Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#634 Knights of the Modern Age: Chivalry Is Being Resurrected By Young Men! Women Pay Attention!
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS With Scripture Are Below the Description!
The nobility of knighthood isn't about suppressing masculine power—it's about channeling it properly. Matthew McKenna, PhD candidate in theology at Ave Maria University, returns to explore how chivalry offers the antidote to both toxic masculinity and passionless mediocrity.
The conversation begins with a profound observation: fiction shapes us as much as non-fiction. The stories we consume—whether through literature, film, or other media—profoundly influence our worldview and aspirations. This makes the recovery of timeless narratives from authors like Tolkien, Chesterton, and Lewis essential for developing a coherent moral vision.
McKenna, expectant father to his first child, shares his concerns about raising children in today's cultural landscape. With pornography exposure happening at increasingly younger ages and children's entertainment becoming progressively more toxic, parents face unprecedented challenges in forming their children's moral imagination. This reality makes understanding the philosophical foundations of our culture wars more important than ever.
Read Matthew's Articles at the Catholic Exchange!
Understanding St. Thomas Aquinas on You Tube
Jacks Latest Blog Young Men United in the Eucharist: Heroically Rebuilding the Three Necessary Societies
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Discussion questions:
- How do the stories and media we consume shape our worldview and aspirations, and what steps can we take to ensure we engage with narratives that promote virtue and truth?
Scripture Ref: Philippians 4:8 – “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” - How does the imagery of a knight’s armor in this passage reflect the call to rise above our natural state through discipline and purpose?
Scripture Ref: Ephesians 6:13-17 – “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm… having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” - The importance of combining moral virtue with practical skills. How can young men today develop both a strong philosophical foundation and the capabilities needed to address cultural challenges effectively?
Scripture Ref: 2 Timothy 2:15 – “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” - How does the philosophical error of existentialism, as discussed by Matthew, contribute to cultural issues like transgender ideology, and what can we learn from traditional philosophical and theological perspectives to counter these errors?
Scripture Ref: Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Fiction shapes us at least as much as nonfiction does. So the media you're consuming, the shows you're watching, the books you're reading and listening to, heavily shape your worldview and the way you're perceiving the world and the desires you have, have what you want to be like. And you need good stories, of course, and I think we're going to get the best story told in a thousand years or maybe not okay since Dante.
Speaker 1:If you're wrong, though, about what's real, or you're wrong about the nature, about what you are, if you misidentify yourself uh, I think I am a puppy. Wrong, right? You're not going to be happy. If you use reality bad, it doesn't work. Take a hammer, hold it upside down. If I hit the nail in, you don't just fail to hammer the nail in, you break your hammer because you're smashing the handle against the nail, and it doesn't work. So if you use reality wrongly, it breaks. Right, you're not happy.
Speaker 2:Thank you again, and you did an opener here. You said June was pride month. I'm not trying to cut down these poor guys that are so confused or girls that are so confused at this point of this podcast, but just to say what you just said, that I'm going to make this all up. Now think about the pride that that takes. You know this all goes back to Genesis 3. You know I will be like God. Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm Jack Riggert, your host, and welcome to all the young men that have been joining us, some young women too, but especially the young men. That's what we have Claymore. Claymore is a big sword made famous by William Wallace and Braveheart Claymore Miletus Christi. In fact, I'm going to hold this up just for a second.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:Miletus Christi. Make sure you download this. This is the battle plan for these young men that are coming in. It's really a discipleship program. It's a lot of fun because we're not doing this alone. We're doing this with Christ, but we're also doing it with each other as brothers. Very, very important. I am excited. We talk about chivalry, we talk about heroes, we talk about villains.
Speaker 2:To you in Claymore, miletus Christi, I am excited to have Matthew McKenna on. He's becoming quickly my resident go-to expert on everything Tolkien, gk Chesterton, st Thomas Aquinas I don't know if you get into Lewis at all, matthew, I'm sure you do right, and so, look, we need to. This is why I'm excited to have Matthew back with us. We need to revive these and resurrect these stories. These are timeless stories, you know, talking about everything that's true, good and beautiful the villains, the heroes and chivalry. Today, I want to talk a little bit more about chivalry because these young guys, matthew, are looking for heroes, they're looking for a way to live, and you just wrote another wonderful article at the Catholic Exchange fairly recently on chivalry. You'll have to tell us a little bit about that, but before you do, welcome, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming back. Tell us a little bit about this first baby coming Well thank you for having me very excited.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, my wife is. My wife is pregnant. She's due any day now. So, very excited. My first baby, our first baby, uh, and I'm the first of all my siblings to get married and then have a kid too. So it's gonna be the first grandchild for my my father too oh, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you what this is. Why we do what we do, matthew, is because we see these young men like you, you know, coming up into the world and having the courage to have children, and what could be, you know, if you look out in the world, matthew, I'll get your take on this. It could be a very it's a very toxic place we're living in right now. Evil is out in the open and, of course, john Paul said over and over again right, be not afraid, be not afraid. So don't be afraid to walk in. He said don't be afraid to walk into this story, but we walk in with Christ, you know, and it's very, very important in today's time.
Speaker 2:So I'll just give them a little bit of background. You're a PhD candidate in theology at Ave Maria University and you study and teach the works and this is why it's so important St Thomas Aquinas, gk Chesterton, jrr Tolkien, and your dissertation is in progress right now, linking Masculine Genius and the Priesthood. We'll have to do a show just on that, matthew, at some point. So tell us just a little bit about this baby, how you feel about the world, and how did you end up writing about chivalry this last time? I?
Speaker 1:think you're right to say it's a very. The world is very, especially toxic right now, and especially to children. I'm reminded a couple of years ago I mean because we're in pride month of June right now I think it might've just been last year last pride month there were some pride nonsense parade going on and they were chanting yes, we are coming for your children.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was all that.
Speaker 1:That might be. I think it's just last year, it's probably in new york, but so like, yeah, the world is very toxic to children, especially like when I was growing up, veggie tales to spring mainstream, the ordinary, the secular children's shows and tv was barely wholesome. I can remember when I was really little watching dragon tales and, like um, a little bit older, watching arthur, stuff like that. Uh, back then the average world, secular world, wasn't quite as toxic, but now, like the crazy kid shows coca, melon or whatever are truly insane and very, very toxic. Everybody's raising their kids on their smartphones and on the tablet. Everybody's got tablet toddlers and stuff.
Speaker 1:It is, in a way, a challenging time, I think, to be entering fatherhood. I mean, I actually know what I'm talking about. I'm not the father yet, I don't have past experience with this, but I do think it is especially challenging time. Pornography is just everywhere. Average age exposure is something like eight now. So it's, and we're having a son too, so it's definitely there's a lot of fears, a lot of worries about, like shielding my son from the culture so we can actually raise him well and not let the culture be in charge of his destiny.
Speaker 2:I'm writing a book to support Claymore, miletus Christi, soldiers for Christ, and in that battle plan I just held up, you can print that on our website, matthew, and if you run across any young men, it's an outline. But that outline is for us to disciple one another, because the hope is in you guys, the hope is in Gen Z. I don't know if you still fit in Gen Z, but if you don't, you're just hitting the outsides of it. Are you still a Gen Z-er?
Speaker 1:I'm not a millennial, I'm the very next thing. I think it's Gen Z.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's Gen Z, so you're the older, probably the older you know Gen Z goes, Matthew, from about 14 to about 27, even 28.
Speaker 1:You know I'm 28.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, Very very top.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is the hope, because here's what happened. And is that that? I think the young men Well, I don't think I know, because I'm speaking to them, the young men that we're meeting have just said you know, there's something wrong. They don't all know right. They're not all PhD candidates in theology, matthew. They could be linemen working, you know, for a city or com ed or something. You know, carpenters, you know whatever. And they're coming into the story and they're saying something's wrong. They don't always know what it is.
Speaker 2:The reason I put that Trump hat up there is not because we think Trump is Jesus Christ, but they started to vote for him because they felt this oppression and they felt like Trump would help liberate them, at least to live the way they wanted. Well, they didn't know exactly what it was. So now is a great time to evangelize, now is a great time to tell these great stories from Tolkien and Chesterton and crack open Thomas Aquinas. And so let's get into your article, which really talks about patriarchy. Well, here's the name Patriarchy isn't about horses, but chivalry is. And so I'm very excited to talk and focus on these young guys, Matthew, when you're talking, too right, because I look to you to be a translator between these great, timeless messages and the hearts of these young guys like yourself right that said nope. Of these young guys like yourself right that said nope. We're going to take back some territory for Christ right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're going to work together to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was originally inspired to write this article. A couple of things came together. First, like I love Chesterton, chesterton has a line I think it's in Orthodoxy where he says something like when we mention chivalry, the most noble time or mood of man is a chivalrous man. It involves the horse. So man is most noble when he's working with the horse. And of course at that time I had no idea about the etymology of the word chivalry. So I was like what, chivalry and horses? No idea. So there's that. And then there was that Barbie movie that came out a couple years ago. Uh, that got that, got a lot of attention. And of course like, uh, at one point the, the dude, barbie ken, like gets involved in patriarchy, uh, and then he has this weird line where he says like I often should patriarchy. I realized it wasn't about horses because he had been like he basically just become a cowboy persona in like a weird way.
Speaker 1:Uh, yes, and so there's this like weird association now, like wait, so gesturing things, chivalry is about horses, actually patriarchy. There's weird association that. So I kind of like looked into these things, uh, it turns out chivalry is about horses actually. That's like I was intrigued in, like because there's like cultural uh events of the bar movie coming out which is like trying to like be feminist but like kind of failed. I think they're kind of attacking masculinity and traditionally they use masculinity, but also somehow like men's association with horses, which Chesterton seems to be saying is legitimate.
Speaker 1:So if you look back into the word chivalry, it kind of comes from two words that mean horse. There's the French cheval I'm not pronouncing that, right, I can't speak French, it's like C-H-E-V-A-L cheval or something, and then the Latin cabalus, and so originally it was more the French word cheval that we get chivalry from, and it just kind of meant the mounted knights, like the soldier who fights from a horse, uh, the, the, the horse warrior. Because you know, the, the knight on a horse, is really powerful and you get a big, strong war horse. You can armor my top. That that's you kind of win if you have a bunch of those you kind of win.
Speaker 2:It's really hard to beat somebody like that actually, uh, in battle, and that matthew is where the claymore sword came from, exactly because the scots did not have the horses that the English had, and as gruesome as it sounds, that Claymore sword could take out the leg of a horse, yeah yeah, it's a huge thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't believe guys could walk into, you know, on a battlefield carrying that sword. The one behind me is heavy and the real one they were carrying is about 10 pounds heavier than this one, and this one is a handful. It's a two-handed sword and I think that Chesterton looks at the horse and there's something powerful in that image, right, of a man like a nobility I think you say in your article, right, and it's true, a man riding on a horse. It kind of elevates him, and so some ideas were coming to my mind. So I'd like to get your take on that. You know when you start to think about that image and then how it relates to where we're at today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So like it's kind of weird how a horse, an animal, makes man more noble or better, like it's like, uh, if you were to talk to some feminist dollar, what they would tell you is oh, that's just because, um, rich people had horses and poor people didn't, and so we associate nobility. Yeah, but of course that's like well, everybody had horse, horses were farming. Like not everybody had a horse, but like they were pretty common thing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not like today.
Speaker 1:Actually, when we're to have horses today, you actually do have to be very rich, because they're like purely recreational and you just have to have them barn and you take care of them and, like today, horses are associated with rich people but, like that wasn't always the case. Horses, their normal, ordinary mode of transportation, uh, work and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So and, as usual, these, these, so many of these young women. God bless them and and and I shouldn't say just young, because there's plenty of baby boomer, crazy labor boomer women out there that don't know history and they would make a statement like that you know, I, I my my grandparents and great-grandparents had had animals and stuff, right, because that's the way you live. They were there, you, you live on a farm, they're all over the place yeah.
Speaker 1:Everybody had a horse.
Speaker 2:And they were not rich. They were not rich.
Speaker 1:I like there's like I think he's passed away now, but my home parish, back where I grew up, there was a really really, really old guy who remembers hitching up a horse to come to Sunday Mass, so like that was like, I think, before World War II, but he was like, so like the last type of like generation, the last people to like still come to Mass on a horse, so yeah, well, I'll tell you what I study every once in a while in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster, and I haven't been down there for a while now, but I used to go down and visit Christopher West.
Speaker 2:on there he's got the Theology of Body Institute, you know, and it's Amish country and you know these Amish. You know they're not rich people either and they work like they really work. Talk about animal, they work. You know these men are out. You know boom, boom with these pitchforks putting hay on the back. But anyways, everybody has a horse and that's how they get around with horse and buggy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like. So it is. Justin kind of like muses over the fact that horse is a noble man. It's also. The horse is a weird animal, he points out. Its head is skinnier than its neck. That's weird. Yeah, like, that's the kind of thing about that we were like that you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, horses are. Horses are kind of weird, funny looking animals actually, but they're like extremely useful. They're one of the few animals you can actually ride like you can ride an elephant, so that's like huge and actually kind of like dangerous because they're so big and like harder to take care of and they take up. They take up more space and stuff eat a, eat a lot more.
Speaker 2:They eat a lot more.
Speaker 1:If an elephant goes on a rampage, you're just dead. If a horse goes on a rampage, you can self-control and so you can break the horse in Much harder for the elephant if it goes on a rampage. But there's only a handful of animals you can actually ride and that can be domesticated actually. So a horse is a great one. Of course it helps us in a lot of ways. It's also just a funny thing, a funny animal and riding it is also funny. Not just having pets, like a dog or something like a wolf, be domesticated or even just having farm animals eat meat, so breaking pigs or chickens or eggs or meat, but actually we're going to ride it and then we're going to use it in war, we're going to ride it in battle and things like that. It's a funny concept and Chester basically makes us wonder about that again, which is really good. I think it's really helpful.
Speaker 2:You know when I think about that now. Okay, so how does that relate when I was thinking about your article and how does that relate to us right now? And we are in a battle, and I think we need to picture ourselves not riding so much on a horse, but perhaps riding on the Gospels, riding on the tradition of the church and thinking about it the same way that we're noble. Right, we become noble not because we walk around in this earth. There's nothing wrong with that. Right, we are from the earth. But we can't stop there, can we, matthew? We have to transgress this.
Speaker 2:We have to be transformed. And how do we do that? Well, we have to get up and we have to go above this. You know, just this earth. We have to come into a link, huh, with the divine, and we do that. And this is very important. I think this is the image that I, when I was reading your article, that's what I wanted to bring over to young guys to say, hey, you know, we have to get up on something, and what we get up on is scripture, our tradition, the magisterium, the true magisterium coming down from the church. You know what? Do you think?
Speaker 1:No, that's exactly right and that down from the church, you know what do you think? No, that's exactly right and that's kind of. Actually we can all tie this back into chivalry. The chivalry wasn't just like um, a term for mountain soldier, like that was kind of base requirements to be chivalrous, to adhere to the code of chivalry and be a knight. But the whole idea of chivalry then is to further, uh, dignify the soldier by giving him a moral, uh spiritual code to live by. So the classic idea of the knight he takes a vow of knighthood to protect the innocent, whatever it is. Obey your, obey your lord, protect the innocent, things like that. But that transforms the soldier, like it.
Speaker 1:It might be uh, rather unpopular, say, but uh, soldiers don't always have the best reputation morally speaking. That's not to be like unpatriotic. My father was in the Air Force and served and everything, and my father-in-law was in the Navy and I have lots of friends that served. But a lot of people will be the first to tell you there's a lot of nonsense that goes on in the military and there always has been. Like military, you put a bunch of young, strong men together in a group, they're probably going to do some crazy stuff. Uh, there's a reason like lots of guaranteed the reason lots of cities were pillaged and burned when they conquered them. Uh, when they were conquered, uh like in world war ii, uh when we had like a million soldiers waiting in britain to invade normandy, uh there was uh the british they said. Said Americans were sexed and underworked because we had a million men waiting there to invade France. They got into a lot of trouble. It kind of made a lot of the British people angry.
Speaker 2:The Europeans are calling Americans oversexed right.
Speaker 1:I mean that's amazing.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you do do that, and I'll tell you what. I know Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, marines, who got addicted to pornography because they were overseas and you're in Afghanistan or Iraq and you have to be very careful going out, where you're going, and some of them got in there by accident, you know. But anyways, your point was well taken right. I mean, we become less than noble, less than knight-like, even though they're tough guys, yeah, and they don't lack courage, but they lack that nobility. So talk more about that, because that's what these young guys that we're working with, matthew, are finding, that it's not just about being courageous, even though I'll tell you what, if you're disconnected from the divine, even courage sometimes is hard to muster up, isn't it? Oh, yeah, I think especially men.
Speaker 1:We need like both. Like we need to have the moral code, we need to like reach for the skies, which we need to accept the love of Christ and be transformed spiritually and become good people not just good people, but supernaturally good people right, so we can live in union and for Christ. But then also you do need like the knight skills, the combat skills, like the good human natural courage. A lot of times we can associate something like that with masculinity. And then somebody from crazy guy like Andrew Tate, who's like probably I don't know that much about the dude actually, but he's probably a horrendously evil person. It sounds like morally something. He's not very noble, but he has a lot of like masculine traits, maybe in a way like strong I think he's that soldier you're talking about, that hasn't you know?
Speaker 2:hasn't been, you know? Look at civilized, let's, let's talk about her or nobilized you know, maybe that's a new word, huh, nobilized.
Speaker 2:Maybe, maybe, maybe we should start using that. But and here's the one quick point I want to get you know your take on this, because when you said we want to be a good man, see what happens in the culture today. These guys think I'm a goody two-shoes, I'm a Puritan, but that's not what we're talking about here, you know, when we're talking about a good man, that means to actually be there to protect, let's say, women, children. You brought up children right To do what's true, good and beautiful in the world, and that is a passionate man. If you lack passion, if you lack courage, if you lack these great desires of the heart, you won't have the confidence to go out and do that, because you have to do the other side, which you were talking about also, which is I have to have some skills. And so what are these weapons? And again, these weapons are, you know, first of all, for our scripture, and scripture is not a sissy. You read scripture.
Speaker 1:They're not asking us to be wimpy men are they? No, not at all.
Speaker 1:A lot of times. I think the modern world, the secular vision of morality, basically just like boring empathy, boring politeness, like it is wimpy, is shallow chested it is, it's lame. You don't need bigger passion, but, if you like, actually study the christian moral tradition in the scriptures. You need a lot of power to be good. You need a lot of passion and strength to be good. Uh, the virtuous person has trained their passions, not in like a stoic way that they just never feel passion, but so that their passion is ordered rightly, so that they are angry when they should be angry. And you can be like Christ and flip over some tables when you should, when you need to, and so then you can have the passion, go out and love viciously. Love viciously I mean like strongly, like intensely, not not vicely.
Speaker 2:So that's all part of like being good yeah, you know, I don't know if you saw, uh, bishop baron uh had an interview with tucker carlson and recently and I was a little mad at baron I, I didn't want to listen to him. I thought he was a little bit uh, lacked a little courage there, uh, during, and some other things too. I always liked him previously, but then I thought I don't have time for him anymore. But anyways, he had this. I changed a little bit because he had this wonderful interview with Tucker Carlson and he seemed like he got his you know his direction. Not that he was going in the wrong direction, right, so don't get me wrong but really lacked that shepherd that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know this knight in shining armor that steps up and leads, not from behind but from the front, right, that's what a bishop should be doing, you know, in his own way. You know some of them, you know in a more vocal way, some of them are a little quieter. You know, pope Leo XIV is a little bit, is a very humble guy, but he's standing up and he's leading, isn't he? He's wonderful, but anyway. So Barron says this, he goes. It's really, in essence, not about stuffing and pushing down our passions and desires, but it's like a river. And so this nobility that you're talking about, matthew, this way to raise a man up and put guardrails on him, so he knows, uh, you know how to live chivalry right knows how to live, how to go.
Speaker 2:He said it's like a river, and that river is raging. It's beautiful, it's moving, it's curving, it's powerful. If you take those banks down, it, just you know, becomes insipid it just kind of drains out there and, and and becomes flat right and that's most of the these, these men in this culture have just become apathetic.
Speaker 2:Nothing, right. So I, I don't want to be good, so I'm just going to be this apathetic, lukewarm guy. And then you see these beautiful nights, right, that that are like a river, and what they? What happens? They just are redirecting their passions and desires so that it's still powerful. That's what I think about chivalry right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Here is the moral being a good person, having good morals, having the banks, they make the river more powerful, Like when you have a garden hose when you cover half of it it gets a lot stronger. When you cover half of it, it gets a lot stronger. So it's in no way as if there's a competition between having a strong skill set and talents and powerful and power and charisma and you might call it masculine qualities. There's no competition between that and the dignity, the nobility, the goodness, If anything, they go together. A holy person who has no skills can't do as much for Christ as opposed to like the heavily, the very skilled, good person. They can do a lot more for Christ. Yeah, Christ gives some people five, some three, some one talents. The person with five talents just makes more talents for Christ.
Speaker 2:Right, and then we go into the world, you know and you go into the world because you know I hate bullies, matthew. Ever since I was a young guy, I hated bullies. I got into martial arts and fighting and taught it for many, many years, just because I hated bullies. And I used to always tell our students I said, you know, we're not looking for fights out there, but I said, if you see a young person, an old person, an old lady, you know, whatever, somebody that's crippled, whatever, somebody that's just small, can't, you know, and people are picking on them, you know, consider at least an action, standing up for that person in some way.
Speaker 2:And it's going to take courage to do that. It's not easy to do. I know that myself. But on the other hand, this is what we're called to do. We're called to go into the world and fight these bullies and a lot of times it's the evil, huh, it's the evil of abortion, it's the evil about these gender ideologies, the books that they're bringing this pornographic books they bring into our schools, and we don't have the courage to stand up and push back.
Speaker 2:And I'm hoping that these young guys like yourself and these young guys with claymore are, uh, getting the courage. You have to have the conviction right. You have to have the tools that you're talking about. You know, like a knight he's practicing, and then you also have to be channeled so that that gives you the impetus to go to say a school board meeting or to pray outside an abortion clinic. These are real knights that I see standing out there and fighting. So this is a very exciting time, I think, to be alive, because the weeds in a weed are growing up together right now and we could see them. They're out in the open, you know, really out in the open.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really good. You read all these things together. If you just have one without the other, it's going to go bad. Like if you have lost skills but don't have nobility, the well. Then you become like a villain, like a really bad villain. But if you're just good but don't have any skills, you're kind of useless. Yeah, that sounds really. That sounds really mean and like it sounds like heaven, but you know what?
Speaker 2:no, we need to challenge each other for that. So if I'm that guy that thinks he's good but hasn't done anything, I need to sit there and think about what you just said.
Speaker 1:I, I think a lot of us are like that, I think, especially because the culture is at least at least my observation of people in my generation and also the younger part of Gen Z Maybe not so much millennials, but Gen Zers largely speaking, because we know what's right and wrong. We want to do what's right. We can oftentimes get lazy and think like, oh, because we're good, we're not the crazy culture and so I don't actually need to like develop my skill set and my talents as much because I'm good. I don't have to be, because I'm more than good, I don't have to be like skilled at things. I think that's a big mistake. And then when we act like that, then we end up losing the culture, cause we don't have like, we don't have good lawyers. You can actually fight the litigations well and actually win, because they think, oh, because I'm right, I don't have to work really hard. No, because you're right, you have to work hard.
Speaker 2:Yes, if you know that and if you know the lawyers that I know in the Alliance for Defending Freedom.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they're good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Thomas More Society. Right, I mean, you know the Thomas More lawyers, these guys are fighters.
Speaker 2:They're fighters, man, and to exactly your point. So we have to go out and do that. But we're these guys that you're talking about, matthew, that don't think they need a skill set. You know what they're going to lose. We're not going to just lose the culture, you're going to lose your own heart, because the demonic I really feel like this the demonic has been set free, and this didn't happen yesterday. It happened when I was a kid already, with the sexual revolution and abortion came in when I was in high school, made it legal. You know, we have same-sex marriage came in in 2015, not, you know, 10 years ago now. And so these things and these gender ideologies that have been released in the schools, you can't make this stuff up right, and we allowed it all to go on. But you know why? Because, first of all, I lost my own heart. When we talk about Claymore, there's there's a three parts to this, and the first part is getting your own heart back. You have to get your own heart back, don't you? Yeah, yeah, go ahead, but.
Speaker 1:but chivalry comes right into this, into oh yeah, you, if you don't know who you are, what you're supposed to do, what your, your purpose in life is, you're going to flounder.
Speaker 1:We're not just called to generic goodness.
Speaker 1:We are called to generic goodness that all of us should live good, moral lives, but we're also called to particular goodness. God gives each of us particular desires and a particular purpose in life too, almost like a subset or a specification of our general purpose in life. Our general purpose in life as human beings is to know, love and serve God, like Baltimore Catechism says, but then, particularly, each one of us is supposed to do that in a different, unique way. Now, the general division between us would be a male way and a female way Cool, but then each man and each woman in a very particular, different way, and that, in order to identify that which is really what's going to make you also, be like, happy in this life, so to speak, it's going to have required knowing your heart, knowing your desires, knowing the talents that god is giving to you, and then developing those a lot, developing those tremendously and then using them for a good, and then combining those talents which you receive from god and then develop a bunch on your own and then using them well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just for the young guys listening, maybe for the first time today, it's about identifying, to Matthew's point, your talents, what God gave you, and then bringing them into the church first and not bring them into the church so the church can use them. Bring them into the church so God can purify them.
Speaker 2:You know, this is about prayer, this is about confession, this is about reading scripture, this is about going to the mass, right? And so these are times where you're saying, okay, god, I got these talents, I want to purify it so I become like that river that's channeled to do good. Only then can I step out and do good. I have to get my heart back.
Speaker 2:You know John Paul would say that often, and you know this, I'm sure, matthew, you know it all starts on the battlefield of the individual human heart between love and lust, right Between being filled with divine life and then going out and being a gift to others versus grasping. And why do I grasp? Why do I take? Why do I get into this lustful life? Right, well, and this is money, power, sex, all kinds of things. It's because I'm not filled, because I haven't taken my talents into the church. Well, the church is not a building, it's the body of Christ, right, yeah, and so this is what you're talking about here. So, matthew, when these guys, we're going to try to get them to start to read some of these things that you are an expert on, how do they start? Because GK wrote a while ago, right, so he was writing what in the 20s and 30s and et cetera.
Speaker 2:I think he wrote Everlasting man about that time, orthodoxy, and so when you pick up Everlasting man, it's readable. But any suggestions to them, when they pick it up, any warnings to say, hey, what would you say about somebody that says, okay, these guys said let's read, or maybe they should read Lewis first. Give us some pointers. So I want maybe just something about chesterton reading one of his books, maybe something about tolkien is it watching one of his movies or you know what? And then, and then the hardest one, uh, if you had any suggestions on how we would poke around with aquinas, um, so you know, if you could touch on those a little bit, because I really want them to get into these stories yeah, I'd highly recommend just reading the lord of the rings.
Speaker 1:Now, it's huge, that's like a thousand pages and not everybody likes reading. I think the lord of the rings and this is the way I usually consume it uh, okay, in audiobooks, audiobook, the lord of the rings is very easy. It's great, yeah. So I'd drop the 20 bucks a big deal or find them free somewhere you can do that. But I'd highly recommend getting those stories. Those stories mold and shape how we view the world, actually maybe even more so than non-fiction fiction shapes us at least as much as non does. So the media you're consuming, the shows you're watching, the books you're reading and listening to, heavily shape your worldview and the way you're perceiving the world, but the desires you have, what you want to be like, and so you need good stories of cult horrors, and I think Lord of the Rings is the best story told in a thousand years, or maybe not Since Dante told in a thousand years or maybe not okay, since Dante, since the divine comedy so seven, six hundred years in six hundred years?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think I think that's fair. An easy way to listen to, I'd say, is audiobook, so that that's doable, I think. So, yeah, just enjoy that. Lewis Lewis is pretty easy to read, um, not too hard to understand. The screw tape letters are amazing one which one? The screw tape letters screw tape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, so, so touch on. Look just very briefly on what guys are going to be reading in the screw tape, because when you first start reading it, it's good to know a little bit about what's going on there yeah.
Speaker 1:So screw tape letters are imagined letters. This loose is pretending that he's one like an experienced demon, writing letters of advice to a younger demon about how to an inexperienced demon about how to tempt people, and so it's like it's almost like an insider's view of a demon's head how they quite easy to understand into the human mind of how you're thinking, how you're desiring things, what leads you to this. So I think the two letters are very helpful to start understanding how and why you end up falling into sin, which of course prevents you from living your life well. So I think that's a great suggestion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great suggestion. Okay, so now we got one from lewis, we'll get you back on and talk about a couple other ones. But lord of the rings, uh, that'll keep them busy for a while, is, is there not? You know, there's good english trans translations, of course. Uh, you know, with saint thomas aquinas, with the Summa or something, but if people are just, he wrote so much right. And yet at the end of his life.
Speaker 2:He calls it all straw when he really had a vision of Christ and so, keeping that in mind, where would they start with? If I was just interested in saying, hey, I need to know something about Aquinas, right, we keep hearing about the St Thomas Aquinas guy. Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 1:A great place to go to the starts would be the Thomistic Institute. They're putting out a great video series called Aquinas 101 on YouTube.
Speaker 2:What's the institute again?
Speaker 1:The Thomistic Institute.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was on that years ago. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's the Dominicans in DC that years ago I forgot, oh nice, yeah, yeah, there's the dominicans in dc. Uh, they're great. They have an awesome youtube uh series. Aquinas 101 really into kind of just summarizes the sumo for you. Like that's like something you like if you want to be an educated catholic, you should probably watch. That was like 53, four minutes each. Like you should probably spend like over a course of like the summer or like a year. You you should probably watch all those like 50 of those videos. Then you get kind of get like the whole summa condensed for you and so that's like it will give you an overview and an entryway into understanding how St Thomas is thinking and understanding deeper the truth of the faith.
Speaker 2:So to mystic institute, doc. Whatever I'll look at it in the show notes. Hey, thank you for that. I know that from years ago. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great resource. That's why they're making this YouTube series the Pontus 101, to introduce people to Thomas in a very easy, manageable way. They do this like five minutes of each. They have this great little animation on them, which helps. Yeah, they're really, really helpful.
Speaker 2:Well on them which helped. Yeah, they're really really helpful, or just I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw out. Here's what I'm gonna throw out for chesterton, then right, we haven't had chesterton. Is is the dumb ox oh yeah the book about st thomas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love it yeah, that's thomas, that's chesterton's like. Uh. Biography of thomas quinnis. Really good, it'll give you an introduction to uh his thoughts, thomas quinnance's thoughts. But it's great. I love the Domox, it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know it's a fairly thin book. And I remember when I was studying in graduate school for theology and we were studying John Paul II studies, it was beautiful, incredible program at the University of St Thomas and anyways, you know, I'm looking for different books on Aquinas and somebody comes across and said, have you ever read Chesterton's on Aquinas? I said no. I said it looks so thin. What could it be telling us about it? And I love Chesterton, yeah. So I said okay, I'll get it. Well, I read, I read a review, matthew, from some, some critics and thinking that they're gonna, you know, tear it down. You know, and they didn't, they built it up.
Speaker 2:They said that's great I said, this is one of the most fantastic books you can read on thomas aquinas, and so this is a. I would have never remembered this, except that you were bringing this stuff up. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I mean at some point you should just read the Summa. You can get hard copies At some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I agree because you don't have to read the whole thing at once, right? You just you pick out a couple of points or maybe something you're interested in, look it up and see what Aquinas said about it. And don't forget that the last thing I'll kind of get your. You know your thing here. You know the beauty of Catholicism Now you got my head spinning right.
Speaker 2:The beauty of Catholicism and St Thomas Aquinas himself is he took Aristotle, you know, from the ancient Greeks. This is the beauty of Catholicism. We think you know this started with Jesus and of course it did right. But we never threw out philosophy and these beautiful ancient Greeks, like Aristotle and Plato, 400 years before Jesus came on the scene, were already talking about this. Matthew, right, what's true, good and beautiful. And he takes, he resurrects, basically, aristotle right in the Middle Ages and then boom, he puts this beautiful layer of Jesus Christ, of Catholicism, there and it says see, everything that we're talking about here, we know, we know right philosophically. This is the richness of our faith. I get goosebumps just now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh it's. The philosophy of the faith is so important because the objections we're getting from the culture, like the greatness in the culture, are, of course, like philosophical errors, like the transgender ideology comes from bad philosophy.
Speaker 2:Give us an example, when you say that You're exactly but, but give us our audience that that may not be, you know, familiar even even with what is you know exactly philosophy, but you know the philosophical view without we only got a couple minutes left, we're winding down, but when you, when you said that I you're right on, can you unpack that a little bit, for?
Speaker 1:uh for our audience philosophy, in a word, is just using reason well to study the world, to come to know what is true, what's true, what's good, what's beautiful, right, but if we're wrong.
Speaker 2:Reality yeah, what's reality?
Speaker 1:and then, therefore, because of what, what's real, how should I live, based on what I am and what reality is, how should I live? Thank you, that was happy. Thank you, that was beautiful. Yeah, if you're wrong, though, about what's real, or you're wrong about the nature, about what you are, if you misidentify yourself I think I am a puppy Wrong Right, you're not going to be happy. If you use reality bad, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Take a hammer hold it upside down and hit the nail in. You don't just fail to hammer the nail in, you break your hammer because you're smashing the handle against the nail and it doesn't work. So if you use reality wrongly, it breaks. Right, You're not happy.
Speaker 1:So many of the errors, the secular errors we see around us today, stuff like transgender ideology, communism, right, they're bad philosophies and they have philosophical roots in erroneous philosophies and bad philosophies. So transgender ideology, of course mainly maybe not mainly, but largely comes from what's called existentialism, which claims you just exist, but you exist without a nature. So you get to choose what you are. And of course that's like absurd, Like I know, you're at very least a homo sapien, which is a nature, and homo sapien of course means homo man, sapiens, wise, wise man. So it's already like a rational creature who knows and loves things, Right. And so existentialism is a false philosophy that you don't have a nature. You just exist without a nature and you get to choose and create your own nature. Of course that's trying to play god right and that's a gender, and you get transgenderism you.
Speaker 2:You did such a thank you again that that and you did an opener here. You know you said june was was pride month. I'm not trying to cut down, you know, these poor guys that are so confused or girls that are so confused at this point right of this podcast, but just to say what you just said, that I'm gonna make this all up now. Think about the pride that that takes. You know, this is all goes back to genesis 3. You know I will be like god. You know, matth, I think to myself. I'm this little tiny pinpoint on the top of a gas fired planet revolving around a nuclear fireball called the sun. 93 million miles away, the whole thing is exploding out into space at like 448, the whole cosmos, the whole universe. And I'm sitting here thinking I can make this all up, right.
Speaker 2:And you know, when you think about the irrationality and here's my last point, I'll throw it back to you to finish is that that's that philosophy? Right? When I start wrong man, my whole life can be. You know, when that river starts to flow its banks and then the banks come down, I just become like this wishy-washy person getting blown around by the spirits of the age. It takes my reason and my intellect, my free will to be walking back into that church, like we said earlier, to be purified, to give me a direction and even those 10 commandments you know, to give me these guide rules. You know, like the river bank, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I can probably wrap everything you said here. Perfect Chivalry is like the correct philosophy of masculinity and man, of what man is right. It's a Catholic vision because of course, chivalry came from Catholic countries in the time when the church was very big and Catholic culture was in Christendom, the way it comes from Christendom. So chivalry is very much the Christian philosophy and theology of what it means to be a man, which of course. You're skilled, you have the proper combat skills, right to be a knight, you're also good, you follow a moral code, a strict, very intense moral code, and you put all that together. Then you can serve the church and your country better. When we see all these eras of people accusing us of weird patriarchal things, you can step that side and go back to the true philosophy of man and woman and particularly looking at it for men. The philosophy we get from Christendom was chivalry. You use your strong and you use your strength to protect and to help others.
Speaker 2:Yes, hey, that was a perfect summary, Matthew. Hey, listen, you're really a gift. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks everyone. Thanks for being here today, and we'll make sure we'll get Matthew back on soon. Bye-bye everyone.