBC. It was with a podcast
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called Radical with the host Amal Rajan. Now Rajan, he's a well-known BBC journalist. He invited Jordan
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for an in-depth interview as part of a series showcasing radicals, pioneers, and innovators.
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The conversation was released in two parts. The first half was a discussion about how to achieve
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big league social media success, and Jordan's career, and how he built the Sideman brand, and all
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of that. Normal, fair, that's what you'd think. But it was in the second half that things took such a
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surprising turn with Jordan speaking out about his faith publicly for the first time. And Rajan himself
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was surprised by the turn in the discussion. He said that although his team do a fair amount of
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digging into the background of the guests, no one had discovered that Jordan was a Catholic, let alone
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this kind of a Catholic. So it all started when Rajan picked up on Jordan talking about decadence and
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decadent society. Take a listen to what Jordan said in reply.
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Well, I think it comes down to the loss of religion and the loss of purpose in life and meaning in any
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depth. And also it comes down to materialism. So I think decadence in culture and society is a fruit
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of liberalism, a fruit of the French Revolution principles, led their way through Europe in the
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19th century, and then through into the 20th century after the World Wars, etc.
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So Jordan went on then to explain how he'd converted to Catholicism in 2020, after having been a dedicated
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atheist for most of his life by his own account, his journey to faith began in a very unexpected
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place. A Kanye West album launch party in 2019. Yep, you heard that right. A Kanye West album launch
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party. So it was at a listening event for Kanye's gospel-themed album. Remember when Kanye was gospel-themed?
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It was called Jesus is King. Jordan had an experience there that got him thinking about
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Christianity. Part of it was actually seeing Americans taking God seriously, which he had
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never seen before. And that is something about America. When you see Christians taking God seriously,
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even in the mainstream, that does strike. So in that BBC interview, Jordan recounts that his moment
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sparked a process that led him away from atheism. And after that, he started seeking truth and meaning
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beyond the sort of hedonistic media lifestyle. He says that within about a year, he found his way
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into the Catholic Church. He received baptism alongside his infant son in December of 2020. And this all took
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the interview into a very unexpected territory. Once the host, Amal Rajan, opened the door by asking
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about Jordan's change in outlook, Jordan didn't hold back. He began to take apart the modern secular
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worldview that he used to share, he used to believe. And at one point, Jordan shocks Rajan by insisting
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that culture follows the church and not the other way around. And that the world wasn't changed by
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the 1960s, but by the Second Vatican Council. It's actually pretty funny. Watch this.
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The loss of the church as the light of the world, which was done, and this is a whole nother podcast,
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one for another day, but done, you know, was really destroyed, I would argue, revolutionized at the
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Second Vatican Council, which when that stripped out of society, you can see almost social collapse
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on a global level from 1960 onwards, which is why people say the 60s was, you know, a totally
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revolutionary decade. People point to the wrong things. And when you look at that decline,
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it's a decline of its power of its kind of grip on society in relation to not through any force,
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but in relation to morality, and what was considered normal and good and true, because the church has
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always held itself as the light of truth in the world coming from, from, from God himself,
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God bless you. I don't know about you, but for me, this is awesome to hear this witness on mainstream
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media, on the BBC, but especially from someone in Jordan's position. And he just went on from
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there explaining the Enlightenment roots, the modernist idea of imminence, which means that
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all religions come from sort of inside us. Honestly, if you turned on an explicitly Catholic
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podcast explaining some of these points, you wouldn't find a better explanation of it than
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that which Jordan Schwarzenberger ran on the BBC that day. Which is also tells you something about
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Jordan. I mean, super smart guy. It's no wonder he's doing so well in his field, but that same smarts,
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that same brilliance, that same willingness to pursue things to great success is what also led
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him to the church and what enables him to describe and invite people to look at the glories that he found.
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He told Rajan that today's world has fallen into, and I quote,
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deep holes of pleasure and oversatisfaction of pleasure and so on, which is crippling society
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and makes people really unhappy, he said. He insisted that only a return to God and the Catholic
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Church could solve anything. And those are really strong words to say on the BBC.
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It's just gorgeous. It's not a perspective that the BBC audience would expect to get from a young
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media entrepreneur. This is evangelization at its peak. And this was actually back in August. And I
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think most of the world missed it. He appeared on another big podcast called Internet Dads, hosted by
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YouTubers Rory Jennings and Spencer Owen. They're well known for their sort of soccer commentary.
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And so, unlike the BBC show, Internet Dads is a more sort of casual, chatty podcast about parenting in
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the digital age. And yep, Jordan has some parenting matters to share. He suggested having kids is the
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best hack for work. He mentioned it forced him to be more disciplined and efficient. Right now, by the
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way, his wife Millie is expecting twins, which will make him dad of five under the age of six before
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hitting 30 himself. Good luck on that, Jordan. And let me give you one piece of advice if you're watching
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this. I don't care how crazy it seems. Enjoy this time. I swear to you from personal experience,
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you will wish for it back not too long from now. And although a chatty podcast with a couple of
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soccer dads isn't perhaps the place you'd expect deep religious discussion, well,
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the presenters had obviously seen the interview with Rajan and wanted to go there. And Jordan,
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it seems, was happy to oblige. He again took the opportunity to share how Catholicism has transformed
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his life. Here's how he described it. I got baptized, I remember 20th of, no 19th of December,
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2020, me and my son actually at the same time. And it was just this amazing thing of like, oh wow,
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like the transformation interiorly from the person that I was in 2017, 18, the person that I was in
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2020 was miraculous, like absolute night and day. And I ended up effectively reading and learning my way
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into from totally, totally atheistic and antagonistic point of view for religion into
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Catholicism and now into like quite deep traditional Catholicism that has been this end game of
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four or five years of, of total kind of immersion into the ultimate question.
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And from there, he goes on to describe his experience of seeing evil in the media world
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and how that pointed him to conclusions about God. Listen to this.
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Always going to exist in a fallen world, which is ultimately run by, uh, by Luciferianism,
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Satanism and by evil. That is the core, that is the root of this world. This world is plagued,
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as I said, plagued by sin and plagued by original sin. Now the only way to counteract that is through
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Christ and is through the faith. And here's what he experienced on reading the Holy Bible.
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I ended up buying a Bible and I never read a Bible in my life at all at 21, 20, 22, whatever it was.
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And I remember just reading for the first time. It was almost like this perfect, uh, I guess,
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encasing of all of my experience in the world and my experience of good and evil, my experience of,
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uh, I guess, voices in your head, uh, the spiritual reality that I didn't really know too much,
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but I had a sense of it almost perfectly meshed in. And I'd never seen it explained like that before.
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And there was just a moment where I was like, oh, I really didn't know. I really was wrong.
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So in both these interviews, Jordan is given a solidly Catholic take on how he thinks
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society has gone wrong and what is needed to fix it. Whether it's the reality of original sin,
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the need to fight against concupiscence, denouncing modernism and modern philosophy,
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Jordan staked out the Catholic church's position and stood ready to defend it. He completely dismissed
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the idea of spiritual fulfillment without God. And he challenged listeners to research the arguments
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for Christianity, promising them that they could stand up to any and all compelling claims.
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But maybe the most edifying part was his explanation of the meaning of life.
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The ultimate purpose of life and in any catechism is to know love himself,
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God in this life, to be eternally happy with him in the next. That's it. There's nothing else.
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So ultimately it's to not get caught up in the world too much, to not fall into grave sin,
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to stay in a state of grace, to live a truly Catholic life and to enjoy materially and spiritually the
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fruits of that, which are enduring peace, happiness and kindness to others, a charitable existence that
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gives and that doesn't take and a sense of restraint on my inclination to sin and my concupiscence.
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And if I can do that each and every day, then I'm good.
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Did you ever think you'd hear that on mainstream media, on the BBC?
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This is a big moment. Really, it's the kind of moment we've been praying for, we've been waiting for.
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A voice from inside the machine telling the truth about God and about the soul.
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Here we have a young man who sits at the heart of Gen Z, internet culture, managing YouTube superstars
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who command massive audiences online, and he's openly declaring that the modern secular world has it wrong.
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He's explaining why and responding by saying that the Catholic Church has it right.
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That alone is massive news. Think about the typical narrative in the entertainment, in the tech world.
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I'm against organized religion. Young people aren't interested in dogma.
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Be spiritual on your own terms. No, no, no, says Jordan Schwarzenberger.
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He turns those narratives, those false narratives, inside out, upside down.
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Nope. He says, actually, the old time religion is exactly what we need.
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And he's doing it in a way that's informed, that's educated, that's so, it's so intellectual.
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It's super impressive, but it's also really accessible. This is real genius.
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No one can say, oh, what a dumb guy. He's not dumb. He's got the success to prove that he is not only smart,
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he's super talented, and he's pulling it all, he's putting it all in the line for the church, for the truth.
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For the church today, this is a massively hopeful sign. It's not every day that someone with so much
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mainstream influence speaks up for tradition so clearly, using words like modernism and criticizing
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Vatican II on a major platform. Until now, this sort of thing has been, yeah, as it's discussed on forums,
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or specialist websites that deal with this, but almost never on national media. It shows that these
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viewpoints can get a hearing. And in terms of the digital influencer space, Jordan's example could be
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groundbreaking. We might see much more of this. Let's pray we do. The sidemen's audience skews very
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young. Millions of teens and 20-somethings who consume their weekly content. They're the ones that are
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going to be hearing this. And while Jordan himself is mostly behind the scenes and dealing with business
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rather than with the content, some of which, by the way, Catholics might find difficult to reconcile with his
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comments, his role is well-known to fans. And it's those fans, those millions of fans that are going to be
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seeing headlines like, Sidemen Manager comes out as a traditional Catholic. It could prompt some of them
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to wonder, what is traditional Catholic? What is that? What's it all about? Why would a guy at the top
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of the social media game feel that faith is so important? Even if it's a small percentage of those
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who know the sidemen, hear about this, and become curious about it, that's still a big deal. He's
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effectively witnessing to people who may have never encountered a serious faith perspective at all.
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It's amazing. But we should also acknowledge that going public with these kinds of ideas
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it puts a target on your back. The world that Jordan lives in especially, it isn't exactly friendly
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or open to Christianity at all, let alone someone challenging the sacred cows of liberalism.
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If he carries on down this line, he may face skepticism, criticism, backlash, or God forbid,
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the cancel culture. He's basically put a target on his back. And that's why we, as his fellow Catholics,
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need to support him with our prayers and encouragement. Let's pray that Jordan stays
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strong in the faith, continues to grow in wisdom and holiness, and uses his considerable influence
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for the greater glory of God as he already has. For LifeSite News and Sign of the Cross Media,
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Hi, I'm Liz Yor. I'm really urging all the audience to continue to follow LifeSite News for all
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