"Endless Scrolling": Pope Leo's Blunt Warning to Catholics

Joy is not hiding at the bottom of your feed, and Pope Leo says it out loud. We start with his short, direct warning about endless scrolling, pornography culture, promiscuity, superficial relationships, and obsession with image, then pull on the thread that really matters: what happens to Catholic life when attention is constantly fractured and faith turns into something we only argue about instead of something we actually live.

From there we go straight at a problem a lot of serious Catholics feel but rarely name clearly: American Catholicism can end up as intellectual Catholicism shaped by Protestant convert habits and argument-first catechesis. We’re grateful for solid apologetics, but we also ask why videos of Holy Week in Spain go viral while many American parishes struggle to sustain processions, festivals, and the ordinary customs that used to form families and neighborhoods. We talk about what broke the chain, including liturgical disruption, catechesis failures, the collapse of local community, suburban dislocation, online life replacing in-person life, and the lingering trust crisis around clergy.

Then we get practical. “Uniquely American Catholic culture” does not mean copying European aesthetics or doing something cringe on purpose. We explore small, repeatable, parish-level traditions like a yearly rosary walk, a local pilgrimage, seasonal devotions, and family practices that become culture over time. We also share a surprising read of The Odyssey as an allegory for disorder, the suitors, and the return that puts the house in order, plus why that storyline hits so hard in the middle of a Church crisis.

If this conversation lit a fire or hit a nerve, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people who care about Catholic life can find us. What’s one concrete tradition you’d start in your parish this year?

Transcript

Hot Takes And Tonight’s Game Plan

SPEAKER_05 0:39

You look way cooler as a black guy than I do. I gotta do it.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

That's because you the there was not much change to make you look black.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

So we uh we're skipping Rarum Navarum tonight because we have an interview on Thursday, and I'm gonna be out next week, and I just I have so many freaking thoughts going through my head, man. Like I saw the Odyssey, and I want to talk about that tonight because uh there's a couple of things that like I've heard a hundred reviews on it, but I kind of had some different thoughts on it um that I that I definitely want to get into. Like I saw the whole thing as like an allegory for the church crisis, like I just couldn't help but see it that way. There's some things I hated about it, there's some things I liked about it, so we're gonna talk about that. Um, and then somebody tweeted something this morning that just annoyed me to no end, and and I was just like, like, I'm so tired of like Protestant Catholicism. And it's a it's a theme that Rob and I have touched on a bunch of times on this show. We've talked about how how much Protestant culture is seeped into Catholic culture because of the converts that came in, which I'm not knocking converts, it's just something that kind of happened. Um, talked about like the um testimony culture, things like that. But I kind of got those thoughts a little more succinct this morning, uh, through whatever the heck happened. And uh then Pope Leo came out with a little video that uh wasn't really about the endless scrolling that caught my attention. It was uh he made a comment about promiscuity, and I was like, Oh, I was I was happy to hear that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Well, hold on. So just to clarify, we will be watching a video from Pope Leo about you know, like not scrolling on endlessly online. How many of your own tweets will we be reviewing tonight?

SPEAKER_05 2:36

Well, like I said, the thing in Leo's video that stood out to me wasn't about the endless scrolling, it was first of all, it was a it was a good short match. It is kind of odd to hear a pope speaking English properly, right? Like even when we had Benedict and John Paul II, like they they spoke English, but like Ben Benedict's English was way better than John Paul II's, but it was still very heavily German accent in English. John Paul II, I felt I felt like he couldn't really fluently speak English, he kind of could read it, you know. So like he he could read a sermon in English, but I'm not even sure he fully comprehended what he was reading. Um uh now look the thing is I I have I'm actually pretty good about my online usage lately. Like when I'm when I'm off, I'm not like I'm you look through the weekend, like I'm almost never on there on the weekends. It's actually hard for me to get back into it, but then when we have to do the show, it's kind of show prep. So I'm working on figuring things out, and then also like the way Rob and I think is so completely different in that I for me to get an idea like worked out, I kind of have to just throw it out there and get it into the into the you know into the Twitter world. Like if I if I didn't tweet that this morning, I'd have forgotten about it by the time we did the show. And it's not I'm not good at like taking notes and stuff. So like that's kind of like Twitter's kind of like my notepad, and I'll just fire a thought.

SPEAKER_04 4:09

That's what you are to Anthony. What is it? I said, hear that, everyone. That's what you are to Anthony.

SPEAKER_05 4:15

Yeah, well, you guys are like you're like my journal in a way, where so I said, like we know the difference between me and you is therapy. Yeah, like I tweet before I think, you think before you tweet, which is it's why you make more money on Twitter than me. But it's also why we're complimentary on this show. It's like it's like if if you were if I had to talk to me every episode, I'd flip, I'd lose it. If you had to talk to you every episode, you'd lose it. Like you can't, it's it's kind of the reason this dynamic works.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

If I had to talk to me every episode, neither one of us would talk.

SPEAKER_05 4:49

It'd be wonderful. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna be off next week. Yeah, Kale, I think you're very similar to me too, right? Like, Kale does that too. He'll I'll I'll see him like I'll see him tweet things sometimes that I don't even understand. And I'm like, what's he doing here? But then I'll see him flesh it out in a later tweet. He'll like it seems cryptic sometimes what Kale tweets. I'll I'll say this also. Um one of my favorite podcasts right now is Kale and uh Steve Skarjak's podcast. Like, I I listen to every one of their episodes because it's like a it's a break from like Catholic content, but it still has Catholic flavor because they like the other the other day, Steve and Kale were discussing uh Steve was talking about when he was invited to Rome for one of these like super secret trad meetings, and it was just like really interesting because especially from him being outside of it now and looking back on it, and he was explaining he got he got invited to Rome to go into one of like these secret trad meetups, and his experience of the people that he was there with made him go, I can't be a part of this just because I don't want to be involved with these people. Hey, I know that feeling. I really could relate so much to what you say.

SPEAKER_04 6:08

The deeper we get involved, the more I understand that completely.

SPEAKER_05 6:12

So, um, yeah. So I mean, look, they're talking about completely different things than we are, but it was kind of especially I was operating a machine the other day, and uh it's it was good to just like listen to to their stream of thought on how they work ideas out and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 6:25

It's uh so Kale, uh Kale, what are you doing next Tuesday andor Thursday? That would actually be an awesome episode, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:33

So all right, so I don't know what the next we would talk about. I'd leave that up to him probably. I Kale, would you would you be open to filling in for me uh next week one day? That would actually be a I think that's actually the perfect fill-in. Like you, you and Kale would have a really good, a really good uh back and forth. I think that would be oh, he's gonna be in Oxford, he's away. Oh man. So uh the Bosch murder we talked about last last week. Uh yeah, somebody's asking what happened to the Bosch murder. We talked about that last week. You guys missed that. Um, yeah, so I don't I don't know. And then I also had um I did jot a few notes now because I couldn't really put everything into my tweets, but I saw them arguing with like Patrick Madrid over the Beatles again, and Patrick Madrid blocks people if they say the Beatles suck. That's how Jason got blocked. That's how Jason got blocked, right? And I'm like, I I think I understand what the Beatles thing is. Um, because I like the Beatles, but it's not necessarily about the music. It's because when I was a kid, my dad loved the Beatles, and when I hear Beatles songs, it makes me think of being on my dad's boat with him as a kid. So it's like a nostalgia thing for me. It's not so much that like I actually like the music as much as it kind of transports me back to my childhood a little bit, and like I have some really good memories of just like same reason why I love the song Erica. Yeah, I mean that that's just kind of how memory works and nostalgia works. So um yeah, that was one. And then uh I had some thoughts about Trump and Francis, and then also the spirit of Attic and so we'll get into all that tonight. We got uh we got a long show ahead of us. Um uh we also have a great Knick Knack success story. I'm hearing Sean Ryan. Somebody sent Sean Ryan some Knickknacks, and then he uh he went on Tucker Carlson's episode and he said that uh he's back at Mass and he's taking his faith very seriously. So shout out to Knickknacks. Knickknacks got another Knick Knack success story. So go to knick knack.com, use code come on, help me out here. Bring the banner up. Oh, yeah, sorry. Killing me here. Yeah, I know. Go to knicknack.com, use code AB25% for 25% off your first purchase, use code AB10 for 10% off subsequent purchases. And if you really want someone to convert, you have to give them the Knick-Knack Black Monk Rosary combo because that is like forget it. You know, you do something like that, and there's no chance the person stands any any more of their atheism or Protestantism or anything. So go to uh, he also said Alps suck straight to Tucker's face. That's awesome. Um, yeah, go to Black Monk Rosaries. Use use code Avoiding Babylon for 10% off your uh or any black monk rosary. We love black monk rosaries. If you don't pray your black monk rosary, you're not on the team. Steve is making fun of that too. Uh like like the Steve Skoja, he's like, you know, like I look because look, I it's something I struggle with in the space we're in as well. In that like being being a trad, right? Like you're expected to hold certain opinions and you're expected to be a certain amount of like corniness. Like, I've always resisted that. That's that was the episode. If you guys want to check it out, they were talking, it was actually their Candace Owens episode with where Kale Kale has this really good thesis on like profilicity and like how how we put ourselves out into the online arena and stuff like that. But um, yeah, like the trad profile, like the typical trad profile. I think the two of us strongly try to reject it. Not because we don't believe the traditional faith, not because we're not trads, just because sweet is itchy. Yeah, well, no, it's more just like the like the whole um what would you call it? Like the like the not the trad aesthetic, even like the like the trad LARP, yeah, like the the especially the the content creator space, like to the traditional Catholic content creator space is something that I don't know, I never felt like I really fit in, but it and it goes to this this larger question. Uh, should we do Pope Leo first before we get into it? It's very stuffy, and I yeah. All right, but that kind of will piggyback into the culture debate. Should we do should we do that first or should we do the Pope Leo thing? We should probably do the lead. All right, we'll do we won't bury the lead. We'll do the Pope Leo video. Uh, we'll play that real quick. And then I want to talk about like why your why Europe has these beautiful cultural Catholic. It's like it's like it's like a beautiful Catholic culture that came from Europe. And then when you get to America, it's like we will look on it that we'll be like, look how beautiful Catholicism is. But then we've failed as Americans to produce our own unique

Pope Leo On Joy Beyond Screens

SPEAKER_05 11:40

cultural Catholicism, right? So it's something I I know Rob has some thoughts on it. I have some thoughts on it also, so we'll get into that next. But all right, let's jump into Pope Leo's uh short, short, like two-minute little video he put out that I actually did enjoy.

SPEAKER_04 11:57

I just I hate that it's Pope Respector getting all the views for this. Who cares? He clipped it. Just saying. Who cares?

SPEAKER_03 12:18

No volume. What? I don't hear it. Try to.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

First of all, you said no volume before I didn't hear it. Sound came out.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Okay. Is it really possible to have joy in such difficult circumstances, we might ask? It is only possible if our life is founded upon our relationship with God as a loving father. The joy Saint Francis was speaking of cannot be found through electronic devices, spending hours in front of a screen, endlessly scrolling on social media every day. These activities often waste precious time. They could be used for moments of silent prayer, of cultivating authentic friendships, spending quality time with family, learning more about our faith, studying, or playing sports. Joy should never be sought through drug use, alcohol abuse, promiscuity, superficial relationships, obsession about our image, or any kind of damaging behavior. Surprisingly, neither can it be found in goods such as wealth, beauty, fame, or even health. For one day we will leave all of this behind. Only the love of God can provide us with true and perfect joy.

SPEAKER_05 13:51

I don't know. It's like a very simple thing.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

Very uh very Augustinian.

SPEAKER_05 13:57

Yeah, I I liked that he because the whole time I was listening to it at first, I was like, all right, this is kind of you know, just it's kind of like simple, like, okay, don't endlessly scroll. But then when he got into um uh promiscuity and even material possessions and stuff, it's like I because one of my biggest criticisms of the modern hierarchy is that they don't touch on a lot of these topics at all, and they just want to touch, like he didn't mention anything about climate change, he didn't mention anything about you know uh, you know, any of the normal nonsense you're hearing from Rome. So it was look, I know it wasn't some fiery sermon that he gave, I just thought it was a good message that he gave. And I I, you know, like it's not good to have this immediate suspicion of the Pope and trash everything he does, right? So if he puts something good out, like commend him for it. And that is actually the message I think priests should be hammering down on in their homilies now because this is like the stuff that's actually facing young people, yeah. This addiction to their phones, the looking at pornography, this uh, you know, using each other for for satisfaction in ways that isn't you know, isn't the marital union, things like that. So I um it wasn't even the dopey way of saying these things.

SPEAKER_04 15:17

No, he kind of it was just it was simple, but it didn't need to be anything more.

SPEAKER_05 15:22

Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm going to um yeah, yeah, but he did say sell the boat.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

I heard the Pope say it. I know well then again, water skiing's a sport.

SPEAKER_05 15:33

Well, I'll tell you the the thing,

A Strange Nudge Toward Daily Mass

SPEAKER_05 15:35

uh and Kale, please don't leave because I want to talk about this because uh something very important happened that I have to discuss with you guys. Really weird. Like Kale knows about this a little bit, but we'll talk about that in a second. But it goes back to kind of the Beatles thing where I was saying I had I had these really great memories from my childhood about being on my dad's boat. Um, I always wanted my kids to have those memories, so that's like the two things I remember from my childhood the most were going on my dad's boat and snowboarding. Those are two things my dad gave me that I just like I I loved them so much, I wanted to make that a tradition I passed on to my kids, right? Like this is like my ever every time every time the weather changes, my kids start to get excited that snowboard season's coming up. Then towards the end of the winter, they have boat season coming up, like they get excited to be out on the water. These and it became just this tradition that I do with my kids, and I hope that my kids pass it on to their children. Um, this this this comment real quick. So Kale and I all right, so all right, so Steve put out uh a tweet the other day. Steve Skojak put out a tweet the other day saying so. I I think everybody knows the story of Steve Skojak. He used to run 1 Peter 5 and then he had a real crisis of faith, and he wound up selling 1 Peter 5 to Crisis. But uh Steve's been going through some stuff where he uh he's his family situation is kind of chaotic right now. And he wrote a tweet the other day saying, I find myself praying to God, even though I'm not even sure if I believe in God. And he kind of said, I'm not sure if I should just do the th like, should I just LARP and do the thing, even if I don't necessarily believe it? So I called Cal on the phone and we talked about this, and I said, Yeah, like 90% of being Catholic is like doing a thing you don't want to do. Right. And it led to this conversation he and I had about daily mass versus Sunday Mass.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

I mean, faith is that that that kind of is faith, right? Doing things that you don't have necessarily intellectual certainty for, but you still do them, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 17:59

Like Yeah, because like LARP, because fake it till you make it. There really is something to it. Like do the thing and it will f like faith may follow from doing the thing, right? So we we we had this interesting conversation about daily mass versus Sunday Mass. So there's there's a um St. Joseph that's in Queens has a 7 a.m. daily Latin mass that I'm sometimes able to like go and slip into before work. Yeah, so like my guys will be out and I'll be able to slip in. And I'm like, I can't wait to go to it, right? I'm like super excited to be able to go in and catch a daily mass.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Cale was telling me I would give anything to be able to like have a 7 a.m. low mass all by myself.

SPEAKER_05 18:45

So Kale was like he's like, I go to daily mass four times a week. But both of us were like, but why do I not want to go on Sundays? Right? Like, like there's Sundays where you have to. It's the obligation. Like I go every Sunday, but it's this weird thing where when you're not being forced to go, you get this like real joy from going to a low man. Well, first off, it's it's way less um of a of a there's way less theater to it. There's there's usually no singing, it's kind of just you go in, you have some quiet time. You can bring even if you go into a daily novus order, it's like that. Yeah, you go in and it's very quiet, and there's often no canter, yeah, no altar servers, nothing. You're kind of just going, it's like going to a low mass, you know. And yeah, it's the quiet, and versus you go on Sunday and there's a thousand people there, and you know, it's just not the same intimate experience, but you still go, right? So you like 90% of being Catholic is you just do the thing, even if you don't necessarily want to do the thing. So Cale and I had this whole discussion about daily mass, and Thursday night, my sister texts me and she says, No, actually, it worked like this. My mother called me on Friday. I was out to dinner with my wife, and she goes, Ann, I don't know why everyone always calls me and makes me do this. I don't know why your sister won't just call you. But your sister told me you have to go to daily mass, and it's Friday night. And I'm like, But like she's like, uh Teresa wants you to go to mass tomorrow. And I'm like, like tomorrow for the 5 p.m. for something. Like, what I don't know what she meant. She goes, No, she said, Do you have to go to mass tomorrow? I don't know, I don't understand it. So I'm like, all right, I'll call Teresa. So my sister Teresa tells me, she goes, Aunt, look, I don't know if I'm crazy. She goes, I might be crazy. She goes, I was brushing my teeth, and I got kind of this like burning sensation in my hand, and I heard tell Anthony to go to daily mass. She goes, I don't know if it's just in my imagination. I have no idea what it is. But I just had this conversation with, and my sister then launches into she goes, Aunt, I just all I know is when I go to daily mass, it's like this amazing thing, and I love going. I start my day off doing it, but I never want to go on Sunday. So she literally says to me the same conversation Kale had with me like 12 hours earlier. And I'm like, this is so weird. So now my wife was going into the city on Saturday to go to a museum with her friend, okay? And I'm like, Ocean, if you're gonna start if you're just gonna start simping for me, I'm gonna block you for simping for me, okay? I know what you're doing, you're not gonna just sit here and simp for me in the comments because I yelled at you last episode. I will block you for simping. It took me a while to realize what he's doing. I hate positive ocean way more than negative ocean. So come back to making fun of me. All right.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

So oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_05 21:53

So my wife was going into the city Saturday to go to a museum with her friend, and she was going to take the training. And I was like, I don't know. I didn't want her taking the train in. And I'm like, I guess I'm driving her into the city so that I can go to low mass in the city. Because like the only the only daily Latin mass I could go to is holy innocence. So my Saturday, I was going to do things around the yard, and instead I'm leaving my house at 10:30 in the morning to drive my wife into the city, to drop her off at the museum to meet a friend, to then go to mass in the city. And I'm waiting with like this anticipation, like what's going to happen at this daily math, you know? And I go in and it was very uneventful. It was very uneventful. It was I mean, look, it was the holy sacrifice of the Mass, but it was very uneventful. Like nothing happened.

SPEAKER_04 22:49

I was waiting for, and this old woman was choking out how to give her a Heimlich maneuver and I saved her life.

SPEAKER_05 22:54

I kind of went not sure like what was going to happen. And I and I didn't want to go expecting something to happen either. Like, I don't know. Like my sister might just be crazy, you know, or maybe you really don't know. Maybe God wanted me to drive my wife into the city because something was gonna happen to her on that train. Like, you don't, you you really don't know.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

I would have bought at least two extra guns that day just in case.

SPEAKER_05 23:21

Yeah, but you so you really just don't know what God's up to with things sometimes, you know. But I just took my wife into the city, went went to the Daily Mass, and she wouldn't have driven by herself, right? She'll no, she won't drive into the city, I won't let her. So she was going to take the train.

SPEAKER_04 23:39

If that was the case, then you definitely saved her life, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:42

Uh, and also, like, I I did just have a nice ride with her, just like me and my wife like sat and got to talk for for two hours while we drove in and stuff, but it it was just kind of strange how like Kale and I had that conversation, then my sister called me with that conversation.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

And did you have any desire to go, hey sis? Uh why didn't you have that burning sensation before you reached for that lawnmower?

SPEAKER_05 24:08

Different sister. I have a lot of sisters, different sister, yeah. No, it was just like I it made me like ask the question like, have has anybody had any um like has anybody had any supernatural things happen, like things that they just couldn't explain? Yes, you know, because you hear stuff like that all the time, and I thought this might have been one of those situations, and it wound up not being anything spectacular, and it was just going to a to a mass, you know, but I don't know, it was just interesting the way that whole thing played out.

SPEAKER_04 24:45

I definitely have, and I'm pretty sure I've told the story on here before, so let's hear it. Okay, I suppose. Okay. Um you're on a show, you can't even not tell the story. Um I'll save it for locals. How about that?

SPEAKER_05 25:07

Okay, okay, okay. Um, okay, so let's get into the culture thing though.

SPEAKER_04 25:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 25:16

So um, okay. Uh this is why I tweeted it because I would totally have forgotten like what my point of this was.

SPEAKER_04 25:24

So yeah, guys, these are the tame.

SPEAKER_05 25:26

I knew I knew what I was getting into. These are the tame stories. Well, somebody somebody has said to me, like, why do you always have things happening? And like part of it is because I'm out in the world a lot, like, I don't have a desk job, I'm always kind of out and about doing things, and you know,

American Catholicism As Head Knowledge

SPEAKER_05 25:40

I I have I work in the city and I'm around people all the time, and stuff just kind of happens. Like, and the stuff with like my sister, I don't know, I have a big big Catholic family, so like weird, weird things will happen like that. Um and I I I'll be honest, I wanted to ignore my sister like bad. I I didn't want to go to mass on Saturday, like I really didn't. I just because I had so many things to do, and this kind of threw a wrench in my entire day. Like, I I had I have my daughter's party coming up next weekend, and I have a million things to do in my yard and get everything ready, and it was just you have to go to mass tomorrow. And I'm like, I really considered just ignoring what my mom told me and not calling my sister or anything. And um, I mean, I'm glad I went in the long run, just because you should never ignore God's promptings. Yeah, if you you know what I mean, like it I'd have I'd have felt terrible if I didn't listen. Even though it wasn't an obligation to, you know, it's just my you know, my sister just had some wacky thought that went through her head. And you know, women, they're always saying, God told me, God told me. All right, so somebody uh a Catholic tweeted something this morning that just made me just cringe. And the thought came to me what was it? I forget, I forget what it was, but this thought kind of came to my head, and it's something Rob and I have talked about on this show from time to time, but the whole the whole thing kind of like came together for me this morning. Um, so I wrote, American Catholicism is largely just intellectual Catholicism, heavily influenced by Protestant converts and the American Protestant culture they converted from. It's why the videos of Holy Week in Spain get so much traction on this site. The American convert looks on and says, Look how beautiful Catholicism is, while failing to produce our own unique Catholic culture ourselves. I'm not knocking converts, just making an observation. I think outfits like Catholic answers are great for answering Protestant objections to Catholicism, but they've also created a Protestant ethos where Catholicism becomes something like faith alone plus the sacraments. It's still mainly based on what you believe rather than how the faith is embodied. It's quote binding certain scriptures to combat the quote mining of other scriptures. The closest thing we get to genuine Catholic culture is that ethnic parishes that have a remnant preserved from their European heritage. So you'll get Polish parishes or Italian parishes that still do processions, but there's nothing that is unique to America. And we should work towards changing this. Now, a lot of people were like, um, I think Ryan, uh, Ryan's in the chat. He said, like, I don't, I don't, it would feel performative to do something to to like it. So we I want to talk about like the the the obstacles to building that uniquely American Catholic culture. And I want to talk about maybe some small things and what cult what what genuine true culture actually even looks like. Because it shouldn't be performative, it should be something like building a small family tradition that you do year after year that eventually kind of gets a little bit added to it, a little bit added to it, a little bit added to it, and then all of a sudden you kind of have this unique thing that you do with your parish family every year. And I think one of the main obstacles look, there's tons of reasons for this, right? You can't leave the council out of it. Changing the form of the liturgy itself was a huge blow to anything that could have arisen from it.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

He was talking about King Deplorable, who is on a Ryan.

SPEAKER_05 29:15

No, no, I'm I was talking about this Ryan.

SPEAKER_04 29:18

I don't think it was, I think it was Oh, is King Deplorable?

SPEAKER_05 29:21

Oh, okay. I think you guys confused a lot because you guys both have a similar PFP. So um, yeah, like the the council itself, right? Now, after the council, the hierarchy drops the ball with catechesis completely, and what you get is the Protestant converts of the 80s and 90s, you get Catholic answers comes up, you get Steubenville pops up, and that's kind of the main like driver of catechesis for Catholicism, other than like your local parish C C D programs, which kind of fell apart in the 80s and 90s. Like things were so nuts at the parish level, unless you had like a vibrant good parish, there wasn't really great catechesis. So people were finding these cassette tapes and CDs and things like that. That is what kind of taught them the Catholic faith. And they were taught the Catholic faith by these Protestant converts, which is a largely intellectual pursuit because they're coming in through argument, but they're not they're not being persuaded by beauty and and culture necessarily, like if it the beauty of the faith, sure, and we all talk about truth, beauty, and goodness. But you're like these Protestant converts are not from ethnic communities, they're not from like your local Polish parish or your local Italian, you know, they're not from those communities, they're largely American Anglo Protestants that intellectually convert, yeah, and then are kind of just left to say, okay, well, I have I have the faith, but what do I do with it?

SPEAKER_04 31:02

What made me kind of sad about your tweet is that I I grew up in a good parish, and like and there really was kind of uh a Catholic culture I I grew up in in that good parish and in in my town. You know, we it was it was largely um at that point a town still of um descendants of like Croatian and Polish immigrants, you know, uh all of our big events of the town happened at either at the Croatian Hall. People went to drink at the Polish National Alliance, which was in the bottom of someone's house, basement of someone's house, stuff like that. And like our our parish had you know, had processions. It we had uh a Fatima Cadet youth group, we did things. This is probably more of a like a night something from the 1960s, but we did a you know, a living rosary once a year. We had May Crowning events, you know, where that where everyone I knew took took part in, right? All the kids I knew, all the families I knew in town, we were all a part of it. And you know, we had a big annual parish festival that lasted three days and and you know, a ton of other stuff.

SPEAKER_05 32:14

Um but that but that's but like like you're saying, like that's coming from a European with like a the remnants of a European culture.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:26

That kind of carried on over here.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

But what what made me sad is like that even there now that's gone.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

Like uh the the parish that I grew up in had to be combined with another parish, you know, in town and uh eventually shut down until it became a TLM oratory, and now it's in terms of number of people going to mass there, it's probably as busy as it was when I was a kid, but the community that was there is all it's gonna it's it's people that drive in from all over the Minneapolis and St. Paul and like they don't do the festival anymore, they don't have all the events anymore. So like that that culture I grew up in is even where I lived is gone. And like I have I I I don't have that to give to my own kids now, I can't find it anywhere anymore.

SPEAKER_05 33:14

I well, I the thing is you think to even that period you're you're talking about growing up, and it's like you would go to those events, your kids. If you're if you're a parent, you have children, you're meeting other parents with their children, and now your kid could meet their future spouse at one of these events, and that's how you kind of carry that culture on. The way things are done now, it's like people are meeting their spouse on Catholic match, or they're meeting, you know what I mean? Like in such a weird way how people are even meeting each other. Our like our our my local parish does the first Sunday of the month. They do the get together down, you know, down in the parish basement, and and the and you know, they have stuff together, but it's not like the community center, right? It's not like it was 50, 60 years ago, even where I mean people are just so dislocated from one another from the online stuff that the way these culture, the way these cultural um traditions form is by having in-person meetings, right? Like you like you get together with each other and you start this small tradition, like, oh, every, you know, I mean your your best bet for getting something like that would be if you're in a small country town and your parish really is like the center of the vibrant life of your community. But it's so, I mean, for me coming from New York, it's such an I'm I'm parish hopping. Like I'm not even at the same parish every Sunday. I'm going the first and third to the one that's closer to me, and then the you know, the the all the other ones I'm either going into the city for or I'm going up freaking Glen Cove for. Like, I don't have a like a focal point where my children have friends at the parish and things like that. It's just and and you add into that like the sex abuse crisis, nobody really wants their kids getting close to any of the priests anymore because we have this distrust of the priests, even men, like you just have this intuitive distrust of them, and it's like, how can we even form our own American tradition? Somebody was making jokes, they're like, Well, how do you add uh Costco Buckies? Like, like, what is what is real Americana?

SPEAKER_04 35:26

And and I think that's the problem because like the culture and community I grew up in, it wasn't destroyed by Vatican II, it had survived Vatican II, right? Like it was this was in the late mid-late 90s and early 2000s, it had survived the worst of it, it was destroyed by by like corporate globalism that's you know destroyed every other aspect of local cultures these days.

SPEAKER_05 35:48

That's what it is. Like, so

Why Local Catholic Life Collapsed

SPEAKER_05 35:50

much of this was social engineering, right? Like, so much of it was breaking up the cities and pushing out to the suburbs, which if you look to 1950s suburban life versus 2026 suburban life, even that is drastically different. You know what I mean? Like, even when we got pushed out to the suburbs, like when I was growing up as a kid, I knew all my neighbors, like it just all the kids, and especially because I grew up on a block with a lot of kids on it, so all the kids from the neighborhood played manhunt. I lived on a court too, so like all the kids on my block played manhunt together every summer, and we, you know, but half of them were Protestant. There wasn't like anything that like really united us other than we lived on the same block. It was it what it's just so different now. I don't know if you could, especially because the liturgy has changed so much, like there's nothing deeply forming the American soul in the Catholic, like in true Catholic sensibilities anymore. It's like the like the the new mass is just kind of like this Protestantized. I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_04 36:57

It's just yeah, but there's there's I don't know if we would have it have more of a Catholic culture right now in the country if we all had the TLM.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

It may be a little better, right? Um there'd probably be more the a greater number of people who stayed Catholic, but I think you still have all the other same forces at work.

SPEAKER_05 37:30

Yeah, yeah, there's so much going on during this like this whole period, the past 75 years that have kind of destroyed the fabric of Catholic identity completely. Is it it's not just the council, it really isn't. It's all these other forces, it's the way media functions now, it's the social engineering breaking us up. It's like you don't have human connection the way we once did. It's um and and the way it is now, especially for those of us who do travel to go to a traditional mass, like you're not you don't live close to the people at that parish. No, no, we're all driving from all these. So I it kind of goes to like E. Michael Jones's point about that, but there's no way around that because even if I was going to go to the Novus Ordo near me, I'm not going to go to my local Novus Ordo because it's so bad. So I'd still be traveling even to go to a semi-decent Novus Ordo. Like it they really destroyed this the whole idea of community with the community.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

Even if everyone went to their local parish that was nearby them, and you were at mass every week with the same people that live near you, like like all the other aspects of a culture are gone. Like the like there is no more folk music, you know, that people share that people can dance to at community events, right? That that's been entirely destroyed. There's no there's hardly any more, even like regional cuisine, right? Like, yeah, Minnesota's got uh tater tot hot dish. Yeah, um, and people talk about Ludafisk, but no one's ever actually had it. Um, even when I think these other aspects of culture, they're just gone.

SPEAKER_05 39:18

Even when I came to Minnesota, like you took me to a Russian restaurant, you know. It's like it's like it's not like you're taking me to some local delicacy, you're taking me to uh which is totally fine too if you have a large Russian community living there, you know. Yeah, and and they all have bond the bonds of of you know, just community within that within like there there's something to be said about how there used to be ghettos, you used to have the Italian ghetto, the Irish ghetto, the you know, all of that, and then your kids would marry within that community, and but the way things are now, ever since the social engineering, it's like I I think about it with my kids, man, because me like my wife is half Italian and half German. So her her dad's Italian and then her mom's German, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:04

That's exactly where I took him. Yep. Yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Uh well wait, one other thing that was funny. Um, ocean ocean said something. Hang on. Uh let me find it.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Uh oh, there is one culture that has folk music in cuisine.

SPEAKER_05 40:25

Wait, what did he say? Ocean made a joke about Catholic match sponsoring our show. I'm trying to find it. Because funny you guys should say that. Uh I might have mentioned it in a Guns N' Rosary show that he was a in yeah, so Catholic, Catholic, the guy that runs Catholic Match, Ocean made a joke. He's a Catholic match now sponsor in AB. The guy who runs Catholic Match actually was like he used to give us like six, seven hundred dollar super chats early on. And he wanted to sponsor our show, but he was afraid that we were too controversial. And he was right.

SPEAKER_04 41:01

I mean, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_05 41:03

He's like, he's like, I don't know. I can maybe I can maybe do like a pints of the quietness with mother, but I don't think I could actually like I don't know if I could let you guys advertise for Catholic Man. But meanwhile, like our show would actually probably be a great place for him to advertise because the people watching our show take their fate seriously. So I mean, uh, whatever. Never mind. I was gonna say um, yeah, it it's uh it goes to this. So, like, what are some ideas for ways you could start it? I mean, some people had some good ideas in that thread where um you could start pilgrimages, like small pilgrimages with your parish that aren't like these grand distances, you just walk from like maybe one parish to a um uh like if there's a uh what do you call them? Shrine, yeah, shrine. So you do you do like a like a five, six mile walk to a shrine with your parish community and just start doing it.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

And if you do it once a year, and then you do it by most Catholic parishes aren't with five or six miles of a shrine. No, but maybe you don't start it from your parish, you know.

SPEAKER_05 42:12

Maybe you you find there's a shrine and you say, okay, let's plot a walk that we do every year. I mean, if it's something in Manhattan, you could do it from one parish to another. If it depends where you are in the country, but you have to get the men at your parish to organize it and say, hey, look, what if just once a year on the second Saturday of June or in May, right? Like for Our Lady, do something during May for the month of Our Lady, and just say on the second Sunday of May, we get together and we do a three-mile rosary walk together. And like you do that, and by year three or four, you start introducing little things to it. So it's not this performative thing, it's more organic, and then it kind of that's how you would kind of start building one of these traditions. But because we don't do that as Americans, I don't, you know, like we're we're kind of hoping for the like in New York, you have the San Janeiro Fest, where it's the Italian immigrants that came over kind of kept that tradition and they still do march those statues through. And um so um one of one of the priests I'm friends with Father McDonald, he's he's going to a parish with a heavy Spanish community because he speaks really fluent Spanish. But I was talking to him about it, and it's like those Spanish communities, man, they they kept a lot of their traditions from their home country and they bring them back, and they still do a lot of those beautiful things, you know. So, but we have to do some that are uniquely American for those converts that come in and they want to explain what is uniquely American.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

I don't know, it doesn't have to be up to this point in time. Like, I think that's the problem.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

It would be bizarre if we wore the KKK hoods like the Spanish do, is what I'm saying, right? Like, not that the word you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

There may be some misunderstandings, right?

SPEAKER_05 43:58

So it would be bizarre if. If we tried to mimic what the Spanish do during Holy Week, but we could do something on our own with uh with more of an American flavor to it, it doesn't need to be a copy of the European format. I just don't know what we would do. Yeah, it could be like it can be Archbishop Fulton Sheen after his canonization, like make the procession in honor of Archbishop Fulton Sheen and do something unique to him, I guess, right? Because these these processions start as like devotions to saints, don't a lot of them, right?

SPEAKER_04 44:34

Yeah, so I I just think that the the real the the heart of the problem is that in most of the country we in most of the country we've lost everything that is you unique, right? I think that's you know, when you say uniquely American, your average person couldn't describe something that is actually uniquely American, other than you know the worst things about America.

SPEAKER_05 45:03

Yeah, yeah. We have so like our like if you're gonna really describe American culture, it's like I mean, I guess cowboy culture is American and what fireworks on fourth of July, like what is the America never had a real culture.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

That's because it means there were there were regional cultures, but those are gone now, too. Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing I think one I think you could say something like um the Hillbilly Thomas, right? The the those those Dominican monks that play bluegrass, like yeah, that I think is a a uniquely American expression of Catholicism, right there.

SPEAKER_05 45:44

Yeah, yeah, that's actually interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah, maybe it's something like that. I don't know. I I it probably really does need to be regional and uniquely regional to each person's location, right? So I think it needs to start at the parish level. I think I think that's really the only way to do it. You have to start it at your parish level. You got like us young, younger. I mean, I'm not young anymore, but you know, like the younger guys that have

Building Traditions Without Being Performative

SPEAKER_05 46:10

young families, young children, you rob, and all the guys that like if you the problem is you're in the middle of nowhere too. You're traveling so far for mass too. But if you live in a smaller town and you see the same people at mass every Sunday, like the guys got to get together and just go, dude, let's do something. Like, let's do something, let's let's get something on the calendar and just set it and let's start our own little thing and see if that turns into something. It doesn't have to be weekly because it's hard to do things weekly. People are busy, people have a lot going on, but yearly or seasonally, something like that.

SPEAKER_04 46:42

You so Bobby says America avoiding Babylon National Park meetups. One thing, like my parents did growing up is we would do an annual youth trip um to the boundary waters, yeah. You know, here which is something a lot of people do in Minnesota, but we did it as a church youth group, and you know, the you'd have uh men's group and when women's group, and the priest would be with the men's group, but you'd meet up in the morning from different campsites every day for the for the priest that was with you to give to do an outdoor mass, you know, in in the the middle of the boundary waters. John Paul, the second style on top of a canoe. Uh yeah actually, yeah, basically like that's how they often were, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:25

That was, I mean, honestly, that was actually kind of cool seeing those, you know, those pictures of John Paul II taking taking the young students out up into the mountains and doing stuff like that. Um yeah, it's I don't know. We have to do something though. And this kind of goes to um my Odyssey review a little bit too, because what I I don't know, this is gonna be kind of a hard segue. You're trying, aren't you? I'm trying to segue it, but uh, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Do we do we have any final points about the the culture thing? Like, because I I yeah, the the Odyssey thing was interesting to me, but it kind of does relate just because of the council and what we're talking about them robbing us of these opportunities because when when I watched the odd the Odyssey, a couple things first off, it was very jarring to see Elliot Page. Like you can't the casting thing is a debacle. I'm sorry, it is. It's just the the the the black girl is Helen of Troy, takes you totally out of it. Uh Elliot Page takes you totally out of it. John Barenthal, um, he was in The Walking Dead. He plays like the you remember you remember John?

SPEAKER_04 48:40

He was in uh Fury, right? With uh Brad Pitt, too.

SPEAKER_05 48:45

He basically plays the same guy from Fury that he plays in this. Like he just plays the same guy in everything, everything, right? So he's just John Barenthal, and he's just like that tough guy, Jewish guy pretending he's a tough rapper. Like that's John Barenthal, you know.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Um well the other um John, how do you pronounce the name?

SPEAKER_05 49:06

Like was Ammo? He was he was okay, he was okay. Yeah, I just can't stand him. I did like Matt Damon in it. What I okay, what I didn't like was um Matt Damon's character, Odysseus, did not long to go home. I uh guys, if you're gonna yeah, I I don't I don't I did I say she?

SPEAKER_04 49:27

I did not you said Elliot Page.

SPEAKER_05 49:29

Yeah, I thought I don't if I gave the wrong pronouns, it wasn't intentional. Like it's a it's a girl, it's a she. I mean, I don't I get confused because he's it's meant to confuse you. It is Ellen Page, Elliot Page. I don't know. You guys know I don't buy into the ridiculous nonsense, whatever the hell it's like Juno.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

I just call her Juno. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 49:49

And it just took took took you out of it. John Barron thought it was terrible. What I didn't like about Odysseus's character is that like he's not really longing to go home. Like, like I loved the Greek myths growing up, and especially the Odyssey. And it's like he he he he he was kind of like avoiding going home, right? But the things I loved about the movie was the ending. First off, the ending is phenomenal. Okay, so but the way the way I saw it is Penelope's his faithful wife at home. He's off he goes off to the Trojan War.

SPEAKER_04 50:29

He's gone guy, he's he's about to spoil a 3,000-year-old story.

SPEAKER_05 50:33

3,000-year-old story. I don't know what to tell you guys. Like he's off in the Trojan War for 10 years, and then it takes him another 10 years to get home. Okay. His wife is the Penelope is his faithful wife, and she's surrounded by these suitors who are all looking to basically pillage Odysseus's home. Okay. And they're not just looking to like be suitors so they can marry her, they're looking to take everything from Odysseus, right? Like, and they're gonna take her, like, and she knows it, right? So she's trying to fend them off. And I just I couldn't help but see it as Penelope is the bride of Christ, and all the hierarchy is the suitors trying to just defile the bride and take the church. And Odysseus, who's Odysseus? Odysseus is the return of the king, dude. And when he comes back, he puts his house in order. Like, totally just puts it back in order, and there is hell to pay for all of these suitors who are trying to defile the bride. And it's like, this is the end of the story we're all waiting for. But it's not just the church, it's also our country that they've allowed all these invaders and these suitors to come in that are trying to defile our country. And it's like, look, the main point of the story is Odysseus is dealing with all this trauma for what he did in the war, and it's like the the one thing that's such a modern thing. It is, but I mean, you called it shell shock when the guys came back from World War One, like there is something to seeing trap like atrocities that messes you up, right? Like they called it shell shock when the guys came back from World War I, they called it shell shock.

SPEAKER_04 52:28

We have a world war world war one is like you can't compare World War One to ancient combat, like it is so inhuman on a whole nother.

SPEAKER_05 52:38

So he's not just dealing with what happened in Troy, he is dealing with what happened in Troy, he's also dealing with what happens to his men on the journey back, and he's dealing with a lot of stuff, right? But and I gotta man, I I I gotta like Peugeot kind of explained this that it's like what it is is even when you look at the post-war consensus, it's like we did some bad things during World War II, but that doesn't mean you let the suitors come in and just destroy your country because of this guilt, right? You you still do need someone to come in and put the house back in order, and like that's kind of the moment we're waiting, we're all waiting on it.

SPEAKER_04 53:17

I would say our problem is we have no guilt over World War II and what we did in it. Sorry, yeah, no, because as America, anyways. Obviously, Germany is a different story, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:36

No, but the West in general, that even if it's this false guilt from the narrative that came from it, right? Like it's the reason we opened our borders, yeah, right? It's like, oh, well, you know, we can't let another white nationalist society, like a German society, have pride in itself again. So like we opened up our borders and let all these savages come in through the borders, right? And has to do with this guilt. And like the the purpose of the story is that, like, yes, okay, you can you can have this guilt from this thing that we did, but it doesn't mean you can't have the house put back in order, and we need the house put back in order, and somebody needs to come in and put the damn house back in order and slaughter our enemies and make people pay for the crap they've done to our country over the past. You know what I mean? So, like that, if you see the story in light of that, it actually is a really good story. It's just it's dressed up in all this modern nonsense with the casting and the you know, like all that stuff, but like the ending, man, is just like we're in this, we're in the church right now with with these suitors who are looking to rape the bride of Christ and they're trying to destroy the church. Like you're what

The Odyssey As An Allegory For Crisis

SPEAKER_05 54:45

I mean. I have three different tweets from bishops that I was going to highlight tonight. One talking about how we have to freaking basically worship Muslims, uh, another one talking about how the Latin masses, like people who are attached to the Latin mass, are dependent upon it, and they and it's basically spiritual milk, and one day they'll have faith enough to come into the new Met. And it's like these are the freaking suitors trying to destroy the church right now, and all we're waiting for is the return of the king to put the freaking house back in order, and it's it's going to happen. It's just how long, Lord, like how long must we go on with this? But if there's something to also even Rob, do you have the clip of the priest I sent talking during Vatican II? I sent it to the telegram and it was positive.

SPEAKER_04 55:37

Oh, the one posted by the Chris guy. Um if you didn't verify it, I wouldn't trust it.

SPEAKER_05 55:44

Yeah, no, no, no. Uh just just play it. It's just a priest during Vatican II talking. It's like an interview. Yeah, it's from that guy. It's from a set A, but whatever.

SPEAKER_04 55:55

Yeah, but he also tweets stuff that's just not true.

SPEAKER_05 55:58

Uh it's just a video clip. I mean, even if the like it makes the point that we're gonna we're gonna go with you didn't it's worth it's worth playing because it kind of goes to this idea of a spirit that kind of came over these people. Like, this is even us in our country, like we all see how crazy it is to keep the borders open and let all these people come in, but it's almost like we're possessed by an outside force that it just won't allow us to stop this thing that we know is going to destroy us. It kind of gets to like this whole idea of spirits and like even Benedict, when he talked about the spirit of Vatican II, like there was a spirit of Vatican II, it was Judas's spirit that kind of overtook these men. Now, this is just a video, like an interview clip, or like a you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

Play it real quick, let's say. The priesthood, hoping that the celibacy requirement will be changed, but many are deciding they won't stay under any condition. One priest allowed PBL to film his last mass.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

I am Father Bob Brusseau. I have been a priest of the diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa for the past 13 years. Approximately six months ago, my bishop gave me permission for a leave of absence. During this period, also I have been employed by the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C. As of today, I plan to discontinue all of my priestly functions.

SPEAKER_05 57:31

Listen to what this guy says.

SPEAKER_02 57:33

When I was ordained, this was the center of my life because I felt like this was the center of our religion, that everything was oriented toward the mask. Certainly, I don't believe any such thing now. I think the real monster is the organization of the institution itself. And I think because everything must be passed down through the uh the authoritarian structure, but it's an encroachment upon human freedom. To me, the important thing is to break that structure. Then I think after we break the structure, we ought to go on to the evaluation of individual beliefs, like the mass. I think it's important that people communicate with each other, but I don't think they need a church or a public religious act as an excuse to communicate. You know, in any community, it's very convenient for people to go to church. You want to be said to be a church goal. Your friends see you there. It's a time to dress up, it's a place to be seen, and it becomes a very social act, which in itself isn't bad, but it's associated with a kind of class distinction. And I always felt like the purpose of Christianity and religion is to get down to the nitty-gritty work of bringing equality and justice and fairness and love to everybody.

SPEAKER_05 58:51

Like these men were possessed by a spirit, this revolution that was happening. Like we I think we have a hard time. Like like we look back upon it and we don't understand what was in the air during the 60s, man. Like it was just this spirit that overtook them, and even the spirit of Vatican II, like, there is a spirit of Vatican II. It's just a dark, dark spirit that pushed these men in the back.

SPEAKER_04 59:22

That doesn't even sound like Catholic modernism, though. That just sounds like evangelical from that guy.

SPEAKER_05 59:27

Sounds like a Protestant, right? But he's it's just that that spirit didn't think do you think about it? Look, I'm sure a lot of people left left the priesthood and left the convents because they were devastated at the changes, but there were way more that left because they thought like him, because they got caught up in this revolution, and they they saw the church as oppressive. Like you think about how much enthusiasm these people went out of the county.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:01

Like there was they well then that guy would have left anyways. Don't you think? If if his problems were the oppressiveness of the church, maybe remained in 55 and was a priest for 10 years before the end of the council, he probably would have left anyways.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:18

He might have. I think I still I think a lot of people still would have left, is my point, even if the changes never happened at the council, is kind of my point. Like the the revolution in the air at that time. I think I you would have still had tons of people leaving just from the propaganda they were receiving from outside of the church. Like, I think so many people correlate it's like, oh, the changes happened and then everybody left. No, it's like this was a spirit that overtook all of society, man. Like, to the point where at the council they fell for this spirit that was just pressing in upon them. And the same thing is still happening to us today, not just in the church, but outside the church. Like you're seeing I know like conservatives and Republicans are like, well, build a wall and we're against this, but it's like this this cultural suicide that we're embarking upon that we know is going to destroy us, but for some reason we can't stop it. Like we just can't stop it. You it doesn't matter who you vote for, who you put in. It's the and it's easy to just blame it on the elder brother. But no, man, there's like there is a spirit that especially when you look at liberals and leftists and stuff like that. Like these people are overtaken by a spirit that they've just given themselves over to. It's not even something that's coming out from them, it's something being pressed upon them and they're just going with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:40

It's like I mean, it's it's it's like watching the popes try try to stop what it's like watching the 19th century popes try to stop what was coming and not be able to, right? And it's like it's like that the them and and people now I think people don't realize and probably don't want to realize the level of violence that is actually going to be necessary to stop this stuff.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:13

Dude, you and I'm telling you, the Odyssey makes that point. Like Rob, the Odyssey makes that point. Like what it what what Odysseus has to do to put things in order, he gets exiled for. Because the retribution is so intense, and it needs to be, and that's kind of the point. Like, that's that that's what like I I didn't hate the Odyssey, man. Like everybody's made, oh, this movie, it's uh it's it's woke, it's this, it's that like I'll be honest, the the the the couple of like the casting decisions, they take you out of it very it's a very small thing that they take you out of. If you overlook that and you just like take yourself out of the five seconds that Elliot Page is in the movie or whatever, and you actually look at the story, like it's a it's it's a good story for us to hear right now because it kind of prepares people for what the hell needs to be done to fix the situation, which is complete violent retribution.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:18

And like I'm I'm not saying obviously like it would be moral to to to start uh violence, you know. But I think it's just it's just I think if we put if we if if we put our foot down the wit, you know, as strongly as it needs to be, the violence will begin, you know, in in

The Spirit Of Vatican II And Revolution

SPEAKER_04 1:03:40

response to that. I think they will, yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:44

They're going to start the violence if we just like you said, put your foot down. But the the the point of the return of the king is also like I saw it as like the return of a good pope or even the return of the king of kings, like the like it's the it's the apocalypse, it's the just judge coming back and separating the wheat from the chip. Like it is it is a very Christian story, it's kind of weird because and the the history involved is it is an apocalypse in a sense, too.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:11

This was the end of the the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, basically.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:17

So that was the other point I was kind of wanted to make is that you could like Nolan is telling an apocalypse story, okay? And he sees it, it's it's almost like Nolan can intuit we're coming to the end of a story in our own civilization. And the kind of wrapping up the point of the movie is him saying, Let's not forget the things that made this culture good, so that whatever comes next, we did we bring those things on. It's kind of weird because the whole point of the movie is like this Christian principle of love your neighbor and treat others as you want to be treated, which is like nowhere near an ancient Greek principle at all. You know, it's like love your neighbor and treat others the way you it's like the golden rule is the point of the movie. And it's like the golden rule, the reason it was so revolutionary is because Christ said it and it was never heard before. Like, you know, and it's like love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Like, we're so desensitized to how radical that is. We just it we just we're we're bathing in Christian waters and we're so desensitized to how radical that message really is. It is a radical message that you're Christ comes into a world where an eye for an eye is seen as like like that's not even really seen as justice. It's more like somebody takes your eye, you want to do 10 times worse than them. So eye for an eye were seen as kind of like moderating it. And Christ comes in and he's like, no, not eye for an eye, turn your other cheek. Like that's like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:49

Well, I I think we're so desensitized to it that we don't we don't, we really don't understand it. We think, you know, love your you love your net neighbors and and treat them as you'd like to be treated. means we get to give them everything, right? We yeah. Whereas if you truly love them and treat them the way you want to be what they need. You set boundaries, right? And you recognize that what would truly be good for them would be to actually help them in in their in their own country.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:19

Their home says you want to be treated doesn't like I want to I want to be treated good in my country. So I'll treat you good in your country. Like that doesn't mean I don't I don't want to be mistreated here. It doesn't mean that it's just but I'm just saying like the movie itself is very it very Christian principles, you know, and I think what Nolan is trying to say is we're coming to the end of the world. Let's not forget the things that actually made our civilization great and forget those lessons you know like and and then and there's a point to that something's coming next something's coming next and we and we've talked about this before too where the the getting to the culture thing right we see the remnants of European culture like Catholic culture right you see it and you're like man it was so great in the middle ages like what comes next will not be that it's going to be something different but that doesn't mean there won't be remnants from that that we bring forward just like how the how how the the European middle medieval states brought aspects of Romanitas into into medieval europe and and could say you know potentially even improved on the on the good things so like the idea of Rome never ceased even after the Roman Empire collapsed right and what came after Rome wasn't the Roman Empire but it kept so many of the good parts of Rome the system of governance and law and things like that that it brought over right what comes next is not going to look like what we see now. I hope not there are elements of what there are elements of what we see now that are good that we need to bring into the next the next phase of whatever happens uh it does know there are many odd yes I'm sure he knows that yeah no but I mean this one was so relevant because it was in the theaters and the and the other thing is my my daughter still loves to go to the movies with me and while she still loves to go to the movies with me I'm taking her to the movies because that's going away soon because it's like you want to as your kids start to get older you just want to hold on to any of that special one-on-one time you get to spend with them it's like my daughter likes to go to the movies with me we make a thing of it we go to the supermarket beforehand we buy a bunch of candy and we go together and then we talk about the movie afterward and it's like I'm not going to deprive me or her of that experience ever.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:58

Yeah Mina and I went to uh the live action Moana remake last week just her and me well and bash I took bash too and uh I get a big popcorn and a Dr. Pepper thinking we could share it. I got two sips of the Dr. Pepper and I bought a handful of popcorn and the three year old ate and drank everything else at one point I I reach over to get popcorn and it's gone and she's got the empty popcorn bucket on her head while she's watching the movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:27

You said the sheep detective movie was good right the sheep detective movie was pretty good actually like unironically right like it was actually a decent movie. Yeah it really was actually movie yeah um yeah like uh well that that can lead us into locals because I want to man I we're doing a Deloney clip over there we're doing a Deloney clip well because we got a comment and not even on Deloney I don't even care about him uh it's more about women being awful to their daughters in law um I want to talk about women women being mean to their daughters in law um just because I see a lot of it all over the place like I just see I just see families being like like like women especially if it's an only son will lose their minds when their sons get married because they feel like they're losing their son to this to this woman they married and I don't know I just got some comments and this this mother's scenario where her her son is married and he didn't bring the kids by for Halloween and I'm just like you awful woman you are going to lose your son and your grandchildren so we're gonna do Deloney over there. We got some other stuff too though I'll uh I'll tell my supernatural story over there too

Broken Prestige, Locals, And A Prayer Request

SPEAKER_05 1:10:50

if you guys want it again supernatural story and then I uh man I should do this before we go um while we're while we're talking about the church and stuff because I like I see I saw a clip of uh Fuentes talking about how nobody cares about politics anymore and it's because Trump destroyed the prestige of the presidency in the same way that Francis destroyed the prestige of the papacy. And I I kind of should have talked about this when we did the Leo thing because the Leo's clip today that we talked about was kind of just like a a good thing a Pope said. Yeah and it's like because we did 13 years of Francis and he did so much damage to the prestige of the papacy like we look upon the papacy with such suspicion now because of it. And it's like every little thing that that comes out we have to we think we have to nitpick and find the find the little mistake he made and it's like man I'm really angry with Trump and Francis for that like the two of them just just kind of wrecked the prestige of those offices for us where I don't give a crap who's running for the next election and I'm jaded when it comes to even Pope Leo and it's you know it's kind of sucks but the situation we're in so that was the point I wanted to make about that but um yeah all right so we're gonna go over to locals uh if you guys are not locals members if you enjoy this show how are you not we've kept it at five dollars a month for you guys there's no other show that keeps it at five dollars a month and Anthony's been talking guys threatening it $7.99 he says I'm threatening it I have I haven't pulled the plug yet I haven't pulled the trigger yet but come on man keeping it at five bucks a month like you guys think about how much you waste five bucks on like to come and sit and hang with us for the rest of the show think how much inflation has gone up since 2022 guys and that's how long we've had it at five bucks and we're keeping it there for now so get over there. Come on five dollars a month and you get to hear the rest of the conversation yeah I agree Molly 100% locals live views should match the YouTube views like we it's just a continuation of this except we get a little more personal and we uh we give you guys gossip that we we won't say over here we'll we'll talk a little trash about and you can you get to join the telegram group and speaking of which we have a uh there's somebody in our telegram chat today that has been going through some suicidal ideations so if you guys can say a prayer for uh what's his name uh Wesley Wesley say a prayer for Wesley he also found out his dad just died today so say a prayer for his dad as well he's going through it he's in the he's in the thick of it so yeah if you guys want to join our locals if you want to come hang for the rest of the show we're going over to locals now so um we'll see you guys on this you gotta you gotta show those phones uh yeah.