Ep 95 - From Bishop Olmsted's Right-Hand Man to Changing Catholic Family Culture, A Conversation with Steve Greene

Let's go. Hello, all. Welcome to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host, and with me we have a very special guest. We have Mr Steve Green. Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me on, James. It's a pleasure to join you.

Yes, and for those of you who do not know what goes on behind the scenes, Steve and I have literally tried to make this interview happen. I was looking, Steve. I reached out to you in May of 2022.

Unbelievable.

When you were at your old job, which I did want to ask you about a little bit. You just transitioned in the last few months or so, but yeah, it's been quite a journey. Then we started recording once and then Steve, one of his children, had a stomach bug and he's like I got to go. I'm so sorry here we are.

It was panthemonium in the background, James.

Absolutely, but it's a pleasure. Purpose of virence pays off, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

So anything that took this long to put together has got to deliver. So I feel a tremendous burden of responsibility now to pull it off on this interview that was a year and a half in the making.

Yes, Well, just you know, we'll just call upon the Holy Spirit and let the Holy Spirit do its thing Right.

Always, always a good game plan All right?

Well, before we get going, let's start with the same Michael prayer, so starting the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

So Michael, the Archangel, defendants and protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God review him.

We humbly pray and do. God, prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast in the house Satan and all evil spirits to prowl about the world. See in the room you souls. Amen, and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Steve, I'm going to kick it over to you. Tell us a little bit about your background. The first question I always like to ask is if you could be the patron saint of anything, what would it be and why?

Yeah, I had seen you ask that question, james, on some of your other interviews and I thought, okay, so he's put me in a dilemma right away. Do I answer this with like the idealized, you know brushed up best version of myself for the interweb kind of thing? Know, I'd be the saint of you know hours of adoration every day, or perfect parenting, or might not. I got to store myself under the bus and, be honest, I think I would be. If I'm really going to be forthcoming here, I think I'd probably have to be the saint of something like procrastination or poor time management. Hopefully there would be other little sinners out there like me who, in spite of all the years and the best efforts of people like their loving spouses, just have not been able to get their act together and get out in front of life. So yeah, if there's anyone else out there, hey, just pray for me and I'll pray for you. We'll see if we can't pull it off. Procrastinators and poor time managers 100%.

You know what the great thing about technology is. If I can just clip both of those together, you can be the patron saint in multiple things. You know there's patron saint of countries and regions, so you're good, you can be the patron saint in both of those.

I'd like to console myself with the thought that there would actually be a lot of people out there who would be grateful to have a patron saint of procrastinators and poor time management. So if it turns out that I make the cut and they see fit to put me on the calendar, I'll happily take that slot if it's open. I'm guessing, not a whole lot of other saints are vying for that title, so maybe it's still available.

I don't think you all have stiff competition with that, Steve.

Right, right exactly.

I think that'll be. Oh, steve wants that. Well, no one's asked for that, so go for it, man.

Both of those are wide open, amazingly.

Well, steve, for those of you who don't know, just give a little bit more about your background Again. You recently switched jobs over the last few months, so kind of dive into that and transition to this new role, which is when you send it to me I'm like this sounds like an exciting role, so I'm interested to hear more about that.

Yeah, yeah. I am very excited about the new gig, the new apostolate. How far back do you want me to go, james? You want me to go back to the mid-summer of 1973, when I made my debut appearance here on God's Good Green Earth, or?

fast forward a little bit, but for the sake of time, because we have young children, we should probably fast forward a little bit more. I would say yeah, sounds good.

Okay, so I'm originally from Wisconsin. I'll just use that as a brief touch point on my origins. I've lived in Arizona, the Phoenix area, for 25 years now and shortly after arriving I actually first came down here. I wanted to write radio and television ads. I had an English lit degree. I'm a Franciscan University of Steubenville grad from the mid-90s, end of the last millennium, as I like to say now that I have gray hair, which makes it very clear I'm not a young person anymore. But through a conspiracy of grace I ended up kind of falling backwards into youth ministry and three years of youth ministry translated into a discernment of vocation. So I actually went off to seminary for two years. I was a seminarian for the Diocese of Phoenix in the early 2000s, disserned my way out of priesthood a beautiful vocation. I got to see it up close and just see the great grace and power of that sacrament while lived. But it became increasingly clear that wasn't what I was being called to. I had been blessed to complete a master's degree when I was in seminary. So when I got back to Phoenix, not going into the priesthood I thought, well, I've got a master's degree bought and paid for by the Diocese of Phoenix. I should probably work for the church for a little while just to kind of give them some kind of return on investment before I go and make my millions doing something else. So I started working for the church. I actually taught theology at a new Catholic high school that was just opening up here in Scottsdale, arizona, and then fast forward 20-some years later here I'm still working for the church. So over the years I've taught theology and Catholic studies for University of Mary. They have a satellite campus from their base in Bismarck, north Dakota. They have a satellite campus down here in Tempe, arizona. That's kind of partnered up with ASU. I taught philosophy and ethics for eight years at Mesa Community College as an adjunct professor and then for the last 10 years after a stint in parish administration. For the last 10 years I was director of Keno Catechetical Institute at the Diocese of Phoenix. Pretty much simultaneous with the director of Keno, my wife and I started co-hosting a podcast produced by the Diocese called the Catholic Conversation. So we continue to host the podcast. We're still doing the podcast. There's actually a radio show and a podcast originally. Now it's just a podcast. And then this summer yeah, after 10 years at Keno. I gave Keno Catechetical Institute my 40s and so, having turned 50, I decided to jump into a new opportunity, starting a new apostolate which is Holy Family Institute of Catholic Faith and Life, which is meant to be sort of a multi-platform faith formation resource for Catholics here in the Diocese and it's actually based out of St Anne Catholic Parish and Gilbert. But the idea is that we'll create content and faith formation resources on a bunch of different platforms and formats and then push it out to the wide world and hope that people find it and benefit from it. So if folks are interested, they can just go to our website, which is very simple it's wwwholyfamilyinstituteorg and we're still building it and adding resources. There's a weekly Wednesday formation series that I offer at the parish. All those videos are up there, just kind of a wide variety of topics and then, working in a blog, some shorter video series. I'm going to be doing a series called Meet the Catechism, where I'll just be kind of breaking open a single paragraph from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and applying it to life and the work and the apostolates of Catholics in the modern culture and more to come, so yeah, anyway, that's what I'm doing now, but I've basically been in some form of faith formation or catechetics, or theology, philosophy, catholic intellectual tradition for the last 20 plus years. So yeah, that's me and a nutshell. And then married to my wife Becky, for 20 years, six kids we've got five of them here with us and had a miscarriage. So we've got one little intercessor up in heaven.

Gosh beauty, what a story. I always love hearing guest backgrounds and it's just so funny where you're just like, yeah, I decided I'd give God a little bit of time back and I'd work for the church. And then God's like, huh funny, I'm actually going to reel you in. This is what you're just going to turn into a career. And so now you're only going to be working for the church.

So it's not up on my offer. James, exactly, it's up on my offer.

You give God an inch and he takes 20 miles right, so that's but it's a good thing and clearly you've done fantastic work. And you know, I remember first hearing about you was the Knights of Columbus, their video series into the Breach, and Father Dommy have talked about that video series, gosh, probably at least like a dozen times, because Bishop Olmsted is just a rock of a man. You got to work with Bishop Olmsted.

I did, yeah, yeah, I worked.

So tell us a little bit about that, because another listener's always heard here about him. I guess we constantly talk about him. So what was it like to work with with that man?

It was as you would expect, james, it was incredible, really the great joy of my professional life. He, for whatever reason, chose to entrust his Catechetical Institute to my leadership and I'll always be grateful to him for that opportunity. Basically, I spent my 10 years at Keno Catechetical Institute forming people in the faith, whose job it was then to turn around and form others in the faith, and it was just such a gift. Working for Bishop Olmsted I would just say that the whole diocese he was Bishop here for almost 19 years, just recently retired and over that time, as you would expect, I think any diocese with a Bishop that long would take on the imprint of the Bishop. It would really pick up his charisms, his vision, his priorities and that's certainly true of Phoenix and under his leadership the diocese really was just way out ahead of the curve in a number of areas where he was really innovative and very forward thinking. He always had a really deep sense of not just the church but the church and its kind of dynamic relationship with the culture, and I think he got part of that. So as a young priest he was actually. He worked. Oh, I would mess it up, james, if I tried to name the exact department, but essentially he worked at the Vatican under Pope St John Paul II, worked closely with Pope St John Paul II, including being one of the English language translators of the Wednesday audiences. That would become theology of the body. He was deeply, deeply connected and had a deep affinity for John Paul II knew him well, worked in close collaboration with him and he really brought that kind of ethos and that kind of spirituality back. And one of the. Actually, when Becky and I first started the Catholic Conversation podcast, we were kind of kicking around for sort of a theme, a quote, an idea that could kind of sum up what we were kind of hoping to accomplish or what we were kind of hoping with the show would be about. And I came across a quote from John Paul II that's always stuck with me and I try to kind of have it playing on a loop in the back of my mind and have it inform what I do. So John Paul made the observation he said the gospel lives in conversation with culture and if the church holds back from the culture, the gospel itself falls silent. And so there's just that like that beautiful exhortation from the vicar of Christ to engage the culture, to make the gospel active and audible in the culture and to bring Christ to the world so that Christ can bring the world to himself. And I think Bishop Olmsted had deeply absorbed that kind of a worldview and that sense of mission for the church and he brought that to Phoenix. And so he was, he was, he's still alive. He is just a very astute observer of the needs of the culture and particularly how the church can speak to those needs, how the church can meet those needs, how the church can bring something of value to the culture. And that's been a theme I have tried to highlight for people really throughout my career working for the church. It's actually the tagline at the end of every episode of the podcast. I always say remember, the church has what the world needs. So learn your faith, live your faith and share your faith. And that's that's playing off of that observation by John Paul II that the gospel lives in conversation with culture. The church rolls back from the culture, the gospel falls silent. But I really believe that I know you do too, I'm sure many of many of your viewers as well the church has what the world needs, not not, as we know, not always what the church, what the culture wants or the world wants at the moment. But we've been entrusted with the fullness of the truth and all this grace and so under Bishop Olmsted, things like marriage crept, natural family planning, deaconate formation, definitely catechetics the department of the diocese that was entrusted to me he just was such an innovative thinker had us way out ahead of the curve. You know, as a, as a director of a catechetical institute, I would go to, you know, catechetical conferences and one of my favorite that I've attended and I've also presented at, is the St John Bosco conference at Franciscan University and that again being my alma mater, maybe I'm a little prejudiced but it's a great, great catechetics conference. People from all over the world, catechists from all over the United States, convening for four days of formation and networking and fellowship. So you know you get, you get in conversations where you kind of talk and shop. And I would just kind of describe the setup that we had in Phoenix under Bishop Olmsted and it just blew people out of the water Like I remember one guy saying he's like man, he's like you guys. With Bishop Olmsted it's not even fair. He's like I would cut my right arm off to have those kind of resources in our diocese. If we started tomorrow, we couldn't get there in 20 years. So I just all that to say. I always had a unique sense of how blessed we were to have Bishop Olmsted as our shepherd and personally just a deeply humble, deeply spiritual, deeply prayerful man rooted in the sacrament and the scriptures. You know every day for him began with a holy hour and mass and you knew that wherever he was taking the diocese, it was always the fruit of real prayer and contemplation, really seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and he was one of those guys and this, again, is something you hear a lot about Pope St John Paul II, who I never met. I assume it's true because I've heard it a lot, but definitely true of Bishop Olmsted. He was one of those unique people where if you're talking to him even if it's you're some, you know you're at some big fundraiser for you know one of the crisis pregnancy centers or something you always felt like you had his absolutely undivided attention. He just really had that gift for making you feel that deep personal connection. So, yeah, it was a great blessing. It really was just a great blessing. I learned a ton from him. I was given a lot of freedom to really try to form people in a way that would be fruitful in their apostolates and in their families and in their ministries and the church. So, yeah, always be grateful for that and hopefully I'm carrying all that forward into a holy family Institute of Catholic Faith in life as well.

Now that's incredible, steve Gosh. I mean talk about a prophet for our times. You know the first. The first I heard of Bishop Olmstead was the his Into the Breach Exortation. I had read that before the nights came out with their, their awesome video series. I thought that was fantastically produced and developed. But you know a man who, like you said, really stressed the family and morality and really no, it's okay, the phone is ringing in the bell.

Okay, so one of the kids got a good. That's bonus content for your viewers. Welcome to the greenhouse.

That's right, perfect, but yeah, so, yeah. So a man who clearly spoke on the family, masculinity, authentic Catholic masculinity and and morality, right, and something that, like you said, he pushed in the diocese and now we see, you know the battleground which is the family, like how families being torn apart left and right. So you know, especially with authentic masculinity, you know what he spoke about, which it sounds like he exhibited in his day to day life, day in, day out. I mean, how, how would you say? I guess you can talk about his approach, or what you're just seeing and when you're teaching, what have you noticed or identified as, I guess, a crisis and identity in men, in the church and in the culture as well.

Yeah, that's a boy, that's a. That's a great question and a loaded and a loaded question in terms of, in terms of Bishop Olmsted. You know, of course you're right into the breach If you think about it like. I mean, I don't track every letter written by every bishop on God's good green earth, so I don't know, maybe maybe letters written by bishops go viral sometimes. I'm certainly not aware of one. I have a unique talent for missing things that everyone else is tuned into. So that might be it. But like the, the, the into the breach. I mean that went, that went viral, that thing went worldwide in short order. It's been translated into like 30-some different languages. There are into the breach study groups literally all over the Catholic world. I, I like on every con and they, they got feedback at the dice. I mean Bishop Olmsted got letters and emails and you know, this changed my life, or I read it and then I had my husband, or I mean women, you know, who engaged into the breach too and shared it with their husbands, guys who are like I. Just have a whole new sense. It just like he in a, in a very real sense. He kind of became like a spiritual father. He kind of became like a bishop to men all over the world through that into the breach, and it was, you know, I think all that tells you is, I think it just underscores the the point I made earlier. He really led from prayer, he led from a deep discernment and a genuine living desire to go where the Holy Spirit was leading him and he, he really he felt called. He looked like, like I said, great, great and very astute observer of the culture and the needs and the culture. You know, like you and I, he looked around and he just saw you have a crisis of manhood, we have a crisis of fatherhood, we have a crisis in marriage, we have a crisis in family life. And as a as a man and as a spiritual father, he felt called to exhort his spiritual sons in the diocese of Phoenix and then, as it turns out, by extension to spiritual sons the world over, to examine again what that call to masculinity is, what the gift of manhood is. A couple of years ago we, we homeschool, and so our two oldest boys, our first two, are our two boys, michael and Donovan. They're 19 months apart, so they they kind of hit, like you know, puberty and it was time for for the talk. And so a friend, a friend of mine, had done a really cool thing with his Catholic men's group. They had a bunch of teenage sons roughly the same age and they had, they had basically teed up a father son theology of the body study group. So these, these men and their sons went through that formation together to really kind of lay that strong foundation not just in Catholic sexual ethics and Catholic morality but in authentic Catholic anthropology. You know, as, as you know, James, theology of the body. A lot of people, if they're aware of it, a lot of people just have the idea that theology of the body is kind of like Catholic chastity on steroids. You know, it's like this really cool sex ed program that you know crazy, a pope came up with this sort of thing and it it certainly is a beautiful and dynamic and rich and inspiring representation of the church's understanding of sex and sexuality and marriage. But it's really much, much deeper than that. You know, it's actually a re-presentation of the church's beautiful adequate anthropology, which again is a John Paul II term, by by which adequate anthropology kind of fancy, you know, theophilusophical speak, but essentially what he means by that is a true and complete understanding of the human person. And you know, for a number of years, when I, when I taught or talked about or presented on theology of the body, I used to refer to it as I tell people. I think that Pope John Paul II's theology of the body is the church's counter-revolution to the sexual revolution. And I'll say, over the last I don't know, certainly five, probably more, like 10 years or so as we've watched the sexual revolution morph into this anthropological revolution, I've begun just saying, instead of this as the church's counter-revolution to the sexual revolution, I've begun calling theology, the body, the church's counter-revolution to the anthropological revolution. I think what happened is the sexual, the sexual revolution, which began ostensibly about what we do, you know, what we do with our libidos, what we do with our relationships, what we do with our sexuality, what we do with Somewhere along the line that changed, it evolved into a revolution, not so much about what we do but a revolution about what we are. And now the full kind of branch and blossom, I think, of the sexual revolution is this anthropological revolution we see around us now, where we've just lost our grip on what it means to be human. We've lost our grip on what it means to be male and female. We've lost our grip on what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God. We've lost our grip on the deep vocational reality of the human person, male and female, and that God stamped that theological reality into our biology so that we would experience and see in the depths of our being that call to communion, the mutual self-gift of spouses, the fruitfulness, the procreation, the partnering. We've got All that stuff has just been lost. Gaudium et spes, as you may recall, the pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world from the Second Vatican Council makes a really important observation. It's in paragraph 36. Gaudium et spes. 36 says if God is forgotten, the creature itself becomes unintelligible. And I think you'd have some hard work to do to come up with a one-sentence summary that more cleanly captures the reality we're living in right now. If God has forgotten, the creature itself becomes unintelligible. And that's where we are, and you and I know this, james. We have become unintelligible to ourselves and that unintelligibility of the human person. We don't understand what we are or what we're for or why we were created anymore, because in the absence of God, then we by default become the new supreme being and we have to try to reconstitute reality and truth for ourselves. And surprise, surprise, we're terrible at it. We make really crummy little gods. We fly that plane right into the side of a mountain in short order. And so what? I think Bishop Olmsted I say all that Bishop Olmsted had recognized all of that, and when it came to the writing of Into the Breach, he really wanted to call men back, not just to sort of the role of a man what should a man do but I think he also wanted to reconnect men to the reality of what a man is. And so when my fellow homeschool dads and I put together our own little kind of father son theology the body study group we were talking about like what can be kind of our theme that we repeat week to week to week. And so what we came up with is manhood is a mission. So if you're a man, you have a mission, because manhood itself is a mission. And the mission of manhood is to love and lead, serve and protect those who are entrusted to you, because every man has someone entrusted to him. Whether you're a husband and a father, whether you're a priest or a religious brother, even if you're a single man, you have people entrusted to you. That's part of the mission of manhood, as God intended it. So your mission as a man is to love and lead, serve and protect those entrusted to you. And that theme of course echoes on every page and paragraph of Into the Breach. He's calling us back to the identity of man as created in the image and likeness of God. He's calling us back to the mission of manhood as entrusted to men by God. And then he's calling us to embrace what that means to step into the breach, to be courageous and, of course, into the breaches. There's kind of a military element to that analogy. There are holes all over the front lines of manhood and the role of men and the identity of men and the dignity of man as well, which is definitely under attack. And so he's calling us, as Catholic men, to arm ourselves and then to step courageously into that breach, even if it means laying down our lives, because guess what? That's part of the mission of manhood too. So I think that echoes beautifully through that letter and I think that's why it resonated. I think that's why it went viral and went all over the world. He spoke to a need and men heard it and they recognized. Yes, yes, that that's the thing. That's the truth I've always known but never heard articulated, or that's the description of who I am and what I'm for and the mission that's been entrusted to me that I've been looking for and I could never find. So, yeah, praise God. And then, like you mentioned the whole Knights of Columbus video series. What a gosh, what a beautiful idea, what a beautiful project, beautifully executed. That's an absolute treasure. I chuckle because I'm one of the interviewees. For those who haven't seen this series, you can go look it up, it's on YouTube, or you can go to the Knights of Columbus website. And they just did a 12-part video series on Into the Breach, pulled out a number of different themes from Bishop Olmsted's letter to men and then just interviewed a whole bunch of guys from kind of all over the Catholic spectrum. But I chuckle because I'm little old me. Who's ever heard of me? And I'm in there with Scott Hahn and Curtis Martin, the founder of Focus. I'm like hi, I'm Steve, I'm from Phoenix, I'm a Catholic too. Anyway, just beautiful stuff, beautiful, beautiful stuff.

Yeah, because there's so many parts in that letter too. I remember for me when he talked about fatherhood and he pulled a quote from Pope Francis and it said essentially I'm summarizing, but basically said if there is a man who does not want to be a father, there is something like intrinsically wrong with that man. And that really resonated with me because I remember before my wife and I got married, I was proud of him at the time and I had never really been drawn to fatherhood Like my wife. You know, when we were dating she was like I want to be a mom immediately. And I was like you know, I can. I honestly told her I said you know, like if we have children, great, if not, like it's not that big of a deal to me and like I was never drawn to it. And I know a lot of guys too. They don't have like this overwhelming desire, but I think deep down they know that it's something that they're being called to do. But I remember that all changed when she told me that she was pregnant with our first, our oldest child, and it's like there was a switch that just flipped in me and I was like yes, like this, this is a, this is a holy calling, you know, obviously a calling to be a husband first to her, which I also felt that way. But something about being called to a father, you know, again like what Pope Francis said in that quote is we all have that yearning to be a father and, like you said, it doesn't matter if, like you and me, are husbands and we're fathers. There's like Father Dominic and the priest out there, and then there's people who are single and you because that is funny, you brought up men who are single, and there is this, this guy in my men's group, and he's single, but he's an uncle and it's like you can be. You might be that difference maker to that child. You know you're, or even just kids in your neighborhood. You don't know who is looking to you. There's somebody that's always watching and you don't know what impact you're having on their life just by your example. So, just because, again, you might not be called to be a biological father or as a priest, there's someone that you can always make an impact to and because we're all called to that, that, that holy calling of fatherhood. But you, you mentioned to and I love what you talked about, steve, when you said manhood is a mission. And then I forgive me if I I didn't get the quote right, but you said and the mission is to serve, to protect and to lead those entrusted into our care. And I wanted to to ask you, you know, because, like you said, bishop Olmson talks a lot about you know, the more militaristic language you know, but to serve, and I think to serve is a very misconstrued concept in in this day and age, in our society, this day. It almost could be seemed like a weakness, so to speak. Like man, we're called to be leaders and we don't. We don't, you know, we don't say no to anyone and our things like that. People need to do it our way and stuff, but to serve is completely opposite, especially with Jesus, when he you know, obviously, the serving of washing the disciples' feet. So maybe, if, if you can, you know, expand on the idea of service, especially in relation to us as men and for, more particularly for you and me as husbands and fathers, and our families. So why that is so important and why it's not actually a weakness but something that is a tremendous strength that a lot of people can can utilize and learn from.

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Yeah, the little quote that we used was the mission of of manhood is to love and lead, serve and protect those entrusted to you. And you're right, service is right at the heart of that. I suspect I'm spoiler alert, I'm not God, but I suspect that one of the reasons God, who had created men, he invented manhood, he invented, he invented masculinity, he invented men. So he knows us completely and perfectly, all of us and each of us. I suspect that one of the reasons that he planted that call to service right at the center of our identity as men and our vocation as men is because services sacrifice. Services is putting someone else before myself, inconveniencing myself for the sake of another, putting my plans aside to be of benefit to another person, and you cannot live fatherhood without service and without sacrifice you can you can live a cut rate version of it that in many cases, is really not even worthy of the name. Fatherhood I mean a man and tragically, there are lots of men like this and we all, to be clear, we all fall into this at times. But there are some men who enter marriage and have kids but have made a firm decision in advance I will not be inconvenienced by my wife and kids, I just won't be. I will continue to have my priorities and my time and my prerogatives and my money and my leisure and my friends and my, my recreational activities and where and when. And if my wife and kids fit in around that self-serving, self-centered life, great. But I will not be. I'm not going to, I'm not going to give up who I am for that, which is completely antithetical not only to the Catholic understanding of marriage, fatherhood, masculinity, it's completely antithetical to God's plan for manhood and masculinity and marriage. And yet that's what our culture sells. It sells this, this radicalized, secularized individualism, this, this autonomy of the self. Like I, I am my own self-referential little world and I determined for myself what's true and I set my own priorities and my own agendas and my own projects. And if any of the rest of you want to fall in line with me and kind of be participants in my little project of me, great. But at any point when you start to cause friction or you make it difficult for me to be who I want to be, I'm going to cut you loose. And of course, we see that all over the place that we live in a culture of, of, of derelict dads and absentee fathers of, you know, abandon the women and children, and it cuts both ways. James, you and I both know that women have their own set of challenges and shortcomings in the way the culture forms them. And then, unsurprisingly, you know, we're made to make a. St Thomas Aquinas, remember, says that love is to will the good of the other as other. And of course that feeds into John Paul II's Theology of the Body, where he talks about the gift of self. Man cannot fully realize himself unless and until he makes a gift of himself to another. And so that's what service is. Service is I'm willing to lay down my life, my priorities, my desires, my comfort for the sake of someone else. I'm willing their good, actively, by surrendering my prerogatives and priorities for their benefit. And yeah, our culture struggles with that. Our culture feels threatened by it. Men in our culture have been trained to feel threatened by it, but of course and I gosh, I hope more men are waking up to this reality. It certainly is a theme that Bishop Obstead called our attention to and into the breach. But if men buy into that cultural narrative that they should just have whatever they want, whenever they want and with whomever they want, and if they develop then those deeply ingrained habits of selfishness and of use of other people, instead of willing their good, using them for my own pleasure, then you do, you end up with overgrown children, and then it kind of turns into the self-fulfilling prophecy where, you know, as you know, the narrative about men in our culture is they're basically these overgrown adolescents who can't really be relied on for anything. And then you get the whole feminist narrative like I think it was Gloria Steinem had that it's actually a great quote, it cracks me up every time which says a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle, like, yeah, that's pretty good. Jab right there. Right, I mean basically saying men are virtually useless, and but that's really that's how men and, unfortunately, how boys are often treated in our culture. It's kind of like here's your remote control or here's your video game controller. Just sit down, shut up and get out of the way, like you're just a useless, self-serving slob. Anyhow, we're not entirely sure why we even keep you guys around, but oh well. And when men buy into that, it not only perpetuates that narrative but it undermines the whole good of masculinity and manhood in the culture. It obscures the reality that men are meant to be heroic, they're meant to be warriors, they're meant to be leaders, and they do that through service, they do that through sacrifice. You know, I've presented to men many times and one of the things I always challenge the guys with. I say, basically we're presented with a choice between how the culture sees us and how the church sees us. And I said that the culture sees us as Homer Simpson Washouts on the couch in a dirty white t-shirt with Cheeto stains all over it and smelling like beer or an unwashed rug, whereas the church sees us like a knight on a stallion in full armor, arrayed for battle, trained and fit and ready. And I'm not talking about physical. Some of the strongest and most heroic men I know would never fit the stereotype of the big macho man. My friend's dad cared for his wife for almost 30 years after she had a seizure in a swimming pool and suffered extensive brain damage. And so he lived his vow to love her thick and thin, health or illness. And he in a sense lost his wife that day. Like the woman he married, this vibrant, intelligent, loving social, the mother's children, like she's ceased to exist. But he held true to that vow and loved her heroically, at tremendous personal cost to himself, a huge sacrifice, I mean. He now essentially had a wife who was like a toddler in some sense, that he had to constantly care for and that, like that, my friend's dad he's probably stands five feet three inches tall and weighs 120 pounds, stoking wet with quarters in his pockets. You know he was bald by the time he was in his mid twenties got thick coke bottle glasses, not an athletic bone in his body. Who cares? Like that's a man, that's a warrior, that's a hero and that's it, it's service, it's sacrifice. And so I would say to guys I'm like here's the deal I would bet, talking to the room of men, whoever it is I'm presenting to, I said I would bet any one of us in here would willingly take a bullet for our wife and our kids or would willingly jump in front of a speeding bus to shove our wife or kids out of the way I said, but the problem is it's not that easy. Most of us will not be called to take a bullet for our wife and kids or to jump in front of a speeding bus. Instead, we're going to be called to make a hundred little sacrifices every day. A hundred little no to Steve and yes to my wife and kids. A hundred little sacrifices of what I feel like doing, for what I need to do as a man, as a husband, as a father and James, I fail all the time. There's never a day where I go to bed at night and I'm like yup, nail that Again, perfect, dead Red Center, 100% tooth and nut. And no, never. I'm a work in progress, we're all a work in progress, but it's really, what version of manhood have you embraced? And that that orients then how you live and how you prioritize things and what you challenge yourself with or don't challenge yourself with. And so, yeah, I think that that call to service is absolutely central. I think God put it there because he knew men would need to be given a call that would force them to push back against that selfish, childish me, me, me use other people kind of tendency. That's just part of our fallen nature. That's one of the afflictions of men after the fall.

Yeah, and that's that's ultimately the greatest lie to. I think culture teaches us is that to be happy you have to kind of focus inward on yourself and you know you have needs. You need to meet those needs and if you meet those needs, then then you can give whatever is left to the rest of the world. And that's totally opposite of what you know, jesus taught. You know, I remember I was currently in this now at the time of the recording, but XS 90 is doing St Michael's Lent. And they're having a weekly talk given and I remember Kyle Clement he one of his talks. He was speaking on this and he was saying you know the greatest lie and what it basically what I just said is, you know, to focus on yourself. And he said, for those of us who are married because he's married as well we are not called to to, like, fulfill our own desires. We are called to die every single day to ourselves and we are called, like you said, to make that sacrifice to our wives and to our children, and we're called to do it with a joyful spirit because that is what Jesus called us to do. And as soon as you, you turn like well, you know, gosh, I've been working so hard at work, I come home and I, you know, I'm present with my kids, I deserve some time off. Like, no, you don't, you do not deserve any time off Because this is what you're, this is your vocation in life. You know, and the bet, the, and he kept saying you know, the greatest lie that the devil keeps popping in your head is that, hey, man, you're working really hard. She doesn't really appreciate all the work you do. Just relax tonight, sit back, have a couple beers. You know, and and granted, sometimes it's going to happen, that's totally fine. I'm not. I'm not saying, like you know, relaxation and leisure in a holy way is not possible. What I'm saying is, as soon as you start to think, well, I deserve some me time, that's exactly when the devil has you right where he wants you, because pretty soon, that me time is going to turn into the next day and then the following day. In pretty soon you have, you know, three weeks of every single night you didn't do anything for your family. You're just like. You know, I've been working really hard. I think I just need a vacation from you guys.

Yeah, you know right, yeah, it becomes, james, you're exactly right, I agree 100%. It becomes a habit and then, and then that begins to form your character. You become increasingly selfish and the more habituated you are to that self serving kind of mentality that hey, hey, you know back off wife and kids like I deserve some me time. And it's not that you intend it, I get it. It's not like a guy sets out to become selfish, but it happens. It changes you and then, instead of cultivating the virtue of self-sacrifice for those entrusted to you, you're instead cultivating the vice of selfishness. And yeah, and there's something so deeply dissatisfying about that, it nibbles at you, it nags at you when you begin to slip into those patterns, because there's something like you. Just get it. For me, I've always been a big sports fan and so for a while I was kind of in that hey, well, into the games on, and it's Sunday, and so I'm from Wisconsin, so it's still a Packers fan. I don't want to watch the. Packers kind of thing. But when we had kids I remember, in fact actually it was when I was a kid it was my dad. Something he said to me, because my dad was an athlete and loved sports he was talking about giving up softball. So he was like in a men's league. He'd play softball a couple of nights a week and then, after I'm the oldest of my five siblings and after I came along, he said there is just a point where I kind of realized your mom would bring you along and she's got this baby in the stands and he's like. It just kind of dawned on me at some point Like what am I doing this for? What's the play? Like I enjoy it. But that's my wife and my son, and that always stuck with me Because it's not like a huge life changing sacrifice. But it's exactly what we were just talking about. It's one of those million little sacrifices, one of those million little decisions. But you stack those little decisions, you stack those little sacrifices, or, conversely, the unwillingness to make those little sacrifices, or the refusal of those little sacrifices, and the cumulative effect is it really begins to change the trajectory of your fatherhood, of your marriage, of your manhood. And that affects everybody. A man, whether he wants it to be true or not, whether he's comfortable with the idea or not, whether he embraces it or sprints from it in the other direction. The man's the spiritual head of the household, and it's not because he's holier or smarter than his wife I'm certainly not. But that's not what it's about. It's not a meritocracy, it's just simply the way God created man and woman and the complementarity. And the reality is the man's leadership is supposed to be kind of back to Bishop Olmsted's, into the breach. The man's role is to be a seawall. If you've ever been to a harbor on the ocean or even Great Lakes region, you're in Michigan. Same thing, like at the mouth of the harbor, they have that seawall and the seawall's job is to take all the violence, the wind and the waves and the storms and the hurricanes, so that behind the wall there is the safe, calm, peaceful harbor. Well, that harbor behind us as men is the home that's our wife and our kids. So we're supposed to be the seawall. We're supposed to take all the violence and the wind and the waves and the storms of the world so that behind us in our home is this safe haven, this safe, calm harbor and Satan wants to hit that harbor like a hurricane. He wants to tear it apart. But God created us to stand in His way. He made, he arranged things so that God has to go through the man to get to the woman and child. And Satan hates us as men. He hates manhood, authentic masculinity, because God put it in His way and because he hates woman and child even more than he hates man. I mean, think of what one woman and her child did to Satan, like he wants our wives and our children. I want to confession one time. This is a great side benefit of having been a seminarian you get to go to confession to guys you went to seminary with. Yes. Yes, so I went to confession with a great, great priest, great priest who I was in seminary with, and you know, confessed and that's basically what he laid on me, james, which I've gone back to over and over and over again. And I think Satan will attack you to get you out of the way, but he doesn't care about you. He wants your wife and kids. It's your job to be a protection, it's your job to stand between them and his evil. And so he just wants to use sin to get you out of the way. He wants you to be that washout, that Homer Simpson. He wants you on the couch, selfish and useless and tuned out and totally unaware and unconvinced. And then you know, james, the other thing about what you were saying too, about, like that, the observation that the guy for Exodus 90, I've done Exodus 90. It's a great program. I encourage guys to check that out. But one of the things that you said, that just occurred to me. So our oldest, michael, is going to turn 18 on November 1st. He's a all saints day baby. And then our number two, donovan, turned 16 this summer. And you know, when you're young parents, you hear people, older parents, you know, and folks who've raised their kids, they'll tell you, enjoy this while it lasts Like soak, this all in. It goes by too fast and you know it's true, but it's still so hard to really embrace it, to really. And especially because when you've got little kids, you know I know you and your wife do it's messy and it's chaotic and it's diapers and feedings and lack of sleep and temper tantrums, and not that the temper tantrums necessarily go away and they get older. They just kind of change tenor and tactic a little bit. But no, you know there's this so you can get just swept downstream by the day to day craziness of it. But you know, to that point that you made about, if you begin to indulge that diabolical whisper, it's like you deserve it, like they're a burden on you or you should have some time this whole. You know me first, me first and then eventually I'll get to them. You know, like I said, I would be the patron saint of procrastinators. Like you can procrastinate virtuous manhood, you can procrastinate virtuous fatherhood, you can procrastinate virtuous and self-sacrificial marriage and spouse, the love of your wife, but it will run away from you. You can well today. Today I'm going to take care of Steve Today. Today I'm going to just put me first. You know I'm going to. I know you know the kids want me to go take them to the park, but I'm just going to watch the game, you know. And then tomorrow we'll do the park, or tomorrow we'll do. And then, surprise, surprise, you know, procrastinators unite. Tomorrow never comes. And as you begin to build, that habit of vice and that habit of self-indulgence, like it runs away from you. And then suddenly you wake up and you're like, I don't have little kids, you know, who want me to take them to the park anymore. I've got teenagers. And I mean, how many dads are living that heartbreak? And then, of course, you know there's consequences to that. If the spiritual head is absent, there's a breach, there's a vacuum. Satan is going to get in and he is going to do damage. And so then you're suddenly waking up and you're like, well, where did all these struggles come from? Where did all these challenges come from? Like, why are my kids doing so? And you realize like, man, I checked out, I missed it, I wasn't there, I didn't pick up the weapons, I took myself out of the game, I put myself on the bench and no wonder, things started coming apart. And then that forces my wife to have to step into the breach, that forces my wife to have to try to be the sea wall. And she may be smarter and holier than me she is but she can't be me, she can't be a man and she can't live the role that was entrusted to me. So yeah, james, amen, I agree, it's so vitally important that men see and embrace it. No one that it's going to be tough. The other thing I always tell men I use a GK Chesterton quote which I like. Gk Chesterton is just the very best. He made that funny observation once. He said anything worth doing is worth doing badly, and at first it's just straight funny, like that's a weird thing. But of course, what Chesterton is not saying is he's not saying it's okay to suck at important things. No, no, no. He's saying you can't. If it's important and fatherhood is important, if it's, if it's important, if it's essential and loving your spouse and your children is essential then you can't put it off until you've got it figured out. You got to wade into it and stink out loud at it at first if that's all you can do. And this, I think, applies especially, james, to the spiritual headship thing. A lot of guys are afraid to take up that role because they don't know what they're doing, they're incompetent, they're like I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how to lead my family in prayer, and so they don't because they don't know how to do it. Well, and Chesterton says anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Yeah, you're going to be pretty terrible at it at first. Do it anyway, step up anyway, make the effort and then, of course, the great thing that we know is grace builds on nature. So the Holy Spirit is there to make good our deficiencies and to begin to form us. If we'll just give him a little bit of effort, he will pick up that little bit of effort and he will run with it and we'll get better at it. Looks like you get better at anything that you don't know how to do, but you set out to try to figure it out. Over the last several years I've talked and taught a lot about this. I keep coming back to, of course, scripture is just shot through with all these beautiful, luminous examples of the paradigm for Christian discipleship. One of them that I just keep coming back to over and over again in recent years is the feeding of the 5,000. And especially for men I put this one in front of men is we're all, all of us, men and women, catholics and disciples of Jesus of every kind, but I think, especially men we're confronted perpetually with an unmeasurable need. Like we look at the culture and the mess in the culture and we're like, how could I even begin to meet the need in the culture? We look at our marriages how could I even begin to be sufficient for the person I'm married to? We look at our kids and their challenges and struggles. How could I even? And so we're constantly just faced with this unmeasurable need, like the apostles 2,000 years ago on that lonely hillside with Jesus 5,000 men, not even counting the women and children, and it's late in the day and they need something to eat, and it's an unmeasurable need. We can't, we've got nothing here. And so they do the right thing. Right, they go to Jesus and they're like Jesus, there's a huge crowd here and they're getting hangry and send them away. And what does Jesus say? What he says on the surface seems ridiculous. He turns to the apostles and he says you give them something to eat, like okay, and I like sometimes it's fun to just kind of like, try to put yourself in the scene and be like, are they like, laughing? At first, like, oh, that's a good one, jesus. And then they're like, oh wait, he's serious, okay. And then they, you know, like Lord, if we had 100 days wages, we couldn't even give them what do you mean? Give them something to eat. And of course he says that that, keith. He says what do you have? And what they have is embarrassing. They've got five loaves and two fish for 5,000 men, not counting the women, and it's embarrassing. But he says give it to me. And then, of course, here's the kicker he blesses it, he multiplies it, he meets the need. He doesn't need their measly five loaves and two fish. He could make bread from the rocks, like he said to you know to say. But he invites them into the great work that he is doing and he asks them to make a contribution. They don't have what it takes, they can't meet the need. But he says what do you have? And it's laughable and embarrassing how little they can contribute. But he says give it to me. And then he blesses it, he multiplies it, he meets the need. James, I think that's just one of the paradigm passages for Christian discipleship and for manhood in our time is we're perpetually faced with unmeasurable needs. We should go to Jesus and he's going to tell us what can you contribute? And it's going to be laughably insufficient, never, nobody's salvation, but it's his work anyway. So we contribute five loaves and two fish and we get to watch him bless it, multiply it and meet the need.

Well it's. The great irony, too, is that, as men, I mean, a part of our nature is that we're competitive, you know, and we strive for success, but then that success, too, leads us to not attempt things that we know we're not good at Right. And so exactly what you said, too, is that you know all we have to do is change the change our mindset. It's like God, like I don't know how to do this. I feel like you're calling me to do this. I'm just, I'm going to trust in you. This is what I have, this is what my talents are, and I'll let you take it from there. You know, like, like starting this podcast, like I hate hearing myself my voice on the podcast bothers me, it legitimately bothers me, but it's just like God, this is what I'm doing. Take with it. If it reaches five people or 5,000 people, it doesn't really matter. Like I feel like you are calling me to do this, but you know, it's not our job to figure out what God wants us to do. It's our job to just give him what we have and he will. He will take it from there. You know, and I love that, that parallel of the parable of the 5,000 or the feet of the 5,000. It's just because it's so true and how often we forget that Jesus literally works miracles every day. He raised people from the dead, he can take the talents that he gave us and he can multiply it. You know across, you know the millennium, and because you don't know the foundation that you lay today, you don't know what that's going to be like 50 years from now, 5 years from now, 1,000 years from now, if you know, if Earth is still around by then. But you know, it's the great irony, I think, as men, because again in our nature, we're aggressive, we're competitive, we strive for success, which is a good thing, rightly ordered, but then that also can hinder us, because we do have a hard time surrendering and humbling ourselves and admitting that, hey, I actually I kind of suck at that and I don't like sucking that thing. So maybe I'll just avoid, avoid that thing. But I did. I did want to talk to you, steve. I can't believe I've already an hour has gone by.

This is this has flown by, but important to talk about.

Yeah, it's yeah, no, it's, it's huge. But you mentioned protection and being the spiritual protector of our house. You know, because Father Dami talked about. You know, spiritual warfare and combat and being prepared for this battle and exactly. But as men, we got stepped into the breach. So how, what? What have you found? Or in your talks and working with men, and what have you found to be, I guess, the most helpful piece of advice? To say so, say, there's a man listening who's like gosh I call this sounds great. You know, I'm married and I want to take this seriously, but I have no idea where to start. I don't know how to defend myself. I don't know how to defend my family, where, I guess, because there's so many great resources out there, where would you suggest maybe one or two practical steps that a listener out there who could take today to help begin to step into that role as a spiritual leader? Because, again, that authority is theirs to have, absolutely. It's just exercising it and using it and utilizing it the way God intended them to.

Yeah, I don't know if you're a Lord of the Rings guy 100%. Yeah, good, good, good, as we all should be. By the way, there's a great if you're looking for a good read. Gentlemen who have not read Lord of the Rings. It's a paradigm work of fiction for just the reality of the Christian life and the journey and the hero's tale and the authentic sense that Tolkien, who is himself a devout Catholic imbued with a beautiful Catholic ethos that's the Catholic worldview at large. There's a great scene in there and of course you'll remember this King Théoden of Rohan, who has been enthralled to an evil sorcerer, saruman, who's basically turned him into a puppet, a shell of himself. He has sacrificed his manhood, his kingship, his dominion, and has allowed the enemy to come in and just overrun his lands. So, by the help of Gandalf the Good Wizard, he's set free from this bondage and so he has to look at the reality of the shambles that his kingdom has become while he was absent. And he's trying to decide. His land is overrun by the enemy and on the march against him he has to decide between running and trying to get behind the wall and hide, or riding out to meet the enemy. And Aragorn, who's also a king, says to him. So he decides he's going to go and hide, he's going to go back to the fortress and hunker down behind the walls and hope that they hold. And he says, and understandably, because it looks so overwhelming that it seems almost like suicide to just go out and fly into the teeth of the enemy. And so he says I would not risk open war for my people. To which, of course, aragorn responds open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not. I think that just that line sums up so beautifully where we are right now. There is no place to run and hide In this culture in this moment in history. Open war is upon us, whether we would risk it or not. And so it's time to be bold and to ride out to meet the enemy. So it's your question how do you do that? Years ago, our pastor, father Charlie Garib, who's a total it sounds like Father Dom, same thing, just totally dead red center on the whole spiritual warfare thing, and especially for men like men, we are in a spiritual battle. This into the breach is a call to be a spiritual warrior for your wife, for your kids, for the culture. He came up with something for the parish that I just thought was great. He called it the Mass Plus One Initiative and essentially what he was challenging families to consider, but particularly men as the spiritual heads of the household. He said, ok, so work, catholic, the non-negotiable is Sunday Mass. You have to be at Mass, but I want you to discern one additional spiritual practice. What is your Mass Plus One, one additional spiritual practice that you can commit to. It might be going to confession. It might be praying a rosary as a family. It might be going to adoration. It might be reading scripture every morning. Father Larry Richards, who I'm blessed to know he's a friend of mine, I actually got to know him in college. But Father Larry Richards has a beautiful principle which, again, is meant for everybody, but specifically he points at men is like here's the thing. That's so simple, any man can implement it and it will just be a beginning of taking up the mantle, putting on the armor to fight the battle it's been entrusted to you. Father Larry's thing was no Bible, no breakfast, no Bible, no bed. So for him it's like, before I get to eat breakfast in the morning, I have to at least open the word of God. And he said I'm not talking about read a book of the Bible before breakfast, read a verse or two verses. It's not about the quantity, it's just about the commitment. So, no Bible, no breakfast, and then again at the end of the day, no Bible, no bed, if I have not opened up the word of God again and just read a verse. And what are you doing? When you do that, man, you're just allowing the Holy Spirit access to your heart and your mind to speak to you through Scripture. So, father Charlie's, mass plus one. Okay, go to Mass. And if you're not going to Mass, start there. That's the first and most basic commitment as a Catholic man. Get to Mass every Sunday, make the commitments clear, the schedule, get to Mass. But then look at what's a plus one, what's one thing I can add. So, mass plus one, no Bible, no breakfast, no Bible, no bed. Increase your sacramental life. The sacraments are real touch points of grace. They're not just sort of hoops that Catholics jump through so that we're weird and no one else understands being count. No, they're real touch points of grace that are meant to correspond to real needs in the life of Christian discipleship. God gave us those seven sacraments because he knew that that grace would be necessary for us to live the mission entrusted to us. So increase your sacramental life Could be go to confession if you're not going to confession, or a little more often if the gap between confessions is too long. Committing to confession once a month and bring the kids and the wife, that's a great, just kind of baseline set to shoot for. You might not make it, but hold yourself to a standard. Look at, is it possible to get to a daily Mass once a week? Is it possible to get to adoration? Years ago at a men's conference down here, patrick Coffin gave a keynote presentation to the men. He was talking about adoration and he was exhorting men, men, get to adoration. And he said the most common objection I hear to when I tell men to get to adoration is he'll say, patrick, I went and it just like nothing happened. I didn't feel anything, it didn't really do anything for me. He said guys, think of it this way, like if you went and spent an hour every week sitting in a small room and on a table at the front of the room was a lump of enriched uranium. You wouldn't feel anything, but something would be happening. You would be getting radiated. So he said think of the Eucharist in adoration like that lump of enriched uranium. You're going to go sit in a small room for an hour a week and on that table, at the front of the room, is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, himself present in the whole Eucharist. You might not feel anything, but he said, man, I guarantee you something is happening. He said you're getting graciated, whether you feel it or not. So adoration can be huge, I'll say, james, for my wife and I, a huge turning point for us and this might be a little bit further down the road for guys who are just trying to get started, but a huge turning point for us was doing the total consecration to the Blessed Mother. And I'll just say, especially as a man, there's kind of a beautiful irony in the fact that a woman has to get involved. But I think if men are honest with themselves, like a woman often has to get involved for us to become who we're really meant to be, so Christ gives us the gift of his mother and in doing that total consecration we just had this beautiful experience of like just being accompanied by grace and having this working and this strength and this clarity that we never had before. My brother is actually the one who convinced me to do it, and I asked him what made you decide to do it? And he said, steve, I felt like I was in a rut and like I had stopped pursuing holiness. And so he said, I looked around and I just started thinking like who are all the people in my life who I consider to be holy? And he said it just suddenly struck me for the first he's like everybody I could think of who I consider to really be a holy person has a devotion to the Blessed Mother, every single one of them. So for him that was like his. Okay, I think I need to do this. And so then I asked okay, well, you're like all right. Well, what was your experience like? And he said you know it wasn't like trumpets and angels and, you know, glory descending from the clouds kind of thing. But he said I will tell you what I've noticed. He said it's super clear that for the first time in my adult life, I have really begun to make real progress on those sins that I could never seem to make progress on. And I told him, like Paul, that is the best sales pitch you could ever have given me, like just that piece of it. That and James, I would say that has totally been my experience. Like it is it's you have an advocate and you have a companion on the journey who is just protecting you and inspiring you and giving you grace and strength. So, yeah, if a guy is ready to consider that, that's huge. And then just prayer as a family prayer. You know, my wife and I pray, but pray together. We pray at meals, we pray at bedtime with the kids, but just again on that, maybe the kind of like that mass plus one model, build in just a little more prayer together, maybe a chaplain of divine mercy, which is super quick once a week, maybe a rosary together, which takes a little longer, once a week, and then just make a commitment. You know, we all know as guys, if you don't commit to it, if you don't firmly say we're going to do this and I'm going to make the time for it and I'm going to give it my best effort, it's not going to happen. So, yeah, any or all those things. There's the great thing about being Catholic is just a million ways to grow and then learn your faith. You know, learn your faith. You can't give what you don't have. Your called is the primary catechist of your children, so learn your faith too. You know your podcast, our podcast, holyfamilyinstituteorg find good. There's a million great resources, you know. Just plug into things that can help you begin to understand it a little better, appreciate it a little more and then be more confident articulating it and defending it.

Got so many great tips there. No Bible no breakfast. No Bible no bed. I love that. That's a good. Yeah, what a man Super simple, super practical.

Yeah and James, as you know, Father Larry Richards is all about men is about Catholic men stepping up and meeting it.

So, yeah, he'll hit you hard. He'll hit you in the gut once in a while, so he's, he's quite a man. Well, steve gosh, this is flown by. This has been a fantastic conversation. Before I let you go, let's just give the audience where they can find you, where they can learn more about you. I know you mentioned a couple like podcasts and your website, but anything else you want to share before we say goodbye?

Great Thanks. Yeah, so the podcast is the Catholic conversation with the cradle and convert, if you, just if you just look up the Catholic conversation, it's on all the podcast platforms spot, spotify and Apple podcasts and SoundCloud and wherever else. I don't even keep track of all the places podcasts are. Yeah, and our format is we just do we just do one topic, one guest, one hour. So we've been blessed to interview Catholics who are smart and holy, from all kinds of different backgrounds and walks of life. We have a lot of authors on the show talking about their books. So, just yeah, it's a great place to listen to somebody who knows something about this stuff, kind of do a little bit of a deep dive on it. And then Holy Family Institute of Catholic faith and life Again, just a multi format faith formation resource with videos and blogs and weekly presentations on the faith which we're continuing to build out. We're on the very early stages, but the website is Holy Family Institute, all spelled out Holy Family Instituteorg, so be happy to interact with people there too.

Fantastic. Well, I will leave links in the show notes for all those wonderful resources. Steve, thank you again so much for your time. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you all so much for listening. Until next time, go out there and.