No Arms, No Legs, No Problem ｜ Choosing Life With Connor McHugh
Episode Stats
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Summary
Conner McHugh is a man of great faith. He runs a podcast called The Plotlines, which is now on YouTube. He was inspired by Taylor Marshall, and I got to meet him not here, but at a previous conference, and he is an inspiration.
Transcript
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My struggles are often more visible than most people's struggles.
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Hey friends, we're still at the conference of the Coalition for Cancer Precinct.
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There's a fellow running around in a wheelchair and he's doing podcasting from here.
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He's got no arms. He's got two feet, which are, he uses basically like hands.
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He runs Plotlines, which is like a podcast. He's now on YouTube.
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He's, you would think, disabled. He's actually very abled.
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But what's more incredible is that this young man is a man of awesome faith.
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He's here at this conference and he's rocketed with all sorts of folks.
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Got to meet him, not here, but at a previous conference.
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If you think, you know, often people think of this, this guy, you'd think, oh, there's the poster child for abortion.
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His name is Connor McHugh and he's coming up right now on the John Hedder-Ruston Show.
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This is Cardinal Burke talking in 2017 about demonic forces entering the church at that time in 2017.
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This was given at Rome Life Forum, a conference that LifeSite has been running since 2014, actually.
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Do you know that we're running another one this year, October 31st of November 1st?
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That is right at the end of this horrific synod on synodality.
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Watch Cardinal Burke give this snippet on demonic forces entering into the Vatican from his talk at Rome Life Forum in 2017.
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It seems clear from the most respected studies of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima
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that it has to do with the diabolical forces unleashed upon the world in our time
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For the recovery of peace will be a gift from heaven.
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But it is not, properly speaking, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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Her victory is of another order, supernatural and then temporal by addition.
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It will first be the victory of the faith, which will put an end to the time of apostasy
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and the great shortcomings of the church's pastors.
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Let's begin as we always do at the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
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We're at the Coalition for Cancelled Priests Conference.
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Okay, so Connor's here and he's doing interviews with various people, various speakers,
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just people generally talking about all sorts of things.
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He had me on his podcast and I thought it'd be great to have you on my show.
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You're doing podcasting, but you're here in a wheelchair and tell us about what life is
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like for you because you're not, how's it going?
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Well, it's going really well and it's great meeting you and it was great talking to you
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on my podcast as well as a lot of different people, Kennedy Hall and stuff and Eric Sammons
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But, you know, it has its ups and downs like any life.
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My struggles are often more visible than most people's struggles.
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So that, you know, it has its, it's a, you know, it involves more suffering in different
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ways and we need suffering for, to get to heaven.
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A lot of people would say, you know, there's a lot of people make the argument, and I'll
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just say it anyway, that, you know, that's why we would not want someone to live like
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Everyone has suffering, but yours is, as you said, particularly visible.
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So, I really attribute it a lot to my family as well as just special graces that the Lord
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Really, he's just had an incredible impact on my life, and he's very much been guiding
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So, do you want me to talk a little bit about my birth and stuff like that?
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Because a lot of people would think, you know, given your situation, a lot of people
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will say, well, I'm going to be angry at our Lord.
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I think it's good to admit that I've been angry with our Lord at different times.
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He's a difficult father sometimes, at least from our perspective.
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It's more because of us that he's a difficult father, not because of him, obviously.
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He's perfect in every possible way, but we fail a lot, and, you know, perseverance is
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But so, I was born 24 years ago, and I'm the fourth of four children.
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So, my parents knew that I was going to be, that it was, they could see it on the ultrasound,
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And it's interesting, when they learned that, the, I think it was one of the doctors or nurses
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or somebody was like, you know, something to the fact of, you know, it's too late for
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And they were like, we weren't thinking about that to begin with.
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So, but, yeah, so I was, so everyone kind of knew that I was coming and that I was going
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They didn't really know how much, you know, what was that going to look like and that sort
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So, I, you know, I was born into this world, and I was born healthy.
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So, what's kind of crazy is, you know, people probably would think that I would be born with
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a lot of health problems, because you look at me and you think, okay, he doesn't have
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hands, his feet are a little odd, he can't walk, you know, I've heard, a number of people
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I don't know how common that is from a birth perspective, like, to be paralyzed from birth.
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But it's, so the big thing was, they went around to a bunch of different doctors, and
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just, you know, I had some surgeries done on my feet.
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But that has miraculously stayed pretty consistent.
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So, scoliosis is basically curving of the back, and that can worsen over time, and really
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So, once you're an adult, it tends to not change because you've grown, you're, you know,
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And then it basically, you know, it, so basically if you can make it past, when you can make it
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to adulthood without any problems in that area, then, you know, that's, that's pretty, or
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then you'll, you're most likely good to go from there.
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And then we, so my parents went around asking different people.
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I think we went, one of the places they took me to Shriners, which is a Freemason-run clinic,
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Now, one of the things that's truly fascinating is that Connor uses his feet for everything.
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He can operate a phone, a computer, can take the lanyard off his neck himself.
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So, you've got no arms or you've got a little bit of an arm?
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But the, the way you're able to use your feet is incredible.
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I mean, like, I almost want to ask, can you play piano?
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You seriously watched him search on the computer and then go flip through his phone and just
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I don't know about you, but that's pretty hard for me to do.
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I can touch, I can touch my, my foot to my head.
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Like, I, I'm, I'm just, I'm just oddly flexible.
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So I think it's, so I think it's easier to be flexible that way.
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When I was in seminary, I was reading a book by Henry Nowen.
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He talked about a nuclear man, you know, and people who grew up in the 1980s were kind of
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formed by that immediate and constant threat of nuclear annihilation.
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My generation has grown up, you know, under the specter of priestly sexual abuse.
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What say you, Mr. Poor person, is the defendant guilty or not guilty?
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I think that for many of us, that has also been all-encompassing, you know.
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I mean, I entered the seminary in January of 2004, and it's basically been there for me
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I want to get back to your faith life, because it, it's truly inspiring.
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I mean, you've got a really, really deep faith.
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Like, you know, take us through that a little bit.
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Yeah, so as a kid, I became more political than anything else.
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I watched Obama versus Romney debates, and I thought Obama was going to be, it was really
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And then my mother told me that he supports abortion, and that really crushed me.
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And so that sort of turned me away from sort of the Democratic Party.
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It just, I, it wasn't so much that I knew I was a Republican or anything like that, or a
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Especially that he was, he was, he was really charismatic.
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And in your family, that must have been a big deal, because they would have gone through
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So I didn't, I didn't really get it from a personal context, necessarily.
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I mean, I think I eventually sort of understood how it could be a, how it could personally affect
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It was more just in and of itself, it was, you know, it just seemed, it was just completely
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at odds with, well, I mean, how my parents raised me.
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So I just, you know, knowing that, then I was, you know, it just set me down a path.
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I always knew, so I went to Catholic school, Catholic grade school, and it was fine.
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Interesting enough, though, back then, the district, the public district actually provided
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I don't know if it was for money reasons, or what it was, or they didn't want to work
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with a Catholic school anymore, or something like that.
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But it actually helped me become more independent.
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I needed to, like, ask other students for help if I needed it.
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And to be honest, when you're asking people for help, you, and it's not somebody, like,
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who's directly responsible to help you, it makes you not want to ask anyone for help.
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So, it makes you want to do the thing that you may ask for help doing, but if you can
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do it, why not just do it yourself and, you know, obviously try things.
00:14:03.800
So, like, you know, I just, so, like, that was my mentality.
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But when it comes to faith, that really, it really, I was propelled more into my faith
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Up until then, I'd really just accepted, I'd sort of accepted Catholic teaching.
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I told myself I believed whatever the Catholic Church taught.
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I felt like we learned more about the Old Testament in grade school than we did learn
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about anything related to Christ, which was kind of weird.
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So, I didn't really, it's not like I knew a lot.
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It's just that I submitted myself to the Catholic Church.
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And then, and, you know, I went to Mass every Sunday.
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But in high, so in my senior year in high school, I had sort of a, just a, sort of a traumatic
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experience that propelled me into heavy anxiety.
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Like, I just, like, from then on, I basically was just, had so much anxiety about things that
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I, you know, it was very difficult to finish out high school.
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Uh, and, you know, I went to a psychiatrist, uh, to help figure that out.
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I wanted to be able to, I wanted to be able to walk at graduation, not literally walk, of
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Uh, um, but, so that, uh, and interesting enough in that, with that psychiatrist, or I said,
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I don't know if it was a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
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But she asked me, cause I had been trouble, I'd been having trouble specifically at church
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staying, staying through mass, staying through all of mass.
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I would, you know, like, it was just, like, I would get numb.
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Because it's, like, cause at the standard Novus Ordo parish, it's a little different
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You, you know, it's, you're boxed in on, like, all sides when you're walking up for communion.
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Because it's not, like, cause it's just, you know, there's no, uh, communion rails.
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It's not like you're going up to the communion rails.
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Which I think communion rails are just so much more helpful to that.
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If, if somebody is, like, you know, claustrophobic or something like that, or have anxiety, it's
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really hard to go into that, like, really long, uh, communion line.
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So I, more, I would stay back in the back and then I'd go up at the end because I, you
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know, that was the only way that I would basically feel comfortable going up for communion.
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Um, but, you know, the psychologist asked me in that circumstance, do you, like, do I
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Like, you know, if, like, basically if I believe I shouldn't be anxious, I shouldn't have a
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It, um, and that, and, you know, she taught me a lot of different ways to manage, uh, anxiety,
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And I was able to walk at graduation and do all those things.
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And then I was moving on to college and I don't know why, but I just, I, her tools made
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So I, uh, had a much more manageable anxiety, uh, going into college, but it still was sporadically
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And there were certain times when I, I'd miss mass.
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I wouldn't go to mass or, you know, sometimes I'd even create a situation that I'd be more
00:17:59.960
And that was really hard, but I really, I, and that was sophomore year.
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I worked my way through, I was like, okay, if, if this is the truly, the body, blood, soul,
00:18:11.680
and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have to, I have to do this.
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Like I, I, and I didn't really understand that you didn't actually have to receive our Lord,
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uh, every time you went to mass, which in hindsight, you know, it's, it's kind of interesting.
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I think we're all really, um, trained to believe that everyone has to go up for communion and
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even that everyone is worthy of going up for communion.
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But, but that was just, that was my understanding.
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And so it was hard to go to church because I knew communion was going to come up and then
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And even then just staying in church was sometimes hard.
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But, but basically I just, I, you know, I, I, I don't even know if this was technically
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a, I don't know if it was a sin, but I, I went to confession.
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I told my priest at home, I didn't tell him at school.
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I told him that I was, I wasn't, wasn't missing, or I was missing church because of anxiety and
00:19:06.620
And I was just, I was, you know, making myself miss church and, um, he introduced me to Padre
00:19:13.680
So the, the saints were, uh, uh, big help to that, but just also telling myself that this
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And I, you know, I eventually was able to sort of overcome that.
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The summer, the summer before COVID, uh, I, is that called the summer of shame or what's
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Dr. Taylor Marshall became very popular on YouTube and I found a lot of his videos and I wasn't,
00:19:55.620
So there was a lot of stuff he was doing regarding like, um, recent politics and history.
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And he was doing some interesting stuff in that area, uh, back then.
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And I, uh, basically I found the Latin mass that way.
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And I really just threw myself into sort of learning about, uh, more about the faith and
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just, it just opened up so many doors and my understanding of things.
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I actually started my podcast originally because I just wanted to tell stories, tell stories,
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but because I'm hoping to one day write novels.
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Um, and I thought, well, I can, maybe if I talk about what I like talking about, maybe
00:20:42.560
people might be interested in the book eventually.
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Uh, but, and then people like, I, uh, I connected with Charles Coulomb and I connected with some
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And I was like, okay, I guess I should make like a YouTube channel because this is, you
00:21:00.440
know, people want to see these people like on, on screen, not just over audio.
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And it, you know, all of it kind of coincides with my faith, you know, the story of how
00:21:13.420
I became more faithful and I, I've, you know, COVID has really been a blessing in disguise
00:21:20.300
in a lot of different ways, but, um, you know, all of that stuff has just come together
00:21:26.160
in what I, what my faith life looks like right now.
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How's your family, um, responded to the way you've developed your, you know, your young
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man now with having overcome a ton and you're a very faithful fellow.
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You've got a podcast, you've got all these things going.
00:21:47.500
My mom was, uh, kind of in some ways dragged along by my dad to church when we were younger,
00:21:56.200
you know, not, not dragged, but, uh, just she, she wouldn't have necessarily mind not
00:22:01.940
going to church back in the day, but my dad, you know, he, he thought going to church was
00:22:12.480
My mom probably wouldn't necessarily have cared at the time, but then she became more
00:22:17.460
over the, over the course of my life, she listened to relevant radio more and more.
00:22:22.280
And, uh, I, I've helped her come more towards tradition and stuff like that.
00:22:27.340
And then my dad's sort of following along, uh, like slowly, but surely, uh, behind us.
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Um, I don't have as much influence on my siblings necessarily.
00:22:37.780
They're all older and, you know, a lot of the stuff that I went through, you know, they
00:22:43.400
had already sort of, they've already been on, on their own doing what, you know, they're
00:22:50.620
And so, you know, it was nothing, nothing special when I was a kid.
00:22:55.220
So, uh, you know, nothing special about our family necessarily, just an average suburban
00:23:02.140
Now, how did you get into tradition from, how did you even discover that?
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I, I share a lot more interests with Charles because he, uh, he likes history and, uh, I
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And he's very much in, into that and just the historical aspect of it.
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He just brings a lot to his, bring things back to history.
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And, uh, Taylor just really opened more sort of my eyes to more of the faith that isn't
00:23:41.100
discussed, that isn't, uh, presented by a lot of people and isn't seen.
00:23:46.460
It's just, you know, the Latin mass isn't something that you just go into church, any
00:23:52.580
church and you'll find it, you have to seek it out.
00:23:56.080
And how, how do you get people to seek something out that they don't know exists?
00:24:04.440
And, and then it just so happened that at my, um, Newman center and my, uh, high school
00:24:09.520
or sorry, college Newman center on the, and, uh, it's so because it's a Newman center, we
00:24:15.460
celebrated the, uh, the canonization of John Henry Newman.
00:24:20.960
They had a Latin mass for, uh, the, for the candidate to celebrate the canonization.
00:24:26.740
And the logic was let's celebrate mass how he would have celebrate mass.
00:24:32.140
And I just kind of looked around and was like, uh, okay, can we do that for, uh, can we do
00:24:40.740
Can we just celebrate mass how each saint would have celebrated mass?
00:24:53.760
We met, uh, in October, uh, at the blessed Charles symposium.
00:25:11.400
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00:25:52.340
What's your message to young people who face challenges, not necessarily like yours, but
00:26:01.240
like you said, everybody has got hardship in their lives that they have to deal with, that
00:26:06.960
And it seems sometimes like it's, God, it's not that hard, not that easy to deal with.
00:26:12.620
Yeah, so what I'd say is make sure you do a morning offering every morning.
00:26:18.840
That's something, I've only started doing that recently.
00:26:21.800
It's not something I've done for my entire life, though my mom had us do it in the car
00:26:29.780
So that was kind of normal, but I got away from it, you know, when it wasn't, when it
00:26:33.800
was not just my mother and I, but it's something that's come back for me.
00:26:38.940
It's really just important to figure out, maybe even, maybe pick something that you,
00:26:48.040
or pick someone you know who's struggling with other things, not necessarily with physical
00:26:54.700
challenges, but offer it up for them, too, because there's, you know, there's merit in
00:27:01.560
And don't necessarily let yourself, don't let the world, so the world right now basically
00:27:13.080
We want to make things happen for everyone in the same way, but don't ever let, if you're
00:27:20.760
struggling with physical challenges, if you, you know, if you can't do certain things, don't
00:27:26.560
let them change sort of how the world works just to fit your needs.
00:27:33.120
Because that doesn't, because just because it fits your needs doesn't mean it's going
00:27:39.700
And it's kind of, accept that there will be hardships.
00:27:45.500
That's kind of the point, is that not everything can be adapted to you.
00:27:49.600
You know, I was, so I was a football coach, like I, or I was a football manager when I
00:27:55.360
I didn't join a football, I'd never wanted to be on a football team in so far as like
00:28:04.940
That's the best example I can think of in that situation.
00:28:08.160
You don't want, you don't want the thing that you want to do to change incredibly just
00:28:17.260
You, you know, try and figure out ways to get involved in different things.
00:28:21.840
But at the end of the day, you know, trust in God and, you know, accept the problems that
00:28:29.820
you're going to go through and strive for as far as God, you know, is willing to take
00:28:43.620
We did have a kick return for a touchdown and that's, that's pretty rare for, of course
00:28:50.900
that was like seventh grade, but you know, I don't know.
00:28:57.100
So that was four years, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade.
00:29:02.220
And then I became a football manager in high school.
00:29:11.660
It felt like, you know, I felt like I got demoted a little bit, but that's okay.
00:29:15.180
You know, God basically said, cause at one point I wanted to be a football coach, but that's
00:29:23.660
You know, he sort of, he had to kick me out slowly of that mindset in order to get me into
00:29:31.380
a mindset where I'm doing, where I'm doing this.
00:29:36.120
So Connor, what are you doing right now for work and, and things like that?
00:29:42.820
So actually because of COVID, I, I've moved online for classes because COVID just kind
00:29:53.520
Not because of any of my physical, it's just because I hated online school, like the way
00:30:00.580
it was done by colleges that aren't usually online.
00:30:05.000
Anyways, I just, so I'm finishing my bachelor's degree at the moment and I'm probably going
00:30:11.900
to be doing tutoring as well, tutoring younger, you know, students and stuff like that.
00:30:19.440
I don't really know where God has, what has, what God has in store for my career, whatever
00:30:31.220
It's at the University of Mary in North Dakota.
00:30:42.100
But I don't know if, I think they name it a little differently there than other schools.
00:31:10.620
I, um, I, uh, I'm very honored to be, uh, talking to you on your show and thank you for
00:31:18.360
having me and, uh, thank you for all the work you do.
00:31:23.620
Your name of your, of your podcast, of your video, of your show on YouTube.
00:31:38.340
So Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, that type of thing.
00:31:42.180
It's also on Rumble, though that's not, not my focus at the moment, uh, but it probably
00:31:49.440
Um, so yeah, Plotlines on YouTube and then, uh, if you look up Connor McHugh on Twitter,
00:31:59.340
That's where, and then I have a Discord if anybody wants to sort of, uh, communicate with
00:32:04.500
me sort of online, you know, uh, and, and follow my work.
00:32:08.580
Uh, you can find that just on any of my YouTube videos.
00:32:34.740
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