December 5, 2025 • 76 mins
In this conversation, BT with guest Scott Smith, explores the themes of modern warfare, societal structures, and the pervasive influence of media on children. He discusses the existential threats posed by willful ignorance and the importance of cultural diagnosis in understanding the impact of entertainment on young minds. The dialogue also delves into the role of sacred art in cultural renaissance, the urgent issue of human trafficking, and the prophetic significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the context of evangelization and conversion.
In this conversation, Brandon Wallace discusses the decline of traditional Christian denominations and the impact of modern ideologies on media, particularly children's programming. He emphasizes the importance of creating a 'no watch' list for families to avoid harmful content. The discussion also delves into C.S. Lewis's views on purgatory and the necessity of regular confession for spiritual growth.
The Children's Guide to Shows
Scott Smith Resources: thescottsmithblog.com
In this conversation, Brandon Wallace discusses the decline of traditional Christian denominations and the impact of modern ideologies on media, particularly children's programming. He emphasizes the importance of creating a 'no watch' list for families to avoid harmful content. The discussion also delves into C.S. Lewis's views on purgatory and the necessity of regular confession for spiritual growth.
The Children's Guide to Shows
Scott Smith Resources: thescottsmithblog.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening to
the Fringe Radio Network. I know I was gonna tell them, Hey,
do you have the app? It's the best way to
listen to the fringe radio network. It's safe and you
don't have to log in to use it, and it
doesn't track you or trace you, and it sounds beautiful.
(00:27):
I know I was gonna tell him, how do you
get the app? Just go to fringeradionetwork dot com right
at the top of the page. I know, slippers, we
gotta keep cleaning these chimneys.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
In accordance with.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
The principles of dumb thing. It does not matter if
the war is not real? Oh what it is?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Victory is not.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Possible thing in the universe.
Speaker 5 (00:56):
The travels faster light.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
It's the darkness.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
The war is not meant to be won.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
It is meant to be continuous.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of
the produce of human labor. Hierarchical society is only possible
on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
If we go down the current status quo, we probably
destroy our civilization. Through willful ignorance. We probably degrade the
world's democracies so that they fall into some sort of
bizarre autocratic dysfunction. We probably ruin the global economy. We
probably don't survive, you know, I really do view it
(01:46):
as existential.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
The war is waged by the ruling group against its
own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia
or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
And you could stay here forever if you want to. Really,
(02:33):
this is.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
Your nautical lantern on the dangerous seas of darkness. Let's
push off from the placid shore of the status quo
and explore what's beyond the horizon. I am your host, BT,
and this is Truth and Shadow, your podcast of the supernatural.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
There's an old saying, maybe older than we think, that
the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the
world he didn't exist. But I'd argue the second greatest
trick might be subtler, still convincing us that whatever we
hand to our children screen toy story is just harmless entertainment.
(03:37):
We live in an era of surveillance where what you say,
by and believe is quietly cataloged. But the deeper surveillance
may not be governmental, it may be spiritual, and it's
not just aimed at us. It's aimed at those still
too young to understand they're being watched or worse shaped.
We used to worry about stranger danger, about the guy
(03:59):
in the windowless fan, But today the windows moved and
it's in their pockets. It's beaming from the family TV.
It's disguised in bright colors, catchy tunes and the disarming
innocence of animation. And yet beneath that surface, if you
really look, you'll start to see something else. Subliminal scripts,
(04:24):
reverse catechisms, a soft erosion of natural law replaced by
the gospel of feeling, self recreation and borderless morality. This
isn't new. It's the same old whisper from the garden.
Did God really say we don't fight dragons anymore? We
sit with them, let them babysit our kids while we
(04:45):
make dinner. We click play next episode without question, and
what enters their minds in those thirty minutes might shape
what they'll believe for the next thirty years. So we
come to our guest today, Scott Smith, not just a theologian,
(05:07):
not just a blogger, but a cultural diagnostician, someone willing
to do the deep dive we all know we should
do into whatever our kids are watching, But they're being
taught to love and why it matters now more than ever,
and the timing couldn't be more prophetic. We're standing on
(05:30):
the threshold of a half millennium since our Lady of
Guadalupe appeared in the New World. She appeared as a
woman clothed in the sun, offering roses in the winter
and speaking to a poor man in his own tongue,
not in Latin, not in Spanish, but Nahuatl. She came
(05:53):
not to crush a culture, but to fulfill it, and
in doing so, she crushed something darker beneath it. But
here we are, five hundred years later. The serpent, it seems,
has found new ways to speak digitally, now quietly repeated
through memes and songs and relatable characters. And the question
(06:14):
is not just what our children are seeing, but what
we're letting ourselves forget. This isn't about content, It's about formation, identity,
and allegiance, because every story teaches something, every symbol forms
a liturgy, every cartoon a catechism. The early Church fathers
used to say that what you see is not neutral.
(06:36):
It's either drawing you closer to the divine or pulling
you into shadow. Maybe that sounds a little too black
or white for modern years, but maybe it's time for
some realism. We reclaim that clarity, especially now, especially as
the sun rises again on Guadalupe's prophecy, the Tilma, the
(06:57):
sacred cloth, Wan Diego war in five centuries, without decay,
no scientific explanation, no fading pigment, just a silent witness
proclaiming something the world keeps trying to forget. That the
(07:17):
Mother is still watching, still whispering truth to those with
ears to hear it. What happens when we stop listening?
What happens when our children, her children no longer know
her name but can recite Disney's lyrics by heart. The
world isn't just heading toward another Anniversary's heading towards crossroads.
Will the next five hundred years be a renewal or
(07:40):
a reckoning? That depends on what we teach them to love,
on what stories we allow to shape their desires, and
on whether we, as parents, God parents, fellow Christians, are
brave enough to look the dragon in the eye and
say no. Let's ask the hard questions. Let's walk through
(08:02):
the blog, through the symbols, through the pattern behind the pattern.
Let's talk about the quiet war for our children's imagination.
Let's see what our lady might be saying to a
generation raised not in a garden but in a digital jungle.
(09:21):
They say that the eyes are the window to the soul.
But what happens when those eyes are staring into a
glowing screen fed a steady diet of algorithms and agendas
in an age where every clique shapes a child's worldview.
Are we shepherds or are we sleepwalkers? Today we're going
to peel back the curtain with Catholic author Scott Smith,
(09:42):
whose blog has become a clearing call to parents and believers. Aliing,
we talk about what's really entering our homes through cartoons,
streaming apps, and subtle ideologies disguised as entertainment. We'll talk media,
We'll talk Mary a prophecy, and maybe we'll glimpse the
shape of the next five centuries. Scott Smith, welcome to
(10:03):
the show.
Speaker 8 (10:04):
Appreciate you have me come back and just letting me
kind of talk about different things that I'm working on.
Some of the things I think we might cover today.
I have a few recent blog articles on one on C. S.
Lewis and the Great Divorce and Purgatory another one, uh
(10:26):
maybe it's not so new, but I've done a couple
posts on uh no watch lists for you so parents
can can figure out what episode, what season the l
g B t Q stuff starts on these kids shows
to nowhere to stop watching or or not watch at all.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So there's that.
Speaker 8 (10:51):
Got an upcoming trip to our Lady Watalupe. I've got
a couple of new podcasts I'm doing. I'm working on
dad Monk and and uh Saints by Number with a
sacred artist Jacob Zumo. And oh, we've got a book
coming out in February, Near Death Experiences for Me.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
We've may have spoken about that.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, tell me about this podcast. Let's talk
about yours specifically, because this is dad Monk. You you
began that one. What was what was the impetus get
that going?
Speaker 8 (11:25):
It's kind of a mixture of different things that I
felt like I needed to get out there in that format,
working from home as an attorney, as a writer, as
we homeschool, and establishing a prayer routine for the family.
And in the way that I'm kind of abbot and
(11:46):
the wife's kind of abbess of our own domestic monastery.
That's that's where dad monk comes in. Uh, you know,
this domestic church and this kind of takes a step
further domestic monastery. So there's that side of things structuring
our lives like little like a little monks running around.
(12:07):
But on the same side, one of the things I
like to do is adapt secular tools techniques to the sacred.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I like reading, even though it's you know a lot
of times these guys are atheists or whatever.
Speaker 8 (12:26):
I'll like to read about different tools, productivity hacks, lifestyle design,
all that kind of stuff, and I used a lot
of that to create this domestic monastery, you know, to
allow myself create passive income, fashion my work life balance
(12:47):
so that I can be home with my family. So
I think that even though these guys aren't Catholic, sometimes
I'm a Christian straight up heathens, right, They have good ideas,
and what I like to do in that podcast is
adapt some of those ideas to establishing home life. But
(13:08):
sometimes prayer life different ways. He's going to be adapted
to and spiritual techniques.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (13:16):
For example, Josh Waitskin if you remember him from searching
for Bobby Fisher about the ches. He was a chess
prodigy and later in his life he decided, I don't
know if he got bored with chess.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He wrote a book The Art of Learning. How he went.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
He transitioned from being a chess grand master uh to
being a tai Chi grand master. So uh, he he
changed completely to have one eighty on from you know,
the intellectual arts to the martial arts. And so he
talks about what he did and one how it translated
to the other.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And I think there's.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
Some interesting techniques in there basically getting yourself into the zone,
so to speak, kind of ways to train your your
mind if we adapted to Catholic teaching, to train your
your prayer life, to get in the presence of God,
(14:16):
you know, to get into your prayer whenever you need it.
Because as a dad or you know, any of us
in an active lifestyle, even you know, speaking for the
board or something at work, like you need to get
you need to find your link to God to put
(14:37):
yourself in the presence of God when you're in a
stressful situation.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And that's how you how you can have a graced
experience of a terrible situation. You know, it said like
with my family, not to say I don't lose my
temper all the time with we have six kids, and
but this is a way to help with that. If
you're able to, in the midst of chaos, put yourself
(15:02):
in the presence of God, do various triggers, prayer triggers,
you know, even just signed across on your forehead or
full sign across if you're in trouble. Things like that.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
Another thing I like to cover is Charlie Munger who
was More in Buffett's Business Partner, Investing Partner. Uh there's
the almanac, Poor Charlie's Almanac, some good another one of
these good secular books out there.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And he also.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
Spoke at Berkshire Hathaway meetings. Well More really did the talking,
but he's he what he does. They only invested maybe
ten different companies, you know, the whole multi billion dollar
investing journey. But what they did was they determined and
(16:00):
which companies to invest in using not just one or
two mental models, but maybe one hundred, one hundred and
fifty you know, physical models, based on physics, biology, logical models.
Just so I kind of go through all these different models,
mental models and show how we can use them in
(16:22):
our lives. Also why the Catholic Church using all these
mental models is ultimately the best investment.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So it's just.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
It's kind of interesting, very maybe hyper specialized kind of podcast,
just bringing all these things together synthesizing.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
No, that sounds like a really good idea to introduce
to some people who may not access or have the
time to read the sources that you're providing an insight
to into a clear Catholic Christian perspective.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, kind of a bridge.
Speaker 8 (17:01):
You know, if you're like a big Tim Ferriss fan
or something like that and Stoicism is not cutting it
for you, you.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Know, this is a bridge to Catholicism.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
And then you've been working with a sacred artist, mister
Zumo to do Saints by the Number. M first question
is what's a sacred artist? That's what I would like
to know, and then we could go on from there.
Speaker 8 (17:29):
Jacob's maybe not your traditional sacred artist, though his his
style has a lot of traditional elements. He uh, it's interesting, Louisiana.
We have something of a renaissance, cultural renaissance going on
in terms of art writing culture.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
You know, we've just always been a Catholic bastion, and.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
So there's a is there in sense outside of there's
no true culture.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Jacob as a sacred artist. Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
You know these are artists that are his family. He
has his brother in law Norman Fouchets and other sacred artists.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
They're using their read that Jacob and Norman both studied
in Florence at one of the sacred art schools there.
But they're also rediscovering old techniques. Uh that you know,
we just uh just became outmodive by more by newer
(18:38):
techniques and our understanding. Oh this newer techniques just don't
cut it. So classical art techniques. Jacob is more of
a hybrid modern and sacred artist.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
And he's modern, not in modernism sense that that good
is new and old is bad, but using.
Speaker 9 (19:08):
It.
Speaker 8 (19:09):
You know, if you if you follow the progress of
modern art, you have a consistent the trajectory is deconstructing form.
So what he does, subconsciously or not is reconstruct the
form in kind of a modern style, modern looking contemporary style,
(19:32):
but with sacred sacred elements, sacred scenes, you know, your
classic scenes, Madonna child.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Jacob. What's interesting about him.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
Is he had a crazy conversion, crazy life. He was
a college basketball player that did art on the side,
and he started doing portraits for I wish I could
remember some of these rappers. It's just not my wheelhouse.
(20:07):
But he eventually started hanging out. He started doing portraits
of rappers local, so we have a number of rappers
from the it In south of Iten area, and he
eventually started doing portraits of more famous rappers like jay
Z and Drake and those guys. And then he was
(20:30):
live painting at the Grammys and you know, playing video
games with these guys doing whatever they were doing, you know,
not good stuff, not holy stuff. Eventually it all comes
crashing down and he has his conversion and gets himself,
(20:52):
you know, clean and straight. So he's doing just beautiful artwork.
Father Calloway and for Donald Coway and the Consecration of
Saint Joseph featured uh portraits of Saint Joseph by both
Uh Norman Uh, the brother in law of Jacob and Jacob.
(21:13):
They Uh just just a.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Very interesting story and very beautiful art. So what we're
doing with uh he he Jacob and some of his work.
He still paints for.
Speaker 8 (21:31):
A lot of athletes and uh, there's various multimedia things
with them. He also uh came across a videographer, a
young man who has a real knack.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
He's he's still in high school. Uh, but he's already
done spots.
Speaker 8 (21:49):
For like Gatorade or power a DdO and for some
of the university athletic for the US you foot All team,
which is pretty big down here. And he's our videographer.
So it's it's a video podcast and it adds another
(22:12):
element to it. What we're doing is trying to spotlight
some of this talent we have down in South Louisiana,
not only artists talent, but our priests. We really have
some amazing priests down here. So we have a number
of them on and we go through their vocation story
(22:33):
and then uh, you know what their what shaped their
lives are taken, what their current theological interests are. We
had father Jeff Bahi on Who's you all should watch
that podcast? What Father Bye? He father by He's had
national program for decades, but his life is so varied.
(22:59):
I would love to write his biography I've asked him
multiple times. He I guess top billing, top of the list.
He gave last rites to Mother Teresa, spent seven summers
with Mother Teresa. He's our vocation strector at the time,
so he had some a month free every summer and
(23:19):
he spent that month with Mother Teresa, breakfast with her
every morning. So there's that amazing side of his life.
The other amazing sad his life is how well he
cut a record with Aaron Neville, the musician, and from
(23:39):
that got a few couple few million dollars that went
to a foundation, and he used that to create Medanoia Manor,
which is a which is a home sanctuary for women, ladies,
girls rescued from sex trafficking. And he's become and they've
(24:04):
kind of created this model. The manner is staffed by
the hospital or nuns. So when law enforcement goes into
these crack houses, uh, these places where women are being trafficked,
they you know, the cops go in, take take out
(24:25):
the bad guys. The women if they're not locked up,
you know, or chained up right, just terrible, terrible things.
They don't want us. You know, the law enforcement passes too.
They don't want to then be ministered or have their
wounds nursed by men. They don't want to see men,
(24:46):
they don't want to talk to men. They uh it's
traumatic to even see a man. Certainly don't have an
emotional receptivity for men when they're first getting at that situation.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So these nuns go in with the SWAT team. Amazing nuns.
These ladies are just beautiful and amazing and uh there
are most of them our nurses as well. So they
go in and immediately begin taking care.
Speaker 8 (25:16):
Of the girls. It's just it's a beautiful thing. And
so that's kind of the model that Jeff father Bye,
he is trying to expand across the country and he's
and I hope with the new administration, father Bye, he
has quite a number of Congressmen, congress people, people that
(25:40):
are entering the White House.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
In his rolodex. So I'm hoping that this is something
that will.
Speaker 8 (25:46):
Be uh, he'll he'll be able to bring across the country.
But he is one of the leading world's worlds leading
advocates and voices on fixed this problem of human trafficking.
The statistics he shares are just crazy things, like we
(26:08):
have never had more people in slavery in human history
than we do right now. I think maybe five just
five years ago, the porn industry was maybe one hundred
billion dollars, and that may be porn and trafficking, I
(26:31):
can't remember. But now it's three hundred billion dollars. Down
here in Louisiana. The biggest conduit for human trafficking is
on Iten between Houston and New Orleans, because those are
two big sports cities and often women are traffic at
(26:52):
those major events. You can sell drugs one time, you
can sell a person eight, nine, ten times a day.
It's just it's just and you know, whoever that number
was that Biden finally admitted was a number of illegal
(27:14):
immigrants that we lost track of, one hundred and forty
one thousand, whatever it was. What Father Bye he talks
about is a is probably a lot more than that.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And b most of those.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
Kids, a good bit of those were kids that are
now either cleaning somebody's house or sharing a bed with
somebody or both. So we have as a humanitarian crisis
on our hands. And that's you know, that's that's just
one of the podcasts. The one we just put out
(27:54):
is about with a local guy that went down in
a plane crash. Good local Catholic guy, but on the
human trafficking side. We're going down next month to Mexico
City to to see our Lady of Waterloupe, but also
to visit the Chalco. Chalco is the name of it's
(28:18):
a it's a town, girls town there. For it's they
have I think it's ten thousand girls in a school there.
It's Father Aloysius Schwartz, Father al venerable Aloysius Schwartz. There's
a book about him that Kevin Wells wrote called Priest
(28:40):
and Beggar, one of the best books I've read in
the last couple of years. Can't put it down.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Really well written.
Speaker 8 (28:47):
He founded He He and Mother Teresa, we're kind of
the same cut from the same cloth. But the the
tens of thousands of people that Mother Teresa and the
missionaries of charities have helped maybe you know, maybe one
hundred thousand. Father al up to that by at least
(29:10):
a degree of magnitude. There are these girls town and
boys town villages, and I don't know, maybe ten locations
around the world, in the Philippines and South Korea.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
That's where he went.
Speaker 8 (29:24):
One of his first missionary journeys was to South Korea
right after the Korean War. Africa, I think it's Tanzania
or Uganda, and these villages they'll have a boys town
girls town, usually in different not in the same location,
different cities, and there'll be just like ten thousand kids
(29:47):
that have been rescued from the street, rescued from trafficking,
and each one of them is just receiving this beautiful
religious education, full education, but beautiful formation. And his what
he did, was my father Al did, was instead of
sending his vocations to London or you know whatever, whether
(30:12):
their major seminary would be, he uh, he educates them,
gets them a high school degree, maybe maybe a little
further than that, but he sends them back immediately. So
that the people that are raised up from these villages,
that are taken off the streets, given this religious formation
for the these formative years, those are the people that
(30:36):
then become the mothers and fathers, religious religious sisters and priests,
brothers that tend to these kids. So he's able to
have just a huge amount of religious to help them
using that strategy. And so it's it's a it's a
(31:00):
just a beautiful place of County to go. Oh, and
you know there's it's more we talking about with our
lady who Loupe too well, I.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Mean, yeah, we could talk about that for a minute too,
a little bit of I mean a history background. You know,
people may be very familiar with the Reformation. Twenty seventeen.
We saw the five hundred anniversary of Martin Luther's the
ninety five THESS on October thirty first or whatnot, and
(31:33):
it was only a matter of a couple of I
it was just about a decade later, in fifteen thirty
one that we have this massive conversion of souls in Mexico,
and we're coming up on the five hundredth anniversary of that,
and you're you guys are going down in celebration to
this soon. Like you mentioned, can you talk about this
(31:56):
great moment in history.
Speaker 8 (31:59):
Yeah, and please everybody listening, please pray. We are hopefully
going to undertake a massive project for conversions, the New
eight million is what we've been calling it. The idea
is that after our lady Wadaloupe appeared in fifteen thirty one,
(32:21):
over the next eight years they're eight million, maybe even
ten million conversions, and so we want to undertake a
massive plan for evangelization and conversions across the world, but
certainly starting in North America with our patrons, our Lady
Guadaloupe to convert the new eight million. If we undertake
(32:45):
this starting with Cardinal Burks nine months no Vina, our
Lady Wullalupe concluded in December, the next eight years, if
we have eight million conversions, that would take us to
twenty thirty one, the five hundredth anniversary of our Lady
of Waterloo. And it would be poignant because even as
(33:06):
we are that if we did that on every continent,
that would be the largest conversion period in Catholic history
since Pentecost, you know, since the original and that juxtaposed
with the crumbling of mainline Protestantism, with the five hundredth
(33:26):
anniversary of Martin Luther, that also coming on the heels
of twenty thirty three, the two thousandth anniversary of Redemption
and Pentecost, having a new Pentecost, so to speak, not
that we need a new Holy Spirit or anything, but
just a new period of conversion. Our idea, our hope,
(33:47):
is that we would be able to give the Blessed
Mother a bouquet of millions of souls as an anniversary
gift for her son. So please pray for this project.
There's a number of people that have signed on for
our team, and we're working together, and then there's a
(34:08):
chance that before too much longer might be adopted here
in America.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, this is this is definitely a momentous period to
be living. And it's also historical in the fact that
we can remember and recall what was going on in
Europe in the fifteen hundreds. The printing press is basically
a new avengine. It allows the spread of documents across
miles of land tracks, and informations just passed quite easily
(34:38):
from one area to another. But the estimation between fifteen
seventeen and fifteen thirty one is about eight million Catholics
leave the Catholic faith and they become a variety of Protestants.
And this is kind of an interesting number because, like
you said, Wan Diego has has this experience. He the
(35:05):
Virgin Mary appears to him, leaves her image on the
told what he was wearing, and in a period of
time eight million Mexicans become Catholic. No printing press is
available to spread this word. It goes like wildfire through
(35:26):
the land by word of mouth. And I think this
is a great juxtaposition between the technological revolutions going on
in Europe and the simplicity of the faith that's happening
in Mexico.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
Yeah, that's that's that's such a beautiful insight. And today
which you know you will necessarily be listening on this day,
but today's a feasts of Saint Francis to sales, right,
patron saying of media and communications.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
And yeah, and.
Speaker 8 (35:57):
With the advent of printing press, anybody at that point
seemingly could write something literally authoritative. Yeah, right, you had
like completely watered down the authority of the written word.
Right now, look at what we're in the midst of
with AI and video creation, and you know, we're we're
doing good things. But anybody can have a show, anybody
(36:22):
can we can you know, between the two of us,
we've got like, I don't know, six podcasts, right, So
the but the more things get we're down, I think
the more we crave authenticity, authority, what is truth? So
(36:43):
the light can shine all the brighter in the midst
of all this all this craziness.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yeah, it's a remarkable period of time. There's the more
you the more you dig into the fifteen hundred's in
European European history, and then you look at the differences
that are going on in Central America and South America,
and you just look around and the evidence has become
(37:12):
almost mind bottling. There's just no way anybody with any
kind of sense can go, oh, this makes a lot
of logical sense. The spread of the faith is something
that happens organically, naturally and definitely guided by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 8 (37:29):
And I think I think we're saying a convergence of
a lot of things historically, a lot of historical trends
like the decline of postmism. But also, however, you calculate
it that one hundred years that Pope Leo the thirteenth,
you know, overheard, and why we start saying the same
(37:51):
Michael Dark Angel prayer after Mass. I mean, one hundred
years has got to be over now. And if I'm
reading since the data and demographics right, it sounds like,
you know, the Catholic Churches survived, It's endured, and in
some sense it could even be may not look it,
(38:13):
but it could be stronger than ever. While at the
same time, mainline Protestantism is dead man walking, right, because
the church in the last twenty thirty years, our moral
voice became, I don't know what adjective to describe it,
but it was not what it should have been. You
(38:36):
could see that without being able to lean on us
the mainline Protestant denominations, they adopted everything, They adopted every
new thing, new shining thing to come along, and now
they are dead men walking. They you look at any
of the surveys data, there's not going to be these
(39:01):
denominations and the next generation, maybe maybe two generations, you've
still got some vestige of it. But if you just
extrapolate what we're seeing now thirty forty years from now,
we're not gonna be the only game in town, but
we're certainly going to be by far the biggest game
(39:21):
in town in terms of Christianity. But besides this, it's
going to be Mormons, Baptist Joah's Witnesses that you know,
and then you know non denominationalism, right, you know, it's
like yeah, yeah, but like Chiscopealians, Presbyterians not going to
(39:46):
exist much longer. So we have to be prepared for that,
for to receive these guys.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, absolutely, it's it's the downside of basically going to
modern with your you know, your postmodernism becomes a plague,
a virus, and it infects everything it comes in contact with,
and we end up with that kind of ideas bleeding
(40:15):
into everything that we can experience, whether it's online media
or on the television.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
And there's a handful of.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Sites people can go to to research whether a show
is really kid friendly or not, what kinds of things
to look out for, number of curse words that may
appear in the film. But something that I think somebody
should really have available as something that you've done, and
that's this watch putting together a no watch list to
(40:46):
specifically root out something that's a little bit more mainline
and mainstream for a Christian if they're trying to keep
their children away from any kind of transgender agenda or
transgender ideologies, or or any kind of ideas along those lines,
(41:06):
if they're trying to play safe and they're wanting their
kids to be educated in the Christian household, you've gone
so far as to put together a no watch list.
Can you talk about this for a bet?
Speaker 5 (41:19):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, So, several of the mothers in our community our
church community.
Speaker 8 (41:27):
We're like, can somebody put together a list? Its like,
I'll do it. I did not realize when undertaking it
would be so they kind of sent me some starter.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
You know.
Speaker 8 (41:43):
There were like maybe ten shows we started with saying
hey watch out this this show has gone dark or
this show's gone that have started introducing characters. And that's
that's how it always happens, right like you kids get
hooked on the first season. It's clean. They're not trying
to normalize any kind of mental disorders or normalize any
(42:04):
kind of LGBTQ behavior. And then once you're hooked, once
they have the hook set, then they they set the
hook and they start adding in these characters. Some some
shows on the on this article, I say, they're ab
Nizio right there from the beginning, they had stuff in them.
But a lot of them are in that second or
(42:26):
third season, and you know, maybe you want to be
able to watch I mean, it's great if you can
just cut off TV for the kids, I mean, that's
that's awesome, But if you want to watch shows with
your kids, and this isn't you know, this is not
just for Catholics. As you know, all Christians are all
people of right mind that don't want to expose their
(42:50):
children to things like this. Maybe you want to watch
the first season, you know, just stick with the first season,
don't watch any further of our shows from Like I'm
an eighties kid. A lot of my favorite shows from
that period are getting rebooted and maybe you know, they're
fun to watch for a season or two and then
(43:10):
they go dark again.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Just what was was it Blues Clues? It was Blues Clues?
Blue is having, you know, because you have like a
new run of Blue Blues Clues now and the original
Blues Clues. It's fine, you know, but now that Blue
was had Blues the Dog and Blues Clues and Blue
(43:37):
had this gay pride parade on on the show. And
this is one of the most striking things I've come
across and researching all this. There was a a family
of Beavers and little little girl Beaver had two little
rainbow band aids on her chest where she had had
(44:02):
voluntary surgery double mastectomy to transition to become a little
boy Beaver. Not that that's possible, but.
Speaker 9 (44:14):
It's just it's it's insane, it's crazy, and all this,
you know, it really, uh, you you don't.
Speaker 8 (44:27):
There's not a lot of what I put out there
like you can. You can go to various websites, and
I side a lot of them that will tell you, uh,
like like a family forum that will talk about and
review various shows, but not just having a list like
this really wasn't out there unless you wanted the reverse side, right,
(44:50):
which can be useful. There are plenty of or at
least there are a few lists out there of all
the shows that have LGBTQ content and they're promoted on
that basis. Right, I give the via negativa, right, I
give the opposite side of things. But also I did
not see a resource out there that said which episode
(45:12):
it began with that, you know, that's a new thing.
I've done what I can with movies as well, but
primarily it's the TV shows, and there's there's some there's
some good ones. I did a a corollary article all
the we have the no watch list and then the
(45:34):
safe list, which unfortunately, the safe list, if it's new shows, is.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Not very long. You've did I've.
Speaker 8 (45:43):
Had some, you know, Daily Wire has some shows which
that's not Catholic, and I do kind of go through
some of my favorite classic shows. You know, Hannah Barbera
always was good. But anyway, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
There's just an amazing here. You know, I'm looking at
this and I'm going Bluey's on here, Pepa Pig and
it's and it's like I just I'm I'm you know.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
All blue.
Speaker 8 (46:09):
He was safe for a long time, but they they
just got if you know, it's it's like with the Holocaust, right,
what's that poem silence, you know, because they would not
speak up for me. There was nobody to cry out
when they came, when they came to take me exactly.
(46:31):
So the show, the popular shows that aren't doing it,
because so many have capitulated, all the pressure can be
focused in on Blues On Blue, And I mean Blue
was solid for a long time because it's Australian and
Australian just generally speaking, is pretty right minded.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
But the pressure eventually got to it and they just
dropped in.
Speaker 8 (47:00):
I think it's it's not a major theme of the show,
you know, it's kind of dropped it in. And you
know some of this I kind of preview and say,
you know, what happens, who's you know, what exactly the
strategy is and the character development, and you know, if
it's main character or whatever, because some of this, you
(47:22):
might want to, if your kids are mature enough, show
to your kids, look see what's happening here. See that
you had one whole season without this, and then they
introduced this as as a blatant attempt coming out of nowhere.
You know, it's not like an organic development of the plot,
(47:42):
you know, just writing wise, that's just intellectually dishonest.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And you know, I want to.
Speaker 8 (47:51):
In a way of vaccinating our children, you know, the
right kind of inoculation, right, Oh, it might be a
way of just see here, kids. This is their strategy. Uh,
and this is how you can look for it and
be on guard for it.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
I mean, it's it's it's pretty rife. I mean, you know,
you say pretty pretty upfront that if it's on Disney
it's most likely to going to contain something like this anyways.
I mean, it's it's pretty come, pretty pretty normal. Uh Unfortunately,
you know, like you said, I mean, we're both eighties
(48:28):
kids and every you know, all of the adults that
I'm around, we're all eighties adults, you know, kids and
as adults now, and we're trying to get our children
involved with Star Wars. I mean it's like it was
big to me, it was big to them. It's you know,
in a huge Star Wars always becomes this, you know,
this bonding moment with a lot of parents and their children,
(48:50):
and it's like, hey, you know, Disney Plus has like
this show for children to watch, and it's like the
Young Jedi and this thing really kicked off, was really popular.
I mean I hear about a lot. You know, I
have Christian friends that sit down with their kids and
go just so you guys know, this two moms thing
is not that's that's not okay, and you have to
(49:11):
sit down and you have to have a conversation with
your children and it's and it's not like, hey, we
should be confirmation or excuse me, conversation avoidant. Right, we
shouldn't make sure that these are never talked about in
the household, because we should be categorizing our children with
what's right, what's wrong. But at the end of the day,
it's there will yeah, that's right, and it's you know
(49:32):
right here on your like I said, on your list,
it's just season one, episode two, you know, right off
the bat, you know, Young Jedi. So it's kind of like, man,
if we can just leave Star Wars alone, that would
be great.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
But yeah, you know, as soon as Disney acquired that property,
we were in trouble. Yeah, I mean, and like Arthur, right,
Arthur was good for twenty one seasons and then long Yeah,
then suddenly principal raft Bones marrying another dude, which you know.
Speaker 8 (50:07):
They are the rats, right, you know, we gotta go.
But there's some very surprising things. The oldest introduction of
this I found was Sesme Street, sayes Me Street. I
think it's the longest running children's TV show ever. Its
first season was nineteen eighty one, and you kind of
(50:29):
had some stuff even earlier than that, you know, if
Jim Henson was doing things before then. And that includes
a song. The very first season includes a song It's
we all sing the same song, and include the lyric
I've got one daddy, I've got two now you know,
(50:51):
granted it could be a stepdad. You just don't know,
but you do kind of know. They gave us Burton
Ernie right whole time.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
Well, I mean it beds but not together, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
I mean what maybe the brothers. I don't know.
Speaker 8 (51:08):
There's not to go down the Burtonernie conspiracy, right, but yeah,
it's it's it's it's interesting. I think a lot of
parents should give this a once over just to understand
the state of things.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Yeah, I mean, there's just so much going on in
today's world that it may be better to just go
back and and watch the original things. Like you know,
you said, you know, the original Ducktails was great, the
original Rescue Writters were great.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
I mean, these were all really good cartoons. They messed
up the new Ducktails. Yeah, I mean it was like
I was watching it with my kids. It was The
animation was really good.
Speaker 8 (51:54):
Yeah, they had a lot of that good nostalgia and that,
but that's what they get you in with that nostalgia, right,
Stick with the original stuff.
Speaker 9 (52:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Another thing is they kind of are trying to ruin
our childhoods like they retcon Like in Rugrats, remember there
was Lil and Phil, the Twins girls.
Speaker 8 (52:14):
They had somebody had a mom that was really like
a tom girl really, so they retcon that she was
a lesbian all this time. Just leave our childhoods alone.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
Like you said, we should never have to force our
children into conversations that they're not prepared to have, But
I mean the other I mean, speaking of you know,
children's and children's minds, one of the things that you
had done with your religious religious classes is you've you've
gotten your high school students to read C. S. Lewis
is The Great Divorce.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
Think this is a very valuable thing to kind of
take a look at and examine because C. S. Lewis
himself never became Catholic. He was pretty much a Anglican
his whole life. Not his whole life, excuse me. He
was a convert to that, but.
Speaker 8 (53:07):
Yeah, he'd converted after reading The Everlasting Man by GK.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Chesterton, Right, And so if you would have you know,
if him and his buddy's Chesterton and Tolkien would have
hung around with him a bit longer, he might have
been to that Catholic.
Speaker 6 (53:19):
Right.
Speaker 8 (53:20):
I definitely believe that. Yeah, I mean, how could you
hang out with Tolkien and GK. Chester Ti, right and
not eventually become.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
Cath Just slucking in the minds. But I mean, gosh,
you know, I think there's just something valuable within the
Great Divorce, and specifically some of these ideas that he
talks about. One of the ones that I think is
valuable to address is the idea that you know it
(53:50):
as Catholics we call it purgatory, and C. S. Lewis
seemed to have been open to the idea. He was,
I would say he was not agnostic. I think he
believe you've done an idea of purgatory as opposed to
a calm consent that you know, maybe Chesterton and Tolkien
a right, there is one. But I think he viewed
at the end of the day that if you know,
(54:11):
if our soul was soiled and we needed to take
a shower in the mud room before entering into the
Kingdom of Heaven, he was okay with that.
Speaker 8 (54:18):
Yeah, yeah. And it's you know, it's weird because the Episcopalions,
which became Anglican became Piscopalion, you know our you know,
our version of Piscapealion, and he they're very Lutheran. And
(54:40):
that came in because Amboleyn, her confessor was was a
closet Lutheran, and so you just they kept a lot
of the look of Catholicism, you know, sometimes even having
higher looking masses than Catholic masses, but a very low
understanding of salvation. A very Lutheran once saved always saved approach.
(55:05):
So in that sense Christ, there's no more penance to
be done because Christ paid the bill and full on
the cross. So that does you know, the whole idea
of salvation through adoption into the Family of God through
(55:29):
baptism and then the sacramental meal of the Eucharist. You know,
the whole reason the Bibles that divided between the Old
Covenant and the New Covenant. Is this idea, this paradigm
of the Covenant. No, it's just like there's a check
that had to be paid at the end of the
meal and they skipped the meal.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
So you know, Purgatory would have been.
Speaker 8 (55:52):
A a Catholic theological wandering for CS. Lewis, And so
he attempts to provide in The Great Divorce, which is
one of my favorite if it's probably my favorite C. S.
Lewis book. I mean, he has some great ones to
(56:14):
choose from. And can you just imagine if he did
become Catholic before writing the Chronicles of Narnia and we
had a Marian figure in Narnia as powerful as Aslan
was a christ figure, that would have been awesome.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Oh but we do have that. It's called Lord of
the Rings.
Speaker 8 (56:30):
And we've got galadriol Ao n Eric Gorn's mother. You know,
that's what happens when you go from from Anglican to Catholic,
you go. It's basically the conversion from Narnia to Lord
of the Rings.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Right.
Speaker 8 (56:47):
Both both are fascinating and I love to read Narnia,
but that's something that child reads. I've read as an adult.
But an adult can really sink his teeth and mature
person can really sink their teeth into Lord of the Rings.
But anyway to talk about C. S. Lewis does kind
of some neat tricks in The Great Divorce to provide
(57:10):
maybe an intellectual understanding and purgatory I don't know if
he's trying to rationalize it with his view. You know,
it could have been him going down that Catholic road.
I don't know if he's trying to rationalize it or
conceptionalize it, but he provides an interesting thought experiment as
(57:32):
the central concept of the Great Divorce, which is a
man dies, well you think the man dies anyway?
Speaker 4 (57:41):
I spoiler spoiler alert, you've not read The Great Divorce
by now? What have you been doing?
Speaker 8 (57:48):
It's been out for about eighty years, so you know,
spoilers might be a statute limitations on that anyway, So
let's just go with the idea that a guy dies
and he ends up in this place called the Gray City.
And pretty soon after finding himself in the Gray City,
he gets in line at a bus stop, and the
(58:10):
bus is basically a tour bus to go up to heaven,
to maybe go to heaven, right, And the meat of
the book is that you take this tour bus up
to heaven. These people hopefully can then go and proceed
on to heaven. They're greeted when they get to heaven
(58:32):
by people they knew in life that are sent by
God to speak to them to try and get purged
them for lack of a arritory of their ways of
thinking and habits and structures of sin and you know,
(58:55):
ruts that they've made for themselves in their brain. Like
you've got Frank Uh, Sarah I think his name is
Sarah Smith. She's this wife of this man, Frank Smith Uh,
and she's like, he just he needs to apologize to me.
Frank's in heaven.
Speaker 2 (59:17):
Frank needs to apologize to me because I work so
hard to if I had of pushed him and pushed him,
he would have never he would have never been promoted
in his career.
Speaker 8 (59:29):
And basically what's happening is that this woman has been
manipulating and strong arming her husband their whole married life
to make him uh seek materialistic goals she has been using,
she's been pursuing her own ambitions through him by proxy.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
And just not a holy pursuit. And she's she's saying she's.
Speaker 8 (59:56):
Expecting him to come apologized to her, and that's you
know why she can't go to heavens because he has
to apologize to her, and like, well, just the people
that come to visit her are like, we'll just forget
about all that you're in heaven, just let it go.
And you're like, you want to scream at these people
because they're at the doorstep of heaven. If they can
just let something go, they can go to heaven instead
(01:00:16):
of hell. And then you've got this amazing portrait of
an episcopal bishop and he's talking to this other guy
and he's like the person in heaven doesn't really come
out and say, well he realized I was right, And
(01:00:38):
because the physical bishop's like, we you know you had
this in life, you had such a speaking to the saint,
the person in heaven. It's like you had such a
literal view of heaven and hell. Surely now you must
see that I was right all along. It's just it's
(01:00:58):
just so good.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah. The irony, the pain of somebody not being able
to see what's happening around them anyway, the great city, right,
So he sees this gives us this back and forth line.
And I think this is the narrator George MacDonald saying
(01:01:23):
to someone his basically his Virgil in his Trip to Heaven.
He says, but I don't understand. Is judgment not final? Right?
Is there really a way out of hell into heaven? Right?
Speaker 8 (01:01:39):
Which in scripture you know the poor man Lazarus. No,
there's no way out of hell.
Speaker 6 (01:01:44):
Right.
Speaker 8 (01:01:46):
So the answer he's given is it depends on the
way you're using the words. And this is from a
saint or somebody from in heaven, so this is taken
as correct. It depends on the way you're using the words.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
If they leave that gray town behind, it will not
have been hell to any that leave it. It is purgatory.
And perhaps ye had better not call this country heaven,
not deep heaven. Ye understand here he smiled at me.
Speaker 8 (01:02:14):
Ye can call it the valley of the Shadow of life,
and yet to those who stay here, it will have
been heaven from the first. And ye can call those
sad streets in the town yonder the valley of the
shadow of death.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
But to those who remain there, they will have been
hell even from the beginning.
Speaker 8 (01:02:33):
So purgatory and Lewis's reckoning, at least in his book,
is a matter of perspective. Yeah, if you are purified, right,
because there's this whole subtext subplot about the ghosts showing
up in heaven and being immaterial. Right, the grass is
(01:02:55):
hard for them to walk on because it's so sharp, because.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
They're just vapors.
Speaker 8 (01:03:00):
And you become gradually more solid the more you are purified,
and the further you're going to heaven. So it's it's
a very interesting view of purgatory. If you proceed from
the Gray City to Heaven, looking backward, the gray city
(01:03:20):
will have been purgatory. If you stay in the Gray City,
the gray city is gray because night has not fallen yet.
Once night falls, then the bad stuff comes out and
it will be permanent, and there's no more tour bus
going to heaven. So you know, it's a it's an
interesting thought experiment, interesting conception of heaven, hell and purgatory.
(01:03:43):
Of course, the Catholic conception that we need to make
sure everybody knows is that if you go to Hell,
you stay in hell. If you go to purgatory, you're
ultimately going to heaven.
Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
Right, Yeah, the main the main thing is it's like, uh,
peratory is the doorstep, it's the it's the porch, it's
the patico. It's nobody goes to purgatory that's not going
to heaven. And I think that a lot of people
misunderstand that purgatory is a second chance. It is not.
It is not an opportunity for you to work off
(01:04:15):
your your debt, or excuse me, work off your sins.
It's a completely different experiment experience. And you know, ultimately,
if anybody's sitting there going around, well I'm going to
probably end up in purgatory and not heaven. They probably
need to go to confession, they get right with Jesus. Basically,
(01:04:38):
they need to try to figure out what their sins
are that's holding them to have a potential place like that.
I mean, you don't you want to aim for heaven.
You know, they say if you aim for the moon,
at least a land among the stars. Don't do that,
aim for the stars.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Yeah, be a saint. What else is there? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (01:04:58):
Yeah, And you're right, anytime we talk about purgatory, we
should encourage all everybody and clean ourselves to be to
to pester our priests every week, you know, as often
as we can in confession.
Speaker 6 (01:05:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
You know, we don't want people to get kind of like.
Speaker 8 (01:05:20):
Martin Luther did, get scripulous, erotic and scrupulous or scrupulous,
but we got.
Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Here on one side or the other. It's best to
go to confession frequently. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:05:32):
That's the other thing too, is I I do talk
to people about things, and it's kind of like, well,
just because you didn't put new clean water in your
your hamster's water bottle today and they've had dirty water
for three days in a row, that's not a sin.
I mean, it's you know, it's it maybe it's animal
to neglect or something, but it's not a sin man,
(01:05:52):
you know, it's it's small things like that. My priest
told me, if if it's an arbitrary law or rule,
it's probablyably not a sin. To disobey it because it's arbitrary.
Speaker 8 (01:06:03):
Yeah, And receiving the sacrament of the eu Christ is
ordered to the forgiveness of venial sins, right, the sacrament
of reconciliation is ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins.
So if you just you know, if you're not here
and not in a say, mortal sin, receive the Eucharist worthily.
Those venial sins are forgiven, those those hamster sins are forgiven. Yeah,
(01:06:31):
I mean that that broad category of non mortal sense.
Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Yeah, I mean it's it's so specific. I mean the
ideas and in the non Catholic listeners may have misunderstandings
of what things are. This is not an apologetics podcast.
There's a there's a thousand of those. You can you
can listen to Catholic Answers Live or doctor David Anders
if you have some serious questions.
Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
But at the end of the day, this is kind
of just.
Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Designed to get someone a little bit higher, a little
bit more knowledge, a little bit more from in a
friendly environment.
Speaker 9 (01:07:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
And that's what's interesting about the Great Divorce and c.
This is so masterful because in just a few sentences
he has presented you with a profile of sin that
everybody can relate to. We've seen it in ourselves or
other people. And these are not who he's populating this
(01:07:32):
world with. Are not.
Speaker 8 (01:07:34):
You know, It's not like somebody that's commit murder. This
is somebody that in life has nurtured a certain understanding
of the world, or a.
Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Certain habit, a certain sacrilege, blasphemy, even apostasy, or just
mistreatment of others that has to be unwound in their thinking.
Speaker 8 (01:07:58):
And I think that's ultimately, you know, this isn't just
a thought experiment of purgatory. This is this is a
way of presenting a mirror to ourselves and how we
treat others.
Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
One of the.
Speaker 8 (01:08:16):
Lines, let's see who is it? It might have been, uh, yeah,
it was Robert's wife. I think it's that same person
I mentioned before. The wife she uh, she said, the
saint in heaven is asking her, you know, have you
(01:08:38):
forgiven this person? And she says, I forgive them, as
a Christian said the ghost, but there's some things one
can never forget. There's a person in hell saying this, right,
what is we really need to think about our understanding
of forgiveness because this person has quote on quote for
(01:09:00):
giving somebody as a Christian. But it's clinging to what
she can see is the wrong in such a way
that is dragging her down to help.
Speaker 6 (01:09:09):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Yeah, yeah, so so Scott. As we said in the beginning,
you know, we've got a couple of resources people can
listen to more review. Let's go over those really quick.
Let's talk. I think we can find it all. I'm
not one out of percent sure, but I think we
can find it all on your website. Yeah, maybe not
the new podcast yet.
Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
You need to add Jacob Zumo, but yeah, I have
an article on the blog that talks about these things.
But Spotify and where we get your podcasts, you can
find Dad Monk. The Dad Monk podcast YouTube is pretty
much our home now and Spotify as well. But since
(01:09:51):
it's a video podcast, right, it's it's cool to watch
on YouTube.
Speaker 8 (01:09:56):
But you can still just listen to it, like you know,
pints of Aquinas. That's Saints by number instead of paint
by number. It's Saints by number. Uh, And you can
uh that's because Jacob uh, he'll he'll go around and
you know, kind of like a wine and painting night.
(01:10:17):
He'll go uh to parishes and you can. He'll show
you how to paint. It's called paint. It's called Saints
by Numbers. So that's what we made the fantastical of
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Yeah, my blog is the Scottsmiths Blog dot com.
Speaker 8 (01:10:31):
And you know all those articles you can find the
If they're not on the recent articles, like the no
Watch List or something, you can always scroll down to
the bottom. There's a list of all the most popular articles.
And the no Watch List has quickly become one of
my most popular articles ever.
Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
It's gone viral on a couple different places. So there's that.
Speaker 8 (01:11:00):
We've got the Near Death Experiences book coming out with
Sofia Institute next month, and again please pray for the
eight million project or a new eight million through the
intercession of our Lady of Wadalupe.
Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 6 (01:11:15):
Man.
Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
You've got a new book coming out. It comes out
in February, so when listeners hear this, they can actually
find your new book.
Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
It's on.
Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
Near death Experiences and that's published through.
Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Who Sophia Institute. One.
Speaker 8 (01:11:33):
We had some snow days down here in Louisiana recently,
so I was able to catch up on some of
the reprints that I've.
Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Been need to.
Speaker 8 (01:11:39):
I've been promising to do two new books publishing as reprints.
Mary Why Do You Cry, which is now live like
you find on Amazon. It's a collection of rose and
mystica and other statues of Mary that have wept and
(01:12:01):
why They've wept. It's a book that was put together
a few decades ago and just got out of print
and deserved to be revitalized. And then another book, Woman
in Orbit, it's a three hundred it'll be out soon,
probably by the time you are listening to this.
Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
It'll be out and available on Amazon. Woman in Orbit,
And that's a three hundred and sixty five day devotion
to our Lady. Each day goes over a different apparition
of our Lady, which is fascinating to see them, so
many of them compiled in one place. And so that
(01:12:39):
should be out as soon as well.
Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Fantastic. Well, thank you as always for coming back on
the show so we could talk more about some of
the stuff that's going on with you and in the
Catholic world.
Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Yeah, just good hanging out with you and just nerding out.
That's what I like to do.
Speaker 7 (01:13:39):
Thank you for listening. This is a free podcast based
upon the value for value model. If you find value
in this or any episode, you can return that value
by liking the show, subscribing to this channel, leaving a review,
or sharing with a friend on your social media accounts.
You can also donate on my website. Thank you again.
(01:13:59):
This is BT for Truth and Shadow Podcast. You are
the light in the darkness.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
H Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening
(01:15:25):
to the Fringe Radio Network. I know I was gonna
tell them, Hey, do you have the app? It's the
best way to listen to the.
Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
Fringe Radio Network.
Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
It's safe and you don't have to log in to
use it, and it doesn't track you or trace you,
and it sounds beautiful. I know I was gonna tell him.
How do you get the app? Just go to fringeradionetwork
dot com right at the top of the page. I know, slippers,
we gotta keep
Speaker 5 (01:15:55):
Cleaning these chimneys.
Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening to
the Fringe Radio Network. I know I was gonna tell them, Hey,
do you have the app? It's the best way to
listen to the fringe radio network. It's safe and you
don't have to log in to use it, and it
doesn't track you or trace you, and it sounds beautiful.
(00:27):
I know I was gonna tell him, how do you
get the app? Just go to fringeradionetwork dot com right
at the top of the page. I know, slippers, we
gotta keep cleaning these chimneys.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
In accordance with.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
The principles of dumb thing. It does not matter if
the war is not real? Oh what it is?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Victory is not.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Possible thing in the universe.
Speaker 5 (00:56):
The travels faster light.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
It's the darkness.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
The war is not meant to be won.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
It is meant to be continuous.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of
the produce of human labor. Hierarchical society is only possible
on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
Speaker 6 (01:23):
If we go down the current status quo, we probably
destroy our civilization. Through willful ignorance. We probably degrade the
world's democracies so that they fall into some sort of
bizarre autocratic dysfunction. We probably ruin the global economy. We
probably don't survive, you know, I really do view it
(01:46):
as existential.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
The war is waged by the ruling group against its
own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia
or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
And you could stay here forever if you want to. Really,
(02:33):
this is.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
Your nautical lantern on the dangerous seas of darkness. Let's
push off from the placid shore of the status quo
and explore what's beyond the horizon. I am your host, BT,
and this is Truth and Shadow, your podcast of the supernatural.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
There's an old saying, maybe older than we think, that
the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the
world he didn't exist. But I'd argue the second greatest
trick might be subtler, still convincing us that whatever we
hand to our children screen toy story is just harmless entertainment.
(03:37):
We live in an era of surveillance where what you say,
by and believe is quietly cataloged. But the deeper surveillance
may not be governmental, it may be spiritual, and it's
not just aimed at us. It's aimed at those still
too young to understand they're being watched or worse shaped.
We used to worry about stranger danger, about the guy
(03:59):
in the windowless fan, But today the windows moved and
it's in their pockets. It's beaming from the family TV.
It's disguised in bright colors, catchy tunes and the disarming
innocence of animation. And yet beneath that surface, if you
really look, you'll start to see something else. Subliminal scripts,
(04:24):
reverse catechisms, a soft erosion of natural law replaced by
the gospel of feeling, self recreation and borderless morality. This
isn't new. It's the same old whisper from the garden.
Did God really say we don't fight dragons anymore? We
sit with them, let them babysit our kids while we
(04:45):
make dinner. We click play next episode without question, and
what enters their minds in those thirty minutes might shape
what they'll believe for the next thirty years. So we
come to our guest today, Scott Smith, not just a theologian,
(05:07):
not just a blogger, but a cultural diagnostician, someone willing
to do the deep dive we all know we should
do into whatever our kids are watching, But they're being
taught to love and why it matters now more than ever,
and the timing couldn't be more prophetic. We're standing on
(05:30):
the threshold of a half millennium since our Lady of
Guadalupe appeared in the New World. She appeared as a
woman clothed in the sun, offering roses in the winter
and speaking to a poor man in his own tongue,
not in Latin, not in Spanish, but Nahuatl. She came
(05:53):
not to crush a culture, but to fulfill it, and
in doing so, she crushed something darker beneath it. But
here we are, five hundred years later. The serpent, it seems,
has found new ways to speak digitally, now quietly repeated
through memes and songs and relatable characters. And the question
(06:14):
is not just what our children are seeing, but what
we're letting ourselves forget. This isn't about content, It's about formation, identity,
and allegiance, because every story teaches something, every symbol forms
a liturgy, every cartoon a catechism. The early Church fathers
used to say that what you see is not neutral.
(06:36):
It's either drawing you closer to the divine or pulling
you into shadow. Maybe that sounds a little too black
or white for modern years, but maybe it's time for
some realism. We reclaim that clarity, especially now, especially as
the sun rises again on Guadalupe's prophecy, the Tilma, the
(06:57):
sacred cloth, Wan Diego war in five centuries, without decay,
no scientific explanation, no fading pigment, just a silent witness
proclaiming something the world keeps trying to forget. That the
(07:17):
Mother is still watching, still whispering truth to those with
ears to hear it. What happens when we stop listening?
What happens when our children, her children no longer know
her name but can recite Disney's lyrics by heart. The
world isn't just heading toward another Anniversary's heading towards crossroads.
Will the next five hundred years be a renewal or
(07:40):
a reckoning? That depends on what we teach them to love,
on what stories we allow to shape their desires, and
on whether we, as parents, God parents, fellow Christians, are
brave enough to look the dragon in the eye and
say no. Let's ask the hard questions. Let's walk through
(08:02):
the blog, through the symbols, through the pattern behind the pattern.
Let's talk about the quiet war for our children's imagination.
Let's see what our lady might be saying to a
generation raised not in a garden but in a digital jungle.
(09:21):
They say that the eyes are the window to the soul.
But what happens when those eyes are staring into a
glowing screen fed a steady diet of algorithms and agendas
in an age where every clique shapes a child's worldview.
Are we shepherds or are we sleepwalkers? Today we're going
to peel back the curtain with Catholic author Scott Smith,
(09:42):
whose blog has become a clearing call to parents and believers. Aliing,
we talk about what's really entering our homes through cartoons,
streaming apps, and subtle ideologies disguised as entertainment. We'll talk media,
We'll talk Mary a prophecy, and maybe we'll glimpse the
shape of the next five centuries. Scott Smith, welcome to
(10:03):
the show.
Speaker 8 (10:04):
Appreciate you have me come back and just letting me
kind of talk about different things that I'm working on.
Some of the things I think we might cover today.
I have a few recent blog articles on one on C. S.
Lewis and the Great Divorce and Purgatory another one, uh
(10:26):
maybe it's not so new, but I've done a couple
posts on uh no watch lists for you so parents
can can figure out what episode, what season the l
g B t Q stuff starts on these kids shows
to nowhere to stop watching or or not watch at all.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So there's that.
Speaker 8 (10:51):
Got an upcoming trip to our Lady Watalupe. I've got
a couple of new podcasts I'm doing. I'm working on
dad Monk and and uh Saints by Number with a
sacred artist Jacob Zumo. And oh, we've got a book
coming out in February, Near Death Experiences for Me.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
We've may have spoken about that.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, tell me about this podcast. Let's talk
about yours specifically, because this is dad Monk. You you
began that one. What was what was the impetus get
that going?
Speaker 8 (11:25):
It's kind of a mixture of different things that I
felt like I needed to get out there in that format,
working from home as an attorney, as a writer, as
we homeschool, and establishing a prayer routine for the family.
And in the way that I'm kind of abbot and
(11:46):
the wife's kind of abbess of our own domestic monastery.
That's that's where dad monk comes in. Uh, you know,
this domestic church and this kind of takes a step
further domestic monastery. So there's that side of things structuring
our lives like little like a little monks running around.
(12:07):
But on the same side, one of the things I
like to do is adapt secular tools techniques to the sacred.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I like reading, even though it's you know a lot
of times these guys are atheists or whatever.
Speaker 8 (12:26):
I'll like to read about different tools, productivity hacks, lifestyle design,
all that kind of stuff, and I used a lot
of that to create this domestic monastery, you know, to
allow myself create passive income, fashion my work life balance
(12:47):
so that I can be home with my family. So
I think that even though these guys aren't Catholic, sometimes
I'm a Christian straight up heathens, right, They have good ideas,
and what I like to do in that podcast is
adapt some of those ideas to establishing home life. But
(13:08):
sometimes prayer life different ways. He's going to be adapted
to and spiritual techniques.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (13:16):
For example, Josh Waitskin if you remember him from searching
for Bobby Fisher about the ches. He was a chess
prodigy and later in his life he decided, I don't
know if he got bored with chess.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He wrote a book The Art of Learning. How he went.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
He transitioned from being a chess grand master uh to
being a tai Chi grand master. So uh, he he
changed completely to have one eighty on from you know,
the intellectual arts to the martial arts. And so he
talks about what he did and one how it translated
to the other.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And I think there's.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
Some interesting techniques in there basically getting yourself into the zone,
so to speak, kind of ways to train your your
mind if we adapted to Catholic teaching, to train your
your prayer life, to get in the presence of God,
(14:16):
you know, to get into your prayer whenever you need it.
Because as a dad or you know, any of us
in an active lifestyle, even you know, speaking for the
board or something at work, like you need to get
you need to find your link to God to put
(14:37):
yourself in the presence of God when you're in a
stressful situation.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And that's how you how you can have a graced
experience of a terrible situation. You know, it said like
with my family, not to say I don't lose my
temper all the time with we have six kids, and
but this is a way to help with that. If
you're able to, in the midst of chaos, put yourself
(15:02):
in the presence of God, do various triggers, prayer triggers,
you know, even just signed across on your forehead or
full sign across if you're in trouble. Things like that.
Speaker 8 (15:15):
Another thing I like to cover is Charlie Munger who
was More in Buffett's Business Partner, Investing Partner. Uh there's
the almanac, Poor Charlie's Almanac, some good another one of
these good secular books out there.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And he also.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
Spoke at Berkshire Hathaway meetings. Well More really did the talking,
but he's he what he does. They only invested maybe
ten different companies, you know, the whole multi billion dollar
investing journey. But what they did was they determined and
(16:00):
which companies to invest in using not just one or
two mental models, but maybe one hundred, one hundred and
fifty you know, physical models, based on physics, biology, logical models.
Just so I kind of go through all these different models,
mental models and show how we can use them in
(16:22):
our lives. Also why the Catholic Church using all these
mental models is ultimately the best investment.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So it's just.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
It's kind of interesting, very maybe hyper specialized kind of podcast,
just bringing all these things together synthesizing.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
No, that sounds like a really good idea to introduce
to some people who may not access or have the
time to read the sources that you're providing an insight
to into a clear Catholic Christian perspective.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, kind of a bridge.
Speaker 8 (17:01):
You know, if you're like a big Tim Ferriss fan
or something like that and Stoicism is not cutting it
for you, you.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Know, this is a bridge to Catholicism.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
And then you've been working with a sacred artist, mister
Zumo to do Saints by the Number. M first question
is what's a sacred artist? That's what I would like
to know, and then we could go on from there.
Speaker 8 (17:29):
Jacob's maybe not your traditional sacred artist, though his his
style has a lot of traditional elements. He uh, it's interesting, Louisiana.
We have something of a renaissance, cultural renaissance going on
in terms of art writing culture.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
You know, we've just always been a Catholic bastion, and.
Speaker 8 (17:55):
So there's a is there in sense outside of there's
no true culture.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Jacob as a sacred artist. Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
You know these are artists that are his family. He
has his brother in law Norman Fouchets and other sacred artists.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
They're using their read that Jacob and Norman both studied
in Florence at one of the sacred art schools there.
But they're also rediscovering old techniques. Uh that you know,
we just uh just became outmodive by more by newer
(18:38):
techniques and our understanding. Oh this newer techniques just don't
cut it. So classical art techniques. Jacob is more of
a hybrid modern and sacred artist.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
And he's modern, not in modernism sense that that good
is new and old is bad, but using.
Speaker 9 (19:08):
It.
Speaker 8 (19:09):
You know, if you if you follow the progress of
modern art, you have a consistent the trajectory is deconstructing form.
So what he does, subconsciously or not is reconstruct the
form in kind of a modern style, modern looking contemporary style,
(19:32):
but with sacred sacred elements, sacred scenes, you know, your
classic scenes, Madonna child.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Jacob. What's interesting about him.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
Is he had a crazy conversion, crazy life. He was
a college basketball player that did art on the side,
and he started doing portraits for I wish I could
remember some of these rappers. It's just not my wheelhouse.
(20:07):
But he eventually started hanging out. He started doing portraits
of rappers local, so we have a number of rappers
from the it In south of Iten area, and he
eventually started doing portraits of more famous rappers like jay
Z and Drake and those guys. And then he was
(20:30):
live painting at the Grammys and you know, playing video
games with these guys doing whatever they were doing, you know,
not good stuff, not holy stuff. Eventually it all comes
crashing down and he has his conversion and gets himself,
(20:52):
you know, clean and straight. So he's doing just beautiful artwork.
Father Calloway and for Donald Coway and the Consecration of
Saint Joseph featured uh portraits of Saint Joseph by both
Uh Norman Uh, the brother in law of Jacob and Jacob.
(21:13):
They Uh just just a.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Very interesting story and very beautiful art. So what we're
doing with uh he he Jacob and some of his work.
He still paints for.
Speaker 8 (21:31):
A lot of athletes and uh, there's various multimedia things
with them. He also uh came across a videographer, a
young man who has a real knack.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
He's he's still in high school. Uh, but he's already
done spots.
Speaker 8 (21:49):
For like Gatorade or power a DdO and for some
of the university athletic for the US you foot All team,
which is pretty big down here. And he's our videographer.
So it's it's a video podcast and it adds another
(22:12):
element to it. What we're doing is trying to spotlight
some of this talent we have down in South Louisiana,
not only artists talent, but our priests. We really have
some amazing priests down here. So we have a number
of them on and we go through their vocation story
(22:33):
and then uh, you know what their what shaped their
lives are taken, what their current theological interests are. We
had father Jeff Bahi on Who's you all should watch
that podcast? What Father Bye? He father by He's had
national program for decades, but his life is so varied.
(22:59):
I would love to write his biography I've asked him
multiple times. He I guess top billing, top of the list.
He gave last rites to Mother Teresa, spent seven summers
with Mother Teresa. He's our vocation strector at the time,
so he had some a month free every summer and
(23:19):
he spent that month with Mother Teresa, breakfast with her
every morning. So there's that amazing side of his life.
The other amazing sad his life is how well he
cut a record with Aaron Neville, the musician, and from
(23:39):
that got a few couple few million dollars that went
to a foundation, and he used that to create Medanoia Manor,
which is a which is a home sanctuary for women, ladies,
girls rescued from sex trafficking. And he's become and they've
(24:04):
kind of created this model. The manner is staffed by
the hospital or nuns. So when law enforcement goes into
these crack houses, uh, these places where women are being trafficked,
they you know, the cops go in, take take out
(24:25):
the bad guys. The women if they're not locked up,
you know, or chained up right, just terrible, terrible things.
They don't want us. You know, the law enforcement passes too.
They don't want to then be ministered or have their
wounds nursed by men. They don't want to see men,
(24:46):
they don't want to talk to men. They uh it's
traumatic to even see a man. Certainly don't have an
emotional receptivity for men when they're first getting at that situation.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So these nuns go in with the SWAT team. Amazing nuns.
These ladies are just beautiful and amazing and uh there
are most of them our nurses as well. So they
go in and immediately begin taking care.
Speaker 8 (25:16):
Of the girls. It's just it's a beautiful thing. And
so that's kind of the model that Jeff father Bye,
he is trying to expand across the country and he's
and I hope with the new administration, father Bye, he
has quite a number of Congressmen, congress people, people that
(25:40):
are entering the White House.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
In his rolodex. So I'm hoping that this is something
that will.
Speaker 8 (25:46):
Be uh, he'll he'll be able to bring across the country.
But he is one of the leading world's worlds leading
advocates and voices on fixed this problem of human trafficking.
The statistics he shares are just crazy things, like we
(26:08):
have never had more people in slavery in human history
than we do right now. I think maybe five just
five years ago, the porn industry was maybe one hundred
billion dollars, and that may be porn and trafficking, I
(26:31):
can't remember. But now it's three hundred billion dollars. Down
here in Louisiana. The biggest conduit for human trafficking is
on Iten between Houston and New Orleans, because those are
two big sports cities and often women are traffic at
(26:52):
those major events. You can sell drugs one time, you
can sell a person eight, nine, ten times a day.
It's just it's just and you know, whoever that number
was that Biden finally admitted was a number of illegal
(27:14):
immigrants that we lost track of, one hundred and forty
one thousand, whatever it was. What Father Bye he talks
about is a is probably a lot more than that.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
And b most of those.
Speaker 8 (27:30):
Kids, a good bit of those were kids that are
now either cleaning somebody's house or sharing a bed with
somebody or both. So we have as a humanitarian crisis
on our hands. And that's you know, that's that's just
one of the podcasts. The one we just put out
(27:54):
is about with a local guy that went down in
a plane crash. Good local Catholic guy, but on the
human trafficking side. We're going down next month to Mexico
City to to see our Lady of Waterloupe, but also
to visit the Chalco. Chalco is the name of it's
(28:18):
a it's a town, girls town there. For it's they
have I think it's ten thousand girls in a school there.
It's Father Aloysius Schwartz, Father al venerable Aloysius Schwartz. There's
a book about him that Kevin Wells wrote called Priest
(28:40):
and Beggar, one of the best books I've read in
the last couple of years. Can't put it down.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Really well written.
Speaker 8 (28:47):
He founded He He and Mother Teresa, we're kind of
the same cut from the same cloth. But the the
tens of thousands of people that Mother Teresa and the
missionaries of charities have helped maybe you know, maybe one
hundred thousand. Father al up to that by at least
(29:10):
a degree of magnitude. There are these girls town and
boys town villages, and I don't know, maybe ten locations
around the world, in the Philippines and South Korea.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
That's where he went.
Speaker 8 (29:24):
One of his first missionary journeys was to South Korea
right after the Korean War. Africa, I think it's Tanzania
or Uganda, and these villages they'll have a boys town
girls town, usually in different not in the same location,
different cities, and there'll be just like ten thousand kids
(29:47):
that have been rescued from the street, rescued from trafficking,
and each one of them is just receiving this beautiful
religious education, full education, but beautiful formation. And his what
he did, was my father Al did, was instead of
sending his vocations to London or you know whatever, whether
(30:12):
their major seminary would be, he uh, he educates them,
gets them a high school degree, maybe maybe a little
further than that, but he sends them back immediately. So
that the people that are raised up from these villages,
that are taken off the streets, given this religious formation
for the these formative years, those are the people that
(30:36):
then become the mothers and fathers, religious religious sisters and priests,
brothers that tend to these kids. So he's able to
have just a huge amount of religious to help them
using that strategy. And so it's it's a it's a
(31:00):
just a beautiful place of County to go. Oh, and
you know there's it's more we talking about with our
lady who Loupe too well, I.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Mean, yeah, we could talk about that for a minute too,
a little bit of I mean a history background. You know,
people may be very familiar with the Reformation. Twenty seventeen.
We saw the five hundred anniversary of Martin Luther's the
ninety five THESS on October thirty first or whatnot, and
(31:33):
it was only a matter of a couple of I
it was just about a decade later, in fifteen thirty
one that we have this massive conversion of souls in Mexico,
and we're coming up on the five hundredth anniversary of that,
and you're you guys are going down in celebration to
this soon. Like you mentioned, can you talk about this
(31:56):
great moment in history.
Speaker 8 (31:59):
Yeah, and please everybody listening, please pray. We are hopefully
going to undertake a massive project for conversions, the New
eight million is what we've been calling it. The idea
is that after our lady Wadaloupe appeared in fifteen thirty one,
(32:21):
over the next eight years they're eight million, maybe even
ten million conversions, and so we want to undertake a
massive plan for evangelization and conversions across the world, but
certainly starting in North America with our patrons, our Lady
Guadaloupe to convert the new eight million. If we undertake
(32:45):
this starting with Cardinal Burks nine months no Vina, our
Lady Wullalupe concluded in December, the next eight years, if
we have eight million conversions, that would take us to
twenty thirty one, the five hundredth anniversary of our Lady
of Waterloo. And it would be poignant because even as
(33:06):
we are that if we did that on every continent,
that would be the largest conversion period in Catholic history
since Pentecost, you know, since the original and that juxtaposed
with the crumbling of mainline Protestantism, with the five hundredth
(33:26):
anniversary of Martin Luther, that also coming on the heels
of twenty thirty three, the two thousandth anniversary of Redemption
and Pentecost, having a new Pentecost, so to speak, not
that we need a new Holy Spirit or anything, but
just a new period of conversion. Our idea, our hope,
(33:47):
is that we would be able to give the Blessed
Mother a bouquet of millions of souls as an anniversary
gift for her son. So please pray for this project.
There's a number of people that have signed on for
our team, and we're working together, and then there's a
(34:08):
chance that before too much longer might be adopted here
in America.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, this is this is definitely a momentous period to
be living. And it's also historical in the fact that
we can remember and recall what was going on in
Europe in the fifteen hundreds. The printing press is basically
a new avengine. It allows the spread of documents across
miles of land tracks, and informations just passed quite easily
(34:38):
from one area to another. But the estimation between fifteen
seventeen and fifteen thirty one is about eight million Catholics
leave the Catholic faith and they become a variety of Protestants.
And this is kind of an interesting number because, like
you said, Wan Diego has has this experience. He the
(35:05):
Virgin Mary appears to him, leaves her image on the
told what he was wearing, and in a period of
time eight million Mexicans become Catholic. No printing press is
available to spread this word. It goes like wildfire through
(35:26):
the land by word of mouth. And I think this
is a great juxtaposition between the technological revolutions going on
in Europe and the simplicity of the faith that's happening
in Mexico.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
Yeah, that's that's that's such a beautiful insight. And today
which you know you will necessarily be listening on this day,
but today's a feasts of Saint Francis to sales, right,
patron saying of media and communications.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
And yeah, and.
Speaker 8 (35:57):
With the advent of printing press, anybody at that point
seemingly could write something literally authoritative. Yeah, right, you had
like completely watered down the authority of the written word.
Right now, look at what we're in the midst of
with AI and video creation, and you know, we're we're
doing good things. But anybody can have a show, anybody
(36:22):
can we can you know, between the two of us,
we've got like, I don't know, six podcasts, right, So
the but the more things get we're down, I think
the more we crave authenticity, authority, what is truth? So
(36:43):
the light can shine all the brighter in the midst
of all this all this craziness.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yeah, it's a remarkable period of time. There's the more
you the more you dig into the fifteen hundred's in
European European history, and then you look at the differences
that are going on in Central America and South America,
and you just look around and the evidence has become
(37:12):
almost mind bottling. There's just no way anybody with any
kind of sense can go, oh, this makes a lot
of logical sense. The spread of the faith is something
that happens organically, naturally and definitely guided by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 8 (37:29):
And I think I think we're saying a convergence of
a lot of things historically, a lot of historical trends
like the decline of postmism. But also, however, you calculate
it that one hundred years that Pope Leo the thirteenth,
you know, overheard, and why we start saying the same
(37:51):
Michael Dark Angel prayer after Mass. I mean, one hundred
years has got to be over now. And if I'm
reading since the data and demographics right, it sounds like,
you know, the Catholic Churches survived, It's endured, and in
some sense it could even be may not look it,
(38:13):
but it could be stronger than ever. While at the
same time, mainline Protestantism is dead man walking, right, because
the church in the last twenty thirty years, our moral
voice became, I don't know what adjective to describe it,
but it was not what it should have been. You
(38:36):
could see that without being able to lean on us
the mainline Protestant denominations, they adopted everything, They adopted every
new thing, new shining thing to come along, and now
they are dead men walking. They you look at any
of the surveys data, there's not going to be these
(39:01):
denominations and the next generation, maybe maybe two generations, you've
still got some vestige of it. But if you just
extrapolate what we're seeing now thirty forty years from now,
we're not gonna be the only game in town, but
we're certainly going to be by far the biggest game
(39:21):
in town in terms of Christianity. But besides this, it's
going to be Mormons, Baptist Joah's Witnesses that you know,
and then you know non denominationalism, right, you know, it's
like yeah, yeah, but like Chiscopealians, Presbyterians not going to
(39:46):
exist much longer. So we have to be prepared for that,
for to receive these guys.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, absolutely, it's it's the downside of basically going to
modern with your you know, your postmodernism becomes a plague,
a virus, and it infects everything it comes in contact with,
and we end up with that kind of ideas bleeding
(40:15):
into everything that we can experience, whether it's online media
or on the television.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
And there's a handful of.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Sites people can go to to research whether a show
is really kid friendly or not, what kinds of things
to look out for, number of curse words that may
appear in the film. But something that I think somebody
should really have available as something that you've done, and
that's this watch putting together a no watch list to
(40:46):
specifically root out something that's a little bit more mainline
and mainstream for a Christian if they're trying to keep
their children away from any kind of transgender agenda or
transgender ideologies, or or any kind of ideas along those lines,
(41:06):
if they're trying to play safe and they're wanting their
kids to be educated in the Christian household, you've gone
so far as to put together a no watch list.
Can you talk about this for a bet?
Speaker 5 (41:19):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, So, several of the mothers in our community our
church community.
Speaker 8 (41:27):
We're like, can somebody put together a list? Its like,
I'll do it. I did not realize when undertaking it
would be so they kind of sent me some starter.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
You know.
Speaker 8 (41:43):
There were like maybe ten shows we started with saying
hey watch out this this show has gone dark or
this show's gone that have started introducing characters. And that's
that's how it always happens, right like you kids get
hooked on the first season. It's clean. They're not trying
to normalize any kind of mental disorders or normalize any
(42:04):
kind of LGBTQ behavior. And then once you're hooked, once
they have the hook set, then they they set the
hook and they start adding in these characters. Some some
shows on the on this article, I say, they're ab
Nizio right there from the beginning, they had stuff in them.
But a lot of them are in that second or
(42:26):
third season, and you know, maybe you want to be
able to watch I mean, it's great if you can
just cut off TV for the kids, I mean, that's
that's awesome, But if you want to watch shows with
your kids, and this isn't you know, this is not
just for Catholics. As you know, all Christians are all
people of right mind that don't want to expose their
(42:50):
children to things like this. Maybe you want to watch
the first season, you know, just stick with the first season,
don't watch any further of our shows from Like I'm
an eighties kid. A lot of my favorite shows from
that period are getting rebooted and maybe you know, they're
fun to watch for a season or two and then
(43:10):
they go dark again.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Just what was was it Blues Clues? It was Blues Clues?
Blue is having, you know, because you have like a
new run of Blue Blues Clues now and the original
Blues Clues. It's fine, you know, but now that Blue
was had Blues the Dog and Blues Clues and Blue
(43:37):
had this gay pride parade on on the show. And
this is one of the most striking things I've come
across and researching all this. There was a a family
of Beavers and little little girl Beaver had two little
rainbow band aids on her chest where she had had
(44:02):
voluntary surgery double mastectomy to transition to become a little
boy Beaver. Not that that's possible, but.
Speaker 9 (44:14):
It's just it's it's insane, it's crazy, and all this,
you know, it really, uh, you you don't.
Speaker 8 (44:27):
There's not a lot of what I put out there
like you can. You can go to various websites, and
I side a lot of them that will tell you, uh,
like like a family forum that will talk about and
review various shows, but not just having a list like
this really wasn't out there unless you wanted the reverse side, right,
(44:50):
which can be useful. There are plenty of or at
least there are a few lists out there of all
the shows that have LGBTQ content and they're promoted on
that basis. Right, I give the via negativa, right, I
give the opposite side of things. But also I did
not see a resource out there that said which episode
(45:12):
it began with that, you know, that's a new thing.
I've done what I can with movies as well, but
primarily it's the TV shows, and there's there's some there's
some good ones. I did a a corollary article all
the we have the no watch list and then the
(45:34):
safe list, which unfortunately, the safe list, if it's new shows, is.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Not very long. You've did I've.
Speaker 8 (45:43):
Had some, you know, Daily Wire has some shows which
that's not Catholic, and I do kind of go through
some of my favorite classic shows. You know, Hannah Barbera
always was good. But anyway, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
There's just an amazing here. You know, I'm looking at
this and I'm going Bluey's on here, Pepa Pig and
it's and it's like I just I'm I'm you know.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
All blue.
Speaker 8 (46:09):
He was safe for a long time, but they they
just got if you know, it's it's like with the Holocaust, right,
what's that poem silence, you know, because they would not
speak up for me. There was nobody to cry out
when they came, when they came to take me exactly.
(46:31):
So the show, the popular shows that aren't doing it,
because so many have capitulated, all the pressure can be
focused in on Blues On Blue, And I mean Blue
was solid for a long time because it's Australian and
Australian just generally speaking, is pretty right minded.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
But the pressure eventually got to it and they just
dropped in.
Speaker 8 (47:00):
I think it's it's not a major theme of the show,
you know, it's kind of dropped it in. And you
know some of this I kind of preview and say,
you know, what happens, who's you know, what exactly the
strategy is and the character development, and you know, if
it's main character or whatever, because some of this, you
(47:22):
might want to, if your kids are mature enough, show
to your kids, look see what's happening here. See that
you had one whole season without this, and then they
introduced this as as a blatant attempt coming out of nowhere.
You know, it's not like an organic development of the plot,
(47:42):
you know, just writing wise, that's just intellectually dishonest.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And you know, I want to.
Speaker 8 (47:51):
In a way of vaccinating our children, you know, the
right kind of inoculation, right, Oh, it might be a
way of just see here, kids. This is their strategy. Uh,
and this is how you can look for it and
be on guard for it.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
I mean, it's it's it's pretty rife. I mean, you know,
you say pretty pretty upfront that if it's on Disney
it's most likely to going to contain something like this anyways.
I mean, it's it's pretty come, pretty pretty normal. Uh Unfortunately,
you know, like you said, I mean, we're both eighties
(48:28):
kids and every you know, all of the adults that
I'm around, we're all eighties adults, you know, kids and
as adults now, and we're trying to get our children
involved with Star Wars. I mean it's like it was
big to me, it was big to them. It's you know,
in a huge Star Wars always becomes this, you know,
this bonding moment with a lot of parents and their children,
(48:50):
and it's like, hey, you know, Disney Plus has like
this show for children to watch, and it's like the
Young Jedi and this thing really kicked off, was really popular.
I mean I hear about a lot. You know, I
have Christian friends that sit down with their kids and
go just so you guys know, this two moms thing
is not that's that's not okay, and you have to
(49:11):
sit down and you have to have a conversation with
your children and it's and it's not like, hey, we
should be confirmation or excuse me, conversation avoidant. Right, we
shouldn't make sure that these are never talked about in
the household, because we should be categorizing our children with
what's right, what's wrong. But at the end of the day,
it's there will yeah, that's right, and it's you know
(49:32):
right here on your like I said, on your list,
it's just season one, episode two, you know, right off
the bat, you know, Young Jedi. So it's kind of like, man,
if we can just leave Star Wars alone, that would
be great.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
But yeah, you know, as soon as Disney acquired that property,
we were in trouble. Yeah, I mean, and like Arthur, right,
Arthur was good for twenty one seasons and then long Yeah,
then suddenly principal raft Bones marrying another dude, which you know.
Speaker 8 (50:07):
They are the rats, right, you know, we gotta go.
But there's some very surprising things. The oldest introduction of
this I found was Sesme Street, sayes Me Street. I
think it's the longest running children's TV show ever. Its
first season was nineteen eighty one, and you kind of
(50:29):
had some stuff even earlier than that, you know, if
Jim Henson was doing things before then. And that includes
a song. The very first season includes a song It's
we all sing the same song, and include the lyric
I've got one daddy, I've got two now you know,
(50:51):
granted it could be a stepdad. You just don't know,
but you do kind of know. They gave us Burton
Ernie right whole time.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
Well, I mean it beds but not together, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
I mean what maybe the brothers. I don't know.
Speaker 8 (51:08):
There's not to go down the Burtonernie conspiracy, right, but yeah,
it's it's it's it's interesting. I think a lot of
parents should give this a once over just to understand
the state of things.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Yeah, I mean, there's just so much going on in
today's world that it may be better to just go
back and and watch the original things. Like you know,
you said, you know, the original Ducktails was great, the
original Rescue Writters were great.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
I mean, these were all really good cartoons. They messed
up the new Ducktails. Yeah, I mean it was like
I was watching it with my kids. It was The
animation was really good.
Speaker 8 (51:54):
Yeah, they had a lot of that good nostalgia and that,
but that's what they get you in with that nostalgia, right,
Stick with the original stuff.
Speaker 9 (52:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Another thing is they kind of are trying to ruin
our childhoods like they retcon Like in Rugrats, remember there
was Lil and Phil, the Twins girls.
Speaker 8 (52:14):
They had somebody had a mom that was really like
a tom girl really, so they retcon that she was
a lesbian all this time. Just leave our childhoods alone.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
Like you said, we should never have to force our
children into conversations that they're not prepared to have, But
I mean the other I mean, speaking of you know,
children's and children's minds, one of the things that you
had done with your religious religious classes is you've you've
gotten your high school students to read C. S. Lewis
is The Great Divorce.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
Think this is a very valuable thing to kind of
take a look at and examine because C. S. Lewis
himself never became Catholic. He was pretty much a Anglican
his whole life. Not his whole life, excuse me. He
was a convert to that, but.
Speaker 8 (53:07):
Yeah, he'd converted after reading The Everlasting Man by GK.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Chesterton, Right, And so if you would have you know,
if him and his buddy's Chesterton and Tolkien would have
hung around with him a bit longer, he might have
been to that Catholic.
Speaker 6 (53:19):
Right.
Speaker 8 (53:20):
I definitely believe that. Yeah, I mean, how could you
hang out with Tolkien and GK. Chester Ti, right and
not eventually become.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
Cath Just slucking in the minds. But I mean, gosh,
you know, I think there's just something valuable within the
Great Divorce, and specifically some of these ideas that he
talks about. One of the ones that I think is
valuable to address is the idea that you know it
(53:50):
as Catholics we call it purgatory, and C. S. Lewis
seemed to have been open to the idea. He was,
I would say he was not agnostic. I think he
believe you've done an idea of purgatory as opposed to
a calm consent that you know, maybe Chesterton and Tolkien
a right, there is one. But I think he viewed
at the end of the day that if you know,
(54:11):
if our soul was soiled and we needed to take
a shower in the mud room before entering into the
Kingdom of Heaven, he was okay with that.
Speaker 8 (54:18):
Yeah, yeah. And it's you know, it's weird because the Episcopalions,
which became Anglican became Piscopalion, you know our you know,
our version of Piscapealion, and he they're very Lutheran. And
(54:40):
that came in because Amboleyn, her confessor was was a
closet Lutheran, and so you just they kept a lot
of the look of Catholicism, you know, sometimes even having
higher looking masses than Catholic masses, but a very low
understanding of salvation. A very Lutheran once saved always saved approach.
(55:05):
So in that sense Christ, there's no more penance to
be done because Christ paid the bill and full on
the cross. So that does you know, the whole idea
of salvation through adoption into the Family of God through
(55:29):
baptism and then the sacramental meal of the Eucharist. You know,
the whole reason the Bibles that divided between the Old
Covenant and the New Covenant. Is this idea, this paradigm
of the Covenant. No, it's just like there's a check
that had to be paid at the end of the
meal and they skipped the meal.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
So you know, Purgatory would have been.
Speaker 8 (55:52):
A a Catholic theological wandering for CS. Lewis, And so
he attempts to provide in The Great Divorce, which is
one of my favorite if it's probably my favorite C. S.
Lewis book. I mean, he has some great ones to
(56:14):
choose from. And can you just imagine if he did
become Catholic before writing the Chronicles of Narnia and we
had a Marian figure in Narnia as powerful as Aslan
was a christ figure, that would have been awesome.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Oh but we do have that. It's called Lord of
the Rings.
Speaker 8 (56:30):
And we've got galadriol Ao n Eric Gorn's mother. You know,
that's what happens when you go from from Anglican to Catholic,
you go. It's basically the conversion from Narnia to Lord
of the Rings.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Right.
Speaker 8 (56:47):
Both both are fascinating and I love to read Narnia,
but that's something that child reads. I've read as an adult.
But an adult can really sink his teeth and mature
person can really sink their teeth into Lord of the Rings.
But anyway to talk about C. S. Lewis does kind
of some neat tricks in The Great Divorce to provide
(57:10):
maybe an intellectual understanding and purgatory I don't know if
he's trying to rationalize it with his view. You know,
it could have been him going down that Catholic road.
I don't know if he's trying to rationalize it or
conceptionalize it, but he provides an interesting thought experiment as
(57:32):
the central concept of the Great Divorce, which is a
man dies, well you think the man dies anyway?
Speaker 4 (57:41):
I spoiler spoiler alert, you've not read The Great Divorce
by now? What have you been doing?
Speaker 8 (57:48):
It's been out for about eighty years, so you know,
spoilers might be a statute limitations on that anyway, So
let's just go with the idea that a guy dies
and he ends up in this place called the Gray City.
And pretty soon after finding himself in the Gray City,
he gets in line at a bus stop, and the
(58:10):
bus is basically a tour bus to go up to heaven,
to maybe go to heaven, right, And the meat of
the book is that you take this tour bus up
to heaven. These people hopefully can then go and proceed
on to heaven. They're greeted when they get to heaven
(58:32):
by people they knew in life that are sent by
God to speak to them to try and get purged
them for lack of a arritory of their ways of
thinking and habits and structures of sin and you know,
(58:55):
ruts that they've made for themselves in their brain. Like
you've got Frank Uh, Sarah I think his name is
Sarah Smith. She's this wife of this man, Frank Smith Uh,
and she's like, he just he needs to apologize to me.
Frank's in heaven.
Speaker 2 (59:17):
Frank needs to apologize to me because I work so
hard to if I had of pushed him and pushed him,
he would have never he would have never been promoted
in his career.
Speaker 8 (59:29):
And basically what's happening is that this woman has been
manipulating and strong arming her husband their whole married life
to make him uh seek materialistic goals she has been using,
she's been pursuing her own ambitions through him by proxy.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
And just not a holy pursuit. And she's she's saying she's.
Speaker 8 (59:56):
Expecting him to come apologized to her, and that's you
know why she can't go to heavens because he has
to apologize to her, and like, well, just the people
that come to visit her are like, we'll just forget
about all that you're in heaven, just let it go.
And you're like, you want to scream at these people
because they're at the doorstep of heaven. If they can
just let something go, they can go to heaven instead
(01:00:16):
of hell. And then you've got this amazing portrait of
an episcopal bishop and he's talking to this other guy
and he's like the person in heaven doesn't really come
out and say, well he realized I was right, And
(01:00:38):
because the physical bishop's like, we you know you had
this in life, you had such a speaking to the saint,
the person in heaven. It's like you had such a
literal view of heaven and hell. Surely now you must
see that I was right all along. It's just it's
(01:00:58):
just so good.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah. The irony, the pain of somebody not being able
to see what's happening around them anyway, the great city, right,
So he sees this gives us this back and forth line.
And I think this is the narrator George MacDonald saying
(01:01:23):
to someone his basically his Virgil in his Trip to Heaven.
He says, but I don't understand. Is judgment not final? Right?
Is there really a way out of hell into heaven? Right?
Speaker 8 (01:01:39):
Which in scripture you know the poor man Lazarus. No,
there's no way out of hell.
Speaker 6 (01:01:44):
Right.
Speaker 8 (01:01:46):
So the answer he's given is it depends on the
way you're using the words. And this is from a
saint or somebody from in heaven, so this is taken
as correct. It depends on the way you're using the words.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
If they leave that gray town behind, it will not
have been hell to any that leave it. It is purgatory.
And perhaps ye had better not call this country heaven,
not deep heaven. Ye understand here he smiled at me.
Speaker 8 (01:02:14):
Ye can call it the valley of the Shadow of life,
and yet to those who stay here, it will have
been heaven from the first. And ye can call those
sad streets in the town yonder the valley of the
shadow of death.
Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
But to those who remain there, they will have been
hell even from the beginning.
Speaker 8 (01:02:33):
So purgatory and Lewis's reckoning, at least in his book,
is a matter of perspective. Yeah, if you are purified, right,
because there's this whole subtext subplot about the ghosts showing
up in heaven and being immaterial. Right, the grass is
(01:02:55):
hard for them to walk on because it's so sharp, because.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
They're just vapors.
Speaker 8 (01:03:00):
And you become gradually more solid the more you are purified,
and the further you're going to heaven. So it's it's
a very interesting view of purgatory. If you proceed from
the Gray City to Heaven, looking backward, the gray city
(01:03:20):
will have been purgatory. If you stay in the Gray City,
the gray city is gray because night has not fallen yet.
Once night falls, then the bad stuff comes out and
it will be permanent, and there's no more tour bus
going to heaven. So you know, it's a it's an
interesting thought experiment, interesting conception of heaven, hell and purgatory.
(01:03:43):
Of course, the Catholic conception that we need to make
sure everybody knows is that if you go to Hell,
you stay in hell. If you go to purgatory, you're
ultimately going to heaven.
Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
Right, Yeah, the main the main thing is it's like, uh,
peratory is the doorstep, it's the it's the porch, it's
the patico. It's nobody goes to purgatory that's not going
to heaven. And I think that a lot of people
misunderstand that purgatory is a second chance. It is not.
It is not an opportunity for you to work off
(01:04:15):
your your debt, or excuse me, work off your sins.
It's a completely different experiment experience. And you know, ultimately,
if anybody's sitting there going around, well I'm going to
probably end up in purgatory and not heaven. They probably
need to go to confession, they get right with Jesus. Basically,
(01:04:38):
they need to try to figure out what their sins
are that's holding them to have a potential place like that.
I mean, you don't you want to aim for heaven.
You know, they say if you aim for the moon,
at least a land among the stars. Don't do that,
aim for the stars.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Yeah, be a saint. What else is there? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (01:04:58):
Yeah, And you're right, anytime we talk about purgatory, we
should encourage all everybody and clean ourselves to be to
to pester our priests every week, you know, as often
as we can in confession.
Speaker 6 (01:05:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
You know, we don't want people to get kind of like.
Speaker 8 (01:05:20):
Martin Luther did, get scripulous, erotic and scrupulous or scrupulous,
but we got.
Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Here on one side or the other. It's best to
go to confession frequently. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:05:32):
That's the other thing too, is I I do talk
to people about things, and it's kind of like, well,
just because you didn't put new clean water in your
your hamster's water bottle today and they've had dirty water
for three days in a row, that's not a sin.
I mean, it's you know, it's it maybe it's animal
to neglect or something, but it's not a sin man,
(01:05:52):
you know, it's it's small things like that. My priest
told me, if if it's an arbitrary law or rule,
it's probablyably not a sin. To disobey it because it's arbitrary.
Speaker 8 (01:06:03):
Yeah, And receiving the sacrament of the eu Christ is
ordered to the forgiveness of venial sins, right, the sacrament
of reconciliation is ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins.
So if you just you know, if you're not here
and not in a say, mortal sin, receive the Eucharist worthily.
Those venial sins are forgiven, those those hamster sins are forgiven. Yeah,
(01:06:31):
I mean that that broad category of non mortal sense.
Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Yeah, I mean it's it's so specific. I mean the
ideas and in the non Catholic listeners may have misunderstandings
of what things are. This is not an apologetics podcast.
There's a there's a thousand of those. You can you
can listen to Catholic Answers Live or doctor David Anders
if you have some serious questions.
Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
But at the end of the day, this is kind
of just.
Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Designed to get someone a little bit higher, a little
bit more knowledge, a little bit more from in a
friendly environment.
Speaker 9 (01:07:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
And that's what's interesting about the Great Divorce and c.
This is so masterful because in just a few sentences
he has presented you with a profile of sin that
everybody can relate to. We've seen it in ourselves or
other people. And these are not who he's populating this
(01:07:32):
world with. Are not.
Speaker 8 (01:07:34):
You know, It's not like somebody that's commit murder. This
is somebody that in life has nurtured a certain understanding
of the world, or a.
Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Certain habit, a certain sacrilege, blasphemy, even apostasy, or just
mistreatment of others that has to be unwound in their thinking.
Speaker 8 (01:07:58):
And I think that's ultimately, you know, this isn't just
a thought experiment of purgatory. This is this is a
way of presenting a mirror to ourselves and how we
treat others.
Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
One of the.
Speaker 8 (01:08:16):
Lines, let's see who is it? It might have been, uh, yeah,
it was Robert's wife. I think it's that same person
I mentioned before. The wife she uh, she said, the
saint in heaven is asking her, you know, have you
(01:08:38):
forgiven this person? And she says, I forgive them, as
a Christian said the ghost, but there's some things one
can never forget. There's a person in hell saying this, right,
what is we really need to think about our understanding
of forgiveness because this person has quote on quote for
(01:09:00):
giving somebody as a Christian. But it's clinging to what
she can see is the wrong in such a way
that is dragging her down to help.
Speaker 6 (01:09:09):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Yeah, yeah, so so Scott. As we said in the beginning,
you know, we've got a couple of resources people can
listen to more review. Let's go over those really quick.
Let's talk. I think we can find it all. I'm
not one out of percent sure, but I think we
can find it all on your website. Yeah, maybe not
the new podcast yet.
Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
You need to add Jacob Zumo, but yeah, I have
an article on the blog that talks about these things.
But Spotify and where we get your podcasts, you can
find Dad Monk. The Dad Monk podcast YouTube is pretty
much our home now and Spotify as well. But since
(01:09:51):
it's a video podcast, right, it's it's cool to watch
on YouTube.
Speaker 8 (01:09:56):
But you can still just listen to it, like you know,
pints of Aquinas. That's Saints by number instead of paint
by number. It's Saints by number. Uh, And you can
uh that's because Jacob uh, he'll he'll go around and
you know, kind of like a wine and painting night.
(01:10:17):
He'll go uh to parishes and you can. He'll show
you how to paint. It's called paint. It's called Saints
by Numbers. So that's what we made the fantastical of
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Yeah, my blog is the Scottsmiths Blog dot com.
Speaker 8 (01:10:31):
And you know all those articles you can find the
If they're not on the recent articles, like the no
Watch List or something, you can always scroll down to
the bottom. There's a list of all the most popular articles.
And the no Watch List has quickly become one of
my most popular articles ever.
Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
It's gone viral on a couple different places. So there's that.
Speaker 8 (01:11:00):
We've got the Near Death Experiences book coming out with
Sofia Institute next month, and again please pray for the
eight million project or a new eight million through the
intercession of our Lady of Wadalupe.
Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 6 (01:11:15):
Man.
Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
You've got a new book coming out. It comes out
in February, so when listeners hear this, they can actually
find your new book.
Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
It's on.
Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
Near death Experiences and that's published through.
Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Who Sophia Institute. One.
Speaker 8 (01:11:33):
We had some snow days down here in Louisiana recently,
so I was able to catch up on some of
the reprints that I've.
Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Been need to.
Speaker 8 (01:11:39):
I've been promising to do two new books publishing as reprints.
Mary Why Do You Cry, which is now live like
you find on Amazon. It's a collection of rose and
mystica and other statues of Mary that have wept and
(01:12:01):
why They've wept. It's a book that was put together
a few decades ago and just got out of print
and deserved to be revitalized. And then another book, Woman
in Orbit, it's a three hundred it'll be out soon,
probably by the time you are listening to this.
Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
It'll be out and available on Amazon. Woman in Orbit,
And that's a three hundred and sixty five day devotion
to our Lady. Each day goes over a different apparition
of our Lady, which is fascinating to see them, so
many of them compiled in one place. And so that
(01:12:39):
should be out as soon as well.
Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Fantastic. Well, thank you as always for coming back on
the show so we could talk more about some of
the stuff that's going on with you and in the
Catholic world.
Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Yeah, just good hanging out with you and just nerding out.
That's what I like to do.
Speaker 7 (01:13:39):
Thank you for listening. This is a free podcast based
upon the value for value model. If you find value
in this or any episode, you can return that value
by liking the show, subscribing to this channel, leaving a review,
or sharing with a friend on your social media accounts.
You can also donate on my website. Thank you again.
(01:13:59):
This is BT for Truth and Shadow Podcast. You are
the light in the darkness.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
H Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening
(01:15:25):
to the Fringe Radio Network. I know I was gonna
tell them, Hey, do you have the app? It's the
best way to listen to the.
Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
Fringe Radio Network.
Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
It's safe and you don't have to log in to
use it, and it doesn't track you or trace you,
and it sounds beautiful. I know I was gonna tell him.
How do you get the app? Just go to fringeradionetwork
dot com right at the top of the page. I know, slippers,
we gotta keep
Speaker 5 (01:15:55):
Cleaning these chimneys.
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