Ep 97 - Understanding and Overcoming Sexual Controversies in the Church with Dan McNally

Speaker 1: 0:19

Hello, welcome to another episode of manly Catholic. I am James, your host, and with me he's back again. I am Dan, your desk.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Dan McNally back how you doing.

Speaker 3: 0:29

Dan, I am doing really well. I'm on my second cup of Catholic coffee.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Which what kind of we drink it today?

Speaker 1: 0:37

Oh, it was the make sure I get the name right.

Speaker 2: 0:43

And how does it sound softball here? No, no steps does gonna go real well, it's like our start.

Speaker 3: 0:50

It's all for you.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Um, is that Catholic introduction to the Bible by Dr Berksma?

Speaker 2: 1:02

Think it is.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Yes, yes, it is great.

Speaker 3: 1:05

Oh gosh, that book is very helpful, very helpful have we gotten you enough of a, but I bought you enough time.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Or yeah, is our lady a mount Carmel. Oh, salted, salted, so caramel or is it I?

Speaker 2: 1:21

was gonna say also caramel.

Speaker 3: 1:22

You know what I?

Speaker 1: 1:23

usually do caramel.

Speaker 3: 1:25

But well, the the mount is caramel, but is the?

Speaker 2: 1:30

coffee, caramel, mm-hmm or both. It's whatever you wanted to be. Thank you, james. I wanted to be both. There you go, then it's both just like who was it saint, your ass or no, I don't know, I want both.

Speaker 3: 1:45

That's like a famous sink.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I want both. That seems very vague.

Speaker 3: 1:53

I know Maximilian Colby was was offered the crown of purity in the crown of martyrdom and he chose both. Wow, there's also. There's also a saint that I just need to remember her saying I I'll take both or I won't, but maybe that's the one.

Speaker 1: 2:05

We're off to good start so far after a really good start, but before we keep going and keep blubbering over ourselves, we are going to do a beautiful prayer to our blessed mother Shall. We miss her In the father and the son. The Holy Spirit Hail, holy Queen, mother, mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope to the do we crowd poor and his children to be To the do.

Speaker 2: 2:30

We send up our sighs, morning, and we beg in the sound of your tears. Turn that almost gracious advocate that I's mercy towards us and after this, our exile, show unto us the last purified will. Jesus, o climate of loving, no sweet virgin Mary, pray for us, a holy mother God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Promise of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Dan, what are we talking about tonight?

Speaker 2: 2:56

Pornography well, not just porn. Yes, but we're talking about yeah, a lot going on.

Speaker 1: 3:02

We're are gonna unpack a lot, because, no, dan, I actually meant for coffee the other day and we weren't playing on talking about this.

Speaker 3: 3:11

Yeah, we were meeting for a work meeting and we did if our, if our bosses listening. We did talk about work.

Speaker 1: 3:15

by the way, happy, we'll just say Birthday birthday. Yeah, I mean again. Yeah, happy birthday to, to their third child, so congrats to our boss?

Speaker 2: 3:26

Yeah, we won't need her name. Yes, but she's listening.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Congratulations, congratulations, boss. So but yeah, we were meeting and we were just randomly talking about know what's going on our lives and Basically what's been happening really, and it's kind of ironic, we're both been Struggling with very similar things. Yes, in terms of of lust and and and masturbation and things like that, which I'm not ashamed to say. That was a statistic you quoted, like I think the Catholic Church was. It's commonly quoted. Yeah, it's like one of those.

Speaker 3: 4:05

It's like one of those quotes from the Saints that's like well, god and do is and do as you please. That's attributed to like four different Saints. But no, there's a statistic going around and I don't have this citation for this, because it's anywhere from 60 to 90% depending on which source you look at. But if you Google it, you find a few. Basically, essentially roughly 90% of men in the church Say that they struggle with Something related to chastity, whether it's masturbation, masturbation and pornography, something along those lines that they actively struggle with it or they have struggled with it. So it seemed like a topic, because we were already talking about this that is 100% Worth while and and really, really needs to be talked about. I'm not saying it's not talked about in the church. I know there's a lot of really good support groups, a lot of really good Conability groups. You got things like covenant eyes out there. You've got a lot of apps and a lot of speakers talking about points. It's not like it's totally no one is talking about it, but I think on the ground level and it's especially thinking parishes and just I just think it's an important conversation to be had and it's important for men and for women who struggle with this sin To be able to know that they're not alone, to be able to kind of escape from the shame cycles that we can tend to throw ourselves into, and so maybe just have some clear talk about it.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So I might be starting more questions than answers, but you know, I think that there's great value in sparking a conversation, even if you don't finish it you have something to when Betsy and me, when we went to our when we were engaged, we they took a class on NFP, so natural family planning, and we both I mean we wrote physical therapists and obviously your physical therapist as well and so we, we know the anatomy, physiology and we're comfortable using an anatomical term then. Yeah, the people who taught the course, and I mean God bless them for for teaching it, but they were almost like cringe worthy of how uncomfortable they were in talking about a Penis, of vagina which is naturally going to come up when you're talking about sex, when you're talking about penises and vaginas.

Speaker 3: 6:26

Yes, exactly, and I think that's a stereotype, because there is not an isolated case. I think that's pretty, pretty common. I think there's a hundred percent. I mean.

Speaker 1: 6:34

So look at our culture, really you finis, euphemisms that we have for things like that, or even just the sexual act right, it's like we don't call it sex.

Speaker 3: 6:42

We come up with all these terms because we're we're just squirmy about it and it's like we have a background, you know, in studying anatomy and physiology and I think a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it. I think part of the problem with that is usually it's like somebody's got to teach the class and you find someone who's very, you know, very involved in the parish and very sincere, but maybe not as comfortable with the topic, but no one else is doing it. So, like you said, god bless them. Yeah, no, exactly, but right, that's part of the problem is that someone else is not. So of course people were uncomfortable with it to do it.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Yeah yeah, 100% yeah. So you know we're talking about, like I said, pornography, masturbation again, things that a lot of people don't want to talk about we want to talk about in the context of, I guess, shedding light in In a way, maybe, that people haven't heard before especially to man that again. Dan and I have talked about this openly and I've even mentioned this on the podcast several times that is something that I start with a lot more previously, but it's something that was creeped up lately as well for me, and you know you mentioned some resources like coming on.

Speaker 3: 7:49

Is it Jason ever at chassis or has a ton of?

Speaker 1: 7:52

amazing resources out there. I think it's shown us for everything that we mentioned here tonight.

Speaker 3: 7:57

It finds a new drug. They're not explicitly religious, I think they're. They consider themselves to be a secular anti porn Okay organization, ftnd I think I don't know if it's a word or calm, but they have a lot of really good research too. So if you're looking for some kind of you want to, you want to, kind of so if you have to have an argument with somebody about pouring, you want to like, say, and they're demanding, you know what are the? What's the statistics, what's the research? How do you know this? Yeah, you're just religion fight. The new drug has a lot of really good, but so does Chastity, calm, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Jason, I mean he just, he just said I go to our website and it's just a ton of resources listed there for you and it's rich as well.

Speaker 3: 10:04

Yeah, I mean there's a lot the research is, it's just there's not a lot. There hasn't been a lot of research up until recently, just a lot more.

Speaker 1: 10:11

So harm that it can, right. So, and I think, dan I, the reason I'm gonna talk about this openly, is that there's a lot of shame that comes with that, especially. I don't say especially within the Catholic Church, but because we're Catholic. That's what we know more most often Is that, you know, it's something that a lot of men struggle with, especially women do too, of course. But there is this feeling of shame and again, I know Jason ever talks about this so much is that a lot of times, when people struggle with something like this, it almost becomes a part of their identity. Yeah, in a sense, right, and so shame. Again and again we want to find terms, things that we're all in the same pitch, because sometimes it's gonna be a bit murky in the water, so we want to make sure that we're black and white, so like, even just the feeling of shame is just a painful feeling of humiliation or distress by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior even as well. So you know, or means like to bring disgrace to your family, to yourself, things like that, right, and so you know sort of pornography is, is the main thing that we're talking about. So we wanted to find that as well, because that, I think, can throw people off as well.

Speaker 3: 11:23

I would bring in what I think is I can, I can. The origin of this idea is, I think, brené Brown, where she talks about the difference between shame and guilt. And shame is is feeling Just bad about yourself and guilt is feeling bad about the thing you've done. And there is a distinct difference. Like guilt is properly ordered for an immoral action, but shame is kind of almost as like turning inward on yourself because you've done something bad and making it a part of you, like you said, with identity and one, guilt is helpful, it can convict us, it can can motivate us to right wrongs, but shame there's, there's no way to To to rectify shame. It's just suddenly I'm bad and that's it, you know, and it can be pretty damaging. Um, and the shame can also come from just a lot of the way we talk about it. Like even just a moment ago we talked about like pornography is so harmful, it's gonna, you are gonna become, you know, the next Ted Bundy. Your marriage is gonna fall apart and you're gonna get a rectile dysfunction, right that's. Those are like the three, the big ones that I heard. I don't know the research on how many people have become Ted Bundy, since he's important, but I think I Understand the motivation behind that language, where it's like kind of the theater tactics. I've been told in confession multiple times, even when I'm not confessing porn, like I've confed, like I've confessed just masturbation, for example, and they'll be like Bring your marriage. I feel like it's coming from a good place, maybe typically, but like the canned response. It's one, yeah, it's canned, and two, geez, like what is that? I mean in my own head. So I I was gonna talk about this later and we'll bring it back up, but there is a podcast that I can't wholeheartedly recommend, but I recommend it. How do I say this? I can wholeheartedly recommend most of it and I think most of the people, of your listeners, are discerning minds. It's called overcoming pornography for good. The host is Sarah Brewer, and she talks about Porn being used as like a buffer. So she talks about this idea of a buffer being something that you use to not feel negative emotions, right, and so she gives a lot of examples, but I think the ones that we can understand that the most easily are like alcohol. We see our coaxonomous using alcohol to buffer ourselves from negative emotions, using, you know, television, social media to not have to feel bad emotions overmeeting, watching porn, things like that. And so when you kind of it get into the situation where you're like, oh crap, like either my life is hard, you know, my marriage is really difficult right now, or the job is really difficult right now and we don't know how to process the emotions that we're going through, it's very easy for us to be like, well, I'm just gonna have a whole box of depth and score, well, you know, I might just click on this link and who knows where I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna this. And then suddenly you know you're looking at pornography, but it's like, at heart, because we're trying to kind of run away from emotions that we don't know how to handle, right, but anyway, you talked about definitions in the beginning, so do we want to talk about defining what that term is?

Speaker 1: 14:36

I think we should so, even just like masturbation. We'll define that as well. So this is from the Catechism. So directly from Catechism. This is paragraph 2352. It says by masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. But the magisterium of the church, in the course of a concerted tradition in the moral sense of the faithful, have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely distorted action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty for whatever reason outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose. Okay, so let me talk about pornography, which is two paragraphs later, paragraph 2354. Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants, since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit. For others, it emerges all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world is a grave offense. So there's a two Definitions.

Speaker 3: 15:57

Yeah, and it is very interesting when somebody confesses, either in the sacrament or to you know, a small group, accountability group, this like, oh, I struggle with porn. I sometimes wonder if we're talking past each other and what we mean by it. Because, like, if one guy is talking about like a picture of, like his girlfriend in a bikini or something like that, versus like you know, like 10 people, an orgy, like like with various acts that are just like you know that other person would consider totally outrageous, and then anything in between, like right as sad as it is. Like I remember hearing a quote one time somebody said if something exists, there's porn for it. It's like that's probably true, unfortunately, but I think with the equity of pornography. But yeah, like it's, it's, I think, in terms of grasping onto it and kind of figuring out what to do with it. Maybe we talk a little bit about spiritual direction later. It's good to clarify, I think, what we're actually struggling with and what we're actually looking at.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Well, yeah, I mean maybe why, but yeah, well, yeah, that's why definitions matter right. So I remember when I first started, when I became Catholic and I went spiritual direction with Father Dom and I would you know, in the confessional, I would you know, say these things I was struggling with. But then he said but he would name it. He said, name the sin, yeah, so it'd be like pride, lust, gluttony, because when you name it then you can fight it, because it's almost like an exorcism. Yeah, right, no, exactly. And so I know exactly. So you know exorcists, they say they try to get them to admit their name, because then when you have a name over someone, then you can more easily control them. Not that the exorcist control them, but you know what I mean. Well, there's power in the name. Yeah there's absolutely power in the name, you know, and so when you name the sin, then you, you can now have almost like an attack plan. It's like, okay, this is what I struggle with, this is what pornography is, this is clearly what I'm struggling with. Okay, so how do I formulate a plan to defeat that, so to speak? Right, and so, because this is you know, the similar studies are coming out that this actually changes, like the chemistry in the man's brain, things like that. I know Father Dom referenced one of our first episodes. Actually it was a study that he it was. Actually he found out about it in seminary where they they had men, they hooked them up to the EEGs and they had them look at women, either scan to the cloud or in bikinis, and they had men look at the same men look at women in very modest dress so it could be a dress, but they're fully covered and they compared the EEGs, basically, and when they looked at women who were scammed to the cloud, the part of the brain that lit up was the same part of the brain, like if a man was going to use a tool.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Does he ever talk about this. Yeah, no, does he? Okay, I haven't heard him talk about this.

Speaker 1: 19:02

Yeah, and then when he, when the man looked at a woman who, who was very modestly dressed, the part of the brain that lit up was when the same part of the brain essentially lists up when, when they are cherishing someone or they're battling with someone, or they feel like they need to protect with that specific someone. So I mean, even just as a small sample size or a small study, if you just naturally take that into pornography, what do you think is going to happen? Right, and as we know about the brain, when you keep doing something over and over and over again, you know, because sex in itself, I mean, it does release dopamine, right, and you know dopamine is, is something that is, it helps you feel good, right? So if you are constantly masturbating or looking at pornography and it gives you that rush of dopamine, you know, naturally you're going to want more of your neural connections. It's straightening the neural connections, exactly so if you keep feeding something, then your brain will want certain things or then you want more of it. But anyways we're getting a little bit complex here.

Speaker 3: 20:05

But can I, can I jump in there? Actually? Because I can sense. I can sense myself listening to this conversation and being like well, dude, I've done that a lot. How strong are the neural connections that I'm forming? Is there even any hope for me? Or boom shame, like back to oh I'm broken, oh, I'm screwed up. This is no, there's no way to fix it. I might as well just keep going because I'm already doing. It feels great, but I would say so. This actually also comes from that, the cerebro podcast. I'm just going to keep bringing her up because and I'll maybe kind of contextualize it right In my journey with this struggle where it kind of played in but she talks about the famous experiment with Pavlov and his dogs. Oh yeah, he rings the bell and by is that operant conditioning, where he associates the sound with the meat or the food or whatever, and the dogs start to salivate the sound of the bell because they learn to associate the bell with the meat or the food, and so he could consistently get them to salivate just at the sound of the bell, even when the other stimulus wasn't present. She says that that's a famous experiment to show that we can kind of essentially like, once a stimulus or a trigger presents itself, we can become kind of activated, right. And the same thing works with pornography and a lot of people that have different triggers or whatever. They see somebody dressed a certain way, which is, again, I don't want to say it's that the person dressing that way is fault, necessarily. Right, you all have different triggers. But the thing that she said that was interesting was apparently and I never knew this before, I listened to her podcast apparently at the end of this experiment, which people know less about, he was also able to detrain the dogs from the stimulus of the bell. So he would repeatedly introduce the stimulus of the bell, not introduce the food, and eventually the dogs would stop salivating at the sound of the bell. So not only can we learn to be a kind of condition, condition ourselves, or addict ourselves, if you want to, to our triggers and give in a certain way we can also decondition ourselves. We talk about this concept of neuroplasticity because, in the same way, the brain is a remarkable organ. Like, in the same way that we can build these neural connections, we can also break these neural connections and reform new ones. So I really want to stress that if anyone is listening and saying, oh well, if I've masturbated a thousand times like I'm screwed, it's like no, you're not, it's actually one of the things that you have to do. So her, her background is is she's like a life coach, she like helps people kind of get through. Well, it started off broader, but she, so she's, she's from the LDS church, so Mormon, she's a Mormon, and she would work with missionaries coming back from their two-year mission and so on their two-year mission they wouldn't struggle with porn. These would be guys that went out and they maybe struggled with porn before, but they didn't on their two-year mission and then they came back and suddenly they're struggling again. Because I think anyone like common wisdom would tell you oh well, if you want to quit porn, you just have to get away from it, right, you just have to run away from it, you have to stay away from it and then, slowly, you'll get better, it'll be fine. What she found in her personal experience was these missionaries would go away and then they would come back and they, as soon as they were no longer, you know, actively on mission and engaged with ministry and, like you know, working with their, with, with their mission partner and everything that it like like it had never gone away. And so the analogy that she drew is that Pavlov had associated these dogs the sound of the bell with dinner and then put those dogs on an island for two years but didn't decondition them. And then the dogs came back and the name rings the bell. It's not like that conditioning has gone away, right, so they would respond with the salivation. But the point is her point and kind of the the backbone of her whole podcast is to overcome it. We can't be afraid of it, we can't just run away from it and hide from it. To overcome it, we actually have to learn how to manage the root cause of the problem, and I had never heard anything like that my entire life. It was totally brown, like groundbreaking for me the idea that, oh, I haven't urged to look at porn, oh, I haven't urged to masturbate, and it's like, well, I guess I'm gonna, because I'm going to think about it all night until I do it. So I might as well just do it. Or it's like I fell already and I'm going to confession on Friday. I might as well sneak a few in before them, cause, why not? And she goes through all of this. Anyway, I'm getting like pretty deep into that, but I really want to distress the point that, yes, like we can build it up and it can become dangerous, but it's also we're not without hope. We can reverse under our sex.

Speaker 1: 24:41

Wasn't that, was it, the point of XS90? The reason they started was to break pornography addiction.

Speaker 3: 24:49

I do believe that that's one of the goals, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:52

So, and again, if you know more about this than I do, I think that the reason behind the whole 90 day timeline was that it takes I think it's about like 30 to 45 days to break a habit. Yeah, especially something that's really like ingrained in you. Right? And for those of you who don't know XS90, it's just basically it could be a. It's designed for a group of men to come together and there's a bunch of spiritual disciplines and physical disciplines that you're supposed to do. So one of the main ones is no internet, no surfing, no scrolling on your phone unless you absolutely have to Like. Obviously you have to use it for work.

Speaker 2: 25:30

obviously you have to check your email for work or if you're expecting something, you know, personal things like that.

Speaker 1: 25:36

But the you know. The point is that you're you're breaking habits, that you're might be addicted to or you're struggling with.

Speaker 2: 25:42

That's like for most people right now it's the phone right Social media, things like that.

Speaker 1: 25:46

So you almost take like a fast from that, but anyway, so you, you go to that 30, I think it's 30 to 45 days it takes for your brain to kind of almost get back to its baseline, if you will, and then it takes again the 30 to 45 days to form a new habit. Yeah, because that's where the 90 days comes from, right, and so, yeah, exactly what you're talking about the brain is fascinating. You know, even as a physical therapist and even learning more about it, we still there's so much we do not know. You know, and but yeah, so you can be conditioned to do a certain thing, you can be deconditioned onto form better habits. You know, a great book that I've found very helpful in my life is James Clear, the Atomic Habits. That book seems to come up every time we talk.

Speaker 3: 26:36

It is.

Speaker 1: 26:36

It's a fantastic book and I'll leave a link in the show notes for you guys as well but because it's forming habits are obviously very difficult, but we have habits that we don't even realize when we get up, we we might, you know, we might start a coffee maker, we might grab a glass of water, we might, you know, go outside. You know, everyone has their own habits that we don't realize that we're doing. But now the point is that you recognize those habits and then you find the ones that are negatively affecting you and then you change it into something that's more positive and he, he kind of breaks down how you're able to do that, because it's incremental steps that you have to do with something. Oh my gosh, here we go. I'm going from I'm addicted to pornography too, I'm not addicted anymore, and it took me three days. Like that's not how it works. A similar brain is designed to how it's designed to work. So, yeah, it is hard work. I'm not going to lie at all, you know, especially, I mean because we're dealing with with anytime you're dealing with with sin, whether it's grave, and we're going to talk about that too, whether it's grave or venial, you know it's.

Speaker 3: 27:37

It's hard to fight sin because we are just, we're human. Well, and I think a comfort that I received when I was looking through the catechism today, on on the just a little bit of preparation, was it talks about chastity as this ongoing struggle. This ongoing battle that we face for our whole lives and I think that's a good reminder is that we're not going to be perfect by the time we die. We're going to continue to, we're going to continue to fail pretty much every day. Scripture says we, the just man, falls seven times a day and what the devil wants to do is to tempt us to fall and as soon as we fall, and to point out that we fall, and try to cause us to be ashamed of it and then try to get us separated from God. So if you look at how Genesis works, in Genesis three the serpent tempts them to turn away, to try to convince them. Right, he uses a convincing argument to turn away from God, what God has told him, and then they fall and instantly he's out of there, he's, he's not their buddy anymore and they're naked and they're afraid and they try to hide from God. And I think that's the like. You go right to the beginning of the Bible, the wisdom of the biblical author of this idea of shame, of like shame. I'll just say my experience. I don't want to speak too broadly, but at least in my experience it drives me away from God. If I would go on any given day, if I would fall into a set of masturbation or pornography, I'd be like, well, frick, I can't even pray now. I had the best of intentions, man. I came home, maybe I had a cup of coffee or something, so I was feeling more impulsive and I was like ready to go sit down on a ride boat and do my Glexia Divina or something. Then I just looked at my phone for like half a second, I didn't even think about it and suddenly I just finished looking at porn and masturbating. And then it's like, well, I guess I can't pray now. So much for today. It's that all or nothing thinking right, yes, yes, 100%. That's, I think, something to be aware of, something to really be keenly aware of and avoid is all or nothing thinking, this idea that, oh well, I've fallen, so now I'm bad and I want. If you don't mind, I don't know what our time frame is, but I just wanted to share a little bit of my experience, because I do and I still struggle. I'm a guest on your podcast, but I'm not like a success story. I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm perfect, I've beaten it. And let me tell you how I did it.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Where you haven't.

Speaker 3: 30:17

No, that's because that's not the point, I think. And like, how would you even measure that? Because if somebody told you, dude, I'm 200 days born free, it's like well, what if you fall today? Yeah, does the Lord still love you? And it's pretty, I think if you're measuring it by days, it's pretty hard on day 201 if you fall and suddenly it's like well, I guess nothing mattered and that's the all or nothing. Thinking that's like well, I was good, but now I'm bad again. The Lord loves us in a state of mortal sin. If in fact we can get into the weeds on when something is a mortal sin or not, we might not have time for that, but like, let's just assume masturbation, pornography, is a mortal sin in a particular case, and so let's say I do it and it's a mortal sin, I'm in a state of mortal sin, god loves me in that state. And all prayer Father Mike talks about this in one of his videos. I'm praying in mortal sin. He says all prayer is a response to God's invitation. So even if we feel that prompting to pray, even if we feel ashamed about it, god is our, party, with us. God has already reached out to us, and so I guess the basic version is if you're in a state of mortal sin or you believe that you're in a state of mortal sin and you don't know if you can even pray, I'm just doing it Like, like he's calling you and like his, his invitation comes before you even realize that he's invited you back to prayer. And if you have a contrite spirit and you're ready to confess it again a million times, then he's going to forgive you. And if you say you're on your way to confession, you're like well, I'd better get to confession, because if I get hit by a bus on my way to confession I'm going to hell. Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever been like? Or is that just me? Is that my crazy brain? It's your crazy brain? It might be my crazy brain, but I maybe there's crazy brains listening. So a lot of the time when I think about like, oh, this is a mortal sin and I'm terrified that, like now, I'm separated from God, I'm going to hell if I die, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. I kind of want to reassure your listeners that, yes, mortal sin is a way to get to hell. Mankind can separate us from God if we are not contrite and if we don't want to seek forgiveness, but if we have that, I mean the intention right like make a, make an active contrition.

Speaker 1: 34:24

Well, actually it's funny you bring that up because I just listened to the catechism of the year and he just finished talking about baptism and he's talking about the. You know people would like ask him questions like okay, so I'm in RCIA, I desire to be baptized. What if I die before? What is that Right? God understands that you have the desire for baptism, right. So if you recognize that you're in a state of mortal sin and you recognize that and you say I'm going to do everything I can to get to confession the next time that I'm able to God again, god knows everything. Right. And if you pray about that and you talk to him about that, he knows that. So if the intention is there and you recognize that, like you said, you know, if, again, if you understand and you recognize that you are in mortal sin and you just don't give a crap, then we're in trouble, right. But if you have the intention of reconciling yourself not only to God but to his church, then you can. You can get ease.

Speaker 3: 35:31

But I think that's the important thing is I got into this place where? So, to go back a few steps, yes, you were going to tell us about your personal. Yeah, if you don't mind, I just feel like it's easier for me to hear stories. So I remember, like people always talk about it, like they struggled with pornography from like the fifth grade and like having started like 30, 40 years. And I've heard some amazing stories through that podcast I was talking about where people have just worked on emotional regulation and working on their triggers, and it actually does Like it doesn't. There was a guy that was addicted for like 30, 40 years and started working on those things and just like he was able to get through it. And I need to go back and listen. I remember I didn't really encounter pornography, I mean like anybody else. I don't know if it was sixth grade or whatever, or so I just was. It was hitting puberty and discovering all that, so it was never really pornography. It was a few years. The universe was like masturbation and like whatever you want to call soft core porn, like like swimsuits stuff, like that kind of thing. But weirdly, I went to confession one day and I was talking to him, preached about it and for some reason, after that day it just went away for, like, all of high school and all of college, which makes, which is like, yeah, praise the Lord for that. But I swear to you, like, god has allowed me to suffer through this sin, I think to allow me to grow in compassion because, like, like, the reason for all suffering, the reason for all the reason for all evil, is so that greater good may come with it and I, and specifically for us to grow in our ability to love each other. I it's funny because one of the biggest arguments against God's existence is why would it all love and God allow evil to happen? And I think it's the worst argument against God's existence. Because evil happens and it invites us to love each other better. It invites us to reach out and care for each other. That's a side note, but when I was in college, we I lived as in a household, so it was like a fraternity kind of thing at Franciscan University, but it was. It was based on, like, accountability and it was based on, you know, brotherhood and like. For us, specifically, it was scripture, focus on reading scripture, and when we would get together in our accountability groups. Guys would talk about porn all the time and how they were struggling with it and like there was a part of me that was extremely judgmental. That's like what's wrong with you, dude? Like why are you? Like, just stop. It's like somebody smoking cigarettes, like just stop smoking. And coming from a perspective of not having ever really had to fight with it, I mean there were times when I would be tempted and I would overcome and in my pride I would feel so weird about myself, yep. And then I remember like mid twenties. I remember I just gone through like a breakup and it was just like whatever, like God, I don't even care. And it wasn't like I went out looking for it, but I was like on the internet and I just saw like a little ad and then the rest is history. And so for a long time I was just like, okay, well, if I go to confession, I'm good, and then when I fall I'm bad again. And it became this almost like multiple like I know these are not actual like clinical thing, but like, but like schizophrenic multiple personality kind of thing, like the like Jekyll and Hyde, like I would, I would look at porn and then I would be bad again and I wouldn't pray and I'd go to confession and I and I would be good again and for a little while I could pray and it was like I was leading two different lives and it and it became worse because I would. Just, I have not had a lot of good experiences and confession with priests talking about this topic. I've had some priests tell me to stop going to confession because I didn't care, because obviously I wasn't trying hard enough. Otherwise why my goal? Why do I keep sitting? It's like father or not father, of saint Mark G. He was the opioid, the opioid addict, and I talked to that guy a lot more recently in prayer. Yeah, no easy. But for me it's like either I would get a priest telling me I'm not trying hard enough and I need to stop going to confession, or good, but I told him as like, but I want to receive the Eucharist of Mass. He's like well, that's a relatively recent phenomenon, daily reception of the Eucharist. So I was like really, and I just stopped going to daily Mass because I kind of felt super ashamed to go up and cross my arms and not receive communion. To clarify, if anyone is wondering, like what part of the teaching of the church that comes out of, I believe, first Corinthians 11, is that if we are in a state of mortal sin, we're separated from ourselves, from God. We're not supposed to receive communion until we've confessed that sin so that we can be more united. And that's struggle. That's been a struggle for me too, because it started to lead down this road of a lot of questions of like. There's kind of this classic saying of like well, the Eucharist is medicine for sinners, not an award for saints, and to some degree I agree with that. But we also can't deny that there are social things as not discerning the body, right. This is kind of abuse of receiving communion when we're which St Paul talks about, right. Like, even now I still kind of struggle with exactly what that means. Like what? Because I mean there have been months that I haven't received communion because I go to Mass. You know, if I'm not going to daily Mass at this point, I'm going to Sunday Mass at least, but if I keep falling and I'm not going to confession as much, there are months I'm not going to communion and I'm like what am I? I mean, am I supposed If I had been receiving communion this whole time, would it be better? Like it almost started to get me to just kind of like what am I receiving communion for? And that it got to a pretty dark place where I was just and I continued occasionally to go to confession. But then I keep hearing more stuff like this has control over you, this is dominating you or this is going to destroy your marriage. Are you married? No, well, this is going to destroy your marriage. And it's like holy crap, man, like I'm, like I was saying I just felt doomed and it just shredded my prayer life right down the middle and I didn't even know what to do. And it's funny that God can bless us sometimes. Ordinarily, he blesses us through the sacraments and blesses us through the church, but you can also, obviously, extraordinarily, bless us through other things. And finding this podcast and just becoming aware of this idea of like shame versus guilt that we talked about at the top of the episode, I started to realize I was doing a lot of this to myself, like a lot of this, and I was allowing myself to kind of wallow in shame. Like the devil introduces the idea again that you, because of this sin that you've committed, you are back, you are broken. And when you hear that repeated, a lot like your marriage is going to get broken, you're going to become Ted Bundy, you're going to do this You're like, well, there's no hope. And it forces you back into that kind of like all or nothing. Well, I guess it's nothing again. Right, maybe I'll go to confession later this week. I think it's just getting exhausting. So I mean, I even understand it if a guy like because you were saying earlier, like as long as you have contrition and you're ready to go to confession, there would be times when I was like I need to know why I'm doing this. I don't even know the point. But the beautiful thing too about the teaching of the church and the teaching about the person of God is, like it makes sense, and it makes sense with, like definitionally, god's character as being a God of love. I think anything that any thought that we have about God that causes us to flee from Him is false. I heard that once as well. This idea that any thought that we have about God that causes us to hide from Him or flee from Him is probably not an accurate understanding of God, and we have to be careful of that because I think sometimes ministers, like you have mentioned earlier, who represent the church, can, whether intentionally or unintentionally, say the wrong things. They complain seeds, depending on the person. I think I don't know my crazy brain can kind of take off and run with it. So I know there's a lot, but I wanted to share it because it's like it was this one sin, when I let it become a part of my identity and when I let the devil basically tell me like hey, you are this sin and it's really, really bad and there's really no hope for you, like it can destroy every other part of your life 100%, and I'm like what am I going to say? Like your marriage is going to be a mess? No, what I mean is like it's just so overwhelming to me personally, I just didn't want to try anymore, right, you almost become obsessed with it too.

Speaker 1: 44:25

Exactly, yes, exactly A few things. Well, thank you for sharing. Yeah, because I know again, one of this episode is that we want people to not feel ashamed about it, because we all struggle with sin and we all struggle with different sins and we all struggle with degrees of sin too, and I mean that is really the ultimate line is that when you recognize that you sin and the lie is that Satan will play in your head is that you are not good enough? God doesn't love you, or now does God doesn't love you because of what you just did, like you're an idiot, you're stupid, like who would love someone like you?

Speaker 3: 45:04

And that of course we know that's not true, god is like you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1: 45:08

God is always calling us back to him, like when you masturbate or I forgot what you said and then, oh yeah, so you were going to sit down to pray, and then you end up masturbating, and then now that desire is gone. It's like, no, that's when you need to do it. Even more so is because now you went down this path and of well, what the hell is the point now? Why would I talk to God? He doesn't want to talk to me, which, of course, we know. That's true, that's not true, but again, that's. The problem with sin, though, is that it clouds our thinking right, clouds our judgment, because we know all this, like when we talk about it, we know how much God loves us, how much God desires us, but you're not thinking clearly, because I know it too, when I haven't been a confessional, while I just start listening to that lie constantly, and again, it's almost just like I don't know if this is your case too, but it's almost like I want to listen to that voice sometimes, which is almost scary to think about, I think because it's almost easier. It's like yes, it's like well, it's like familiar. Yes, exactly, and it's like well, and because normally when we, when we sin, especially a sin like this, is because you're giving into, you're giving into desire that God gave us, but you're not, you're not fulfilling a desire in its proper order, yeah, right, so it's like I want this, which is a natural good. God gave us this desire as a man, for a purpose, for a reason, but then we participate in an act that is not what it was designed for and that is. It's also hard too, because, again, it's almost like mixing up the two things a naturally good desire, which with a, with a natural act, so to speak, I mean even the.

Speaker 3: 47:01

Greeks had that. When you think about like from Atheists, like grasping for the flame, yeah, and then understanding that like or nature has an order to it, yes, and like if we try to achieve something outside of the order, something is going to go wrong. And that's the basis we talk about with morality and kind of like teaching all kind of makes sense. There's a lot of grasping for a natural, unnatural grasping for for, perhaps, goods. Ultimately, all of our grasping is because we want love. But one of the things that struck me when you said that is is like like we almost, we almost want to listen to that voice when Jesus, a lot of the time, when Jesus heals, I think it's a lot of the time. It might have been one instance I think it was the man born blind, but there's, I'm sure, other cases of it where he asked do you want to be healed? And that's an ask, a question we have to ask ourselves, because like, can I even envision a world where, like, I'm healed? And I think that's like when you look at the big picture, like the Christian life, a lot of it is like, boy, we got started with original sin right at the beginning of the Bible, and it's this process of healing and drawn closer to God since then right, it's never going to be perfect.

Speaker 2: 48:12

Right.

Speaker 1: 48:12

And I think too I think Jason ever talks about this a lot too is when you're, when you're in this habitual sin, it becomes almost a part of your identity, and then when you, when you like, I'm a person who masturbates. Yes, exactly, but then he talks about too, is it says okay, so then when you because most people know that, like, pornography is bad for your brain, so like the, the scientific argument I think doesn't work anymore, because most people know that. So, yeah, this is going to damage your, damage your brain. It's like okay, yeah, thank you, I know that, but this still doesn't help me because I know, like factually, what this does to my brain, but I'm still doing it, right. It's an addiction or a compulsion? Yes, exactly. So then he talks about okay, so that's why this is so hard, because then it's like you're almost, you're almost dividing the bodies, like this is my identity as a person who does this, and then when you go to defeat it, it's like you have to pry this away from the person because they're grasping at it so much.

Speaker 3: 49:08

That's why it's so hard. That's why I think, for all the good that alcoholics and all this does, I've never liked the like. Introduction of like. My name is Dan and I'm an alcoholic.

Speaker 1: 49:17

Yes, because it's your identity.

Speaker 3: 49:21

But I am. That's the thing, even if, even if I were addicted to alcohol and abused it, I wouldn't call myself an alcoholic Right, because then then where's my trajectory? Yeah, I don't look at myself anymore as a person who, who, like, is addicted to this particular sin, like, it's like this has entered my life and there's a reason that it has, and there's a kid that's going to come out of it. But I'm the son of God and that has to come first, yes, and that's that.

Speaker 1: 49:49

that really is the point. Right Is that we need to identify ourselves as sons and daughters of God first.

Speaker 3: 49:56

And I want you to know something too You're listening, like when we talk about that statistic, whether it's 90% or it's 80% or it's 70% or whatever the statistic is. If committing this sin separates you from God and makes you unable to pray, from pray with pray, and talk to him and be united to him, then the church is lost because it's it's hit almost all of us. Yeah, right, so it can't like, it can't be true. Like God, like, yes, it's true that it's a sin and it's true that we should, you know, abide by the sacraments and go to them and seek them out, but not out of fear, not not running away because constantly thinking I'm, I'm going to go to hell, but saying, okay, it's a fall again, but I don't need to lose my peace about this. I, we, you know, I expect that, that we're going to fall and we seek out the mercy of God and and immediately turn to him. And I just I can't emphasize that enough because I spent too much time suffering thinking that he hated me every time and I just, it's, it's a lie.

Speaker 1: 51:58

Yeah, 100%. I wanted to give you guys some encouragement too, because you mentioned, like the ability to self-control is an ongoing process. You know, in a paragraph 2342 in the Catechism it says self mastery is a long and exacting. That's the quote. Yeah, one can never consider acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life. The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence, and chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by imperfection and too often by sin. Man, day by day, builds himself up through the many free decisions, and so he knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth. So, whether you're at stage one or stage a thousand, we all have to start somewhere and we all have somewhere to go. Yeah, right, what is in the, the litany of humility? It's, it's asking God make others holier than me as long as I become as holy as I should. I love that quote.

Speaker 3: 53:06

It's so I used to hate that quote.

Speaker 2: 53:07

Yeah, but then but then you, but what it does it?

Speaker 3: 53:10

orients you to the proper order. I'm not the version, Marianne. I never will be. Yeah, she has this. She's at the height of creation. There she is. You know with her son, right that like, and it's funny because I'm growing up. So we were talking earlier about how I emailed Father Mike about pornography and he emailed me back. This really long email is awesome, but I also. This will long, but but he, it was a great. It was a great response. Who else? did he know Well, pretty much just him. I'm a fan boy, but I emailed him prior, prior, previously, about the question of like where we're going to if, god willing, we make it to heaven. Like I think I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy and I was reading the Paradiso and I was talking about, like these various layers of heaven, and that made me depressed because I was like all the people that have, all saints in heaven, are going to be like in, I imagine like in heaven, like it's a city. I'm like I'm getting like a puddle on the outskirts of my God guess this is good enough. And I was like depressed about that. And it's like no, you like it's, it's union with God, it's the face of God the saints talk about. Like you will be completely filled and overflowing with the presence of God. So some people will be a fimble and some people will be a, a fast canyon right, and so that depressed me at first. But then I realized like you're not, I don't, I don't want to talk about, because, again, comparison is the thief of joy. The point is like there is a right order to everything and that that line of the landing of humility puts you in your right place. It's a great and it's so perfect for that landing. There are people that are holier than you. Yeah, and that's okay. And that's great, as if the pride for me to think, oh, there's people that are holier than me, like I don't, even like I would be lucky to make it If I even make it, doesn't it kind?

Speaker 1: 54:56

of defeat, the purpose of the landing of humility.

Speaker 2: 54:58

I'm like, wait, I'm weighing it.

Speaker 3: 55:01

The other ones were fine. Then I may not be afraid of being forgotten, whatever I can do a day alone, like nobody needs to know that I went on a little trip to the beach To say no one would be, someone would be holier than me, James, which of us is holier? Definitely not your dad. No, it's definitely not me. I don't run out of family. Catholic punk.

Speaker 1: 55:21

I just show up sometimes, that's right. I just invite people on the talk when I call up my show. Oh the holy people.

Speaker 3: 55:27

Less holy people To make myself feel better. Yeah, dude. So when you pray the light of humility and you hear the line that others become holier than I, have, provided that it should become as holy as I should, just remember I'm a little bit a few rungs below you, so hold on to that when you go to bed at night.

Speaker 1: 55:44

No, it is true though, because we just think about that line and the whole litany, it really punches you in the gut every time. But that line, it really puts things into perspective. As long as I get to heaven isn't the goal, to get to heaven and we're all united, we're gonna be united, not more united than we think we should be yeah, exactly, and that's the whole point. So, whether we're a thimble or a canyon, like you just said, you're still being the prisons of God, the fullness of the beatific vision. How awesome is that gonna be? Words came and described the beauty of that and we're kind of digressing a little bit here. But the point and again we want to give everyone encouragement here is that you're definitely not alone for one and two. God loves you, no matter what.

Speaker 3: 56:43

That's such an important point and I think, because of Rays Catholic, it's almost trite to say that God loves you, god loves you, god loves you. You need to pray with that, you need to chew on that and you need to sit with that for longer than you think you need to, because it's so. I can't even put it to words. It is the one thing that I just couldn't accept. I remember reading Fr Jock Philippe's Thirsting for Prayer book and one of the things I don't remember exactly how I put it, but it was just achingly hard to accept. It was like we talk about how, as humans, we love people for their virtues, like, oh, this person is smart, this person is wise and kind and attractive Whatever Like the qualities, and then they're good. And it was like God loves you in your imperfection and seeks you out because that's his nature. And I cried in the chapel reading that because I couldn't accept it. And it's hard when you actually think about at least for me it's so hard but let go of the pride that your sins are so great that you're not worth loving. When that comes down to it and that's what Fr Mike emailed me about when I emailed him all these questions and I was kind of angry. I apologize to him, but I emailed him these questions because I was just going through. It was such a hard time in my life and one of the things I said was like I'm frustrated that I have to go up to communion and cross my arms and be embarrassed and look like a sinner in front of the congregation when I'm sure there's other people going up widely receiving, not even realizing that they shouldn't be receiving. And he's like hey, that's pretty prideful. And I was like whoa, you called me out by there and I was like dang, yeah, so I don't know what.

Speaker 2: 58:27

I was going with that. I don't know. I liked it. I liked the Ramble.

Speaker 3: 58:32

I mean the Ramble. That's the thing. The Ramble is like panning for gold. There's a lot of just rocks, but there's some gold in there you know.

Speaker 1: 58:39

No, I was talking with someone the other day and he was talking about how, as Catholics or as Rays Protestant, we neglect the magnitude of what Jesus said and did here on earth. Like we hear oh, you know, god loves you, god so loved the world. Oh yeah, like Jesus, there's only Son, jesus raised from the dead. He raised people from the dead. He walked on water Like, okay, calm the storms or whatever. So Jesus said these amazing things on earth. And when we read the gospel, when we do the daily readings or do your daily prayers every day, how often we neglect and forget the magnitude of what we're actually reading. The creative of the universe wants to have a personal relationship with you. He literally is calling you to him every single day and all we have to do is accept that gift of grace and, like you said, the pride of us and the pride is another thing. God's really talking about that. A whole other podcast for that. But is that, like, my sin is too great that God's grace can't overwhelm that sin? Right and again, like, the things that we are struggling with are things that saints had also struggled with.

Speaker 3: 59:57

Right and I mean, is that funny how pride can go both ways, like oh I'm so great, yeah, and they also be like I'm the greatest of them. Sinners, you can't forgive me.

Speaker 1: 1:00:06

Yeah, that's pride is so freaking sneaky, I know, I know, or like the false humility too.

Speaker 3: 1:00:13

That's exactly false humility. It's like the pride inverted. Yeah yeah, that's pretty crazy.

Speaker 1: 1:00:19

I mean Satan and his demons. They are very good at manipulating and causing confusion and chaos.

Speaker 3: 1:00:29

Yeah, you're thinking about something I'm thinking about, so many things.

Speaker 2: 1:00:33

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:00:34

It's true, I'm thinking about fear because I think a lot of us. If you're struggling with this sin, sometimes you can feel an urge or a temptation and then you get really nervous, you get locked up because you're like I'm not going to make it the rest of my life. There's those moments You're like driving your car from work or you're like just came driving, right, well. But then you get that weird click in your head of like, oh, it's good, yeah, I know there's nothing, I'm going to do about it, and you get at least with me. I would lock up and I would get so fearful and I keep wanting to plug this podcast. But because when I implement there are practical solutions. I want to talk about that a little bit because I know a lot of people. There's some programs that will tell you oh, do this and measure your success by days. Please don't measure your success by days, because it's this all or nothing. Thinking Right, like, oh, I went six days without master reading but then I did it 10 times in a row, like I think a better way to. And again, this is coming right out of the Overcoming Photography for Good podcast. When I implemented a lot of the steps that she talks about in the podcast, I was feeling a lot more free. One, because she focuses on saying we got to get rid of the shame. But two, she actually offers this practical like actually things I'd never heard of before, because here's the things I've heard of before the Covenant Eyes on your phone and I think Covenant Eyes is a perfectly good tool and it can be used in good ways, but I always found ways around it, like you. Like, like there's, I could always figure it out, I don't know. Sorry, covenant Eyes, like I can always find ways around it. Accountability groups, and that I mean if you have someone who's consistently accountable every single day and it's like dude, are you doing it? But that can do two things. One, they can not be super committed, and then you get, you slip through the cracks and you try not to communicate with them or constrain your friendship because you need them to really be on you, and then it just gets like tense and awkward, yeah Right, but like we talked about Greg Batara's book the Mindful Catholic a while ago and talking about mindfulness, not as like some kind of like the Buddhist practice of like, oh, we're emptying ourselves, but this idea of grounding yourself in your body and feeling your emotions and understanding what your urges are and how and why we're doing them, like learning about your triggers, like, okay, that click happened in my head when I was driving. Why, what was I thinking about beforehand? When I get home, write it down, write down where I felt it in my body, right, the podcast episodes there's multiple episodes like. There's episode 29 is how to stop feeling urges, giving step-by-step instructions what to do when you feel it Like. What was my trigger, why did I feel that way? And then just breathing into it, practicing a little bit of just emotional regulation and looking deeper into why did I feel this way, what is bothering me that I'm trying so hard to buffer from? What is bothering me that I'm trying to avoid that my brain, in trying to protect me, is going hey, let's do this important, you're going to feel better. Right, and I will say this because you talked about like, sometimes, there are sometimes in life where it requires a lot of extra work, and there are we even talked about that on Tuesday this week about how, like, there's times in our lives where it hasn't been an issue at all. So there's times where it's like a big issue, 100%. And and I would say like again, like I'm not coming here, oh, I've conquered it, I did it, I overcame pornography for good, okay, like, but I will say when I actually did the work, being consistent in prayer, when I felt an urge instead of being terrified that it was going to take me down, realizing oh, this is an opportunity to get stronger, right, right. Because instead of using it. So my pastor growing up would always tell me if you feel temptation to sin or if you feel like the devil is lying to you, if you can tell that that's what's going on, immediately start praying. Instead of you do that over and over again. The devil's going to realize oh crap, every time I try to tempt this guy, he's going to start praying and the devil works on our, on our soul, but he works on our psychology, on our brain as well. So, with this sort of emotional regulation thing, I really want to stress that the work to put in, to work on understanding our triggers, to work on working on like the practice of mindfulness, the practice of feeling in our body where it's coming from and writing it down, journaling on it right and being committed to it. Because when I actually put in the work, I'm not saying I was like fixed, but I changed the way, like my life looks totally different. I was not experiencing that shame, I was looking at life much more hopefully and I felt closer to God than I had felt since that habit had begun, because I was actually taking responsibility for it and like running with it, and I cannot recommend enough, oh, a number of these episodes that she gives it's free and she and she really front lets a lot of the information in this podcast and it was just stuff I had never heard before Because all I'd heard before was, you know, pray harder or see how many days you can go or run away from it or just, and I think there are pros to things like company and I was in pros to things like accountability or so there are also cons to them and they can and they can fall apart if you, if you let them, and so, like anything else, putting in the work helps. But I gotta say, check out that podcast because it's really, really there's good information there from just a psychological perspective, if not a spiritual one, although she is religious as well and she a lot of her clients come from a lot of places. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:06:18

So understanding your triggers is a big one. Was there anything else that you found helpful?

Speaker 3: 1:06:27

I would say the concepts, the structural, like the understanding of what everything meant. It was like a totally different paradigm than I had ever even experienced. So when she talks about pornography as a buffer, right, I use it to like food or like alcohol or like whatever drugs like to get away from something, something. So what is the something? Learning about that, like the whole Pavlov's dog thing, recognizing I can, if I can condition myself to be addicted to this, I can decondition right. Learning how to stop fearing urges. Learning about you know the difference between shame and guilt and how that's important. There's all or nothing. Thinking of saying like, oh well, I fell, I masturbated, so I'm going to do it all week until I go to confession, just so I can get as many as I want. That can't be the attitude, right. And then, when temptations come, that we don't have to be afraid of any of them because they might make you slightly uncomfortable in the moment, like, oh, I feel it in my body and I feel uncomfortable and I know it's coming. It's like, well, you can be uncomfortable, you've probably been uncomfortable in your life before and there's a way to actually process it. But there's work to be done and you have to be willing to sit down and do it, and I want to give you a hope that it's worth it and there is a light at the end of the tunnel if the work, if you can put the work in, can I reject before you continue to do it, because this is really good. Please.

Speaker 1: 1:07:46

But the temptation part to it, thank you. We are all tempted by something and I think if we are tempted to certain sins like, like this, pornography, masturbation, which again, which has a stigma around it. Yeah, which causes a lot of shame. I think when you experience that temptation again, correct me if if I miss interpreting this, but you might think well, nobody else struggles with this, nobody else gets tempted like this, like I do, so clearly there's something wrong with me that's why I came on your back, because every man will be tempted by this, because the devil knows that most men struggle with it right in some way, shape or form right, and so the temptation and again I want to emphasize this, being tempted is not a sin.

Speaker 3: 1:08:36

Oh, yeah, thank you yeah, no, so it's.

Speaker 1: 1:08:39

We all are tempted. Jesus was tempted, right. Right, but it's how you respond. That's when you can lead to sin, obviously. So, just because you have a temptation, even if you get tempted a thousand times a day by this one particular sin, it doesn't mean that you yourself are sinning. It's just how you respond to that temptation. Right, because if you, every time you you get the temptation and you say a Hail Mary or an our father or something, it doesn't be that, obviously, but again the devil like, well, crap, because every time you pray, you are strengthening your relationship with God and you're also hurting the demons as well, because you're drawing closer to God. When you do that, then they have less power, control over you, so then it leads to you becoming a more holy, pious person, right and so, so big. So fighting the temptation is or, I'm sorry it just having the temptation does not mean that you are doing anything wrong. Necessarily, we all get tempted and in some form, all the time, throughout the day. It's just then okay, recognizing that, like you said, and then finding ways to, I guess, fighting back against that, or recognizing that. Okay, if I get tempted this certain way, then I intend to do this but again, it's almost like following the path to the action, almost okay. So when I come home, when I turn on this street, I get this thought automatically because again, it's that condition that we were talking about earlier in the episode, and so then, okay. So it's just even recognizing that, okay. So when I do that, this is James clear again this is, yeah, this is atomic habits.

Speaker 3: 1:10:17

Yeah, you can take that trigger and, instead of letting it go one way, you can decide yes, whenever I get this and I'm gonna move this, and you can build those neural connections and build form that new habit, right, right.

Speaker 1: 1:10:27

So I know for me and this, that this doesn't have to do with with pornography, but for me, like when I, when I turn on to my street to come home, I instantly become hungry. You've had just episode, is intermittent fasting yes exactly so. And I get home and the first thing I do unless I have a child screaming and running at me is I go to the fridge every single time, unless something stops me from doing that. Do you need me to text you? yes, I'm gonna say I'm going home, then I'll text you and I'll say don't you dare open fridge but yeah, so again, this just goes ties into everything we're talking about tonight is that our brains are used to. Habits of our brains will develop a routine, whether we recognize it or not. So if I come home and our turn on my street and like oh hey, you were, we're going home, finds well, open that fridge. We're getting hungry, like I don't need to yeah right, but again it's recommended so comforting.

Speaker 3: 1:11:24

Yes, what's familiar is so comforting, which goes back to like this habit if it's become so normal for you recognize, if you know, is this something I'm taking comfort in just because it's familiar, even though I want to get rid of it in my life, right? So sometimes that's a hard thing to come to terms with right.

Speaker 1: 1:11:42

So do you have any other practical tips for the audience for up, because you mentioned that under I put understand the triggers, understanding that, how porn is your buffer and also recognizing the temptation I mentioned?

Speaker 3: 1:11:58

something James clear also talks about in atomic habits, how you're in fire and father father Mike has talked about this before how your environment actually shapes your actions. Yes, if you, for example, if there's like a time there, a lot of the time, there's times and places where we're triggered. You said when you turn on your street you come home and immediately eat food. Right, because we've had repetitious behavior associated with those times and places. Right, if having your phone in your room at a particular time is a problem, are you willing to give up having your phone in your room at a certain time? If not, okay, at least being honest. Yeah, but like knowing times and places, they call them witching hours mm-hmm where it's like well, at 10 o'clock, my brain just goes for a time like yeah, okay well, maybe we need to get out of the environment, like, literally, the first episode we reported together talked about how I was going for a walk every morning and it's crazy how much even just a walk whether you're praying rosary or just looking at the trees, like can clear your mind. And I want to emphasize this too, and I sound like maybe a bad Catholic and saying it, or me one, but we're very sacramentally minded in Catholicism. So the idea being, we are body and spirit, so there is something spiritual connected with something physical. So I don't want to, I don't want to, underplay the importance of the neuroscience. Right, like, there are like, like, like, whether it's the Sarah Brewer podcast or whether it's James Clear's atomic habits, it's not wrong to look at us, whatever you want to call it, a semi-secular source that has good information on healing your brain from like, a psychological or a neuropsych, neurobiological perspective, I wouldn't worry. It's like oh well, this isn't a Catholic source. Like be intentional and like we doubt if there's anything that you think is is unusual, but if the information is good, I think you know God made us body and soul, so if there's something that's good for the body, it's good for the soul too well, god works through any medium as well. I just think sometimes people are afraid to like reach, like look at sources outside of kind of church specific.

Speaker 1: 1:14:05

Oh why.

Speaker 3: 1:14:06

This is like Jordan Peterson podcast exactly, and I know so much oh, I agree and I know I don't think that's most people, but I know sometimes we can just be a little bit flighty because you know we got a week clean to the sacraments. We clean to the church because it's a boat in a very, very rough waters these days and there are a lot of things that could try to mislead us. But I don't, I just think sometimes we can over spiritualize something. That is psychological. I agree not to say, not to say that it's not spiritual at all, but there are elements that are spiritual and they're elements that are physical right.

Speaker 1: 1:14:38

Well, yeah, I mean because I mean we've talked about this many times. I mean if, because, if you, maybe you are struggling with this and you haven't even prayed about it, I mean that also is just the first step. Yeah, it's like just and honestly, just being open and honest to God about it, it's just like God, I'm struggling with this.

Speaker 3: 1:14:54

I mean obviously he knows that, but I think I think often we neglect prayer and we think that it's just like this because we're Catholic, like it's already so like sometimes I'll just be like yeah, I didn't even ask God about this yeah exactly and what am I doing? Yeah, I know that Catholic song of good boy it's like no you did not even ask God once, yeah today.

Speaker 1: 1:15:16

Good way, yeah right, I mean, you're just like hearing priests and stuff is like the first question I asked if it's spiritual direction or not. Heard, is they come with the strong? Okay, well, like, what has prayer like revealed to you? I haven't prayed about. It's like. Well, let's start there. The Creator of the universe probably has a thing or two to say about what you're going through and how often we just neglect that simple yet profound step. And, of course, that you know that will lead to. Okay, we need to have you know, maybe we need to go to counseling, or maybe we go to a spiritual director every week, or maybe we kind of like weekly confession spiritual director is good for that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 1:15:58

Yeah, I can't overemphasize.

Speaker 3: 1:15:59

Yeah, like funds me. Trust that that you find helpful in like drawing you close, you got a spiritual director is huge. I think all us could use a spiritual director if we have questions and struggles, the things that we're uncertain about because we get stuck in our head. And having a spiritual director just to talk us through sometimes to get the words out of our head yeah, whether that's your journaling, talking to spiritual director, both like get out of your head because the devil lives in there since, yes, he really does.

Speaker 1: 1:16:28

So you've done challenge.

Speaker 3: 1:16:32

Oh, I like you going to receive this or more that you wanted to say there's always more and I pray that if you're listening to this, I hope something has been fruitful for you. I know it's been a little bit disorganized, but it's.

Speaker 2: 1:16:46

I mean, so is life come on a spirit, couple way spirit um.

Speaker 3: 1:16:54

I have two challenges. Pick the one you want to do for the next I don't know, say week, if you're struggling with something actual and you have it. Brought it to prayer, like James and like me, bring it to prayer. Act got asked out about that intentionally and listen to what he says. Wait, wait as long as it takes. Listen to what you say, my alternate challenge, or you can do both of them. Look at this podcast because it's, I'm serious. I found so much hope and peace listening to some of the, some of the skills that you can learn in terms of emotional processing. It's called overcoming pornography for good with server and it's, I would say, at least like episode one and maybe episode four. Those, those are like. Once you listen to the first one, you're like, wow, this is crazy and I've never even thought about this before and I would say there's a hundred fifty episodes right now. Slowly, they're not all going to be something I can get the sample approval to, but like, listen to the first few just to get the concepts and see what takes you. Because I really think, from like, just a purely like, from a purely secular perspective, there's some skills and some concepts that really changed the game for me and made this a lot less scary, so I recommend that.

Speaker 1: 1:18:25

So those are the spiritual and the physical and I'm like 15, 20 minutes from most of them that students some interviews, which is like very fair, but yeah, so they're pretty digestible yeah. I'll put a link in the show notes for you everyone. Should we do finish with a Hail?

Speaker 2: 1:18:42

Mary, I would love to have our beloved, blessed mother and father and son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord's with the blessed, our God among women, and blessed is the fruit of our Jesus. Holy Mary, mother, god, pray for us sinners now at the hour of death. Amen, there's some Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 1:19:02

Amen well, thank you all. So much for tuning into another episode of the Manicatholic. Until next time, go out there and be a sin.