Novus Ordo Refugees: Journey to Catholic Tradition with Brian Holdsworth

Good day ladies and gentlemen very special episode of the show for you today not only do we have beard Supremacy not only do we have an ecumenical encounter between someone who attends the fraternity and someone who attends the society we also have beard Supremacy here on the show today so I’m

Very happy to have my fellow Canadian traditional catholic Brian Holdsworth Brian how you doing I’m doing well thanks for having me kenned excellent and this is also uh we should say we’re across time zones I’m in Southwestern Ontario you’re out in Alberta um which means for people

That don’t know Canada that’s like four europs away as far as distance goes it’s so big in this country so there’s a lot going on here which is fascinating all right so for those who don’t know Brian’s Channel you can check it out uh Brian Holdsworth that’s the

Actual name of the channel Brian Holdsworth yep okay yeah it was just it was just something that I had started as sort of a hobby channel so I didn’t think much about branding or anything at the time it was just my username and

Then it it took on a life of its own and so now it’s still just the same thing same name I’m thinking of rebranding let me let me let me see if you like the name so you ever you ever read M Mere Christianity by CS

Lewis y I think I think everybody has but um so I want to I want to do something called like mere tradition just um okay you know like what is tradition we hear this word tradition all the time it’s more than just Latin Mass it’s music it’s literature it’s

Architecture so I just kind of that’s that’s a direction I’m thinking of going so I might Rebrand as mere tradition but I think if I take away the Kennedy the Kennedy report name people will get lost maybe I mean that’s always the risk with with branding is that uh it’s meant to

Identify and it’s meant to associate with certain things right so if you change the name you always risk diluting that but if it if it makes an improvement uh then then sometimes it’s worth the cost in that because your background’s in marketing right yeah and branding specifically

That’s I mean marketing is a huge umbrella but branding is kind of the the key thing that everything that I do orbits around okay so do you think from your professional opinion if I said like meere tradition with Kennedy Hall would that be an improvement to the Kennedy

Report it it has the potential to so typically when whenever I’m evaluating something that is branding related so whether it’s a name or a logo or anything like that there’s there’s generally four criteria that I I turn to the first is Simplicity um this is this is obvious

Enough the more simple it is to or the more simple it is the easier it is to understand and the easier it is to remember and associate with something um the next is that it should be uh representative so it should uh it should mean something it should be something

That you can associate with something something else right um but there are good versions and there are bad versions of this uh the bad version of this is every dentist in the world their logo is a pulled tooth which is just like that’s not what people want to think of when

They go to the dentist Um an interesting version of this is something like Starbucks so Starbucks their logo is a mermaid right um now what does that have to do with coffee nobody knows but it inspires some curiosity in people’s minds they think well what’s must be a story why is there

A mermaid right maybe like the first people who got out to the West Coast had some sort of an encounter with a mermaid and this Legacy has built up this this great chain of coffee stores who knows what it is but it makes this it creates an association it creates a mythology

And and a story behind it so it should it should mean something it should represent something um sometimes again it could just be really explicit right if you’re a plumber maybe it’s a leaky pipe or something like that or if you’re a dentist that’s pulled tooth other times it could be something more

Elaborate um the next is that it should be unique um you want to differentiate yourself from from others who are out there um for the most part sometimes you want to associate yourself with others if you want to kind of uh ride their coattails a little bit but for the most part you

Want to control your brand you want to be deliberate about your brand so you don’t want people to accidentally form an impression of you and that’s what a brand is it’s just an impression that people have of you or your organization and if you’re easily confused with somebody else then you’re letting them

Dictate the impression that people have of you right so you want it to be unique and easily recognizable um and then the last one is it should be attractive uh you it should be something that resonates with with your target audience and that that that goes without

Saying so perhaps the weakness in the Kennedy report would be something like well it sounds like a news show it sounds like here’s the latest news here’s the report from the from the Kennedy desk or something like that right and if that’s what you’re doing then then that makes sense but if if

That isn’t most of what you’re doing then maybe that can be misleading or confusing for people uh so so to do something that’s more broad cultural commentary if that’s if that’s your goal then I I think that that makes sense to to try and uh explore a potential brand

That that would indicate that in in in a better way yeah that makes sense I well the reason I invited you on actually is I wanted to get this consultation for free so thank you very much for that but um yeah yeah exactly yeah but uh when I

Started out I was a teacher uh that’s a whole other conversation I was a Catholic school teacher and I basically had to leave just cuz I’m not a communist and the system is just really bad sadly here in Ontario and um so I fell into like having to make a living

And then um the fattima center asked me if I wanted to do shows I was writing for them and they were like this a Kennedy report so it’s just kind of the name that stuck with me because at that time it was during all the lockdown

Stuff there was a I mean it was impossible not to talk about some of the news um but since then I’ve kind of adapted and don’t really I do talk about some of the church issues sometimes but it’s probably like two out of 10 shows right now or something like

It’s not really the predominant thing anyway that’s that makes sense yeah yeah that’s interesting that you say that an interesting use case as well for for most uh Catholic audience members would be uh Matt Fred’s show Pines with the coinus he started that as like a school project almost I think as a

Podcast that was about exploring uh Thomas’s thought I think just kind of going through the Suma in particular articles and questions and uh and then he eventually expanded out to doing a YouTube channel and doing interviews and things like that and because it wasn’t just about okay let’s sit down with the

Angelic doctor and and probe his mind and have a pint with him that was sort of the concept of the podcast he he started wondering well maybe I need to change the show to something like or the name to something like the Matt frad show and he kind of toyed with that at

The beginning and I I I I even designed a logo for the Matt frad show with him at at the time and then he uh he second guessed that and realized you know what people know it as Pines with the coinus and and that’s I’m just going to keep

Going with that and so he reverted back to that and it’s been working well for him yeah yeah yeah that makes sense um it’s funny you mention Starbucks though I used to work for Starbucks I worked there for uh four years when I was uh

Between the age of like 17 and 21 so I’m 35 now so it was you know whatever actually it was about 17 almost oh goodness I’m getting old about 17 years ago that I actually started there and um they told us when we get hired there was this whole initiation thing in the

Starbucks I think it’s from Moby Dick I I don’t remember um but it’s like it was uh on the hull of the ship or something like that and it’s a siren and that was the thing and that was sort of the uh that was the the background for

It yeah interesting but still what what’s the association between Moby Dick and and Coffey um nothing yeah but there must be something though right like either one of the founders like really loves MO dick maybe or who knows but it just makes us think there’s something

More to this than merely I want to sell you a product right like and that’s what most uh most brands are aiming to do is to try to bring you into something more cultural something more profound than merely consumerism you know whose brand I really like is uh Dr quesi uh

Tradition Insanity I actually I actually pay to subscribe to a sub I love it so much but it’s true it’s just tradition and Sanity and it’s like you kind of know exactly what you’re getting and it’s kind of catching yeah I like that yeah and it plays off

Of something that’s familiar to people like theology andan or yeah is that what the book was Theology and Sanity by Frank I think so I think so yeah yeah yeah that’s true okay so I thought today besides getting marketing advice which was very helpful especially for all the small business owners in the

Audience um we would talk about our just things that are not how should I put this everyone’s basically sick of all this the news news whether it’s Israel Palestine or whether it’s the the Cade or uh the speaker of the house thing or whatever the thing is Trudeau every

Every five minutes or something silly coming out of Ottawa for us whatever it is and you know it’ be nice for people to have an edifying conversation about Catholicism and the things that we love uh and Brian and I do share a lot in common uh we’ve talked on email and

Stuff about our love of you know things like Chesterton and and just basically traditional things and music and I actually I know you just had Dr Kon about his music book and I narrated the Audi book for that and I loved the book and right and uh you know I love I love

That air we call it classical but really classical is one period but for the sake of conversation I love classical music as a genre and Fiddle music and we actually just kind of listen to that as a family all the time and so um I thought we’ just talk about what Drew us

To the Catholic faith and maybe that will flower into tangents that people will enjoy about you know other things so um you were I I remember watching a video years ago about how you became Catholic uh you are a convert correct yep okay and you were raised as

A practicing Protestant or just sort of nominally so so I was baptized in the United Church which for those who aren’t Canadian it was sort of like a merging of of the older Mainline churches here in Canada um and became something of a Protestant rival to the Catholic church

At least in terms of size it was the biggest Protestant denomination but like most Mainline Protestant denominations it uh it had liberalized quite a bit by the time I appeared in uh in temporal history and and my parents weren’t particularly attached to it uh although it was just part of their family

Heritage had been were United Protestants right um so so that’s what I was baptized into my dad didn’t have a faith really he was uh kind of a lifelong atheist especially at that point um and my mom M I think she Associated uh churchgoing with what it

Means just to be a well-to-do citizen an upstanding citizen um of the world if not you know Canadian society and so for her this meant integrating in some sort of a church life and I don’t know what her prayer life or what her concept of

Of the Trinity or any of these sort of traditional um Christian doctrines would have been uh but it didn’t really last very long I remember going to Sunday school when I was really little but uh By the time was probably five or six I think our church

Church growing days had ended and by the time I was nine my parents had split up and that really solidified uh an aversion towards church in the case of my dad he was able to just Embrace his Atheism in the case of my mom I think

That she felt a lot of uh animosity in light of the fact that she was now divorced um within her her sense of what church church acceptance might look like and so um she moved away into other forms of like new age spiritual ity and

Stuff and for the most part we were able to just find our way based on conventional secular agnostic Pagan wisdom um and that’s basically what we did so our values were just sort of whatever happened to appeal to my mom she was our our she had uh primary

Custody over us so we spent most of our time with her but she was working and so you know a lot of our a lot of our sense of what is good and true and beautiful just came from the popular culture from watching TV from video games from movies

Um and from school which doesn’t tend to offer much else than just the sort of the popular sentiment um so so yeah I would say a pretty pretty typical Millennial upbringing through the 90s uh until I started to re-evaluate this question now because I was baptized I mean I can only

Speculate about this but there had always been a strand of let’s say curiosity or maybe even a spark of faith in my life I had always always wondered about God um there were times in my life where I had sort of prayed God God was pretty nebulous though in my mind it

Wasn’t it certainly wasn’t anything like a trinitarian concept of of divinity um and then Jesus was something in the backdrop there sort of like I’m familiar with this guy I’m familiar with the Bible I don’t know how he fits in but I I don’t think I would have ever found

Myself praying to Jesus growing up at all um it was just sort of the monolith of God um who was very much sort of this personified father figure in my mind but still also very abstract um and I remember also having a kind

Of uh deal with God in my mind that I I don’t think I would ever really sit down and pray this or verbalize this at all but I had this notion in my mind that one day I’m going to become a good person but while I’m young and having

Fun that’s that can wait you know like like then I think a lot of people maybe they don’t associate this with God but they have this idea like well one day I’m going to become an adult and become responsible but for now I’m just going

To have fun right so for me it was the same kind of thing but there was somehow that was tied to some understanding of God at least as a kid and so when I actually eventually did start to find myself confronted with moral failures and a sort of a crisis of understanding

Of my identity and and where my direction in life uh I think I probably did associate that back with um okay so part of what this sorting myself out means also confronting the question of God who does God exist who is he in relation to me and what is he asking

From me and um as I did so I mean there’s a whole lot of context around what inspired me to do this but as I did so um I came to believe that there actually was a God and and that he was calling me to do more with my

Life oops there you go it was muted very similar uh on my end parents split when I was five or six I can’t remember like I was that young I don’t know if it was I think it was grade one but I don’t know if it was first semester or second

Anyway was it was long ago um on the one hand I was so young that I don’t remember much before that so there wasn’t like a an I should say this there wasn’t like an explicit trauma feeling if that makes sense CU it wasn’t like I have memories of something rupturing

Although I’m sure if I sat down with a shrink you know he unpack a bunch of nonsense um but um but then my parents were catholic they are Catholic but lapsed remarried that sort of thing so there was nothing I was baptized went to Catholic school but the Catholic schools in

Ontario well it’s funny um I actually did have a little bit of faith when I was about seven or eight because at my local public school this is how much things have changed what year were you born I was born in 88 82 okay so um you know I’m going to

Elementary school in you know 1992 9394 kind of those 95 grade 1 2 3 and at that time like in Ontario they were still saying the Lord’s Prayer with the announcements until I think I was in junior kindergarten or kindergarten um and and there was still Bible study so

There it was it was not taboo so it was after school but like a lot of kids would go and that’s funny the ladies from the local United Church would come to a Bible study and I remember going to that because again even though the parents you know didn’t have the faith

They were like well go to the Bible study that’s what good kids do they go to Bible studies and so I went and they you know they had the little magnets they put on the Whiteboard of all the characters of The Bible and I remember like you know thinking Jesus was good

And all this kind of stuff and then went to Catholic School learned a little bit but not much it was really bad sadly um and then I had a Protestant youth group when I was because I had no idea the difference Protestant Catholic what did I know um Protestant youth group I was

Grade six or seven it was a very charismatic environment and uh it was all praise and worship and the hands and the air and whatever and uh I had to come to Jesus moment when I was like 12 um wow didn’t last it didn’t last it was like I mean it lasted sentimentally

In so far as throughout High School I was like it’s good to be a Christian and I’m proud of my Catholic Heritage I was not like a a secularist but then um throughout University I the problem is is that I was how should I put this like without sounding

Self-aggrandizing like I like to read I like to write I like to debate you know of course that’s why I’m in this line of work so you know I asked all these questions I realized basically that my teachers had no idea what they were talking about and I realized that in my

Opinion I thought I knew everything you know because I had got a degree so of course I knew everything and um so just sort of left it and then in my mid-20s had a big coming back but uh but yeah similar simar similar background as far

As the the broken home thing and um yeah anyway so you’re about roughly how old when you start to be like I want to pursue like Faith as an objective thing well I would say I was about 19 when I started accidentally 18 or 19 when I started accidentally exploring

That and and that was through circum just the circumstances of my life were unraveling a little bit so I was I’m the kind of person who well I’ll say from my work ethic growing up was one in which I I found that I was able to

Achieve the the level of success that I could be satisfied with by with very little effort right so I had a certain measure of talent that would get me the grades I wanted or get me the friends I wanted or get you know if I was playing

Sports same kind of thing I didn’t want to put in a lot of extra effort though to to build upon that and to achieve some sort of Excellence or anything and that had worked well enough for me until I had applied to the program that I

Wanted to get into in college which was a uh like a uh like a Visual Communications program so kind of a fine arts program but I wanted to be a graphic designer and a web designer and this was really all all that existed at the time and so they you

Had to submit a portfolio and uh do an interview and I think write a few essays as well and I I had really done the bare minimum on this thinking that you know this has always worked for me in the past uh until uh I didn’t get in and so

A lot of my friends were going off to college uh except for me um I was still working at the paint store that I worked at through High School the kind in which you know as the part-time high school kids we would look down upon the

Full-timers for this is all you could do with your life and now all of a sudden here I am uh not even doing as much as they have done with their lives right and and just thinking like boy this this is uh a real wakeup call you know um

What am I doing with my life I need I need to get my act together because I had expected much more from myself but not because I deserved it obviously I had a bad attitude and and and didn’t know anything about virtue or or vice or

The kinds of things that I was I was operating within um so that did that required a bit of soul searching um maybe this was the moment where I had to become that good person that I had always said might become at some point um simultaneously uh my girlfriend at the

Time she was the kind of person who every six months or so would get a new best friend um and and for her this was she didn’t really understand friendship very well um and this is only something that I’m starting to piece together better myself but I I recently read the

Four loves by CS Lewis and one of the things he says about friendship is that friendship is the kind of relationship that is built upon mutual love of something like there’s a common denominator something that you love together and so the orientation of a friendship is two or more people looking

Towards something that they love and aiming their lives towards that thing and sharing the love and the relationship that they have with each other out of this this mutual love so for example religion could be this thing right we’re all we’re all Catholic we all go to the same church we all believe

The same thing we’re looking towards God together um that’s what friendship is but my girlfriend for her she friendship was for her more like AOS so OS is where the thing that you love is the other person not some some common interest right so um if friendship is is

People all looking in a common Direction um AOS is people looking in the opposite direction people looking at each other and just infatuated with each other and that’s how she treated friendship so she was always she some new infatuation that she had whe whether it was someone of

The opposite or the same sex and in this case it was a friend um it was a mutual friend that i’ had gone to high school with for a long time and um I didn’t I didn’t know much about her her name was well I’m not going to

Say her name just to spare her in case she doesn’t want it out there um let’s say her name was Sharon so so our mutual friend Sharon was somebody that I I had known in high school and and gone snowboarding with a bunch that’s that’s how I knew her

Mostly but as it turns out Sharon’s family had a Bible study that her mom would lead and I didn’t know anything uh about this aspect of her life and so my girlfriend said hey I I’m going to this Bible study and I want you to come and I

Was like no thank you I’m not interested in that at all um but she she really wore the pants in that relationship so she made me go and so I reluctantly went and and as I did so I I found myself uh really um enjoying the conversation this

Wasn’t really a scriptural study per se it was more let’s just talk about life let’s talk about some of the things that uh maybe you haven’t been in the habit of talking about with your parents that you should should have been right these are the kinds of conversations every

Parent should be having with their kids routinely as they’re growing up and a lot of us didn’t get that and so to have these conversations with her mom who was a very holy and uh Serene and humble woman uh was was very meaningful and enjoyable and she would also lead us

Through these sort of prayerful exercises um but it was all very high level you didn’t even get a sense that this is explicitly Christian necessarily and um my relationship with my girlfriend ended um um and she stopped going to the Bible study she found some new infatuation but I kept going because

There was something there that I I was really drawn to and so the more we would have these conversations the more I thought you know I really do need to confront this question of God um and these this family just inspired me so much too like they had so much of what I

Wanted in my own family um and they had so many characteristics and qualities and virtues I wouldn’t have recognized them as virtues but they had something about them some indefinable quality in my mind that I wanted and so I thought well maybe it’s their faith and so uh

One night after I came home from the Bible study I was the only person who was home like it was dark I don’t know where the rest of my family was but this was pretty typical in my family life that you know we were all just doing our

Own thing and I thought okay well here’s here’s a moment I have to myself and so I just sat down on the couch I didn’t turn any lights on or anything and I just put my distress signal out into the universe and said God if you’re

There uh can you reveal yourself to me in some way that will be meaningful for me and if you do I will take that to mean that you want me to follow you um however I understand that and it’s really hard to explain what happened next um but there was definitely a

Physical presence um like I felt a physical presence I felt overwhelmed by just this sense of of peace and serenity and goodness um and it was it was extremely um I don’t know it just i’ never experienced anything like that and it touched me just to the sort of the core

Of my soul and it was convincing for me um was probably the most mystical experience I’ve ever had and I resolved from that day forward okay well then then you do exist and I’m going to pursue you and try to know you better in my life so that was that was really the

Start of what inspired me to take theism at least more seriously and since it had come in a somewhat Christian context and because I had some with Christianity I thought well that’s that’s the place to start so I’m going to start reading the Bible um and and simultaneously I think

I need to probably find a church to go to um this family uh Sharon and her family uh they were catholic and so I but I there’s a lot of anti- Catholicism in my my family’s um Heritage my grandparents were extremely anti-catholic uh in the city that I I

Grew up in the public schools were actually Catholic schools because it’s an old frankophone missionary or mission where that this this communities founded um but their Catholic identity was very diluted in the in the public schools here um and so my impression of Catholicism was extremely negative other

Than this particular family and so I thought well I’m going to find my own way and so I started reading scripture and I went back to the United Church where I was baptized um was quickly turned off from what was going on there um my my aim was

I want to know how to be a Christian because I don’t know what that looks like I don’t know what that means and I’m also reading scripture and I don’t understand what a lot of a lot of what is contained there specifically I was reading the New Testament um so really

Familiarizing myself with Jesus’s life and teachings and so I kind of took a step back from church and then I would go try another one I’d be like okay that’s interesting not what I expected and then I’d go try another one and the thing that I found very frustrating about the

Whole experience was that there was just incompatibility you’d get little glimpses of things that I was reading about in scripture and expecting to see in a church and that was good but then a lot of other things that I was like what why are we doing this this doesn’t seem

To make any sense at all and then in other churches some different fragment that was good and and perhaps um consistent with what I was reading in scripture but then of course other things and a lot of incompatibility and I just thought you know I’m reading

About this group of 12 that that Jesus is forming these people who uh he’s he’s really diligently hammering into these guys what he wants from them and then he’s giving them the ability to do the things that he was doing to to heal the sick to cast out demons and to proclaim

The kingdom um pretty much his authority as far as I could tell and then of course you come across things like uh Matthew 16 where he explicitly gives them this binding indisputable Authority and I I’m I’m sitting here looking at the landscape of churches that i’ gone to I’m thinking like nobody even

Pretends like they have this Authority or any of the abilities to lead like he does and the more I became acquainted with some of their Theology and their ecclesiology I was coming to realize that they actually explicitly deny that such an authority exists and so I was

Like well who who does have who even claims to have that Authority let alone actually has it and as far as I could tell at least in the western tradition Catholicism was the only one so for me this became an exploration of okay protestantism versus Catholicism and

Again from everything I had been reading in script sure there were little things that Protestants could could nitpick about like call no man father but it’s like yeah but the Catholics have an explanation for that and you know it’s not it’s not a slam dunk case right that’s not a silver bullet against

Catholicism meanwhile um there’s bigger picture of things like Apostolic Authority and Apostolic succession um that the Protestants don’t even pretend to have um so as I explored that and as I read about the history I just found myself siding with Catholicism um and I really didn’t want

Catholicism to be true because the par the Catholic parish that I had snuck into for the odd time and went to check out I was like I don’t think I identify with these people at all it was it was a much older demographic the the music and

The preaching were very very subpar to what I had experienced in different Protestant churches I was more in the habit of going to a u a young adult Pentecostal church at that time and it I mean a thousand young adults people my own age who looked like me who talked

Like me were coming to this thing every we every Sunday the preaching was amazing the music was praise and worship which I was sort of like that’s not my style but it’s qual they’re doing a good job like it’s quality whereas at the Catholic church it’s definitely not my style and they’re not

Doing a good job of it so my attraction to Catholicism was uh non-existent um but I couldn’t deny the truth of of the things that I was reading and so um So I entered into rcia and um and at least in so far as my conversion to Catholicism goes that’s the rest is

History H yeah that’s fascinating so yeah it was uh speaking of that family that you encountered just sort of the goodness of family life and you think what’s behind it that was uh important for me as well there that come to Jesus moment I mentioned where I was at this

Youth group it was actually with a friend of mine whose dad was a teacher at the old public school I went to um and they were just like non-denominational kind of like Baptist in their background but non- denominational and and their family was great like they had a bunch of kids and

They were just wonderful I mean the parents loved each other they loved the kids the mom stayed home she made egg salad from scratch at lunchtime it was like whoa what is this little perfect Paradise you know and uh you know my mom’s working and it’s you got it’s a

Tough grind and uh so that was a big thing too I was like whatever these people have I want that thing so that seems to be it for a lot of people yeah um yeah I think so like one thing I’ll say too about about the Family Life

De mention so I was a bit old I was I was nine when my my parents first split and 10 when they got divorced and I’ll say that was such a traumatic thing for me that I felt like I’ve experienced something so hard and yet nobody who

Should care seems to care that this is happening all all over the place this this very traumatic and awful thing um and if anything it felt like I was getting gaslit by Society where they’re just sort of like yeah people people should be able to get divorced if they

Fall out of love and it’s no big deal and it’s like no it was a big deal um and not just for me but my brothers and the trauma was wasn’t just something that was internal it was manifesting itself in very awful ways in our lives

As we did you become I became a really angry kid did you become did you get the anger problem oh yeah yes yeah absolutely so I became a very rebellious person as a as a result of that too right because the thing that I thought the good thing that I thought that I

Should have um the people that I thought I could depend upon and Trust had betrayed that and and confiscated that from me and so when when it comes to your elders imposing rules and trying to form you and Mentor you I just thought I’m not

Going to listen to you at all I don’t I don’t trust what you have to say and so I I became deeply embedded within like skateboarding culture and punk rock music and heavy metal and all this kind of stuff and really identified with at least the emotion behind all of that

Right like just screw the world I I it’s betrayed me so I’m not gonna be loyal to it you know um and the other thing you know as I started to explore churches it’s like the Catholic Church seemed to be the only one who treated marriage with the severity that was consistent

With the effects of it being ruptured in my life right right like this is an actually really important thing and we want to honor it and we want to protect it and uncompromisingly whereas everybody else was just like yeah it’s okay no big deal it’s like no it’s a big deal it it

Screwed me up yeah it’s uh this idea of the trauma you go through there’s two things I want to touch on with that the trauma that you went through almost like the photo negative of a picture like you saw it from the other side and you go if it

Hurts this much it must be the reverse it must be that important um absolutely and and I agree so you know I I don’t remember what age it was but I remember from young age um you I had a couple girlfriends before I got married you know but I got

Married relatively young I was 24 I would have been married earlier I got we got engaged when I was 22 and and but you know the world tells us to wait and you know you buy a house for all the secular things right and whatever um we

Weren’t practicing at the time so we didn’t do things the right way and I wish we did but such is life and um but nonetheless I remember at a young age um saying to myself like almost like a promise like I’m never going to to get

Divorced and I remember even when I was in sort of like the dating World which I wasn’t in very long thankfully I remember even when I was like 16 you know talking about having girlfriends and stuff and I said to myself why would I ever want to be in a relationship with

Somebody that I didn’t want to marry and I would explain things like that to like guys I was on the football team with I’m like the captain of the football team where all bunch of jocks and they’re just talk in locker room talk and I’m

Like I don’t know man like I I I might want to marry her one day they’re like what’s wrong with you and I’m like I don’t know what is wrong with me right but um but I just couldn’t conceive it otherwise because I was like well this

Thing will lead to this thing and when that thing breaks it really hurts people and so that was something and yeah and that’s one of the reasons why today in the church like I’m really sympathetic to a lot of people who take different views on certain things because the

Trauma that’s going on with a lot of Catholics today it’s just difficult like it’s just really hard it’s just really hard for people you know they’re just trying to whether it’s the papacy stuff or their ship or whatever whatever the thing is and uh people are kind of in

Like a fog of War that’s kind of what happens with trauma so I’m pretty like I’m pretty easy on people if they take different views on certain things when it comes to like what the response should be to the crisis because when you’re in that position of trauma it’s

Like anybody’s guess what you should do you know does that make sense yeah absolutely I I couldn’t agree more I mean um it’s it’s hard to remember that because it feels like we’re like you say we are at War a lot of the a lot of the

Time but um uh this has certainly been the more I reflect on it the more I contemplate um it’s becoming more and more my my my official policy whether I can actually live up to it or not is to to give people some room it seems to me

That there are uh there are characters out there who are are pretty malicious though at the same time and and you know there’s only so much room I’m willing to give them but uh you know the differences that you and I have for for example in our

Ecclesiology like I I I sympathize with people that that end up going to the sspx I mean I have concerns and I think that there are compromises there but at the same time uh I I can understand why um people feel that it’s a necessary compromise yeah and uh yeah that’s

People yeah they’re just trying to get their kids to heaven and and um yes there’s not a lot of not a lot of options lot in a lot of ways so I want to touch on this idea of friendship because I think you like me you’ll probably have

Experienced when you became a Catholic you probably had a really easy time making new friends that became good friends and I experienced that and I was talking with a family member the other day who is in sort of the secular world and he was explaining to me how like nobody has

Friends uh in their their 20s nowaday like nobody has good friends I mean okay by chances the odd person you grew up with they still live in town or whatever okay fine maybe there’s like a pro a kinship of proximity or something but yeah you know um if it’s

Not a work friend if you’re done playing college football it’s not somebody you’re on the team with uh people like don’t have really deep meaningful relationships with people who they’re not in a romantic relationship with and what you say about the four loves um Benedict Pope Benedict wrote a

Book I read it years ago on Christian friendship I think it might it’s either called on Christian Brotherhood or Christian friendship it’s quite short if you haven’t read it i’ recommend it I think it’s like 80 Pages or something I read it in like an afternoon and um he

Says which um is a it’s a it’s a very traditionally minded statement that would be very difficult for a lot of people to hear but he says Catholics can’t even really have true friendships with Protestants and he has all this Theology and he goes through St Paul about it now

Obviously he’s speaking in the general sense people have different types of friendships but he was talking about that true communion so to speak between one man and another um it can only flower to its fullest when the most fundamental things are shared to the degree that they have been exhausted

Logically so um you know uh yes okay a Protestant guy and a Catholic guy okay we’re buddies but like again as you say with marriage ultimately that friend of mine unless he has some personal conviction about contraception like you know there’s going to be a point in this mid-30s when

You know they’re going to make a joke about snip snip I went down to the doctor and it’s like at that moment our friendship’s basically done because like that revolts me you know like I mean to sort sounds so harsh to people but like

I find it vile I find it I find it an Abomination you know know um and that’s the that those are the sticking points so but so maybe you can comment on that but also did you find when you became a Catholic that all of a sudden you

Started to make friendships with people in almost effortlessly in a sense so no I didn’t so so two things happened um well one one thing happened very sharply which was that I uh in the same way that if if you were friends with somebody who did something that you

Disagreed with it would be a verse to you and it would be very hard to maintain a relationship with them um as I moved into Catholicism and this new way of life that I was trying to adopt uh my old friends who I had grown up

With and I had a lot of friends growing up and through high school and everything uh they they couldn’t relate to where I was going right um 18 19 year old guys the thing that they want to do every weekend is go to the bar and get

Drunk right and so for the first little while I was like okay I guess I’m just the designated driver but that got old pretty fast um and I I don’t think they liked having me around as the sober guy all the time who was just sort of frowning in the corner and disapproving

So just practically speaking Our Lives kind of went in separate directions right with the the example that you give it doesn’t take much because even within my Catholic Community um you know there are some families who let’s say are more open to life than others there

Are some who are using NFP almost like it’s contraception right and um you know we have a big family my wife and I so we have we have seven kids um 14 to too and so that means as we spend time with with other friends it’s it’s a

Family affair right like we don’t really want our kids to have relationships with people we don’t know we don’t want to be going and and spending time with other people that they don’t really know so it’s sort of like well we have to find friends who’s who’s lives really align

With ours who have who have kids that get along with our kids and uh who are available and who we get along with and who of course we share the important things like our Catholic faith with um so it it really doesn’t take much for just practically speaking to end up going in

In separate directions uh in lifestyle and and the challenges that that come with trying to maintain those relationships um but I I really do take the point that that that Benedict was making there because it is possible to have a friendship based on some mutual love like let’s say we both really like

The Edmonton Oilers the hockey team where I live right I can I can build a friendship with somebody not that I’m not a big hockey fan but if I was a big hockey fan I could see yeah my neighbor Lakes hockey we spend time together watching hockey and that’s great yeah um

But in order for it to to come to its full fruition in order to really blend your lives together it has to be built on something more than that um and ultimately there’s going to be a tension there there’s going to be U it’s very hard to to tolerate significant moral uh

Diversion uh among people who have relationships with each other um people will feel insecure people will feel judged people will judge and and that’s just very difficult to to maintain um that happens that’s happened certainly in my family relationship as as you know I don’t come from a Catholic Family and

So maintaining those relationships it’s not based on the bonds of friendship so much and usually it’s not with with family usually it’s based on affection which is just sort of this this kind of uh love that is comfortable and familiar and and hard to abandon um but

Friendship is again built on on quite a bit more the ideal is when you have friendship and affection I mean that’s just where it’s easy and natural and you’re comfortable with each other but then you also have something un commmon on top of that that you can you can

Occupy your conversations and and Inspire your mutual love um so so I didn’t when I first came into the Catholic Church the particular Parish where I started attending didn’t have many young adults so I I had a tough time meeting other young Catholics and my wife converted too and

So um this was something that we prayed about a lot in in the beginning of our marriage um just for friends we need Community we need people who will support us in in this crazy life that we’re trying to lead and God did provide we found ourselves in a position where

We started hosting like a prayer group at our house and people just started showing up they it was obvious that there we were feeding a need that was um that was prominent and so people would show up on our doorstep on a Friday night and they’d say hey is this where

The the Catholic prayer thing is and we’re like yeah sure come on in and I would get a guitar wrote and I would sing some praise and worship and and people loved it um and so through that through through a lot of effort then we really did start start building

Community um but it took some time um and that’s one of the I think the challenges uh in the Catholic church today is that Um the young adults who stick it out are few and far between um this is something I I mean I’ve addressed this topic a little bit especially on the Romantic side about you you know why you should you should pursue a spouse and and and and don’t just date casually and

Something I see in the comments all the time is people who are like there’s no I don’t know where any other young adults are I would love to find a Catholic man or a Catholic woman but I can’t find any and the fact that the church just seem

So indifferent to this need um they’re failing other we’re failing other demographics as well but we are we’re really failing uh young adults in this respect and uh it’s it’s a tragic thing um yeah my Latin Mass that’s not the case no it’s not and uh well that’s what

I want to bring up too two things it’s a double-edged sword because I have a love hate even with the idea of young adult because I’m 35 and I know the dicese has young adult and it goes to 35 and I’m like I got gray in my beard I got soon

To be six kids I got a mortgage I’m not a young adult I’m a tired adult you know like so but I get I get it initiated yes i’ I’ve been you know I’ve been adulting for for for you know a decade and a half

Now um yeah I get it though I get it so um on the one hand it’s good to to to sort of um go to the young adult Direction because they need it on the other hand a lot of people I think almost look at being a young adult as

Like a new type of being an adolescent you know it’s like well I’m a young adult so like what do young adults do it’s like well there it’s adults who are either married or not married so they do what married or non-married people do anyway but I I know exactly what you’re

Saying um so we locked out when we re reverted because I was Catholic and then there was a big conversion that’s a whole other story but um that would take two hours to to lay out anyway but when we reverted she was baptized Catholic as well we actually went to element school

Together so we didn’t have to like come into the church but we had to learn the faith and we had to you know live in a state of grace and all these kinds of things and so that was where we had to do the work

But we moved when I got a job teaching at a Catholic High School and luckily fell into a pretty strong conservative Catholic community and that was why it was so easy I think to make friends um wasn’t from work most of the people at work didn’t like me because I was too

Orthodox um mainly and it was also during the time of the rise of Donald Trump and I was not into politics at the time I had rejected politics because I was such a liberal like I wasn’t a leftist but I was such a liberal as like as a secular University student uh so

When I came back to the church I realized just how much of an idiot I was so I was like I’m just going to like leave me alone politics I don’t want to talk about you and I’ll just learn the faith and then the Trump thing was like

The apocalypse for people that everyone was talking about it and I just being the contrarian I guess that I am I’m like wait isn’t he say’s pro- lifee like shouldn’t we support him and it was like how dare you you know you crazy crazy weirdo so um I didn’t make a lot

Of friends at work but um we did fall into these good friendships and they were great then and maybe you can have a similar transition maybe you can tell me about this we found tradition and we found Catholic tradition hard you know um we did go to a diois in tlm

Community for about a year and a half where we live though it’s like an hour and a half drive it’s just not sustainable um so we did that but like my wife started dressing with just the skirts and you know started finding modesty and and like you know we’re

We’re not praying the Luminous Mysteries anymore and like things not not saying that’s wrong I’m just saying we just we adopted tradition a different calendar different mass that kind of stuff and then we actually lost friends especially we went to the sspx I get that but but

We lost friends and we gained new friends but it was like a second conversion we um there was a tension now um we didn’t do it like we didn’t try to do it we tried to be involved with all the conservative Catholic stuff but there was just almost like this

Um we got the impression that people thought that we were like leaving the club and that we didn’t think that they were good anymore something like that and maybe it was my fault I don’t know but I’m just saying that was the thing did you find something when you went

From like kind of conservative novas sordo to tradition was that also a difficult transition yeah so I’ll say first of all that I wouldn’t say that we had a terribly Orthodox novas Ordo Parish um we had the parish that was close by and there were intentionally Orthodox

Catholics that we were friends with who went in so far as you know we had experienced like relatively Orthodox relatively speaking we were all people who were trying to to live the Catholic faith Faithfully but you know like a lot a lot was going on we we we got a new par or

Or sorry a new pastor at one point and with the rotation for priests you have the potential of a particular Pastor being at your parish for you know eight or nine years and this guy was bad news the he he immediately so his first homy the first

Thing he did was introduced himself as you know I consider myself something of a cross between a Jesuit and a Franciscan and I’m like okay but you’re not you’re a diois and priest so why why why are you what that even mean pretending even yeah what does that mean

Um he was wearing blue jeans and um like not even like in sandals but like velcro sandals um under his vestments and um we we stayed behind quite late after Mass to greet him and introduce ourselves as our new pastor and he was speaking quite loudly

Um to you know the next person in line in front of us to to greet him about how the people at his old Parish were just a bunch of stupid rednick and he was so glad to be out of there and I was like that’s how you Tau spiritual children

Yeah like very very alarming he went on to do yeah yeah he went on to do things the sanctuary of anything decorative or ornate that he could like a very a very Stark minimalist sort of lurgical instinct the homilies were at best just I don’t know very very hard to

Follow nonsensical if you were giving the benefit of the doubt at worst explicitly heretical at times wow and I just remember thinking um yeah but so my my my oldest daughter she’ll be an adult by the time this guy gets moved potentially and I cannot we cannot

Suffer this you know I I can’t tolerate this simultaneously I had also been just really struggling with u like I’m I’m I’m very sensitive to Aesthetics like I’m a graphic designer by trade I’ve always been artistic I’ve always been very uh moved by music and and very uh

Intentional about the kind of music that I listen to and so the Aesthetics at our Parish had been bothering me for quite a long time and not just because of the the banality of modern Catholicism but because there wasn’t even any apparent effort being put into the Liturgy right

Like it was just com complacency and that was that really bothered me and so I found myself going to mass and then coming away from Mass where I used to feel refreshed and fulfilled and um and and drawn into the life of the spirit I was now finding myself just angry and

Resentful and and mad at myself for that because I was like I shouldn’t feel this way this is my fault and really giving myself a hard time over it and then there was one week where after you know this this weird homy um we go up to receive the

Eucharist and um this isn’t something I had explored explicitly uh but I felt prompted to kneel and to receive communion on the tongue I had never done that before and I I hadn’t read about it I wasn’t convicted about it necessarily Catholic sense it’s cathol sense yeah or maybe just a prompting of

The Holy Spirit and and I found myself saying no uh I’m not doing that so I’m like I’m walking along in my Pew and then eventually out in the in the Nave of the church and the whole time I’m like having this this argument with God

I’m like no I I don’t want to do that I don’t want to draw attention to myself until eventually I’m like okay it’s not going away so I’m just going to try and see what happens and so I I I get up there and the extraordinary minister of

Of Holy Communion doesn’t know what I’m doing and so she Pats me on the head and I was like oh no I’m trying to receive communion and so she was oh and she takes the host and she she really abruptly just kind of shoves it in my mouth and and

I that’s here I am to do something no yeah I wanted to do something uh more reverent and it ends up being this kind of catastrophic like very irreverent reception and I’m sure people saw that um so I go back to my pew just really discouraged and embarrassed and um kind

Of heartbroken simultaneously the band is playing a saxophone solo like literally a saxophone solo is going on while I’m kneeling down trying to I’m like am I at a am I a keny g like yeah is this a keny G concert where am I right now like this is I can’t pray I

Can’t focus and my prayer at that moment was God forgive me because I’m being so judgmental right now but like where are you you like I I’m just struggling to find you and I don’t tend to have very audible or um even in my mind’s eye visual like responses from

God like I’m not a very charismatic uh Christian but I I very strongly got the sense that he was saying I’m not here and I have to qualify that by saying that yes the Eucharist is there it’s valid and everything but you know if you’re looking through a pane of glass

And it’s covered in dirt in mud and saxophone solos and people in you know wearing clothing that is just not fit for a Wedding Banquet which is what you know we’re supposed to be doing when we encounter the Lord um or the sacrifice of Calvary depending on how you want to

Think of it um just this completely casual noisy distracting atmosphere and I just remember thinking like and I literally started tearing up when I thought that he was saying that to me you’re not here how can that be like how what am I supposed to do with that that’s that’s

Heartbreaking um and I was just so bothered by that experience um so all of that accumulated to the point where I was like we need to change I can’t go on like I’m going to lose my faith if if we continue to push on simultaneously also seeing you know families that when we

First started attending that church which is the our only experience of Catholicism I didn’t grow up in the church so I hadn’t been able to observe this for any length of time but by by this point I had been in the Catholic Church long enough to observe what appeared to be intentionally faithful

Families who who were there with little kids when I first started attending who were now teenagers who were absent gone who had yeah had left the church right and I’m thinking okay my my kids are coming up to that age do I have confidence that they’re going to retain

The faith no not at all based on what I’m seeing like I I hate this atmosphere I can’t pray in it it’s it’s culturally just offensive um and it’s the at the general attitude is just an atmosphere of complacency so simultaneously we knew some friends that were going to a Latin

Mass and we’re like okay why don’t we try that I mean that’s going to be a big change um so that’s what initially led us there so that was my very very long way of of answering your question yes we had friends in in in sort of that novas Oro environment who

Were clearly angry with us and and hostile towards that and we did lose I think some friends when my wife started wearing skirts as well she would get these snarky remarks from friends about like implying that her husband was making her do this kind of thing that

She was now oppressed and stuff yeah and um you know the irony is that like traditional traditional people in any flavor of life whether it’s Catholicism or otherwise get branded as The Stereotype is these are the judgmental people right I know um I have never I’ve never like I’ve gone into mass and

Thought you know that’s an inappropriate thing to wear a mask but you would never see me walk up to that person and be like what are you doing like how dare you or even or even just to do it subtly like oh it’s uh must you must be a

Little cold to you’re going to the beach today or something yeah yeah exactly I’ve I would never dream of doing that right and here are the supposedly more tolerant and liberal Catholics who are approaching my wife and doing this very thing that they would condemn if they

They got a glimpse of it in in traditional circles well so yeah a lot of a lot of hostility and a lot of rupture took place there well let’s just say and let’s just say even if somebody did walk up to somebody who was dressed inappropriate for mass and told them you

Could still do like that would still be okay to do I’ve never done it I haven’t seen it done but I’m just saying if one were to be like you know in a nice way obviously there’s personalities and manners but like hey are you new here that’s wonderful it’s great we don’t

Wear tank tops you know like we don’t wear mini skirts and it’s like there’s nothing wrong with that because you know this this used to be so normal in society like I mean again we’re similar age and and when I was a kid and I’m sure when you were a kid like the

Neighbor would like see you doing something bad on your lawn and be like hey cut it out young man your mom wouldn’t like that you know like that was okay because it was like we you know you shouldn’t swear you know and I like well I probably shouldn’t swear because

Like the moral code that’s being enforced by the good neighbors that I have are telling me not to I’m going to listen to that so he wouldn’t even be bad but you’re right it doesn’t even happen it doesn’t you know and um okay so that’s that’s really fascinating

Though when you talk about the major moment is basically realizing with your daughter you know she’s going to be an adult by the time this this priest leaves so I didn’t like we didn’t have a good Parish so to speak uh but we had this catechism family group of like the

Neighboring parishes so it was like once a month we didn’t really have much Parish life but it was like this uh intra intra like inra Parish life you know it was um yep so we had that um but we didn’t see most of those people we went to Mass on Sunday maybe

If there was like 20 families there was like two at our parish and then 10 over there and six over there whatever and um so we didn’t have a terrible Parish it wasn’t like that was actually kind of a crisis of conscience for me when I

Discover so you know not to make this about the sspx but just in the perspective of when I discovered the sspx I was uh it was 20 minutes from my house whereas the Latin Mass was an hour and in bad weather and the snow it’s

Like it’s an hour and a half and it’s dangerous since 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon and whatever my dases is kind of a wasteland for tradition and MH and when I was kind of having this crisis of conscience because I’m like okay I’m okay with going to the

Traditional Chapel if there is a state of necessity I kind of had I kind of understood what that meant I was okay with the logic of it but then I remember asking myself I’m like well my Parish isn’t that bad like no it’s not like now

I would say it would be really bad but it wasn’t like clown Mass it wasn’t the priests were fine I mean it was Chicken Soup for the Soul most of the time but it wasn’t heresy um the choir was a decent folk choir like they were in tune

And they played the guitars well you know the the church itself was very beautiful it was an old church that had been renovated it was the high altar was gone but like the Fresco were still there and stuff like it was you walked in and you were like this is a pleasant

Catholic place to be but just like you I remember thinking to myself okay I mean my oldest is only eight and we’ve got our six child will be here in 2 months um so things were happening really kind of fast and furious this is like four years ago or

So and I remember thinking of myself I’m teaching these kids in the Catholic school and none of them go to church and none of my colleagues kids go to church the odd one and I’m like the ones that do because I had discovered tradition really the ones that were

Continuing the faith for the most part um they were either basically living as traditionalists without going to traditional Mass you know like they had all the artwork and the rosaries and all that stuff in their house it was like they basically were traditionalists I’m like there’s something

There um or they basically had turned their Catholic Family Faith experience into a very Protestant type of experience meaning it was all activities it was like you know they definitely had a sense of Christian Community but it was like we go to the prayer meetings we

Go to the praise and worship thing we go to the summer camp we go to the Bible stud study I’m I go to do net Ministries I go to and those things they had their goods to them but I’m like is it the Catholicism keeping them

There uh or is it the life because a lot of those things my kids might not take to you know maybe my kids don’t want to be a camp counselor with the you know like there’re just things where this isn’t I was like there has to be a way

For my kids to just be Catholic and just learn their catechism read books go to sacraments and like they should keep their faith it it shouldn’t be and again I’m not saying what these parents are doing is bad they’re doing the best they can and what they’ve done is extremely positive

Because they’ve worked so hard to keep their kids in but I’m like all that’s outside the parish the parish should be keeping my kids in the church that’s why it’s there you know all these nonprofits they’re great but like again that’s you know I saw the danger I’m like well

That’s going to become about individuals it’s like well so and so is really good at like he’s you know he’s got gifts and praise over people and so and so is like is really good at leading praise and worship it’s like I’m glad so and so is a great

Musician but then that has the danger of becoming sort of like a cult of personality does that make sense like that was a danger I really had to wrestle with yeah absolutely um I it sounds like I mean we had this in intra Parish kind of community as well in large part

Extending from that young adult community that we had started with the the prayer group at our house so it wasn’t so much that we we needed our Parish to be the be all end all but um at the same time you do need your Parish to do something for for your children um

Even if it’s just sort of if it’s acceptable in in its I don’t know the measure of what a parish is supposed to be you know in terms of uh its lurgical life it’s the the catechesis that you might get from it all of these kinds of things but in

Our case it was it was becoming less than acceptable and I just didn’t have the confidence anymore that um that our kids would survive that um I knew for me it was a big turnoff and as I saw the the kids from these other families turning 16 17 and just disappearing from

The life of the church I found myself just thinking I how can I blame them like if I was that age why I wouldn’t stick around if I had been raised this way because the reason I’m sticking around is because of Grace right I know I can’t abandon my faith I

Can’t abandon the Eucharist and I can’t abandon the church because I need that Grace to survive and to hopefully inherit eternal life but if you’re raised in that atmosphere in the sacramental life and you know a family that is hopefully a prayerful family then Grace will just seem like something

You can take for granted you don’t know what it looks like on the other side the way that a convert does right and so if I turn 16 17 I’d be like well I don’t need this crappy preaching on Sunday mornings that is completely irrelevant

To me I don’t need to listen to this bad music and this ritual that I don’t really understand I can go off and be happy like the rest of my friends apparently are not knowing that you’re going to all of a sudden um you’re going to lose that that Divine Life that has

Sustained you throughout your life and that was my fear for my kids because they were being raised as Catholics like that who could take Grace for granted um and then moving over to Latin Mass um it really was about my kids I mean yes I had my complaints but I as a

Bachelor I could have I could have just stuck you can tough a lot of stuff out if it’s not for your kids you can tough a lot of things out yeah yeah but to risk the The Souls of my children was just not a price I was willing to pay and

When we went over to the Latin Mass my kids immediately they they were drawn into it they loved it um I gave them the option at one point I’ve told this story a few times and I said okay we’ve been going to this Latin mass for a few a few

Weeks now do you want to go back to our old Parish or do you want to keep going to the Latin mass and they were like Latin Mass Latin Mass we were in the van and I could see all these hands in the rearview mirror like triumphantly

Cheering and stuff and I was like okay then you know like this this is obviously connecting with them um and it wasn’t just the Liturgy I mean liturgy is one thing um but it was like there was lots of other young kids there that they were identifying with who looked

Like them who dressed like them who cared about the things that they cared about um and there was just a buzz in the room there was a Vitality in the atmosphere of that that community and it’s tripled in size since we we started attending so there’s that Vitality has

Has shown itself in in profound ways you know um there’s a story reminded me of I forgot to say it last time I was talking but I never had an experience at Mass where I was like God’s not here but out of the mouths of

Babes uh we had been going to the lat so we started going to the Latin mass in 2018 um and we didn’t go exclusively we were going most of the time and then then exclusively by the end of 2018 and then uh you know ever since

Then I think I’ve been to the novas sordo like a couple times for like a reason of Charity like a wedding or something like that kind of whatever but I haven’t gone to the Nova sordo for mass mass on a Sunday in like four years or something but except for one time so

It was just before lockdown it was 2020 and we had been roped into this um this uh marriage prep thing and this was like nine months before like these people that ran the marriage prep for the dicese for this particular cluster of parishes asked us will you sponsor

Such and such couple in February and this is like July when they’re asking us we’re like sure whatever we just put on the calendar and we didn’t even think it through and we’re like oh we’re going to have to go there for Mass on Sunday like

That it was at like that we had to be there at the 10:00 a.m. Mass um not they don’t call it high mass but like the one with all the singing whatever and um and this is a very strong Catholic Community in the sense

Of like this is a this is out in the sticks in Southwestern Ontario lot of farmers lot of Irish and Dutch and they got 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 kids like these people do follow the teachings of the church for the most part um and we used

To look up to this place like we would be like we’re going to go to that Parish it was still beautiful because they had kept everything but just took the AL high they took the alter rail out and inserted a table alter but everything else was there

They also put TV screens up which had a really nice contrast with the gold leaf frescos anyway my goodness gracious um um I’m not as artistic as you but I think one of the reasons you and I are both fond of Dr queski is uh I was

Listening to his article or thing the other day’s podcast he did about like seeing Through The Eyes of tradition and how he’s like in a place with bad music and like his head starts to hurt I get that way too I’m like shut up stop the stupid noise but anyway so in this

Parish and um my son at the time my oldest son he was four he wasn’t five yet and there’s praise and worship going my wife’s we in a veil because we just come from like going to Latin mass for the last two years and we’re in there and it’s a disaster like the

Priest is like fist pumping guys on the way up and like it was whatever it was a whole thing and my son’s dancing he’s dancing because the praise and worships going on and and he looks up at my wife and he goes to my wife is God in this

Church too Mommy now we don’t know if he was excited about God being there because it was happy and fun or we don’t know if he didn’t think God was but either way we said to ourselves this is like a this is a a Crossroads we’re at here because our son’s

Four and we know this is a disaster and we know it’s not sustainable so he’s either really excited about the disaster which is bad or he knows it’s a disaster which is bad but it’s good that he knows that so it was something similar to what you went

Through yeah I mean it it it reminds me and this is another story I’ve told quite a few times now um but uh shortly after we started attending the Latin Mass uh my two he was at the time two years old he’s he’s older now obviously

But uh so he was getting uh restless and making noise and stuff and so I picked him up and just as I I did there was this like plume of incense floating over us and it caught the Rays of the the stain glass windows and he immediately just started going prayers

Prayers and it it reminded well I won’t I won’t say it reminded me it it it instilled in me the understanding that um this more sensory approach this more sacramental this more embodied kind of spirituality which is what with all ism is supposed to be what it’s what an

Incarnational spirituality is right is something that even a 2-year-old will just immediately understand he’ll be drawn to the mysticism of it he’ll be drawn to how profound it is whereas it Anova sordo it’s yeah he might be dancing in the Pew but he he he’s not

Going to associate that with God in in the same way that he doesn’t associate dancing in front of the stereo at home which my kids my little kids will do um with prayer or anything like that it’s that’s a this is a fun this is party

Time this is a fun thing to do right this isn’t a prayer thing to do um and we do need to have those distinctions between the profane life and the and the sacred life and profane here I it’s it’s important to point out for people that yeah yeah profane not meaning vulgar but

Just the ordinary right that’s sort of the the way that the church has used that word in the tradition um whereas those those distinctions are just utterly blurred in in most uh other no sordo perishes um to the degree that the profane is actually encroaching upon the sacred and and the

Sacred is often just not even present in many respects um yeah so the more I had those kinds of experiences the more I was confirmed in this this this uh confidence that that the Latin mass is going to give my kids the best chance of retaining um this faith

That I was trying to transmit to them yeah um two things one I know some people are going to watch this and think well what about I have a really good novas sordo it’s like really traditional with respect I don’t even know if there is one of those in all of Canada like

Maybe the oratorians do it in Toronto uh what I mean by that is the so-called unicorn so people will bring this up and I’m like listen that reality doesn’t exist for me I’d have to drive to like Chicago or something I don’t even like I

I don’t even know where it is um and then even there I mean once you really start to dive into the Liturgy and you’ve talked about this with the Lex Randi Lex credendi yes there can be a very aesthetically pleasing Nova sordo for sure of course they can do that I

Mean there’s there’s people and God bless them for it I mean that’s obviously objectively better than an aesthetically displeasing novas sordo of course it is uh it’s going to inspire deeper Catholic devotion and if that’s what you go to and that inspires devotion I’m happy for you but when you

Read the missile and things the theology is still going to be the thing that at least is very encouraging of or permissive of what is generally speaking SE in the Nova sordo and there’s a there’s an issue there it’s like that’s the exception that proves a rule so

That’s something that you know um but um H what was I going to say here I lost my train of thought uh oh anyway I was going to think it was something what did you say before that it was really important I thought maybe it wasn’t about about my son’s experience

Like that sensory experience the Sun the sensory I don’t know anyway but uh yeah that’s yeah that’s the children having the sensory experiences oh this is what I wanted to say here it is um the reductionist um we we’ve become so um like beaten down in our in the church as far as

Liturgy is concerned that people like you’re saying well there was a level that I thought was acceptable but it wasn’t even acceptable and that’s the mentality people have I remember I was at a Men’s Conference years ago and this speaker former professional football player Elvis gerbach a Pro Bowl football player

Had a big conversion was doing the Men’s Conference circuit and whatever getting men all riled up it was fun and but I remember he was talking about how he got his kids to stay in and he was like just telling us an anecdote he’s like yeah I

Say to Jimmy whatever his name is you know uh yeah the music’s bad okay the preaching’s bad and I know it can be boring and he’s like but Jesus is really there and I remember at that time being like are we accepting the fact that the thing that’s supposed to be the

Intersection between Heaven and Earth is just not good and and and uh so it’s not necessarily like we’re not saying we’re not both praising tradition here because of from the mindset that the Nova sordo experience is negative what we’re saying is that it’s just not positive like it’s

The opposite it’s like um it’s yes it’s it’s it’s like heaven and hell yes I am scared of hell like in the sense of I don’t want to go there but I’m more enamored with the idea of going to heaven than I am being scared of hell and that’s we should there’s something

There’s an analogy there mhm yeah well and that lowest common denominator too because I find that like again this is the attitude of complacency it’s like yeah it’s it’s it’s not great but it’s valid it’s like that’s we’re content with that really like like and these aren’t even things that

We can’t fix we could totally fix these things right there there was that Pew survey that came out recently uh ranking music and preaching I think in in various uh churches and the Catholic church it was just based on surveys of people who go to church and um what

Their level of satisfaction was with the preaching and the music and and the Catholic Church came out at the bottom um which is to say I mean yes we can complain about that but it’s to say that there is better preaching and there is better music out there these are things

That we could be much more deliberate about we could do a better job of this we we don’t have to say yeah it’s too bad but Jesus is there so it’s fine it’s like I mean this is not it’s not acceptable it’s it’s not a virtue to just tolerate uh

Mediocrity um we should be wanting to excel in this aspect of life look at all the other areas of life where we do uh expect Excellence from ourselves in our jobs in the sports that we play and all these kinds of things we take those so seriously we we don’t tolerate um um

Mediocrity there so why when it comes to the most important thing you do every week and I’m not just talking about the lay people but the people who are actually in charge of organizing this yes the the priests and the people on liturgy committees and such it’s

Like why why are we so content with with something that is such a a turnoff to the vast majority of people it’s it’s inexcusable and it’s harming Souls it’s harming Souls it’s harming souls and and I always go back to the first book of the Bible Canan abble and

Uh when the the story of Kan and Abel is extremely important for a billion different reasons and there is a priest named father modley who did write a book about the conversion of the Jews prophesied with Cain and Abel uh Cain being the older brother who kills the

Younger brother who is pleasing to God this is the Sanhedrin you know ordering the murder of Christ and things like that there’s lots of typology there but there’s also a very lurgical typology listen uh there was no Sacrament before the the holy sacrifice of the mass I get that like like there

Was no Holy Eucharist but there was according to the Old Testament liturgy prayer worship that was pleasing to God and it wasn’t pleasing to God and yeah um what we find with Cain and Abel and this is obviously in and it can be the and I should also qualify this one can

Offer something that is aesthetically pleasing uh while having a hard heart and then that’s just going to be that person’s judged on their individual but that doesn’t mean the Aesthetics are bad so people will say well there was what if the traditionalist is a bad guy and

It’s like well he’s a bad guy but the Liturgy is still objectively good so that’s not really an argument um yeah so with c and Abel though they both offer God what is technically speaking a valid sacrifice and both of their sacrifices do prefigure the Eucharist because Cain

Offers a lamb or Abel offers a lamb and Cain offers grain well we have ultimately and then Abel is killed by his older brother so we see the victim and we see the lamb offered as bread those are all the three things that there but what we find with with with uh

Cain’s sacrifice it’s not accepted by God it’s not because it’s not a real sacrifice it’s not accepted because of how he offers the thing okay so when we say things like uh well don’t worry it’s valid it’s like well hold on a second here the intention behind which we offer

The thing I’m not talking about the intention to confect the sacrament that’s that’s a different thing but the intention by with which we offer the ceremony the liturgy those things are not accidentals they’re not things that are extras they’re it’s like a diamond ring you know uh you buy your wife an

Engagement ring you know uh any Jeweler worth is salt unless you specifically desire of like just a gold band with like a little diamond in it they’ll never really do that every diamond ring is going to have they’re going to have a setting because everything around it actually makes the diamonds sparkle more

And makes you see it more and it makes it more beautiful and you can add too much and you can be too reductionist so really a jeweler to continue with the analogy who’s an incredible Jeweler if he’s had a long career his skills will have developed he’ll reach a point where

He makes the most beautiful ring possible and it can’t you don’t want to make it any worse and it can’t be any better and that’s basically what the Latin Master is like um you know we have the pearl of great price in this and everything that’s around it it we not

Only do we know it’s valid we we we feel it’s valid we breathe it’s valid we hear it’s valid we see it’s valid we we consume its validity and none of those things have to be explained to you when you go to the tlm um anyway that’s

That’s kind of my my soapbox thing but when people will say you know it’s valid it’s like we got to be careful with that and one last thing I’ll say is when people say well what do you expect we’re just going to you know fix

All the liturgies and it’s like yes I do expect that because look what we did during Co with respect like look of all the energy in the world every Parish has to have stickers and ropes and masks and new video new videos recorded about how do this it’s like literally if the pope

Did tomorrow and said you have six months maybe they can’t all say Latin Mass you have six months to fix your altars turn yourself around uh develop some POS and say an old missile translated into vernacular I guarantee they could do it yeah well and and simultaneously there there’s there’s a

Few analogies in this one one is that people will will really resent any sort of criticism that’s directed towards the Nova order they’ll say you know they’re both valid they’re both Jesus they’re both the mass it’s wrong to criticize either of them it’s like well hang on

Here what why did we why did we pursue a reform of the Liturgy in the first place if it wasn’t based on some criticism of the the mass that had already existed we recognized that there was something here that needed to change because it was deficient in some way or maybe excessive

In some way but it need to be calibrated and so the church went through this whole process of reforming things and if you want to tell me that it it can’t be done well that’s exactly what they did do they completely um they they rewrote the mass they um they didn’t they didn’t

Come up with new standards for for sanctuaries in architecture and art but somehow that conspiracy persisted everywhere with the exact same flavor I don’t know I don’t know how that happened exactly but um it’s it’s obviously possible um and it doesn’t if you in favor of those of those reforms

Or just reform in general um then why not why not a further reform if we why not why not recognize some of the concerns that a lot of people have um related to just some of the explicit complaints that we have but also the witness of the countless people who are

Walking away um at vulnerable ages uh because they don’t know that this is such a precious thing because we haven’t communicated that to them by the way that we worship and and by the way that we package this whole thing um this comes back to branding again no one’s

Going to buy a product from a company with a Cheesy comic Sands uh PowerPoint clip art logo right like they’re gonna look at that and be like well this isn’t this isn’t professional these guys it’s probably a terrible product that these guys are offering right no one’s going

To be inspired to think that this is where the god of the universe resides in this Temple where we’ve got silly felt banners and juvenile music and we’re all acting like this is just another day in the life of profanity of just like I would when I go to Walmart and I check

Out um we’re not communicating that and we have to be yeah that’s right yeah comic sand you know I’m I’m not a graphic designer so I make my thumbnails using canva but sometimes I look at even some of the the canned templates and stuff on canva I’m like

This is better than what they’re using for the sinod right now like I’m using a service that cost me $10 a month you know what I mean and it’s like yeah anyway it’s just whatever okay last last we got about five seven seven eight minutes we’re gonna go an hour and a

Half here let’s do a little tiny thought experiment and that we’ll end off with if you were Pope if you were Pope they call you Pope Pope Brian the red Pope Brian the red um if you were Pope um five four things you would do immediately what would they

Be this is this is something I I I could have answered 10 years ago with some confidence but so much has gone on and so much is under the bridge so much water is under the bridge now that I I don’t I don’t even know where to start

I’m pretty sure I would fire everybody in the curia um and not because I think everybody there is necessarily corrupt or evil or whatever but you just can’t you can’t be confident like there’s enough bad apples there and the people who aren’t will land on their feet they’ll have other jobs somewhere that

They can possibly do but I would definitely completely clean house there um I I I have concerns with the um the College of Cardinals at this point as well but you know if they elected Me Maybe maybe they’re not so bad but um there’s there’s definitely concerns there um

Something to do with Germany I mean there’s got to be a response I don’t know what exactly it would be but but you can’t you can’t just continue to tolerate what’s going on there um we need to be willing to excommunicate people again especially public people we only only communicate trads Brian come

On well exactly but you know if it’s some of those Bishops I mean if they’re out there explicitly contradicting Catholic teaching it’s like okay it’s just formality at this point you are excommunicated I I’m not even like excommunicating you you are excommunicated and everybody should know that right um politicians same same kind

Of thing um those those who identify their Catholicism with the the the Creed that they um that they propose and that they promote to the world if it’s actually contrary to the Catholic faith um they should be excommunicated they they should not be allowed to scandalize

People in that way and and and so Division and confusion um I think this would be hard for me but maybe the last thing I would say is I would I would shut up as the Pope I would stop speaking and Publishing and writing as much as the

Popes do um that’s that’s a very modern phenomenon that I don’t think people really realize that you know the the number of encyclicals that they get written today it’s like how many more times do we have to do do another um social teaching in cyclical it’s like most people don’t understand what’s

Already been written let’s devote attention to understanding what has been written and what has been said we don’t need to say more there’s just way too much that has been said and written um we don’t need to layer that further and further first things have to be first

Things we have to prioritize uh those things first the Creed the sacraments um the life of discipleship what it means to know and love God those are the key things and then you build upon those things and secondary things have to be secondary but because there’s so much

Secondary and tertiary stuff that’s out there so people think that that’s the faith and it’s like no that’s not that will help you understand it more deeply and more explicitly but if you don’t understand the fundamentals you’re going to be really confused um so let’s let’s stop giving

Interviews to people who are hostile towards us let’s stop writing 80 paragraph in cyclicals that that have a lot of a lot of things just don’t need to be said that that can be misinterpreted or or what have you let’s get back to to Clarity and to promoting

The true Faith um I would certainly want to initiate some lurgical reform but I don’t know what the best strategy is in that so that’s interesting all the things you just said because I’ve thought about this question a lot actually as an author every author will

Tell you they have seven or eight books in their head that they want to write right now but they just can’t I have a book in my head that I had to think about this from a fiction perspective so I’ve thought about it for like hours but

I’ve never written it down yet maybe one day um but uh I never thought I funny thing my f my mind does not go to the um the things that you’ve mentioned like the politics the excommunications and stuff the first thing I think about is uh stopping the bleeding so the

Confessionals are a disaster because the priests are not trained in moral theology the masses are disaster for all the reasons we’ve illuminated so my first thing if I could think of like what you know what this is my first six months I would put a complete interd worldwide on the reception of Holy

Communion um unless you were at a traditional Parish I know that would be exclusivist but it’s just like I have moral certainty that anyone who’s going to a traditional parish is going to be in that setting that’s good and I have moral certainty that the regular parishes are a

Disaster um and that would that would last a month and then an interdict would also be put on preaching and last you’re a traditional Parish um and then within very short order and again we showed this with Co a communicate would be sent out by my you know my

Uh uh my Rottweiler my whatever my my my CDF head or whatever I’d call the holy office again of the Inquisition but um but uh it would would be like this is your 12-week sermon series where you’re going to explain in layman’s terms the catechism of St po Pas the 10th or

Something like that like you have to read this from the pulpit for 20 minutes or 30 minutes like I just it would be something like that and then you know immediately all priests must turn around you just have to turn around you’re just going to say you’re novas sordo using

Only the prayers that are the Catholic ones and you’re going to turn around and face the crucifix with the people blah blah blah everyone can do that every altar on the world can do that you know little things like that and then with the confessional the confessionals are open

But the priests unless they went to a traditional Seminary are forbidden to give advice I know this sounds harsh but when the people will will will will when the people will confess certain sins they will have literature that they can give them to read on combating that sin and

Like you know cuz again with email and stuff it’s so easy it’s like here is your here is all here is these are these are sins Commandments 1-1 pile number one is for you know like just tell them which piles to grab from right and it’s like that’s going to be better than

Anything you could tell them with your Chicken Soup for the Soul theology which is just going to make them worse you know um and then uh within you know 6 months to a year uh there’ll be a translation of the traditional Latin Mass into whatever vernacular is dominant with really good

Language as best as possible and then within let’s say 2 years everyone is required to say the traditional Mass unless they’re Eastern of course that’s different but required to say the traditional mass in Latin um unless they’re over like learning language is difficult you know with with with the

Tlm when they got rid of it I think it was over 75 were allowed to keep it but they didn’t have to learn a new language it would be really hard for somebody over the age of like 55 to be expected just I understand I used to teach

Languages it’s very tough people when they’re older to learn so let’s say let’s just say the number is 55 okay fine you can if you want but you’re grandfather but you still have to do literally just like if you open up your missile and it’s like the translated

Side you have to do that as as the those are the things that I would do and then I’d probably be assassinated well that’s that’s just it I mean you can identify certain ends that you want to achieve um but knowing myself and and how difficult it is to

Move myself towards certain ends I want to achieve I know that um we are stubborn we’re stubborn creatures right virtue virtue only develops slowly and you can’t really legislate it um including the virtue of religion and and Faith for that matter so I think that

You you do have to admit that there are limitations if if you’ve got word as the Pope that um that the end is nigh then maybe you have to to to accelerate that program but I I think that yeah we would would have to to try to find measures to

Lead people along because that’s the nature of conversion conversion doesn’t happen sometimes we get these dramatic conversion experiences right but but for a lot of people it’s a lifetime Affair where we have to try to try to lead them where we want to go and that that

Happens slowly and subtly but when you say that when you talk about uh the lack of formation in moral theology that reminds me that when there have been major reform initiatives in the church I think like Trent for example so Trent focused a lot of attention on the seminaries uh immediately after that’s

The place to reform reform formation of seminarians so that you know in a generation we’ll have priests that actually can um do what needs to be done and and do it well when we think about that age of Revolution right so like the 18th and 19th centuries again that sort

Of renewal of of neoism was sort of like you need to be teaching Thomas in the seminaries because the kinds of challenges that we are facing intellectually with the enlightenment Thomas is the antidote um and and so I think that you know of the things I said

That’s that’s got to be a much higher priority is is reform in the seminaries certainly yeah I um actually I just uh I haven’t announced it yet I’ve told people I’m writing a book but I did just sign with Sophia and uh writing a book on modernism and um okay and it’ll be

Out like maybe by the end of next year because it takes you know 12 to 15 months from start to finish with the process to get it on the Shelf sort of thing um but I’m done probably about 50 60 pages of it and I’ve been going

Through Kant and Hegel and Hume and diart uh Tyrell and Wazi like basically the philosophical progenitors of modernism and then the theological and the greatest enemy of the church is not Freemasonry the greatest enemy of the church is not you know Islam the greatest enemy is Emanuel Kant the

Greatest enemy is is is Renee dickart the greatest enemy is is is is Hegel because uh that manner of thinking makes all of those heresies possible uh because it’s a subjectivist whatever it’s a it’s a materialist problem it’s a bifurcation of of the cosmos and the universe and

And um the only you know like I just finished reading I narrating um augustin’s confessions for Tan uh Anthony elin’s recent translation I love Augustin I took Augustin yeah it’s it’s a good it’s a really good one I took augustin’s name as like my religious name when I entered the third order like

He’s a really big deal to me um but it’s but Thomas has to be it has to be to mytic realism because it’s it’s everything Augustin and Aristotle and Plato offered but it’s it’s perfectly concentrated and distilled and and and distinctly Western you know yeah absolutely perfect

Y all right ladies and gentlemen we did even get to Chesterton we didn’t get to which uh beard products we like to use by the way ladies and gentlemen you can buy Kennedy support beard oil products in the link to the description um or the description

Box of the video um lots more one day you got to come back on my show if you if you’re able to find time because this has been wonderful yeah yeah I’m happy to do it okay all right ladies and gentlemen um as always let me know what you think in

The comment section to the video also um we will be running another men’s conference in February uh weekend the 17th 18th 19th can’t remember so mark your calendars not ladies but just gentlemen um if you’re from Canada or the states we did have some Americans last year it’s going

To be about 220 people this year or so should be bigger um so stay tuned for that and um that’s all all right Brian H we’ll talk to you soon and uh everyone let me know what you think in the comments this has been the Kennedy report until next time God bless

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