The Michael Knowles Show - An Expert Exploration Into St. Thomas Aquinas ｜ Fr. Gregory Pine

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00:00:45.300 Each human being can have the confidence that his life, her life is not an accident.

00:00:49.620 There might be bad things that happen.

00:00:51.680 You may have experienced some measure of pain, a heaping helping of suffering, seeming incoherences.

00:00:57.420 But it's part of a story, and that story redounds to God's glory and potentially your salvation.

00:01:03.160 And so you can have the confidence that if you gaze into it, it won't be the void that gazes back.

00:01:08.540 I don't know if this is more preachy than your show ordinarily is, but I kind of can't help myself.

00:01:12.720 I appreciate it.

00:01:13.420 I mean, you are a member of the order of preachers.

00:01:15.480 It would be contrary to your nature if you were otherwise.

00:01:18.400 If you're a longtime viewer of my show, you will know that the sentences in every episode contain three things.

00:01:32.920 A noun, a verb, and a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:01:37.260 But a lot of people don't know who this guy is.

00:01:41.620 And they ask me, they say, Michael, tell me about Thomas Aquinas.

00:01:44.840 And I say, look, I love St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:01:46.940 I have a devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:01:48.640 My confirmation name is Thomas.

00:01:50.620 But what do I know, man?

00:01:51.820 I'm just a cigar salesman.

00:01:53.180 So I'm so pleased to bring in someone who is truly expert.

00:01:57.200 That would be Father Gregory Pine of the Order of Preachers, who is a professor of philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies,

00:02:05.620 as well as the assistant director of the Thomistic Institute, named after the aforementioned saint, Thomas Aquinas,

00:02:13.300 and the author of Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech.

00:02:19.640 Father, thank you for being here.

00:02:21.480 Thanks for having me.

00:02:22.320 I'm delighted.

00:02:22.820 I want to get to the subject of the book, because that really pertains to podcasting.

00:02:28.500 In my line of work, there are really three constituent parts.

00:02:33.600 A detraction, calumny, and gossip.

00:02:36.220 That is basically the whole industry.

00:02:38.380 So I'd love to get to that.

00:02:39.740 I'm very concerned about matters of speech.

00:02:41.680 I wrote my own book on it, probably from a less theological lens.

00:02:46.440 First, I want to know.

00:02:48.380 I personally want to know, because even though I have a great devotion to Thomas Aquinas,

00:02:51.680 he wrote 10 billion words, and he expounded on every single topic under the entire sun.

00:03:01.000 Who is he, and why do Catholics and more traditionally-minded Protestants,

00:03:08.400 and especially political conservatives, quote him all the time?

00:03:13.620 Good question.

00:03:14.440 Let me think about that.

00:03:16.540 I'm done thinking.

00:03:18.120 So St. Thomas Aquinas is a touchstone of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

00:03:22.880 In short, he inherited the main insights of those who went before him,

00:03:27.900 and he communicates them in a way that's readily available to those who have come since.

00:03:32.660 So sometimes in the 21st century, they'll talk about St. Thomas Aquinas as if he were complicated

00:03:37.800 or overly complex, but the reason for which we still talk about him is that he managed to communicate

00:03:43.800 in as coherent a way as one can for complex things.

00:03:49.060 So St. Thomas, in effect, the work that he undertakes is to kind of translate the divine wisdom

00:03:54.220 to human concepts.

00:03:58.000 And yeah, I don't know exactly if that's the best way to kind of qualify it,

00:04:01.480 but he's referred to as the common doctor of the church because he inherited the main findings

00:04:06.120 of those who went before him.

00:04:07.400 You know, he's a deep reader of sacred scripture.

00:04:09.560 He's engaging with the fathers of the church in really, really subtle and beautiful ways.

00:04:14.160 And then he's communicating the faith in its integrity.

00:04:16.760 So he's not just like, I like this, that, and the other thing,

00:04:19.140 and I'm going to talk about them until the cows come home.

00:04:21.340 He tries to communicate the faith as it flows from God and as it conducts us back to God.

00:04:25.900 So yeah, if I were to summarize it in three adjectives, he's wise, he's holy, and he's comprehensive.

00:04:33.740 Well, that'll do it.

00:04:34.660 Nice.

00:04:35.160 I heard a story that, you know, he writes everything.

00:04:38.940 Probably the most famous work is the Summa Theologiae.

00:04:41.380 And then he has this mystical vision at the end of his life.

00:04:45.120 And he comes back and he says, so everything I've written is straw.

00:04:50.720 One, is that true as far as legends about saints go?

00:04:53.520 And two, what does that mean?

00:04:55.740 So I think it's true.

00:04:58.660 So St. Thomas Aquinas is one of these saints who had his life and works kind of subjected

00:05:03.720 to thorough scrutiny as part of like a modern canonization process.

00:05:07.880 The modern canonization process is kind of coming online in the centuries before him,

00:05:12.020 but it's really, it's cruising.

00:05:14.460 It's really doing what it ought to do by the time that he is up for canonization.

00:05:19.420 And so you'll hear that story recounted, I think, in the biography written in association

00:05:23.700 with that process by William of Tocco.

00:05:26.920 So it was like St. Thomas was in the priory in Naples at the end of his life.

00:05:31.060 He was assigned there from like 1272 to 1274 for his last stint.

00:05:34.820 And he used to celebrate mass and then he would serve mass for his like main scribe, Reginald

00:05:41.900 Piperno.

00:05:43.300 And he would also spend a lot of time in Thanksgiving and he would weep copiously.

00:05:48.000 And it was the sacristan of that priory church whose name is like Domenico, I've forgotten

00:05:54.060 his last name.

00:05:55.240 And he was passing by and he heard in clear tones an exchange between St. Thomas Aquinas

00:06:01.480 and the crucified Lord.

00:06:03.340 And like that's the main story.

00:06:04.720 Like he heard, well, you have written of me, Thomas, what would you have in return?

00:06:09.220 And St. Thomas is said to have responded, nothing but thyself, O Lord, nothing but thyself.

00:06:13.800 So I think it's good to keep that in mind that our Lord thought that he wrote well, because

00:06:18.560 shortly thereafter, kind of in association with that mystical experience and also the

00:06:22.740 exhaustion of his life's work, St. Thomas pronounced upon his works that there were so much straw

00:06:28.120 by comparison to what he had seen, right?

00:06:31.480 So it's not to say that they're straw, because if they were straw, he would burn them.

00:06:34.280 They're straw by comparison to what he saw and he saw the Lord.

00:06:37.800 And so shortly thereafter, that event happened on the feast of St. Nicholas in 1273.

00:06:42.480 And then he died on the 7th of March in 1274.

00:06:45.780 So it just, it precipitated the end of his life.

00:06:47.740 He actually died on the way to the second council of Lyon.

00:06:50.140 I might be muddling a couple of details of the story and just mish-mashing.

00:06:53.180 So my apologies to those in the comm box who have-

00:06:55.460 Could have been the third council of Lyon.

00:06:56.880 No, probably not.

00:06:57.880 There isn't one, but nevertheless.

00:06:59.860 So that story that you just recounted is the other, one of the other very famous stories

00:07:05.400 about him, which is that God says, you've written well of me.

00:07:08.940 Yeah.

00:07:09.560 And he said, what will you have?

00:07:11.440 You know, and instead of saying, I want a Ferrari or I want a box of Mayflower cigars,

00:07:15.480 which would be worthy answers.

00:07:17.900 It's like you mentioned.

00:07:18.400 That's right.

00:07:19.100 You're crushing it.

00:07:19.700 Thank you very much.

00:07:20.840 I know we're three minutes in.

00:07:22.880 But rather than that, he says, nothing but you, O Lord, which makes so much sense.

00:07:27.440 And so this reminds me of something that I see going around Twitter.

00:07:31.180 I see St. Thomas going around Twitter a lot, which does my heart good, because Twitter is a cesspool 0.91

00:07:35.980 and it's full of scum and villainy, but sometimes you see these bright moments. 0.80

00:07:40.440 And one thing that was going around was St. Thomas pointing out that lust is one of the 0.98

00:07:46.860 causes of despair.

00:07:48.380 And I think, actually, he says sloth is maybe more primary a cause of despair, but lust is

00:07:54.100 a big cause of it, because lust turns your mind away from spiritual goods toward earthly

00:07:59.400 goods.

00:08:00.160 And so because your mind isn't on spiritual goods, you know, you're lost.

00:08:04.140 Ultimately, that's where your hope has to lie.

00:08:06.500 And it made me realize that his answer is the obvious answer, because no nearly terrestrial

00:08:14.240 thing will ever satisfy any of us.

00:08:16.720 And so, you know, it's not just that he's being holier than thou.

00:08:19.480 That's the only reasonable answer to give.

00:08:22.400 Nothing but you, O Lord.

00:08:23.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:24.720 When one reads Thomas Aquinas, it's so eminently reasonable.

00:08:28.420 And yet, the thinkers of the Enlightenment, so-called, mocked the scholastic thinkers of

00:08:35.080 the Middle Ages and said, oh, they're all debating how many angels dance on the head

00:08:38.000 of a pin or whatever.

00:08:41.540 How did the thinkers like Thomas Aquinas fall out of favor?

00:08:46.700 Are they coming back into favor again?

00:08:48.660 And if so, why?

00:08:50.260 Yeah, I think, so this is my take.

00:08:52.200 This idea might be shared by other individuals.

00:08:55.320 I haven't checked in with them, so I'll just send it across the bow.

00:08:58.960 I think that, so in the history of theology, at a certain point, like especially in the late

00:09:04.440 15th, early 16th century, people get really concerned about nitty-gritty details.

00:09:11.260 And we understand why.

00:09:12.840 Because if you found yourself in an ambiguous moral situation or in a potentially compromising

00:09:18.120 situation, you want to be able to act with certainty and confidence, especially when you fear for

00:09:23.120 your ever-loving immortal soul.

00:09:26.880 And so, during that time, especially with kind of contemporary changes in philosophy or

00:09:34.280 the practice of philosophy, there was doubt that we could actually know the things themselves.

00:09:39.380 And so, there became this great reliance on authorities.

00:09:42.040 So, you know, philosophers and theologians began adjudicating claims on the basis of

00:09:46.740 who said or how vehemently this or that person said.

00:09:51.440 And so, it became this kind of calculus of if you can marshal X number of authorities or

00:09:55.860 Y number of authorities, then you can be certain, then you can be confident.

00:09:59.740 And it was as part of that conversation that people began to reject scholastic thought because

00:10:04.680 it had become kind of decadent and it had become inordinately concerned with pacifying

00:10:09.820 doubts rather than getting to the heart of the matter.

00:10:12.820 And so, St. Thomas has always been someone to whom we can return because he's passionate

00:10:16.240 about getting to the heart of the matter.

00:10:18.660 St. Thomas doesn't necessarily address a lot of these nitty-gritty details in his works,

00:10:22.160 but he furnishes you with principles so that you can rehearse arguments, so that you can

00:10:27.000 be in fruitful dialogue with your environment, your contemporaries, with whomever.

00:10:32.300 And I think that, like, that's, yeah, part of the reason for which St. Thomas has so much

00:10:35.560 purchase now is because, you know, you read St. Thomas and you find that you can engage with

00:10:40.580 life in a way that's more free, in a way that's more kind of abandoned, as it were.

00:10:45.140 Maybe that's the wrong word to choose.

00:10:46.540 But the basic idea is that you attend to what is most important and you find that that kind

00:10:52.180 of unriddles the complexities, and while life still might be hard, you know, it's like hard

00:10:56.740 to persevere in the practice of the faith, it needn't be overly complex, you know?

00:11:01.000 And so, like, St. Thomas, you know, even though people talk about him as overly complex, it

00:11:04.740 ends up that he, yeah, he facilitates an encounter with life which proves more simple.

00:11:09.620 It reminds me of the Reagan line in his most famous speech, Time for Choosing.

00:11:14.540 He says, you know, some people say we offer simple answers to complex problems.

00:11:19.220 Maybe they are simple, not easy, but simple.

00:11:22.240 And in a way, I guess I get the same feeling from St. Thomas Aquinas, which is, I'm not saying

00:11:29.100 that what he is teaching is easy to live out, but it is simple enough.

00:11:35.120 In fact, divine simplicity, I suppose, would be one of the things he teaches.

00:11:38.220 So then, for people who are listening to this, and they're saying, okay, this is Thomas, he

00:11:41.560 sounds like an interesting guy, and he had a lot of answers.

00:11:44.820 I mean, truly, I consult him on just about any question I have.

00:11:48.820 What should I have for breakfast on Tuesday is in the Secunda Secunda, I think.

00:11:53.400 They're going to say, okay, I get it, but what is it?

00:11:56.380 Like, what is it that he is teaching me practically for my life today that I am not getting from

00:12:02.980 the modern world?

00:12:04.180 I think often in this line from Chesterton, he says, the most practical of persons is

00:12:07.400 the mystic, in the sense that the mystic has clearly between his navigational beacons the

00:12:12.520 port of call.

00:12:13.620 The mystic is headed for heaven, and in light of heaven, he's able to make judgments as

00:12:17.940 to things here on the surface of the earth, and do so with clarity and conviction.

00:12:22.640 And I think that's the power of St. Thomas Aquinas, in that he's not a slave to our

00:12:26.040 practical considerations, but he furnishes us with, again, speculative principles, or

00:12:31.120 maybe to make it more approachable for folks, he furnishes us with genuine wisdom that we

00:12:36.440 find we can apply to practically every situation.

00:12:39.200 So there's some real input energy.

00:12:41.700 I think about those, like, charts in my ninth grade biology textbook, like you have to have,

00:12:46.040 like, a catalyst, maybe it's, whatever, shut up, no one cares. 0.53

00:12:49.120 But the basic idea is, like, you're going to have to invest a little bit at the outset

00:12:53.500 to engage with the Catholic intellectual tradition or the Christian intellectual tradition more broadly.

00:12:58.480 But you find that it furnishes you with a grammar so as to speak coherently, and then

00:13:04.080 your own experience of life becomes more, I guess, transparent to these cool conceptual

00:13:09.760 resources.

00:13:10.640 I'm speaking overly complexly, but the idea is this.

00:13:13.280 It's like, a lot of us are eclectic in our thinking.

00:13:15.660 We're like, this cool person said that, and this holy person said this, and this other

00:13:19.620 guy, whatever, who cares?

00:13:21.400 But the idea is that it all hangs together.

00:13:23.740 Like, it all comes forth from God and returns back to God, and that we can kind of tap into

00:13:28.380 God's providential plans in their unfolding, not in that we become ubermentioned as a result,

00:13:33.140 but in the sense that we can actually know, and we can actually love.

00:13:37.720 So, like, when you and I enter a church, for instance, we're not like, hey, here's the

00:13:40.460 thing, people said that our Lord is present in the Eucharist, but, like, can't really rule

00:13:44.120 out the other alternatives because we haven't seen them appear in a Eucharistic meeting.

00:13:48.280 Who knows about anything?

00:13:49.060 So, I'll genuflect to the front of the church, to the left of the church, to the right of

00:13:51.720 the church.

00:13:51.960 I'll genuflect to the entrance itself.

00:13:53.360 You know, it's like, to cover my bases.

00:13:54.820 It's like, no, no, we just genuflect because we believe that we can have certainty, confidence

00:13:59.620 that the Lord is who he says he is.

00:14:01.500 And on the basis of that conviction, St. Thomas is able to say, like, okay, here are steps.

00:14:06.380 Here are principles.

00:14:07.100 Here are arguments.

00:14:07.780 This is the way that you engage.

00:14:09.000 And I think a lot of, like, part of the reason for which they find it so powerful is a lot of 0.98

00:14:12.520 folks are out there just saying, like, these people are dumb, so I'm going to say the opposite 0.97

00:14:15.700 thing that they say. 0.98

00:14:16.880 You know, so it's not, you don't actually plunge the roots of your soul into metaphysical

00:14:19.840 soil.

00:14:20.640 You don't actually, like, nourish yourself on what is.

00:14:23.020 You're just, whatever.

00:14:25.040 St. Thomas says, like, you can know and you can love.

00:14:28.060 Because, right, there's the impulse to say, well, and I fall into this all the time.

00:14:33.020 Well, this old dead smart guy said something, and good enough for him, good enough for me.

00:14:37.280 So, there's that kind of appeal to authority.

00:14:39.000 But then, there's another one I fall into, there is this reflexive observation from the

00:14:43.540 modern world, which is we say, well, look, that guy is wrong about everything.

00:14:47.800 He's wrong about literally everything.

00:14:50.300 And so, if he says something that I don't know very much about, I'll just assume that

00:14:54.120 that's not true and perhaps take the opposite approach.

00:14:57.500 And, you know, practically, it kind of works.

00:15:01.100 It does work out, but it's not rooted.

00:15:04.220 You're right.

00:15:04.900 That doesn't lend itself towards systematic thought.

00:15:07.740 So, I think you've hit on this crucial point, which is, in our world, our culture is very

00:15:14.600 skeptical of certainty.

00:15:16.280 Even on the right, even among Christians, they just say, well, you can't ever really know.

00:15:23.120 The medievals, the scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, they really knew.

00:15:30.200 Like, they really knew.

00:15:31.340 When did we stop really knowing things?

00:15:36.320 Good question.

00:15:37.320 Short answer, I have no idea.

00:15:38.800 Long answer is, I suspect it had something to do with the traumas that Europe passed through

00:15:44.700 in the 16th and 17th centuries.

00:15:47.280 And you see that reflected in philosophical thought.

00:15:49.940 I'd like to introduce my friend, Father Bonaventure, into the conversation, who teaches specifically

00:15:54.580 18th century pietist precursors to Kantian thought.

00:15:58.360 Well, I mean, look, that is a fan favorite out here.

00:16:02.300 Millions of the audience members.

00:16:04.780 Morning, noon, and night.

00:16:05.860 Yep.

00:16:06.620 Yeah.

00:16:06.840 When you said at the beginning, like, a lot of people are asking, who is this Thomas Aquinas?

00:16:09.820 I thought to myself, how many people, you know?

00:16:14.000 That's okay.

00:16:14.520 At least.

00:16:14.800 Maybe four.

00:16:15.280 Yeah, can't rule it out.

00:16:16.440 That's okay.

00:16:17.020 I'm in a cottage industry.

00:16:18.460 Well, when it comes to the things that I'm interested in, it's like St. Thomas Aquinas

00:16:21.640 and, like, Philadelphia sports.

00:16:23.340 I have a lot more.

00:16:24.060 Never mind.

00:16:24.360 Keep going, Gregory.

00:16:25.000 But the basic idea is this.

00:16:27.060 You know, so, like, Descartes, for instance, the beginning of the discourse on method is

00:16:30.680 revolutionary.

00:16:32.620 Just call everything into doubt and then see what you can do on the basis of your subjective

00:16:36.320 experience.

00:16:36.980 Yeah.

00:16:37.200 And then the idea that things which people claim to be certain of can be a source of,

00:16:44.220 you know, violence, oppression, et cetera, whether those claims are adjudicated in good

00:16:49.580 faith or whether that's just used as ammunition as a way by which to rule out difficult claims

00:16:55.200 that have purchase on my life, which cause me to convert, you know, we can talk about

00:16:59.800 that all day and all night with all three people who care about who Thomas Aquinas is.

00:17:03.800 But, yeah, I think that in the 16th and 17th century, you see the breakup of a kind of

00:17:10.040 consensus.

00:17:11.000 And, you know, people blame that on science.

00:17:12.620 I don't think it's to be blamed on science.

00:17:14.720 Obviously, like, the medievals had an appreciation for how science was to be conducted.

00:17:19.640 Their approach, their kind of methodology relied heavily on demonstration so that you

00:17:24.180 could advance with certainty.

00:17:25.580 You make the empirical judgments and then you say, okay, let's ground this on the basis

00:17:29.520 of what we know.

00:17:30.200 But, yeah, I think that we're still in the, whatever, aftermath, in the ruins of a kind

00:17:36.560 of post-apocalyptic wreck that was visited upon us by 17th century folks.

00:17:42.120 I mean, this very company has gotten lots of views because of a movie called What is

00:17:47.460 a Woman, which became this dominant question in our culture to show you the extremes of 1.00

00:17:52.940 the skepticism.

00:17:53.900 So then what do you say, what does St. Thomas say to the person who is watching?

00:17:58.940 I've gotten a lot of emails on this.

00:18:01.280 They say, look, the culture is awful.

00:18:04.080 It's decadent.

00:18:04.940 It's terrible.

00:18:05.480 It's making me unhappy.

00:18:06.660 The behaviors that it imbues in me are making me unhappy.

00:18:09.260 I want to believe.

00:18:11.440 I want certainty.

00:18:13.640 But I just can't do it.

00:18:17.200 So what do you do?

00:18:18.560 So I'd say there are also salvation historical reasons for which we find it difficult to be

00:18:25.040 certain and confident.

00:18:25.780 Like we're all laboring under the burden of sin.

00:18:28.880 So we come into this world despoiled of grace and wounded in our nature.

00:18:33.240 And so we're just thinking through things under the cloud of ignorance.

00:18:37.320 We're choosing through things with this kind of, I don't know what you would call it, like

00:18:41.280 a knot of malice.

00:18:42.400 And then we're feeling through things with a healthy dose of like concupiscence and weakness

00:18:47.100 mixed in.

00:18:47.940 So it's just hard to navigate life in that respect.

00:18:50.960 Insofar as the very tools with which we're trying to process our experience are themselves

00:18:55.560 bent, not broken, but bent.

00:18:58.620 And so I think that like the real protagonist of history is the beggar in the sense that we

00:19:02.780 have to beg for God if we are going to be delivered from our calamity.

00:19:06.840 Thanks be to God, Christ comes begging for us in some strange fashion.

00:19:11.420 And so like if we are going to know, there is a sense in which we're also going to have

00:19:15.200 to be healed and grown beyond our present limitations.

00:19:18.280 So when people experience their bankruptcy, I think that's a beautiful precondition to

00:19:23.200 asking for enrichment.

00:19:25.260 And specifically from the only person who can furnish it in plenary fashion, God.

00:19:30.020 So it's like when grace comes into our life, it heals us and it grows us.

00:19:36.380 It's not just like something that's layered on.

00:19:38.400 It gets into all of the nooks and crannies of our humanity and rectifies them, reconciles

00:19:43.520 them, you know, furnishes us with what we need in order to live well.

00:19:46.800 So I'd say for the person who wants to have certainty, who wants to have confidence, I'd

00:19:50.740 say go to Eucharistic Adoration.

00:19:52.380 Just sit yourself in front of the Lord.

00:19:54.060 I think a lot of people who aren't churched or who aren't religious find that a more pleasant

00:19:58.200 place to be necessarily than mass, because there's not as many moving parts.

00:20:01.900 They can just plunk themselves down and they can just, you know, it feels strange to talk

00:20:05.280 to Jesus if you're not accustomed to Eucharistic teaching and practice, but you can just sit

00:20:11.440 down in a church where the blessed sacrament is either present in the tabernacle or exposed

00:20:15.080 in a monstrance and just talk it out with the Lord.

00:20:17.480 And you might not yield much from that conversation, but the typical experience is that when you go

00:20:22.600 home, you find that like the furniture of your moral life has shifted ever so slightly,

00:20:27.320 sometimes more than so slightly, it's shifted and it's kind of created space within which

00:20:31.880 to re-engage or to like envision your life anew.

00:20:35.420 So I'm a cheater, you know, like I don't like go for the philosophical proofs because I feel

00:20:40.100 like I can just do the theological fire.

00:20:42.920 Right, right.

00:20:44.060 It's why not just go direct.

00:20:46.060 Yeah.

00:20:46.620 Go to hallow.com slash Knowles.

00:20:48.100 Here we are.

00:20:49.100 It's almost Lent.

00:20:51.000 Last Sunday was Sexagesima.

00:20:53.160 Then we're at what, Quinquagesima?

00:20:55.360 And then we're in it, baby.

00:20:56.660 We're there.

00:20:57.620 Beginning this Ash Wednesday, our sponsor, Hallow, is inviting you to take Lent seriously

00:21:01.620 with Pray 40, The Return, a 40-day journey of daily prayer leading up to Easter, featuring

00:21:06.100 Jonathan Rumi, Father Mike Schmitz, Sister Miriam James, Jeff Cavins, Mark Wahlberg, Chris

00:21:09.780 Pratt, and others.

00:21:11.080 Lent is the church's annual reminder that self-mastery matters, that virtue requires

00:21:15.600 discipline, and that becoming who God intends us to be means removing the things, habits,

00:21:19.480 distractions, comforts that stand in the way.

00:21:22.220 Through prayer, fasting, and self-giving, we make room for God's mercy, grace, and love to

00:21:26.160 actually do their work.

00:21:28.080 At the center of Pray 40, The Return is one of the most profound stories ever told, the

00:21:31.960 parable of the prodigal son.

00:21:34.140 A reminder that no matter how far someone falls, redemption always remains possible.

00:21:40.180 Draws inspiration from the brothers Karamazov throughout Pray 40.

00:21:43.640 There's just so, so much here.

00:21:46.420 Right now, go to hallow.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.

00:21:51.020 Take part in hallows Lent Challenge.

00:21:53.040 Pray 40.

00:21:53.500 The return, it is for you.

00:21:55.820 For some people who will say, I'm not familiar with sacramental theology, I don't believe

00:22:01.660 in the real presence of Christ and Holy Communion or what have you.

00:22:04.960 I would say, yeah, okay, fine, sure, I get it.

00:22:09.320 Plenty of Catholics don't believe in the real presence, according to public opinion surveys.

00:22:12.700 Very unfortunate.

00:22:14.400 But to your point on the wisdom of just go check it out.

00:22:19.560 Check out the adoration.

00:22:22.060 We're incarnate creatures, and we move through symbols.

00:22:25.120 That's how we interpret the world.

00:22:26.040 So when you pray to our Lord, you're either, you might look at a picture or an icon.

00:22:32.260 You might look, I don't know, at a landscape, at the beautiful creation.

00:22:36.280 You might close your eyes, and even then, you're not looking at the back of your eyelids

00:22:39.660 because there's some image that's going to pop up.

00:22:41.780 So, like, just go with me for a second.

00:22:46.100 Maybe look at, even if you think it's merely a symbol, what Christians have considered to

00:22:52.060 be at least a symbol of our Lord for 2,000 years.

00:22:56.440 And actually considered to be much more than a symbol of our Lord.

00:22:59.760 I think that's really great advice.

00:23:03.960 Drew Clavin, my friend and colleague, had a kind of similar advice years ago.

00:23:08.840 Someone said, how do I believe in God?

00:23:10.660 And he said, well, here's how you believe in God in 60 days.

00:23:15.000 Just behave as though he exists.

00:23:17.900 Just try it out.

00:23:19.320 Fun little experiment.

00:23:20.680 Let's just behave as...

00:23:22.340 I'm reminded of this St. Thomas prayer that I sometimes pray, the prayer for students.

00:23:30.020 I sometimes pray it before I go speak.

00:23:32.400 And it says, you know, Lord, please free me from the twofold blindness into which I've been born,

00:23:38.700 sin and ignorance.

00:23:40.120 And I do wonder, for people who have all these problems and trouble believing or improving or whatever, 0.92

00:23:46.240 I think, like, how much of that is just because we're all ignorant?

00:23:50.420 So it's like, you know, if you want to believe that God exists as an abstract principle,

00:23:55.580 there are proofs.

00:23:56.640 Like, St. Thomas famously has five of them, and they're pretty convincing.

00:23:59.780 So you can just, like, read that, and maybe your mind will start to assent to it.

00:24:05.460 But two, you're burdened by a ton of sin.

00:24:11.140 And for a lot of people, I think they would say, well, yeah, what do I do about that?

00:24:14.640 Yeah, I'm wracked by lust and wrath and pride and social media,

00:24:20.420 which in the individual platforms appeal to each of those, you know,

00:24:23.640 Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, respectively, I think.

00:24:28.940 So I have great pity for them and for me, in a way.

00:24:35.180 Well, what do you do about that?

00:24:36.600 What if you say I'm just too lusty and prideful and angry to reason?

00:24:44.040 Yeah, so that's a humble acknowledgement of one's existential state.

00:24:48.340 And I think where there is humility, there's already God's working,

00:24:51.700 or God is already working there.

00:24:53.580 I do think that, so Christians hold it to be true that we're born in a state of original sin. 1.00

00:24:58.940 And I think that's a really liberating doctrine.

00:25:01.060 Sometimes people see it as a negative doctrine, but I take it as a positive doctrine.

00:25:04.980 Because at a certain point, you're going to have to contend with the fact that everything that you touch, you kind of ruin.

00:25:09.920 And if it's just you ruining those things, well, that's devastating.

00:25:15.840 But if God endowed us with this original gift that we since lost and now come into the world left to ourselves,

00:25:23.720 feeling a nostalgia for what was and a yearning that it might be reconstituted,

00:25:27.720 and then we make a mess of things, like, okay, I can make more sense of that.

00:25:32.720 And so I take it that, like, yeah, so yes, we are lustful, we are wrathful, we are prideful.

00:25:39.640 All those things are true.

00:25:41.240 I just don't think it matters too terribly much what hand you've been dealt,

00:25:45.020 in the sense that you might come into this world with a certain temperament or a certain constitution,

00:25:48.580 and you might recognize that as not that good.

00:25:52.080 What matters is how you play the hand.

00:25:54.300 And I think the best way in which to play the hand is to address that hand to the one who dealt it

00:25:59.860 and say, like, what do you have in mind for this?

00:26:02.520 You know, because it's not a mere matter of chance.

00:26:04.500 He knows the cards that he gives.

00:26:06.060 And they're the deliverance of love.

00:26:07.420 They're not the deliverance of, like, chance or whimsy or caprice.

00:26:11.100 Like, if it is true what Christians say, that God is a provident Father, then this is the issue of love.

00:26:18.300 And so that being the case, then, how do you choose to play it?

00:26:20.660 And I think the idea is, you know, like, a lot of people are here saying to themselves,

00:26:23.740 like, my real life is elsewhere.

00:26:24.820 I'm being kept from my real life.

00:26:26.280 People are holding me back.

00:26:27.460 People are oppressing me.

00:26:28.260 Whatever it is, we all have our characteristic temptations or the stories that we tell ourselves

00:26:32.400 as to why we're not yet flourishing.

00:26:34.240 But the fact of the matter is that this is our real life.

00:26:36.860 This is the hand that we've been dealt.

00:26:38.520 And that we have the wherewithal to play it well, provided that we ask God for said wherewithal.

00:26:43.800 And so I think it's like, yeah, I think it's good to be reconciled to the truth.

00:26:47.760 I think it's good to abide in what is and say, like,

00:26:50.560 okay, I'm not that handsome, you know, like I'm balding.

00:26:53.180 And I use a weird vocalic register, which often loses as many people as it attracts.

00:26:58.620 You know, and like, this habit, while cool in a certain sense, also totally detracts or like,

00:27:03.740 it makes it such that people just run in the opposite direction, especially in airports,

00:27:07.200 you know, because they're already nervous.

00:27:08.740 So it's like, you have to know who you are and what you're about.

00:27:11.160 And then you can live your life with a kind of, with a certain freedom, you know,

00:27:14.800 something like abandon.

00:27:17.120 Yeah.

00:27:17.720 So, yeah, I think that for people in those kind of in those situations,

00:27:22.220 obviously, yeah, various ways in which to go about it.

00:27:24.240 I personally want everyone to be Catholic.

00:27:25.760 And it's not because I'm like an imperialist or a colonialist.

00:27:28.320 It's because, because we have all the means of grace and salvation,

00:27:31.420 because we have all the means whereby to heal and to grow,

00:27:34.440 whereby to profit from God's offer of divine life.

00:27:37.820 And that's just wild.

00:27:38.840 You know, it's just, yeah.

00:27:40.760 I don't know if this is more preachy than your show ordinarily is,

00:27:43.360 but I kind of can't help myself.

00:27:44.760 I appreciate it.

00:27:45.720 I mean, you are a member of the order of preachers.

00:27:48.020 In fact, I would be very, it would be contrary to your nature.

00:27:51.380 Preachers got to preach.

00:27:52.780 Yes.

00:27:53.460 Well, of course, of course.

00:27:54.680 And a lot of people are becoming Catholic right now.

00:27:56.760 Yeah.

00:27:57.600 And which I think is part of the Thomas, Thomasance,

00:28:01.100 the Thomas Renaissance that we're seeing on social media.

00:28:05.560 For our Protestant friends who are watching,

00:28:07.460 I think one thing that's attractive about St. Thomas Aquinas

00:28:11.860 is that he's a systematic thinker.

00:28:13.580 Yeah.

00:28:13.860 You were touching on that a little bit earlier.

00:28:15.880 It all kind of makes sense amid all of the many letters that he wrote

00:28:19.760 or that his secretaries wrote.

00:28:21.740 Sure.

00:28:23.660 And there are plenty of Catholic writers who are not systematic thinkers.

00:28:28.300 Sure.

00:28:28.820 And there are a lot of Protestant writers who are not.

00:28:30.740 And I remember Hilaire Belloc, the Catholic writer,

00:28:32.960 making the point that Martin Luther,

00:28:34.300 for whatever political virtues he had,

00:28:37.100 was not really a systematic thinker.

00:28:39.160 Even if one is taken with his theology,

00:28:41.440 it doesn't totally jive.

00:28:43.960 Whereas for someone like John Calvin,

00:28:45.500 even if you hate his theological views,

00:28:48.940 there is a kind of coherence to it.

00:28:51.440 He's the most systematic thinker probably.

00:28:54.360 I think Belloc calls him the genius of Protestantism.

00:28:57.200 So if one has multiple systems of thought,

00:29:01.100 why is Thomasus the right one?

00:29:02.780 Um, yeah.

00:29:06.220 Have I thought about that in those terms?

00:29:08.940 It's interesting because like, you know, not just to be anecdotal,

00:29:12.380 I experienced St. Thomas's clarity of thought,

00:29:16.060 his depth of insight,

00:29:18.580 but I experienced it within the setting of his personal holiness for the first time.

00:29:23.060 And so like, I never considered another systematic thinker.

00:29:26.940 Like for me, it's always just been Thomas, Thomas, and Thomas.

00:29:34.100 I'm getting to learn how to navigate other traditions,

00:29:36.800 not so much as a native speaker, but as a kind of dilettante.

00:29:40.680 But for me, it's just always been St. Thomas, like mystic tradition.

00:29:43.920 So I think that if we're making comparisons,

00:29:47.520 we can, one, appeal to the authority of the church,

00:29:50.080 which commends him as the common doctor,

00:29:52.320 as the universal teacher of the Catholic faith,

00:29:54.040 from whom we can all stand to profit.

00:29:56.140 So there is in a certain sense,

00:29:57.380 a kind of a authority accorded to St. Augustine.

00:30:00.260 Like St. Augustine appears more on the catechism of the Catholic church

00:30:02.960 than does St. Thomas,

00:30:04.300 because he's really the first one to engage a lot of these issues.

00:30:08.280 And St. Thomas relies upon him an incredible amount.

00:30:11.080 So of the sources that St. Thomas cites,

00:30:12.780 obviously scripture is that which is cited most.

00:30:15.920 But then next it's Aristotle and Augustine, which is fascinating.

00:30:20.180 So I think that what you have in St. Thomas,

00:30:23.080 which you don't necessarily have in patristic teachers and preachers,

00:30:26.760 is that system or systematic approach to the whole of the faith.

00:30:31.340 So often enough, Augustine is treating a particular issue.

00:30:34.140 You got the Donatists over here doing whatever.

00:30:35.960 You got the Manichees over here doing something else entirely.

00:30:38.920 You've got the Pelagians over here doing a third thing. 1.00

00:30:42.360 And so he's addressing them, seeking to correct their errors,

00:30:44.820 but also to edify the flock in a way that they can comprehend,

00:30:47.900 in a way from which they themselves can profit.

00:30:50.840 But he's not thinking like, okay,

00:30:52.660 we've navigated all of these different controversies.

00:30:55.220 Now it's time to set forward the faith in its entirety.

00:30:59.040 He'll have like certain treatises,

00:31:00.420 which tend to be more systematic,

00:31:01.620 like the Inquiridian on faith, hope, and charity.

00:31:03.360 But he never writes that work.

00:31:06.040 St. Thomas comes at a time

00:31:07.380 when people are beginning to write that work.

00:31:10.600 And you're recovering a lot of this patristic teaching.

00:31:13.280 St. Thomas had access to all of these excellent libraries,

00:31:15.600 which a lot of people had forgotten about for like 800 years.

00:31:19.320 That's an exaggeration, 600 years.

00:31:21.880 And then you also have the reintroduction

00:31:24.000 of a lot of really beautiful philosophical resources.

00:31:26.720 So I think that part of St. Thomas's genius is relying on Aristotle's genius.

00:31:32.280 Because you have these real insights from the Platonic tradition,

00:31:35.400 but they're not necessarily set forward in systematic fashion.

00:31:37.880 They're set forward in the manner of a story or in the manner of a dialogue.

00:31:41.380 Whereas Aristotle, he was a schoolman.

00:31:43.780 You know, he was, again, systematic in his approach.

00:31:46.400 And I think that Aristotelian philosophy corresponds most closely with what is.

00:31:51.680 Controversial thought.

00:31:52.540 At this point, most people don't care, but here we go.

00:31:55.060 Hot takes within a very limited fold.

00:31:58.240 And so St. Thomas is recovering all of these riches from the patristic tradition

00:32:02.160 and doing so with philosophical resources, which cohere closely with reality.

00:32:06.800 And so he's able to set it forward in a way that cleaves to the thing itself.

00:32:11.740 So a lot of times you're like, there's something out there.

00:32:13.480 And I'm going to say a lot of words and hope that it lands kind of in the vicinity.

00:32:17.700 It's kind of a horseshoes and hand grenades type approach to the truth.

00:32:20.700 Whereas for St. Thomas, it's, no, we've got the best philosophical resources,

00:32:24.860 the best theological resources, and also the best thinker, arguably, of all time.

00:32:29.120 And he does so with a kind of consciousness that this should be explained

00:32:32.120 in as coherent a fashion as possible.

00:32:34.480 Because a lot of the texts that he inherited were kind of like, catch is catch can.

00:32:38.380 And, you know, so he says about the sentences of Peter Lombard,

00:32:41.100 he's talking about a lot of cool things, but he's repeating himself.

00:32:43.720 He's not necessarily doing it in the order wherein we can best onboard all of these insights.

00:32:48.520 And yes, I think we can do better.

00:32:51.200 So that's like the introduction of the Summa Theologiae.

00:32:53.220 And then he just gets after it at the height of his career with a whole team,

00:32:57.380 like a whole squad of people in his service.

00:33:00.020 And the results are magical.

00:33:01.640 Nope, wrong word, mystical.

00:33:03.700 Yes.

00:33:04.140 Yes.

00:33:05.260 For those who have never dug in, which, you know, it's great.

00:33:08.820 Any question you have, you just Google the question, Summa Theologiae, and it'll probably come up.

00:33:13.520 He lays out three points, and then he says what he has to say.

00:33:19.260 And then he responds to the three objections for like every single question under the sun.

00:33:25.660 Yeah.

00:33:25.840 With lots of secretaries writing it down, doing multiple things at once. 0.96

00:33:31.260 One last biographical point before we move on to other questions. 0.99

00:33:37.380 But it kind of harkens back to this idea that sin makes us stupid. 1.00

00:33:42.480 And that maybe a lot of the reason that everyone behaves really stupidly today 0.99

00:33:47.100 might have something to do with the widespread and encouraged constant mortal sin. 0.99

00:33:55.080 His family didn't want him to become a Dominican.

00:33:58.420 Yeah.

00:33:58.860 His family wanted him to become an abbot, have a nice sort of prestigious, cushy position.

00:34:03.400 Yeah.

00:34:03.660 He wanted to be a Dominican. 0.64

00:34:05.080 They lock him up in a tower. 1.00

00:34:07.760 They send a hooker in. 1.00

00:34:08.960 Yeah. 0.99

00:34:10.620 He doesn't take well to this.

00:34:11.980 Well, he actually responds very well to this, but not as...

00:34:14.520 As well not.

00:34:15.240 Yes, he chases her out with a torch, as I recall.

00:34:18.680 I'd say gently accompanies her to the door with a torch.

00:34:21.700 Lights her way for her.

00:34:22.660 Exactly, yeah.

00:34:23.420 Behind her, in fact.

00:34:24.580 Yes.

00:34:27.300 Why didn't they want him to become a Dominican?

00:34:30.240 And how did he resist a temptation that would be very difficult for many, many people?

00:34:38.360 So, to the first.

00:34:39.820 They didn't want to become a Dominican because the Dominicans had been recently founded, maybe

00:34:44.500 like 30 years prior, a little less than 30 years prior.

00:34:48.000 And so, they were still kind of ragtag, as it were.

00:34:51.820 I guess something comparable would be like how someone might have looked at the missionaries

00:34:56.440 of charity when it wasn't yet clear that St. Teresa of Calcutta was a saint.

00:35:00.260 So, St. Dominic had been canonized at that point, but nevertheless, it was like they were

00:35:06.400 not especially prestigious, whereas other religious orders at the time had that reputation

00:35:11.100 for being prestigious.

00:35:11.960 So, why did he want to be a Dominican in the first place? 1.00

00:35:13.800 So, I would tend to think, so the Dominican ideal is, at the time, revolutionary.

00:35:20.800 Not in the way that a lot of people say revolutionary, but in the sense that it represented a departure

00:35:24.240 from the norm, and it was risky.

00:35:26.800 Because up until that point, you had various movements of religious life.

00:35:29.900 So, for those who don't know anything about this, you've got priests, and those priests

00:35:35.780 might be attached to a place, we call those diocesan priests, or they might be attached

00:35:39.720 to a certain community.

00:35:41.000 We refer to those often enough as religious priests.

00:35:43.680 And religious priests tend to sort on the basis of interest, okay?

00:35:47.840 So, the first movement of religious priests is the monks, and their interest is cultivating

00:35:54.700 recollection, seeking to be in the presence of God, praying throughout the course of the

00:35:58.580 day as a way by which to sanctify time and working so as to support their temporal needs

00:36:03.880 and maybe serving in the countryside if there are occasions.

00:36:08.300 But then the next movement is canons, who live kind of like monks, but they have more pastoral

00:36:12.680 responsibilities, but they tend to be rooted to a canonry, right?

00:36:17.480 So, to like a cathedral chapter or something like that.

00:36:19.760 So, the next movement is the friars.

00:36:21.140 The next big movement would be the friars.

00:36:23.060 And the risky thing about the friars is that they're way more mobile.

00:36:28.580 And whereas the monasteries tended to be in the countryside, they bring the monastery to

00:36:31.940 city center.

00:36:32.960 So, there's this sense that, okay, so for a Dominican friar, what's the ideal?

00:36:36.340 It's to contemplate and to furnish others with he whom you have contemplated.

00:36:40.800 So, the idea is that you live a kind of monastic life and that you're transfigured by that, 0.96

00:36:44.980 that you're transformed by that.

00:36:46.600 But then, like Moses, who goes up to the mountaintop and has his face transfigured, you

00:36:51.180 know, in brilliant light, and then comes down and testifies or witnesses to the people,

00:36:55.680 so the Dominican friar is meant to preach, he's meant to teach.

00:36:58.780 But it's risky because there's like a lot of sin and vice at the city center, okay?

00:37:03.040 So, part of the reason for which a monk would retreat to the countryside is to ensure a kind

00:37:06.820 of cloistered environment where he could have, you know, some measure of confidence that he

00:37:12.900 could live his life with recollection in the presence of the Most High God.

00:37:16.820 And so, the Dominican ideal, it's risky, right? 1.00

00:37:20.180 It's decidedly risky.

00:37:21.880 And the active life isn't necessarily, yeah, well-established in the church at that point.

00:37:27.380 So, like the Franciscans come from the penitential movement, which is kind of wild and crazy.

00:37:31.840 And then the Dominicans come from the canonical movement, which is a little more established.

00:37:35.160 But nevertheless, it's kind of ragtag.

00:37:37.240 It's a risky business.

00:37:38.560 But I think St. Thomas was attracted by the ideal in the sense that he saw the fruit,

00:37:43.680 which was born of doctrinal preaching and teaching, that by dedicating one's life to

00:37:48.200 prayer and study, he himself became, I don't know, like the hope is that he'd become good

00:37:54.060 and that he would, you know, go forth from his cloister and people would see something

00:37:58.800 about his witness and think like, I want that.

00:38:00.840 Yeah.

00:38:01.420 You know, there's something about that.

00:38:02.600 Yes, just taking it back to 2026, for my whole life, people have been saying,

00:38:10.120 look, man, I don't want doctrine and dogma.

00:38:13.460 And let's not be, don't be doctrinal.

00:38:16.080 Don't be dogmatic.

00:38:17.120 You know, look, I'm really spiritual.

00:38:18.980 I'm not religious, but I'm really spiritual, man, you know.

00:38:21.960 And it probably reached its apotheosis in the new atheism.

00:38:25.620 And it's since crumbled into anarchy and decadence and chaos.

00:38:29.240 And now I think people say, actually, you know what?

00:38:31.140 That doctrine, that's kind of interesting.

00:38:34.080 Dogma, even, that's interesting.

00:38:35.640 And, well, religion, what is religion?

00:38:38.660 And St. Thomas says, religion is a habit of virtue that inclines us to serve God,

00:38:44.260 to give God what he deserves.

00:38:45.860 So, well, maybe that's a good, what's so bad about that?

00:38:49.240 I wonder if that's the, you know, the pendulum swinging back.

00:38:54.020 Yeah.

00:38:54.980 I think it's like, I mean, you could approach this from any number of advantages,

00:38:58.840 but freedom unfolds within bounds.

00:39:01.300 And when you tell people that there are no rules, they end up miserable.

00:39:05.200 You know, if you, like, drop a ball in the midst of people and say, like,

00:39:08.580 play the game.

00:39:10.000 They're like, which game?

00:39:10.880 According to which rules?

00:39:12.740 Define for me the field of play.

00:39:14.720 Because otherwise, the strongest is just going to insist on his way.

00:39:17.960 It's like when you play card games with individuals who know them really well

00:39:20.980 and continually introduce rules at intervals in a way that profits them.

00:39:24.760 You're like, oh, my gosh.

00:39:26.140 It's just, it's insane.

00:39:27.480 But when you have a sense of, like, okay, these are the bounds

00:39:30.060 that delimit the space in which I can play,

00:39:33.140 then you begin to enjoy it.

00:39:34.520 Chesterton has this point about, like,

00:39:36.140 if you put a bunch of kids on an island with sheer cliffs at the edge

00:39:39.380 and tell them to have fun, they'll huddle at the center of the island.

00:39:42.680 But if you build a little wall around it, they can explore the whole of it.

00:39:46.100 So that's not to say that, like, we're purposefully limiting ourselves

00:39:48.800 just so that we can get excited about oppression or repression.

00:39:53.000 But the idea is that our nature entails certain limits.

00:39:56.080 By virtue of the fact that we're human beings, you know,

00:39:58.420 we ought to treat our teeth in a certain way.

00:40:00.600 If we, like, floss with, I don't know, like an iron file,

00:40:04.180 we're going to cause problems for our enamel.

00:40:05.800 Like, nature sets the terms according to which we flourish.

00:40:09.180 And in St. Thomas' estimation, like, God is at the summit of creation.

00:40:13.460 And unless you enshrine that fact in your interior life,

00:40:16.840 your exterior life will be a little bit chaotic

00:40:18.680 because you'll be living in rebellion.

00:40:21.200 You'll be living contrary to what is.

00:40:23.220 And the only way in which to flourish is to live in harmony with what is.

00:40:27.160 And now, mind you, there's got to be scope there for growth

00:40:29.200 because if we don't just say, like, these are how things are, I give up.

00:40:32.700 It's something to which we aspire.

00:40:34.940 Because, yeah, like, I might know that God is to be preferred to all things,

00:40:39.900 but at certain times, it might be difficult for me.

00:40:42.600 You know, if you put me through, like, Navy SEAL's Hell Week

00:40:45.500 and I've only had three hours of sleep over the course of the last three days

00:40:48.320 and you say, like, time to say the breviary, I might be like, you know?

00:40:52.780 It might not be pretty.

00:40:53.900 But nevertheless, like, it remains for us to appropriate that,

00:40:56.680 to take that on board as best we can over the whole course of our life.

00:40:59.580 And that's part of what's exciting about being human.

00:41:01.980 That, you know, graduation reminds me. 0.95

00:41:04.700 We're talking about hookers more than I expected to in a conversation. 0.98

00:41:07.780 I guess it comes up once or twice.

00:41:09.060 But, you know, there's a frequently cited point as pertains to practical politics,

00:41:13.280 which is that St. Thomas Aquinas, I think citing Augustine,

00:41:17.180 conspicuously says, look, you might not want to outlaw prostitution entirely,

00:41:23.300 which is kind of shocking.

00:41:24.380 You say, well, why not?

00:41:25.140 It's very bad and it's a vice and so shouldn't you?

00:41:29.240 And his answer is, well, not everyone is at the same level of virtue.

00:41:35.180 They're all at different parts on their journey,

00:41:37.420 would be like the woo-woo way of saying it in modern parlance.

00:41:40.960 And so he says, you want the law to teach people and to instruct them

00:41:45.420 and to bring them up a little bit,

00:41:46.600 but you don't want it to be unattainable.

00:41:49.380 You don't want it to be so stringent that people actually crack

00:41:52.320 and they end up worse off than they were even in the beginning.

00:41:54.600 So there's this great prudence that comes in those practical applications.

00:41:59.980 No, it's, you often, yeah, you hear this in theological circles as well.

00:42:05.500 But this notion that, so the law is for our good.

00:42:08.900 That's something that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think instinctually.

00:42:14.160 Even on the right, I mean, this is what kind of drives me crazy about our friends,

00:42:19.160 our friends, the libertarians, you know, which are part of the conservative coalition,

00:42:23.100 but they're not conservative.

00:42:25.340 They begin with different priors, philosophical priors.

00:42:29.040 And this is, to me, one of the big distinctions between a conservative and a libertarian,

00:42:33.440 is conservatives tend to take the Christian view that the law is for our good

00:42:38.240 and the virtuous pagan view of the law is in, like, just the normal guy view that the law is for our good.

00:42:43.480 And the libertarians take this view that law is offensive or somehow itself unjust.

00:42:50.920 Am I strawmanning?

00:42:51.860 I don't care if I am.

00:42:53.400 I think that's their inclination.

00:42:55.500 Yeah, so I think that for us, this takes a kind of work of recovery to set forward how law is good.

00:43:00.800 So St. Thomas will define a law as an ordinance of reason, which, again, somewhat jargony,

00:43:05.860 but the basic idea is that it's a reasonable dictate.

00:43:08.520 It's not just something that I enforce.

00:43:11.040 It's not just something that I will into existence.

00:43:13.420 Because I think a lot of people suspect law of just being will to power.

00:43:16.580 When truth be told, it's, no, there is a natural law at work in the world.

00:43:20.720 And we, as rational animals, are capable of discerning something of that natural law

00:43:25.720 and then of determining it or specifying it further for our particular life together.

00:43:30.800 So it's not just a mere matter of efficiency or expediency.

00:43:35.840 It's a matter of how do we, as a polity, host a conversation as to what's good

00:43:40.660 and then frame laws which can be educative, which can be pedagogical, conducting us to that good.

00:43:46.620 So he'll specify further, it's got to be by a legitimate authority.

00:43:48.940 It's got to be for the common good.

00:43:50.280 It's got to be promulgated.

00:43:51.340 You know, he'll hem it in.

00:43:52.340 But at the heart, it's an ordinance of reason.

00:43:54.840 So it goes back to the same point that we can actually know what's good

00:43:57.440 and that we can actually come to an agreement as to what's good.

00:44:01.160 Bother.

00:44:02.220 Bother.

00:44:02.900 Don't you know there's someone screaming at their screen right now?

00:44:06.360 Yeah.

00:44:06.880 Saying, well, hold on.

00:44:08.300 One, is your good really the same as my good?

00:44:11.860 One, and two, and this is the question, I get it a lot.

00:44:16.080 Who decides?

00:44:18.320 Who is to decide?

00:44:20.140 Because what you're suggesting, that the law is to teach us, to make us behave in a certain way,

00:44:27.340 that sounds like social engineering.

00:44:29.540 It sounds nearly like brainwashing.

00:44:31.700 It is downright totalitarian and offensive to any good American conservative.

00:44:36.200 How dare you, sir, come here to a podcast set and suggest that the law can be for our good?

00:44:44.640 Do you have any answers to those questions?

00:44:45.760 Yeah, that was beautifully done.

00:44:47.100 You're good at this, by the way.

00:44:48.060 I don't know if anyone's told you that, but let it be known.

00:44:51.040 You're good at this.

00:44:51.540 That's very kind.

00:44:52.280 I'm enjoying myself.

00:44:53.800 If you're like, what's that dude laughing about over there?

00:44:55.920 It's just, you're the man.

00:44:57.340 I greatly appreciate that.

00:44:58.640 So cheers.

00:45:00.060 Yes, so we could say any number of things.

00:45:02.780 If people have difficulty agreeing as to like how the speed limit should work,

00:45:07.420 let's just start with something more basic.

00:45:10.680 Like, should you be able, for instance, to just, wow, I realize that a lot of these things we actually do differ about.

00:45:19.360 Because I was about to say like murder, and then here we are.

00:45:21.500 Here we are.

00:45:21.980 You got abortion on the one end.

00:45:23.080 You got euthanasia on the other end.

00:45:24.260 Maybe those aren't just as clear as I thought they would be.

00:45:27.480 Five years ago, they might have been.

00:45:29.060 Or at least euthanasia, maybe.

00:45:30.560 But now.

00:45:31.300 Yeah.

00:45:31.740 Oh, marriage?

00:45:32.460 Oh, no.

00:45:34.320 Is there any?

00:45:37.200 I'm, wow, I'm undermining my own arguments as I hesitate and stammer.

00:45:41.320 That's embarrassing.

00:45:42.060 Now, if we were just judging by the standards of all of human history until like 2015.

00:45:49.560 Yeah.

00:45:50.480 Your point would have stood.

00:45:51.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:52.200 Something has accelerated.

00:45:53.320 Something has accelerated.

00:45:54.420 So maybe let's do like lying.

00:45:56.560 A lot of people think you can lie in any number of ways.

00:45:58.800 But we all recognize at a certain level that if we were free to lie, okay, in a sense that like it couldn't be adjudicated, it was non-justiciable, then you couldn't make contracts.

00:46:09.600 Right.

00:46:09.860 And I think that everyone at a certain level is motivated by the making of contracts, at least as it concerns the making of money.

00:46:14.820 Yeah.

00:46:15.220 You know?

00:46:15.480 So you're going to be able to find something with anyone with whom you speak.

00:46:20.240 It's like, why aren't you killing me right now?

00:46:21.760 Why aren't you killing me right now? 0.94

00:46:22.660 You know, it's because I'd go to jail. 0.99

00:46:23.820 Okay, perfect.

00:46:25.640 So I think that we can typically find some common ground with our interlocutor as to the type of things which shouldn't be done.

00:46:32.480 Like, let's say that it's a kind of shrill political conversation.

00:46:35.380 I think most people would agree like Holocaust shouldn't come back. 0.99

00:46:39.080 Yeah.

00:46:39.440 You know, like slavery.

00:46:40.420 Not all would agree, but most reasonable, all reasonable people would agree.

00:46:43.760 Let's say like 99% of people would agree.

00:46:46.140 You know, like this shouldn't come back.

00:46:47.480 That shouldn't come back.

00:46:48.380 The types of things which we agree represent a kind of atrocity in the case of the event and social progress that we recognize that corporately as representing an atrocity.

00:46:57.160 So just as soon as somebody admits that, they're granting something after the manner of objectivity.

00:47:02.820 Okay?

00:47:03.180 They might have a complicated philosophical theory which gets them out of hard and firm commitments.

00:47:07.760 You know, they might be like, oh, no, that only applies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

00:47:10.260 Right.

00:47:10.600 Okay, whatever.

00:47:12.020 But I think that everyone admits at a certain level that we have some kind of objective access to the good.

00:47:18.540 Okay?

00:47:19.040 Even like hardline relativists.

00:47:20.700 I think like what a lot of relativists want is non-intervention.

00:47:24.900 They just don't want you dictating the terms of my life.

00:47:27.220 Yeah.

00:47:27.540 Okay?

00:47:27.820 So what they want is a kind of tolerance.

00:47:30.000 But they often trot out a philosophical theory for the practical end which they hope to obtain.

00:47:36.980 You know?

00:47:38.120 That's a very wise statement because I think it explains all of it.

00:47:41.260 They want to be really nice and inclusive and polite in a certain understanding of politeness, probably a misbegotten understanding of politeness.

00:47:53.060 Yeah.

00:47:53.200 And so they backfill a bunch of philosophical gobbledygook and anthropological gobbledygook to just get to their end which is, shouldn't we be nice to the gays or something? 0.86

00:48:04.760 I mean that's like a lot of our discourse, especially as pertains to sexual morality over the last 10 years, basically comes down to like, hey, I have a gay cousin.

00:48:14.140 Can I be nice?

00:48:14.840 Yep.

00:48:15.660 And the end of that is like men and women aren't different.

00:48:20.520 That's like the anthropology that they've come, but you don't need, you don't have to do that.

00:48:26.360 I don't think most people actually think that, even the ones who profess to.

00:48:29.160 Yes.

00:48:29.420 And so I think it's like, yeah, I find, I mean in conversations that I'll often have with people regarding hangups to Catholic conversion.

00:48:37.800 So it's like this person's an atheist or this person's a Protestant or this person's Orthodox and they're thinking about becoming Catholic, but they've got this one doctrinal hangup.

00:48:46.080 Sometimes I'll just, I'll try to figure out if there are actually practical considerations in the background.

00:48:50.540 Yeah.

00:48:50.880 Because it's like, you're talking to the atheist, it's like, do you really care about worship vis-a-vis God and the Blessed Virgin Mary? 0.73

00:48:57.840 Or, you know, because like I acknowledge the fact that if you become Catholic, you're going to have to change your life. 0.59

00:49:02.400 Yeah.

00:49:02.900 And that's burdensome, or at least it seems burdensome from this vantage.

00:49:06.300 Yes.

00:49:06.560 Because, you know, you think about Protestants who are thinking about becoming Catholic, that will entail a reorientation of a lot of relationships, you know, because while they may recognize, you know, that becoming Catholic is not the worst thing in the world, there may be some individuals in their family or in their friend group who think of it under that aspect.

00:49:23.580 And that's really hard.

00:49:24.920 Yeah.

00:49:25.160 And so they're going to be told you're hateful.

00:49:26.900 They're going to be told you're intolerant.

00:49:28.000 They're going to be told you're being brainwashed.

00:49:30.240 And they, I mean, like, what are you going to say back?

00:49:32.980 It's like, ah, I don't, you know, like, I love you.

00:49:36.040 Sorry, mom.

00:49:36.340 Yeah, exactly.

00:49:37.120 In some cases.

00:49:38.280 And so, like, I think a lot of us just have difficulty distinguishing between people, their desires, and the realization of their desires, you know?

00:49:45.200 And so, like, this person's becoming Catholic, and we just say bad person. 1.00

00:49:48.880 We don't necessarily, but someone might say bad person.

00:49:51.440 Or, you know, as it concerns, like, the same-sex attraction, homosexual orientation, or whatever it is, it's like, you know, unless you wholly embrace, unless you wholly validate what I do, that's a rejection of me as an individual.

00:50:03.500 It's like, I didn't say that, you know, but if that's your interpretive lens, then I'm kind of stuck, as it were.

00:50:09.280 Right.

00:50:09.500 So I think that a lot of the discourse breaks down when we fail to make basic distinctions, and, yeah, when we fail to actually facilitate a real conversation as to what matters or what the people are actually concerned about.

00:50:20.580 Yeah, that does, it just, this idea from that St. Thomas prayer keeps coming up, which is, and even I miss it sometimes, because I really like the abstract stuff, and I love the precision of nailing down every premise, but, no, maybe it's that this person is dealing with an aberrant attraction, or is too, I don't know, connected to some particular vice, or they don't want to disappoint, you know, Aunt Gertrude or something like that.

00:50:50.060 And, in a way that, in a way that's much more easily answered, though, maybe more difficult to actually live out when you realize that that's the obstacle, that's the stumbling block.

00:51:02.060 Yeah.

00:51:02.940 I think, I mean, I think about it, too, in terms of, I mean, you say things on the internet, and presumably people on the internet disagree with some of the things that you say.

00:51:11.100 Intentionally.

00:51:11.660 Yeah.

00:51:12.100 From time to time.

00:51:13.240 Yes.

00:51:13.520 At a spiritual director, I would always say, from time to time.

00:51:16.160 But, like, in my own very limited experience, I do, like, a quarter of a fraction of not that much.

00:51:23.040 But, like, a lot of people tell me to my face that I haven't done well, and which can be difficult, obviously, because I'm proud, you know, and I'm angry, and I'm vainglorious.

00:51:31.380 And, like, recently, I just, in those moments, I just pray for the grace to not be against that person.

00:51:38.320 You know, because I think that, like, a lot of discourse comes down to the recognition, like, it's not us versus them in many instances.

00:51:43.720 There are instances in which it's powers and principalities.

00:51:46.340 You know, it's not with flesh and blood.

00:51:47.620 And you just got to be straightforward about that.

00:51:49.720 There's no sense in, like, making everyone out to be just whatever.

00:51:53.380 No, this is actually conflict.

00:51:56.660 But, like, just to not be against that person.

00:51:58.920 Like, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and this individual was informing me as to ways in which things that I said could be misinterpreted and applied in a way that would hurt people, which I'm sensible to.

00:52:08.800 Like, certain things that the individual said, I don't necessarily agree with.

00:52:11.860 But at the end of it, I just said, like, hey, because she was basically moving to the exit because she just expected me to be angry with her, you know, in my proud, vainglorious way, which is a reasonable expectation.

00:52:25.700 And I said, like, hey, if you don't want to go, you don't have to go.

00:52:28.720 I'm not against you, you know, and I'm open to the things that you're saying and dot, dot, dot, you know.

00:52:35.220 And eventually she did have to go because blah, blah, blah, and thus and such.

00:52:37.560 But, like, I think that we often have it in our minds that it's us versus them.

00:52:42.120 Well, truth be told, it's, I mean, it's us versus the evil one, and the evil one is sowing up.

00:52:45.940 I mean, he's not sowing up.

00:52:46.820 He's sowing discord, contention, strife.

00:52:49.320 And I think that's a lot of what we hear in the static that's presently on the airwaves.

00:52:54.280 Well, that is actually a great transition to your book, Training the Tongue, because this is, I feel seen.

00:53:01.480 I feel seen by your book.

00:53:03.300 Yeah.

00:53:03.520 Because I talk about this with my wife, sweet little Alisa, frequently.

00:53:07.100 Okay.

00:53:07.320 This whole industry, and some practitioners more than others, it's detraction, calumny, and gossip.

00:53:15.020 And that's rough.

00:53:16.840 You don't want to do it. 1.00

00:53:17.740 Like our Lord says, if you call someone an idiot, you're going to go to hell. 1.00

00:53:21.440 You know, maybe there's a little more to it than that, but still, that's pretty scary. 1.00

00:53:25.600 You don't want to hear that if you're the sort of person who wants to call people idiots sometimes. 1.00

00:53:30.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:53:31.160 So, what do we do about this?

00:53:34.400 Because the American right has adopted a position that actually comes from liberalism.

00:53:40.920 It was more of a left-wing position, but now they've adopted, which is free speech absolutism, that you should be able to say not just, like, things within the confines of justice and morality and the law, but, like, literally everything, and there should be no consequences for it whatsoever.

00:54:00.040 And that's not my view.

00:54:01.700 I don't think that's a traditional conservative view or a Christian view.

00:54:06.180 So, how do we rein in our nasty little tongues? 1.00

00:54:09.540 So, I think the first step is a recognition of the purpose of the faculty of speech, which is communion, without sounding too—what did you refer to it earlier as woo-woo?

00:54:19.980 A little woo-woo, a little, you know—

00:54:22.540 Okay, yeah, woo-woo or touchy-feely or whatever it is.

00:54:25.800 New-agey.

00:54:26.380 Yeah, nice.

00:54:27.180 But, like, the point is to come together in a sense that—and this is a traditional philosophical position, namely that we are social animals or political animals.

00:54:36.400 Sometimes you'll hear it conjugal animals.

00:54:38.460 I like to add ecclesial animals.

00:54:39.840 But the idea is that our lives are meant to be shared.

00:54:45.820 So, we come into the world related or we come into the world for relationship and interaction, and we don't choose a lot of that.

00:54:54.080 It goes before us, which I think would be, like, a kind of classic response to social contract theory.

00:54:59.460 It's our sociality precedes us.

00:55:01.940 That is to say, it's baked into our nature.

00:55:03.840 The question is whether we'll lean in or whether we'll lean out.

00:55:06.780 And speech affords us a way of concretizing our thoughts and affections so is ultimately to share them so that we can come together.

00:55:15.680 Because by virtue of the fact that people have bodies, they're not able to occupy the same space.

00:55:19.940 Right, right.

00:55:20.600 And, you know, like, you think of all romantic literature.

00:55:22.920 Of an unchaste sword, it's like devour.

00:55:24.860 Of a chaste sword, it's like self-gift, you know? 1.00

00:55:26.900 But, like, people want to be together.

00:55:28.780 Yeah.

00:55:29.200 Like, people don't like the experience of distance, of misunderstanding or failure to launch, whatever, you get it.

00:55:35.380 So, the promise of the faculty of speech is that we can come together.

00:55:40.780 But in order to do so, we need to be good stewards.

00:55:43.900 And so, this gets back to the point about freedom.

00:55:46.000 Like, freedom isn't an absolute good.

00:55:47.940 Freedom is a good which is to be matured, ultimately to be disciplined in the service of the good that lies in store.

00:55:54.920 You know, like, our development as human beings, our service of each other, and ultimately our worship of God.

00:55:59.340 So, it's like, we want to be fixed in the end.

00:56:04.160 We don't want to be like, I could choose to serve God, but I could also, like, choose to do drugs.

00:56:09.060 Or I could, that's such, like, a lame example.

00:56:10.480 I felt very Nancy Reagan with that.

00:56:11.920 Yeah, well, it's a good example, actually.

00:56:13.620 Thank you, yeah.

00:56:13.800 Because I think that is how many people, including conservatives, many of them, view themselves, view their human nature, and view the ideal of human nature as, you know, the kind of person who can, if I want to serve God, I will serve God.

00:56:29.560 And if I don't, by golly, that's my right as an American, isn't it?

00:56:33.100 And I think that's not, the Mayflower pilgrims were Protestants.

00:56:39.000 They didn't have, probably have a fully Thomistic view of things.

00:56:41.520 But I don't think they would have agreed with that statement, you know.

00:56:44.300 I don't think they would have agreed with this notion that freedom is for the option of license.

00:56:52.320 And yet, that now predominates, certainly on the left, but also on the right.

00:56:57.900 Yeah, so I think the idea is that freedom is the promise of fulfillment.

00:57:01.080 It's the promise of flourishing, but we need to, we need to heal.

00:57:04.980 We need to grow.

00:57:05.740 We need to discipline our human activity in a virtuous fashion so that we can come together.

00:57:11.140 And so, on that basis, then, like these, I make the emphasis in the book about cultivating verbal virtue, because I think a lot of time when we hear sins of speech, we hear like, root this out, root that out, root the other thing out.

00:57:21.900 And at the end of the day, if all you do is root out weeds from a garden, you just have an empty garden.

00:57:26.860 That's it.

00:57:27.640 So, we want to cultivate good growth.

00:57:29.140 And there might be weeds that crop up, but the idea is that they'll get kind of forced to the periphery, and then they'll be easier to identify, easier to root out by God's gift.

00:57:38.380 So, yeah, just like telling the truth is something so basic, but there's a recognition that the only way in which we can genuinely share is on the basis of the truth.

00:57:46.600 Because if I project some false notion of who I am, you know, let's say that I tell you that I like, I know a lot about New York sports.

00:57:52.560 I don't know anything about New York sports.

00:57:53.800 I hate New York sports teams.

00:57:55.640 Not because of anything they've done to me, but just like who they are, you know?

00:57:58.960 You will.

00:58:00.020 Increasingly, given the Yankees' failures in recent years, they've done, even for me, they've done a lot to hurt me and chase me away.

00:58:07.580 Like a marriage that is hitting a rough patch.

00:58:10.680 Sorry.

00:58:11.960 Sorry, it's a digression.

00:58:13.180 No, it's great.

00:58:13.680 It's a good digression.

00:58:14.340 So, yeah, so if I were to pretend to be other than I am, that's not real communion.

00:58:19.900 You know, it's just like I'd always be insecure in the sense like if he finds out that I'm actually a Philadelphia sports fan, he's going to know that I come from a kind of strange middle-class town where people use the F word not just as a point of exclamation, but also as a conjunction, as a verb, as a noun, as a, I mean, it comes in as commas sometimes.

00:58:40.240 You know, it's just like, you know, it's like it's somewhat of a crass city.

00:58:42.600 I'm not going to impress anyone by the fact of being from Philadelphia, except for Philadelphians, you know, because it's kind of a cult.

00:58:47.240 They're hardcore about it.

00:58:48.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:58:48.960 So it's like, so telling the truth becomes the basis of communion.

00:58:53.280 We can only come together on common ground.

00:58:55.000 And then approaching like the particular sins that you describe.

00:58:59.200 Yeah, so I focus a lot on like conversation.

00:59:01.800 You know, a lot of people talk about dialogue as if dialogue were good in itself, which I don't think it is.

00:59:06.820 Dialogue is for something.

00:59:08.300 Yes.

00:59:08.600 And it's not always clear what it's for at the outset.

00:59:11.280 Like, I think if you approach somebody whom you don't know and say like, let's talk about very serious things, that person can be like back away slowly.

00:59:17.340 Yeah.

00:59:17.580 So I think there's a there's a point to small talk.

00:59:19.700 We're meant to kind of perform our communion in the way that we can, you know, with the hope that we might mature in a friendship.

00:59:25.400 But you're not going to be friends with everybody.

00:59:27.180 You might be friends with like two to five people.

00:59:28.960 Right.

00:59:29.360 And then you're lucky.

00:59:30.300 Yeah, exactly.

00:59:31.020 So, yeah, the idea there is that we're hosting a conversation because talking helps because life is worth sharing, because we have a hope that we can go to God together.

00:59:41.340 And so then in order to do that, we need to encourage people to come kind of out of the cold and like gather around the hearth.

00:59:48.400 Like, it's cold out there and we just lose touch with our extremities.

00:59:52.640 And we're like, what is going on?

00:59:53.800 But when you gather around a fire, you can feel life returning.

00:59:56.680 And I think that's what conversation is meant to do.

00:59:58.840 It's meant to welcome people into a human exchange, a human encounter.

01:00:02.160 But in order to do that, like, we need to build each other up because if we're always criticizing each other, whether to each other's faces or behind each other's backs, then there's a suspicion which keeps us at a distance.

01:00:13.000 And we're never going to be open up.

01:00:14.580 We're never going to be able to open up.

01:00:17.700 So I think that, yeah, the basic idea is the promise of communion is real, but that we need to discipline our faculty of speech in pursuit thereof.

01:00:24.400 Yeah, I've heard lying described as contraceptive speech.

01:00:28.460 Nice.

01:00:28.720 It is much as it undermines and maybe prevents the whole purpose of the speech, right?

01:00:35.740 The purpose of the speech, as you describe, is communion and the basis of that is the truth.

01:00:39.520 Yeah.

01:00:39.880 So I love the idea also that you cultivate these positive virtues because going back to good old Aristotle, you know, he describes sort of four states of virtue in my recollection of the ethics, which is they're the people who are just vicious.

01:00:57.580 You know, they just, they love sinning, man.

01:01:01.040 It's so fun.

01:01:02.160 And then there are the incontinent who don't want to sin, but they do.

01:01:05.540 And then there are the continent who want to sin, like kind of at a deep level are inclined to sin, but they don't for the most part.

01:01:15.640 And I think most people think that's it.

01:01:18.080 That's the range of human life.

01:01:19.600 Yeah.

01:01:20.100 But Aristotle tells us at least, and maybe one day I'll find out that he's right, that there's such a thing as virtue.

01:01:26.120 Yeah.

01:01:26.560 And that you can actually cultivate a desire to do good things.

01:01:32.460 Yeah.

01:01:32.820 And a revulsion against bad things.

01:01:35.900 Yeah.

01:01:36.800 Is that real?

01:01:37.860 I hope so.

01:01:38.560 I hope it's true.

01:01:39.600 Yeah, yeah.

01:01:39.700 No, I think that, like, the development of one's character, you know, proceeds by stages.

01:01:44.760 And I think a lot of people find themselves in between states, as it were.

01:01:49.340 It's not like a stepwise function.

01:01:51.080 You know, it's, so, whatever, I'm thinking of slope-intercept form right now, y equals mx plus b, because that comes up sometimes.

01:01:58.700 It does, yes.

01:01:59.760 No, I was talking about that 24 years ago.

01:02:03.440 Nice.

01:02:03.660 I remember, I think it was the last time I spoke about that, yes.

01:02:06.540 Savage.

01:02:07.460 Yep, okay.

01:02:08.100 So, leave pre-algebra at the door next time.

01:02:09.960 Okay, so, the promise is that it becomes easier, prompter, yet more joyful to act out of those kind of good dispositions.

01:02:19.440 So, I think, like, a lot of what we're doing as we seek to respond to the various goods in our life generously is we're addressing various obstacles or hindrances.

01:02:29.620 Like, a lot of times, when we recognize, like, I'd like to be more attached to this good, it will mean a kind of detachment from other things.

01:02:36.700 Like, if I'm going to be wholeheartedly for this, I'm going to have to leave other things behind.

01:02:40.900 So, you think about, like, an athlete, for instance.

01:02:43.180 Let's say that, you know, a talented basketball player, the point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers is named Tyrese Maxey.

01:02:48.980 Let's say at the age of 12, he came to appreciate that he was better than a lot of his classmates.

01:02:52.500 And he realized that if he really invested in this, that, like, he might be good.

01:02:58.260 And let's say at the time, like, he was in the school play, he was on the mathletes, you know, he was doing scholars bowl.

01:03:04.120 I'm just listing things that I did.

01:03:05.820 You know, I'll never be cool.

01:03:07.760 It's good to know that from the outset.

01:03:09.300 But he might have done those things.

01:03:10.360 You can't rule it out.

01:03:10.880 We don't know.

01:03:11.540 You can't rule it out.

01:03:12.180 Quiz bowl, baby.

01:03:14.200 But he probably said to himself, like, listen, these things all meet at the same time.

01:03:18.140 I'm going to have to detach from certain lower goods in order to attach to certain higher goods.

01:03:23.000 And human life's like that in the sense that, like, you know, I like Sour Patch Kids and I like cool conversations with cool people by chance happenstance.

01:03:33.800 And I like Eucharistic Holy Hours, right?

01:03:36.560 And I like heaven.

01:03:37.920 Don't yet know what it's going to be like entirely, but I've had some glimpses, you know?

01:03:41.340 Okay, so let's just say that it's Ash Wednesday, all right, and I can only have one meal today because that's the church's law.

01:03:49.780 And I might be lusting after Sour Patch Kids, but this lower good has to take the backseat to this higher good in the circumstances, right?

01:03:57.920 And truth be told, my affections should not be as enslaved to Sour Patch Kids as they are in fact.

01:04:03.400 And so I'm seeking to mature such that these higher goods have more purchase, that they have more claim to me.

01:04:08.480 And so I think that, like, what's happening as our characters are developed is that, like, a space is being created in our life to accommodate those goods.

01:04:16.560 And, yeah, like, we're addressing certain obstacles or certain hindrances to the full realization.

01:04:21.060 But then we're also coming before God and saying, like, hey, if this is going to work, it's going to be you who does it.

01:04:26.960 So, one, grant me the grace to desire it, and two, bring it to perfection.

01:04:31.960 So, yeah, the promise is that it should be easy, which is wild.

01:04:35.880 Before I let you go, I know you have to, you've done one of these whirlwinds.

01:04:39.380 And I actually, I enjoy doing this myself, fly in and out same day.

01:04:43.520 I know.

01:04:44.740 It's prevented going out and getting dinner, but Nashville is future Greenland right now.

01:04:50.660 It's all shut down.

01:04:51.420 It's freezing.

01:04:52.100 It's a precursor to our colonization of the Arctic.

01:04:54.700 It's fine.

01:04:56.060 Before I let you go, there are going to be people who say, well, okay, so I've learned a little bit about Thomas Aquinas,

01:05:02.260 and I've learned, I've had these philosophical insights, and okay, I've, he gave me kind of a hard sell on Catholicism.

01:05:08.120 Hopefully, maybe I'll take it up.

01:05:09.500 That'd be great.

01:05:10.100 I'd love to do it.

01:05:11.500 But at a real practical level, I'm at least convinced that I should want to be good.

01:05:18.760 Yeah.

01:05:19.240 How do I, how can I be good?

01:05:23.680 Yeah.

01:05:25.440 So I think goodness comes from beyond us, irrespective of whether one believes or does not believe.

01:05:34.460 Like even Aristotle recognized that there's a certain measure of chance, luck, fortune.

01:05:40.500 He thought that the virtuous man needed that.

01:05:42.960 And so in Aristotle's estimation, virtue is kind of an aristocratic thing, because he thinks that you need to have enough time, enough leisure, enough money in order to be genuinely virtuous, virtuous in the plenary sense.

01:05:52.900 But part of what I think is especially beautiful about the proclamation of the gospel is that the Lord's for each and every.

01:05:59.680 And not like a Marxist, you know, like he recognizes that there's, there's a certain goodness to differentiation, because he wants to incorporate us in a mystical body.

01:06:08.380 He doesn't want us to just like be blandly egalitarian.

01:06:10.700 Just a blob, like some kind of Marxist gray blob.

01:06:13.860 Exactly.

01:06:14.400 Yeah.

01:06:14.540 That's not a body.

01:06:15.360 That's not a true body.

01:06:16.200 That's not a true body.

01:06:17.460 And so I think that each human being can have the confidence that his life, her life is not an accident.

01:06:25.580 There might be bad things that happen, decidedly bad things.

01:06:29.260 You may have experienced some measure of pain, a heaping helping of suffering.

01:06:33.500 There might be a lot of like seeming incoherences, but it's part of a story.

01:06:38.700 And that story redounds to God's glory and potentially your salvation.

01:06:42.820 And so you can have the confidence that if you gaze into it, like it won't be the void that gazes back.

01:06:49.220 Like, so like, I think like a couple of preparatory virtues, which I commend to all people of all times and places are curiosity and honesty in the sense, like be curious about what you're actually experiencing.

01:06:59.280 I think a lot of people are worried to inquire as to what's going on in their life because they fear that there are no answers or there are no solutions.

01:07:05.980 But the fact of the matter is just taking on someone else's counsel or authority that there are.

01:07:11.360 And then you can be honest.

01:07:13.180 You can be like, I'm embarrassingly this way.

01:07:15.400 I am shamefacedly that way.

01:07:17.360 I am less than I ought to be or I am, you know, I think a lot of people feel that they are simultaneously too little and too much, which is a terrible place to be.

01:07:24.880 But you can stand to be curious about your experience and honest with what you find.

01:07:28.360 And you can try to hand that over, you know, like goodness comes from without.

01:07:33.520 And if there's going to be a goodness that enters your life, it's often going to be by asking for help from a friend, from a member of your family, from a trusted kind of source of wisdom, somebody who's been through it, somebody who's, whatever, been down that road.

01:07:46.100 But ultimately, like, I think that that network of relationships and interactions is meant to conduct us to God.

01:07:51.720 And so when he comes knocking, you're probably going to be able to recognize the sound at the very least and maybe even the voice.

01:07:58.760 So, yeah, even in my attempts to be less than preachy, I end up being more than preachy.

01:08:04.060 But, like, it's just, yeah, people can have the courage to live their lives because it's not beyond us.

01:08:08.920 People need a little preaching sometimes.

01:08:10.600 Amen.

01:08:10.980 That's the thing.

01:08:11.840 You mentioned you're from Philly.

01:08:13.900 I'm a New Yorker.

01:08:15.460 And so at various times in my life, I have been a little saltier with my language.

01:08:20.440 And it's kind of come and gone.

01:08:23.700 When I was a kid, and then I'd kind of clean up my language, and then I would come back in.

01:08:27.460 And I've really tried my best to root it out.

01:08:33.060 One, because it is a sin, right?

01:08:34.860 It's a venial sin to say naughty words.

01:08:37.660 So I don't want that.

01:08:39.100 I have enough problems.

01:08:40.500 I don't need more of that.

01:08:41.800 And two, it's kind of unbecoming, especially in mixed company.

01:08:44.720 But even with the fellas, I just try not to do it.

01:08:47.220 So I've done my best to root it out.

01:08:48.640 Now I actually have a kind of an aversion to it.

01:08:51.320 I try not.

01:08:52.380 I don't like it when I hear people use naughty language.

01:08:55.640 How does that principle apply to the other sins of speech that we all frequently engage in?

01:09:02.160 I think, I mean, not unrelatedly, to use a torturous formulation at the beginning of a paragraph.

01:09:10.020 Not unrelatedly, she said in haste.

01:09:12.160 So I think part of the reason for which I think it's good to navigate around craft speech or naughty language, as you describe it, is that it tends to lower the tone of a conversation.

01:09:22.280 And when you consciously or deliberately lower the tone of a conversation, I think you open the door to further verbal vices or to further sins of speech.

01:09:31.920 So when you say, like, hey, this is a place in which we say this word, that word, the other word, it seems to suggest this is a place in which we detract, calumniate, and otherwise gossip.

01:09:40.780 Because it's like, hey, you know, you can let your hair down.

01:09:43.880 Hey, you know, you can be at your leisure and say whatever occurs to you in the moment.

01:09:48.580 And so I think that, like, it goes back to the idea that speech is for communion, that we're meant to build each other up, not in, like, patronizing or condescending ways, like patting each other on the proverbial head.

01:09:59.220 But in a sense that I think there's a lot of excellence that lies hidden in each of us that requires the community, in a certain sense, to recognize and then to elicit.

01:10:08.620 I think it's like the office of a friend to kind of coax the good out of his friend.

01:10:12.400 Not in that, like, again, it's not in that, like, he knows better.

01:10:14.880 But I think that there are ways in which our friends pull things out of us.

01:10:17.700 And I think that our speech should reflect that.

01:10:19.640 It should facilitate that.

01:10:21.480 And so, you know, like, men tend to be competitive and comparative.

01:10:24.640 They tend to be, they tend not to give compliments too terribly often.

01:10:27.820 But I think that's a problem.

01:10:29.160 You know, it's like I live in a house with 45 Dominican friars, and I listen to a rotation of 30 to 35 priests preach each month.

01:10:35.880 I try to tell them, like, when I think it's good, like, hey, that was a great homily.

01:10:38.360 Thanks for that insight.

01:10:39.020 That was beautiful.

01:10:39.800 Because it's like, listen, the world's big enough to accommodate more than one preacher.

01:10:44.480 You know, the point of us being here isn't so that each of us could contend for being the best preacher.

01:10:49.360 And I think that when someone sees something in you and calls it forth, it has a way by which of ennobling you,

01:10:54.300 of actually helping you to mature into your true identity and mission.

01:10:57.820 And so, you know, so detraction is the sin where we speak about somebody behind his back

01:11:02.160 and we say true things, but like kind of true things out of turn.

01:11:06.960 It's like, did you hear?

01:11:07.780 You know, it's like this person doesn't need to know.

01:11:09.540 And all it does is undermine the individual's reputation unnecessarily.

01:11:13.300 So calumny or slander is when I say false things.

01:11:16.340 So I've stooped to such a degree that I'm willing to invent stuff just to hurt this person in effect.

01:11:21.580 And then gossip, you know, like we use that to name a variety of things, but often enough gossip is fueled by a certain idle spirit.

01:11:27.920 So I think like when it comes to detraction and calumniation or calumny, it's often enough like we feel like we're in competition

01:11:34.620 or we're in comparison, as it were, and we're trying to get ahead or we've been hurt and we're trying to hurt back.

01:11:42.740 Or it's like maybe there's an in crowd and we want to be part of it.

01:11:47.260 And so we tender this information as whatever is necessary for admission.

01:11:52.660 You know, it's like I've got the secrets.

01:11:53.920 Admit me to your company so I can share the secrets.

01:11:56.040 And it doesn't matter to us that other people are wounded thereby.

01:11:59.660 Whereas often enough gossip is just like we need to do something with our tongue.

01:12:03.180 And so we're completely content to trade in juicy morsels.

01:12:07.280 And I think that just directs us back to the point that we should be looking to cultivate like edifying speech.

01:12:13.060 Because, yeah, there's such dignity to our faculty of speech and we can use it in such beautiful ways.

01:12:17.340 You know, like the book ends with sections on humor.

01:12:20.540 You know, like humor, it's delightful.

01:12:21.920 You can point out incongruities.

01:12:23.340 You can help kind of people navigate the tensions of their life.

01:12:27.020 Correction.

01:12:27.580 We can encourage people in living a good life by just pointing out whatever this, that, and the other.

01:12:31.960 Not good.

01:12:33.300 Preaching and teaching.

01:12:34.380 Prayer.

01:12:34.780 Obviously, that's how the book ends.

01:12:36.060 But, yeah, I just think that often enough when we direct our gaze back to verbal virtue

01:12:40.080 or the actual trajectory for which our speech is intended, it helps clarify.

01:12:44.240 That's a very good point.

01:12:46.200 Father Gregory, first of all, the book is called Trading the Tongue.

01:12:49.980 I think I'm going to buy a thousand copies.

01:12:53.140 I'll keep 500 for myself and I'll send 500 copies out to every other podcast.

01:12:57.620 Nice.

01:12:57.920 So it's very difficult because now I think it's a federal law.

01:13:00.800 Every white man under the age of 70 has to have a podcast in America.

01:13:05.420 So anyway, that'll be good for book sales.

01:13:08.080 And even people who don't have podcasts could certainly use a lot.

01:13:12.160 I have much more to say.

01:13:13.060 Even on Trading the Tongue, maybe we'll have to have you back to talk about it more now that I have my own copy.

01:13:17.780 I love it.

01:13:18.340 Thanks.

01:13:18.520 Father, thank you so much for being here.

01:13:19.960 My joy.

01:13:20.300 Thanks for having me.

01:13:20.780 Thank you.

01:13:20.860 Thank you.

01:13:20.920 Thank you.

01:13:21.360 Thank you.

01:13:21.860 Thank you.

01:13:22.860 Thank you.

01:13:22.920 Thank you.

01:13:23.860 Thank you.

01:13:23.920 Thank you.

01:13:24.860 Thank you.

01:13:24.920 Thank you.

01:13:25.920 Thank you.

01:13:26.860 Thank you.

01:13:26.920 Thank you.

01:13:27.920 Thank you.

01:13:28.920 Thank you.

01:13:29.000 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 16, 2026

An Expert Exploration Into St. Thomas Aquinas ｜ Fr. Gregory Pine

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