I LOVE the recognition of the fact that Darwinian, ableist, antiChrist and DEEPLY EVIL capitalism is a complete cancer on society. Hungary, Singapore, and many other places are not going "woke" precisely because they are not shallow, atomized, brain-dead pseudo-libertarian neoliberal hellscapes. The illusion "freedom" isn't the be all and end all of any sane civilization's life.
In regard to pronouns at school. I am in medical school and they push it constantly. I was doing my first OB/GYN session and they were compelling us to ask for pronouns and give them ours. While everyone else did because they are part of the cult, I refused. It was awkward, especially considering what we were doing, but I stood firm. If I have to ask someone their pronouns for a GYN session, what are we doing? Please pray for our medical schools to come to their senses and go back to the truth. Happy Easter.
I like that this guy is much more focused on what it means to be Christian rather than just being anti-woke, which is what conservatism is now. I struggle to even consider myself conservative. I have no interest in conserving whatever lead this country to where it is. And that's the best part about being young in today's world. I have plenty of technology and opportunities to build a new life and a new vision of how to live life. An opportunity to start from the ground up on how to create a Catholic lifestyle and future, without any attachments to failed past ideas - but with all the benefit of knowing, or being able to easily find and learn, the beautiful Catholic customs and writings that have been passed down. God used all this sin and horror to break our attachments to everything that we have been placing above Him. At least for me that's how it feels.
I am 78 years old. No geographic change for me. I am stuck in evil Illinois. So l will be content to be a prayer lady. We need to jam pack adoration chapels 24/7.
I’m so thankful to have Christian, long form content to listen to while I’m working or at home. I’ve been really convicted recently to unfollow and unsub from a lot of different channels that weren’t pleasing to the Lord. God bless you and your team!
Same! Love listening to long solid catholic/Christian Godly content! So tired of secular stuff full of a corrupted agenda. I’m trying to put God first in all things! Love finding like minded people exist everywhere. I was feeling lost, until I discovered so many Godly people in U tube channels!
I'm from the province of Québec (Canada) I really hate what is going on regarding abortion, dying with dignity. Like we can see, we have politicians that hate our nation. I'm part of the 1% (most rich and most with degrees). I had in mind to live in Florida . Why I'm staying still in Québec, is surely regarding where I go to church (Catholic). Once again I hate what is going on in my province and also in my country (Canada). Justin Trudeau is as bad as his father (Pierre E. Trudeau prime minister in the 80s). Boy !! I would give much to have a politicien like Governor De Santis .
Matt is such a brilliant interviewer. He asks the perfect questions at the perfect times and lets his guest answer it with minimal interruptions. Well done ❤
I find that accepting that the west as we've known it is dead makes life even more interesting. I'm Irish and it seems we're very close to Canada right now. Our culture has completed changed. I'm a musician and I play at wedding receptions, most of the time I feel like I'm visiting an entirely new culture and observing an emerging religion
@@mattgibbs1184 good question. I guess I would say it's quite hedonistic, no shortage of drink, drugs and sex. In a positive way, people really want to show how you how kind and accepting they are. They have no clue how to dance so the men tend to throw themselves about in a childish way which is actually very interesting when you consider the purpose of dance but at the same time the ladies will be very provocative in they're dancing. The same sex weddings are quite unpredictable, different social rules are at play
Ironically, I learnt to swear at Catholic primary school between the ages of 5-11. It wasn't until I participated in an early music church choir with my wife that a real change took place. We would sing plain chant and polyphony and we'd come home and keep singing afterwards absolutely moved by the beauty of the music. And that was it. The swearing radically reduced and I'd like to say that the chant, composed by Pope Gregory through the inspiration of the holy spirit, having passed through my throat and vocal cords sanctified them. A recent video by Fr Ripenger about the qualities of chant explains how chant tempers the soul and I can attest to what he says.
I don't think that Pope Gregory was the composer of the chant style but a sponsor and promoter. Before the advent of Gregorian chant, Roman chant had an affinity to eastern chant. I recommend videos of early Roman chant (5th century et al.).
I wish Catholic Churches would have chant in services instead of these Protestant sounding hymns (I’m a convert and have no Byzantine Catholic Churches near my rural location)
Everything in my education (GenX) was to say that there could not possibly be reality or validity in the dominant religion in our country. So wiped out was it, the notion of remaining a Christian society, that the early part of this discussion is what I've spent months writing about since returning to faith, not even realizing that I wasn't alone in those thoughts.
I know Tillsonburg Ontario very well! I was born and raised in Brantford with my grandparents owning farms in Burford. Tillsonburg and Burford were big tobacco producers back in the day. I'm in Windsor now. I'm very impressed with Jonathon; also feel called out by him in some ways which is good. We should always be willing to grow in our faith and conviction.
Great discussion. I really appreciate how hardcore Jonathon is. I get the feeling we're seriously gonna need to toughen up if our religion is still going to exist in western countries by 2100. We do need to adopt an attitude of suspicion towards everything produced by the culture. There's a time and a place for assimilation, and there's a time and a place for suspicion and partition. When the Church dominated Europe, when it was ascendant politically, economically, and culturally, it made sense for us to take on board the products of surrounding culture - to cherry-pick the good pagan customs and artifacts and Christianize them. It's a wise strategy when you're operating from a very strong position to be magnanimous and open. But we're not operating from a strong position anymore. If anyone still needs to be convinced of that, consider the following. The Catholic Church is effectively a political non-actor at this point. We haven't negotiated a treaty between nations in centuries. We have little or no voice in western national politics, and even less of a voice in international politics. Economically, the Church is in dire straits. The deficits are constantly increasing. The Church is in debt due to generations of mismanagement, official corruption, and embezzlement. The Church is being harvested for its wealth by outside, secular forces. We seriously need to watch out for that, since it's remarkably similar to patterns in the late Byzantine Empire which presaged its doom. And culturally, the Church is hanging on by a thread. The Church is still a potent force within relevant subcultures, but it speaks with a very weak voice by its own historical standards. Compared to the Church of the 13th century, the Church today speaks in hushed tones for fear of a backlash. By contemporary standards, it does have significant authority within its sphere of influence. But outside that sphere, in the West, its cultural influence is effectively negative in value. Not only do western societies not listen to the Church and heed its admonishments; the most influential people in the west actively do the opposite of what the Church says. They promote the exact opposite of whatever the Church promotes, and they achieve fame and success doing so. Thus, the Church has negative cultural influence in dominant western circles. Clearly, with respect to our Church's security and influence in the West, we've seen better days. I'm not forecasting doom by any means, it's just important to acknowledge and accept the situation. You can't respond to conditions that you're unwilling to admit are prevailing. Like Jonathon said, we have to admit we've already been defeated for us to even stand a chance of surviving. We have to stop pretending that the pendulum is about to swing backwards in the other direction, as if the world is gonna suddenly forget everything that it's believed for the last 300 years and elevate the Pope to his rightful place as the world's leading spiritual and moral voice. We have to admit that we're a resistance movement again. We're a counterculture. After 1400 years, we're a persecuted minority in the West again. And that's okay. There's a lot of good that comes with that. Christianity thrived and grew exponentially in the age of basement Masses. Even now, it's currently thriving in China's _present_ age of basement Masses. Having accepted that we are a resistance movement, something akin to an opposition party in political terms, we need to be realistic about what surviving is going to demand of us. It's not just about our own personal relationship with Christ anymore. If we want the Church to still exist where we live in a hundred years, we simply can't afford to be lukewarm about anything. We need to cultivate the clarity of vision and force of will that our ascetic forebears, the Desert Fathers, possessed. We need to be able and willing to reject the most tempting products of our own culture, of our own peers. For young men, I strongly suspect porn and sexual deviance more broadly will be the greatest test of each individual's commitment to the resistance. Young men today have awful ideas and habits surrounding sex. Young men are obsessed with particular "kinks" that have been drilled into them by pornography. Rejecting those in our personal lives is a challenge _every_ single one of us needs to rise to. We don't all need to be ascetics, we don't all need to be quasi-puritans, but there is a bare minimum here. We all need to partition ourselves from the mainstream culture to at least some degree. And collectively, we need to get in the frame of mind of viewing _everything_ the mainstream culture produces with automatic suspicion. That's my main point. Our default response can no longer be to adopt the culture's newest thing. We've been lulled into a false sense of security, to the extent that we've forgotten that we're fundamentally a counterculture movement. We've dominated our cultures for so long that we mostly define ourselves FIRST as members of the mainstream culture, and only secondarily as Catholics. Most of us don't see ourselves as outsiders. We don't feel it down in our bones. Because for the longest time, we shared 90% of our values with the mainstream culture. So that 10% that we differed on really was secondary. "Catholic" was just an adjective for the better part of the last 2 millennia in the West. We could afford to consider ourselves "Catholic Americans" rather than "American Catholics," because we only needed to reject 10% of what the culture offered. So we could maintain a default strategy of assimilating _ourselves_ into the surrounding culture, and only resisting it in special cases. But that just isn't gonna work anymore. We don't overlap with the culture hardly at all anymore. And these days, to the extent that we, as individuals, overlap with the surrounding culture, it almost always represents a personal failure. For that reason, we need an entirely new strategy. Our default response to the culture needs to be rejection. When your tenuous commitment to the eternal truth is under such concerted, sustained threat, closed-mindedness is a virtue, not a vice. If we don't change our approach quickly, things will just continue as they are already trending - the culture will just get better and better at parasitically siphoning off our children into their death cult, and we'll eventually go the way of the dinosaur. Which will most likely cause the total collapse of the West, since religious communities will be the only people actually producing any children at all. All the other "communities" will just be cults that are highly specialized at stealing more fruitful people's kids. That's already the situation now with the LGBTQIA+ culture. Some of the least fertile people on the planet are already operating some of the most successful child recruitment campaigns in human history. It's a deeply troubling ecological situation, since the people themselves aren't reproducing. Their lineages-the genes themselves-go extinct. It's the ideology that is propagating as they steal children to indoctrinate with it. The ideology has become the organism. It's a virtual parasite on leftist humans, and it's rapidly adapting to turn Christians into hosts and vectors. And that's basically the first premise of my thesis: we need to adopt a mindset of "quarantine and containment" with respect to modern culture. And I don't just mean "The Left" proper. I mean ostensibly neutral technology, science, art, philosophy - everything. Especially anything with materialistic/naturalistic/positivistic roots. We don't necessarily need to reject all of it, there's a lot of great value there (e.g. penicillin). But our _default position_ on everything should be rejection. If we're going to _absentmindedly_ make a decision whether to accept or reject something, that decision should always be rejection. If we're going to make an educated guess on something produced by the mainstream culture, that guess should always be "it's toxic." It's obviously better to do your research. I'm just saying we should apply a heuristic of suspicion, _not_ a heuristic of the "benefit of the doubt." We should view all mainstream, modern, western cultural products with suspicion. The burden of proof is on the mainstream to prove to us that its cultural artifacts are benign. The Amish have the right strategy. And we all know the Amish are among the best bets to survive modernity. If you had to bet on a religious community to survive modernity, you'd certainly pick the Amish before you'd pick most Christian denominations. And that's because the Amish _by default_ reject everything the modern culture expels from its bowels until it's proven itself benign.
And I totally agree there's a lot of relief in accepting that. Make a clean break and start over. The sooner we start developing a new culture, cleanly partitioned from the festering carcass of the old one, the better chance we stand of surviving the next few hundred years of Western "progress." If we wait too long to sever ourselves from the conjoined twin that is the mainstream western culture, it'll be too late. We'll have already accepted way too many of the catastrophic errors of the culture of death, and we'll have failed to hone our strategy of defending our insular culture from the mainstream's efforts to colonize us. There's a good chance that the virulent strain of anti-Christian bigotry we're seeing brewing in the West is only going to continue growing in power and aggressiveness. It's not going to stop mercilessly crushing dissent. Why would it? It's so close to achieving its ends. There might be an occasional populist backlash against our satanic elites, but that's been the case for generations now, and it hasn't yet stopped the left's scorched-earth march through our institutions. Haven't we learned the pattern by now? The left goes a bit too far, and the center wakes up and sides with the right... for a few months. The left goes into hiding, realizing it's gone too far, and pipes down for the briefest of moments. But all it needs to do is wait for the unprincipled center (the overwhelming majority of citizens in any western nation) to inevitably lose focus and move on, and they can go right back to ratcheting up the pressure. It's just this constant tactic of bullying us and taking advantage of our pacifism, getting away with as much as it can possibly get away with, before retreating and crying foul and playing the victim when we _finally_ react to their latest onslaught of outrages. They're just gonna keep doing that. And that's a big problem, because every time they do that, after the dust has settled, we realize they successfully moved the goalposts about 50 miles toward moral chaos and despair. That's why leftist "progress" is always a ratchet. The movement stops and starts periodically, but the needle only ever moves in _one_ direction. The Overton window only ever expands to the left, to encompass new atrocities and degeneracies, new forms of self-worship and rebellion against God. It virtually never expands to the right. If we keep allowing ourselves to be played in this way, we'll simply be gone within a matter of generations. The only _realistic_ strategy for survival I can see (i.e., excluding imaginative alternatives like moving to Mars) is to act as quickly as possible to _totally separate_ ourselves from this "conjoined twin" I mentioned before it hurls itself off of that cliff we can all see looming large on the horizon. That's not to say we should stop evangelizing or that we shouldn't, like Jonathon said, give people an off-ramp. We should always welcome defectors from the culture of death. I am one of them, myself. But one way or another, we each need to make a spirited effort to reject the culture's attempts to insert itself into our daily lives and worldviews. That doesn't mean severing every single tie that binds us to the culture, it just means our interactions with it should be one-way by default: we influence it, not the other way around. Paul went to Rome to preach, not to consume Roman entertainment. If we're playing the game right, then the surrounding culture will need to make a very convincing case for us to accept one of its products.
FANTASTIC comment!!!! You are 100% correct, IMO. Just the other day, I wrote in another comment on a Matt Fradd video that we need to become "Luddites" again, canceling our toxic cable; watch only select movies and listen to select music; instead of screen time, spend time outside, play board games with your family, hang out with friends IN PERSON, cook, read good (paper!) books, garden. Buy loads of classic books from used-bookstores (because the woke crowd is starting to rewrite classics via "sensitivity editors") to preserve the original versions. Take walks in nature, pray, go to church and Adoration, start Bible study groups, etc.
This conversation is just amazing. Thank you for it. One note of hope, my older kids didn't get phones until high school and even then, no internet, no snap chat, no camera, etc. They thought they would be social lepers too but they are not! In fact, very popular and fine. Now, our youngest is asking for a phone at age 13 and she is using the same arguments the older ones did but unfortunately for her, we know the arguments are not true. Turns out, you can still be cool without it. It might upset them to not get what they want but parents need to wake up and do the hard stuff. Now, my older son is 19 and paying for his own phone. I still worry that he is sucked in as we all struggle with but he is an adult now and at some point, he is in charge of his own life.
This is so refreshing. I'm on board with just redefining our subculture. I'm also on board with his economics. My husband and I converted last year and we bought into the two-income household family set up because for one we were raised that way. But now I'm trapped Because of exorbitant student loans. I would happily have 5-7 kids God willing if my student loans would be forgiven so I could stay home and be a barefoot homesteader. I want 5 kids as it is
I am really enjoying this talk. My only pushback to the entertainment discussion is - what is the heuristic we have to determine what is well ordered entertainment, and what is disordered? I mean for goodness sake much of the old testament would be worse than R rated if you turned it into a film or TV series. I think the biggest thing we need to do is raise our kids on the good stuff. The word of the Lord. classical literature (from peter rabbit to the hobbit to Narnia and so on). And bring up them up as good Christians, who can then go out and recognize bad entertainment as that. When something is being pushed on them, they'll be able to recognize it and shut it off. But we still need to develop that heuristic that is simple and allows us to categorize the good from the bad. And that's where I'm really interested in a robust discussion. I want to come up with a good one. And be able to use that to determine what not only my kids watch, but what I and my wife watch.
Honestly i think the issue is parents aren't talking to their kids, or they are waiting too long. If your kid is 13 or 14 before you give the talk, well his friends have already been talking to him about it for a couple of years by that point. Another issue is parents aren't creating an environment where kids feel comfortable bringing these subjects up to their parents. My husband and i have always tried to have an environment of free flowing discussion, and it worked. So my middle son was first exposed to porn on the school bus when he was 10 or 11. He came home and immediately told us. He also wasn't embarrassed to tell us exactly what he saw. What he had seen was a woman performing oral sex on a man. Because he told us everything, we were able to do two things. First we were able to tell him how bad porn is and even give him the science on what it does to your brain (it actually changes the structures of the brain and causes neurological disorders). So he had a good understanding of why its bad for you. We were also able to teach him about sex and marriage. We taught him that what he saw isn't always a realistic expectation of sex, and that it all has to do with consent. We were also able to teach him that what he saw isn't necessarily a bad thing in the confines of a marriage, again, assuming there is enthusiastic consent. Some women enjoy pleasing their husbands that way and others don't. So we were able to have a conversation about sex acts, and how you really need to get to know your partner and never cross any boundaries. Sex isn't wrong, but it can be disastrous if it's not respected. Now then, if we hadnt made sex and relationships an open discussion with our children, theres no way our son would have come to us. Because he came to us, we were able to teach him our values, instead of his friends teaching him. Its been a few years now, and both of my teenage sons are disgusted with the idea of porn, and both of them want a good woman they can marry and share these things with.
Allowing women to work "tax free" for having 4 children, just means the women will birth kids to give over to the state. It should be "if a woman gives birth to or adopts 4 children and will homeschool them, their husbands can work for life "tax free". That supports the family.
Many in this young middle-age generation in their 40"s have remained Catholic in their rebellious years perhaps because they had parents who behaved and openly kept their faith. At least in this country. I am hopeful.
This was a fantastic episode! I listened with a notepad nearby to keep track of the significant list of recommended reading offered here. So many great books to check out. Thank you!
Good interview...challenging ideas, suggesting changes...encouraging courage. I am a Catholic convert, haven't been to church but twice since the 'before' time (by that, I mean SARS Co V 2) struggling with EVERYTHING going on in the world today, most especially the controversies within the Church herself. Asked now where I fall on that continuim, I answer that I am, at present, a Christian-at-Large (or maybe a Catholic-at-Large). I can now use my Christian Prayer without the little cards, and use a missal for the daily readings, so have not abandoned my devotion to my personal faith. I so appreciate programs such as this which help me ask myself the same important questions. I am on a journey that I hope will land me back at church and the Mass.
I was an English major in school, and a professor who I respect would say, "Reality is a construct of language," to illustrate the power of language. At the time, students would have to stop and consider what he meant, but the meaning so obvious nowadays. "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power" by Josef Pieper has been on my reading list.
What do Marta Kauffman (creator of Friends), Bob Iger (CEO of Disney), Larry Fink (chairman and CEO of BlackRock, one of the biggest owners of Walt Disney), Ben Shapiro (DW), Dennis Prager (PragerU), Bari Weiss (journalist), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (President of Ukraine), David Zaslav (CEO of Warner Bros Discovery), etc. have in common? 1 Th3ss 2:15 Where are they directing our eyeballs? Often called the windows to our souls M@tth3w. 18:9 La C!v!lta C@tt0lica
1 hr 32... the Jewish Culture was very good at passing down their culture. God gave them the rules and feasts and taught them to remember what God did for them; How God saved them from their enemies; brought them out of Egypt; parted the Red Sea. Perhaps Christianity needs to get better at celebrating our Feasts and passing down our stories of how God saves us! Personal testimony helps people to share and increase their faith. Thanks for all your interviews and pints!
I don't care for entertainment. I will always choose real conversations or listening to conversations rather than watching something to be entertained.
Re: finding decent kids and family shows and not supporting corrupt streaming companies: buy a DVD player and used DVDs. There used to be excellent shows and movies available.
I don’t know why, but it hit me hard when he talked about the images taken of aborted babies saying, “Only by actually showing the only baby photos of these children that were ever taken can these children take their rightful place among us.” It brought tears to my eyes.
I have to push back on your characterization of Me Before You. I have only read the book, but I interpreted it as a criticism of assisted suicide. the main character does everything in her power to prevent it, and spends the rest of the story (and sequels) feeling betrayed and heartbroken that her loved one would make such a choice.
I havent seen the movie or read the book but even if a movie is based on a book they are different things. Maybe you are right about the book but that doesnt say much about the movie because the producers and director can take the story and frame so differently that the message can be the other way around.
I'm not a Christian but I absolutely love this podcast and this conversation in particular. I find myself in the Douglas Murray camp. So many social ills can be solved by adherence to Christian teaching. But I can't find it within myself to fully adopt the faith.
Maybe because the faith/religion isn't just about a set of rules of various kinds, an intellectual model for social harmony, etc. It's not about ideology or political/social model. It's about the relationship with God first and foremost, all the rituals and rules are ordered towards that goal. It requires the conviction of the whole heart. Maybe,just maybe, God is slowly pulling you and opening your heart. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate the social and cultural values of Christianity. But Christianity is ultimately more than that. No one can force you to change your heart, to make you internally convinced. Faith starts, when intellectual, social, cultural considerations end.
hello, i'm homeschool, to the Iphone section, giving a 14 yo a phone I agree that it takes the child away from the family which is bad. For me, I live in an area where my mother won't let me walk outside our neighborhood but my father would (if my mother let me), i am also one of 5. my mother regrets getting me a phone, due to the risks that it poses, i won't lie i have been exposed to those risks and they have effected me. my point is i don't see kids my age very much kids at school see ppl abt 40hrs a week. i see other kids abt 5 separate occasions in a week and those are usually for abt an hour or two at a time. within that i see kids *my* age abt twice a week. and those i call my friends (aka. those who have similar morals to me, that does not mean they are catholic) i see abt once a week twice a week if i am very lucky. my friends (this is about 3 people) who I trust and either share my catholic faith or are Christian in some way, get to see about once once every three months to a year (the year is for the two who have moved away but we make a point to see bc we know the whole family). my parents can only drive us so many places. I want to meet ppl and make friends but the opportunities for me to get out and meet new people and interact with my current friends is few and far between. i went to a camp abt a year ago and the whole week I had to continuously remind myself to talk to people and to not shut everyone out. using a number/ the internet has helped me stay in contact with my existing friends. especially my close Christian friends.
The core message I am getting from the interview is: « The world is out of joint and its degree of out-of-jointness is unredeemable, hence flee it into nodes of sub-cultures. » How is this Christ-like? Levi Shalom
Regarding Hungary's policies, whilst I disagree with the overt religiousity of the origin of the policies, as a UK-based athiest in a committed relationship with a Catholic convert... I'd kill for the opportunity to buy a house, marry my partner and raise a family. It is about time that the economy served the actual human beings existing within it, rather than the other way round.
When you were talking about that the West is dead, I was shouting inside like "not that fast! Look a little to the East, Hungary is still holding her ground.":D Later I was glad you talked about it. My country usually gets criticism from everyone. Btw Pope Francis comes on Friday, there will be a huge Papal Holy Mass in front of the Parliament. And on Pentacost the Flame of Love Movement organized a gathering for 10.000 youngsters at an old Marian Shrine. Everyone is called to send rosaries. The Holy Spirit is alive here and works! God Bless, great show!:)
I really like this guest and find myself agreeing with him on many things. He's very Canadian in his worldview in terms of his distrust of free market nonsense and his advocacy for policies that seek to strengthen the family. This is what American conservativism gets wrong; no one is interested in having children or staying married if there's no support for them when they lose their job or can't afford a medical procedure for their child. True conservatism is providing the supports people need to thrive within a family environment. Canada has a national childcare benefit, universal healthcare, and publicly-funded Catholic schools. That's real conservatism.
Phyllis Bowman who founded 'SPUC' in the U.K should be recognised at the proposed Shrine. She was my old Boss. Glad to say I went door to door campaigning for the 'No' Vote in the abortion referendum in Ireland in 2018.
What a fantastic conversation!! Jonathon's come to many of the same conclusions I have come to on my own having delved into moral theology since studying myself back into the Church with regard to watching modern TV (e.g. UFC, boxing, training for self-defense vs. actually engaging in violence for others' entertainment, the more obvious question of consuming what Hollywood puts out, etc.).
For kids, Adventures in Odyssey radio episodes are very well done. $10 month. My husband is a construction worker who hears such immoral garbage and he even gets drawn into the stories. It's a great way to form kids consciences.
This guy is great but on Russia he is very wrong and I write this from my house in Eastern Europe. I am not pro Putin or like Russia but history and geopolitics are very clear. To say that Russia attacked unprovoked or to see it as a Ukraine vs Russia conflict is borderline crazy. This is quite literally a fight against unipolar system (read american supremacy). This guy should really listen to Victor Orban.
You are right, but other will understand this only when bombs will drop on their head, their homes will destroyed, their children will kidnapped. th-cam.com/video/7GKx5i7YDjg/w-d-xo.html
Jonathon's comments about media are spot-on. A media empire is about the *only* thing American conservatism has managed to achieve (with the possible exception of judicial originalism). Heck, what does it even mean to be a conservative in America? It means that you consume one form of media rather than another. It means that you line Tucker Carlson's pockets rather than Rachel Maddow's. Congratulations! So much conserving! I dabble in civil-society stuff, and it never ceases to amaze me how uniform the acceptance of The Latest Thing is. All these cultural institutions which supposedly exist for the sake of conserving things-conserving literature, conserving knowledge, conserving the visual arts, conserving music, conserving local history, conserving buildings, conserving whatever-and . . . conservatives are nowhere to be found. You might run into some out-of-touch retirees who don't really get what the kids are doing-and don't really care, either. But that's the best you can hope for. 92.3 percent of the people who involve themselves in their communities in any meaningful way seem a-okay with the cultural revolution. It never seems to occur to anyone that it's *weird* that you're more likely to encounter a "conservative" at a random keg party than at your local library, but here we are! Sorry for the rant, but this stuff makes my blood boil.
Really? Because to me, what the Daily Wire is doing--maybe failing at times but doing--IS conserving culture. Is creating content and conversations around it.
Being dissident in itself isn't really a virtue - some groups have tendencies to be revolutionaries ("revolutionary spirit"). We just live in such times that being a conservative or traditionalist Christian makes you a dissident.
This was good for me to watch a bit with my son who it helped to understand the effect that media is having on him. It also gave me some ways to talk to my daughter about the sexual revolution versus God's view of gender, sex and family.
Are in case anyone here in the comments is from Alberta Saskatchewan or Manitoba we love you since you’re from the cool part of Canada we wish you were Americans
This is my entertainment. I just watch Pints and similar stuff if I want to sit still. Watching with a cigar is great. As a cigar lover I'm always trying to get a glimpse at the bands. Jonathan's looks like DE Undercrown Connecticut, good choice as he seems a bit new to cigars. Hope he liked it. Matt's...I can't tell what it is.
I never put two and two together. Listening to your accent, I never thought about you not being from America until today when you mentioned you're from Australia.
I’m a conservative and staunch Atheist. It’s a weird place to be as someone who strives to be grounded on logic and reason while his peers are still lost in religion. Especially those who pick and choose the convenient parts, and ignore the parts they know are immoral as science and technology has advanced. If anyone actually practiced what’s in the Bible as it was written, they would likely be in prison or a mental institution.
If Covenant Eyes could offer parish subscriptions, the wealthy could help their poorer parent brothers and sisters have for their kids. Would be cool if priests/pastors could announce such a powerful spiritual -techno tool to their flocks
The comparison of fighting to pron is actually astoundingly bizzare. Fighting is a deeply spiritual endeavour. It gives us a chance to mortify the flesh, to surrender ourselves as sacrifice to God as the apostle tells us. It connects us with deep parts of our nature. It allows us to care less about our comfort and wellbeing then we do about glorifying God. The UFC is fantastic for reminding us of this. We need to emphasise the warrior vain of our tradition, e.g. the Crusaders, not this 60s lovey-lovey-love-love peace and love liberalism. How can you not see that you're siding with the pagans on this one? Violence is part of our nature, which we according to Aquinas are meant to perfect. Let's.
I have no children. I pretty much tapped out if the culture. I watch king of the hill, Andy Griffith and mash. Mash has some issues and the commercials are too much sometimes.
Daily wire- I think it’s unrealistic to expect movies to be completed perfect in every way. When people do that you get hallmark movies. Evil isn’t so bad it is worth fighting, everything is bland and cliche, and sedate. At this point you accept the portrayal of some debauchery so that the hero can be depicted fighting it, or you simply nix entertainment over all. Otherwise you might as well watch some psychedelic looking shape shifting colors to white noise and elevator music. That’s about the value you get out of these tightly controlled and mild films and tv shows. Slightly comforting and slightly annoying. I say do puzzles, listen to good music, have a hobby, draw, have people over, garden. Watch a well made documentary maybe. But please don’t try to make “pure” films. That’s not a new idea. We know it doesn’t work.
The issue with the Russian invasion and conservatives is certainly that conservatives feel the need to take the opposite position of the liberal. However, the reason that no one is talking about the Ukranian's perspective is that everyone in America is viewing it through the lens of American foreign policy. The main question is whether we should be funding the war, not whether Russia was correct. Unfortunately, most conservatives can't seem to make such a distinction. I have some friends in Ukraine that I am very seriously worried for. And at the beginning of this conflict, my view was that we should have immediately put troops on the ground to stop this. If we had just annexed Ukraine into the collective west, Russia would not have invaded. Instead, we pussyfooted around. Since we didn't put troops on the ground, I thought we should not do anything. No funding, no aid, because Ukraine will loose this war, but instead of taking the 7 days everyone thought it would at the beginning, it would take two or three years, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths. It crushes me how correct I seem to have been. The west is using Ukraine as a weapon against Russia at this point. We are utterly unwilling to fight to defend her, yet we want her to fight this war in hopes of causing regime change and the potential collapse of Russia. It blew my mind that when things looked even slightly positive for Ukraine around April of last year, editorial after editorial came out about the collapse of the Putin regime, with some authors going so far as to imagine how many different countries would be formed by the west out of the Russian Federation, and which ones we could immediately count on being pro-western. It was insane. So I repeat exactly what I have been saying from the beginning. If Ukraine wants to exist as a state, they have no choice but to fight. Yes, Russia could end this tomorrow by withdrawing. But the west could have ended this far earlier. We could have pushed the Ukrainian government to abide by Minsk I and II. We could have not helped initiate a color revolution in Ukraine. We could have put boots on the ground if we think Ukraine is this important. The west is making errors here, and is getting people killed. I can't do anything to change Russia. I can't make Putin more or less truly Christian (his mother did baptize him in secret at great risk to herself, so it is possible, even if I have always seriously doubted it.) I can't force Russia out of Ukraine. But I can recognize that America is pursuing policies to the detriment of the Ukrainian people, and I can recognize that America wants Ukraine to be LGBTQified. I can recognize that America is using Ukrainian lives to try and topple another regime. I can recognize that America may be putting its ability to adequately defend itself at risk as we get ever nearer to open conflict with a million-man army in China. I can vote to try and make sure that we rectify these issues. And I can try to help others understand that what we are doing is wrong, that we can't have things both ways, and that we will loose if we keep this up.
You know Tolstoy has a theory of history, which can be summed up as he who does God's will wins the battle. In War and Peace, he has a line asking why the veteran army runs from the new conscripts, or why the large army is routed by the smaller? Why doe the seasoned general make an obvious mistake, and the moron win the day? Why does the Dnipro river thaw as Napolean attempts to retreat, resulting in a near total loss of his army, and a loss of all hope of overwintering in Poland to fight another day? Because God wills it so. Constantine was not a true Christian. He didn't convert till his deathbed, was a pretty vicious dude, and was a womanizer. But he legalized Christianity. He furthered the cause of God's people. Thanks to him, Christianity entered its Golden age and expanded as it has never done before or since. Putin may not be a true Christian. He may be using it out of pure cynicism. I have always thought that to be the case. But he is trying to push Christianity. The entirety of the Russian Church is suspect, in my opinion. I have always thought Kyril to be nothing more than a Putin stooge. But I can't say that the west is closer to doing God's will than Russia is. We are out here fighting for it's destruction. We have people who only stopped supporting Ukraine when they found out that they were Christian. We are pushing abortion, contraception, porn, homosexuality, perversion, atheism, and all manner of evil on the world. Quite frankly, I do not think we deserve to win this war. I just wish the poor Ukrainians weren't caught in the crossfire.
Thursday, so cool your dad made biscuits and gravy almost every weekend - my dad would too on Sunday mornings! I took over the tradition when I was older, so I make some bomb biscuits and gravy (plenty of friends and family will back me up on that, so I'm just being humble ;)).
My movie viewing rule is nothing made after the mid 60s.....when Hollywood had the much maligned Hayes code there was at least a moral framework for storytelling
I do sympathize with the point Douglas Murray made. I'm not gay and I still can't get myself to believe in the historicity of the resurrection & other theologically important ideas
Great talk! I’m writing a YA novel, actually, that my goal is to write it as something I would give to my own (older) child. In the back of my mind I’m worried about who will publish it? Will they twist it into something I’m not trying to express? If the West is dead, and we need to create subcultures….fine. But how? Where? These are questions it’s important to answer bc otherwise it just sounds defeatist, even if it’s true…
When our EXCELLENT new pastor arrived, for months I was wondering how he got to be such a good and faithful priest. Then, one day, in a homily he unknowingly gave me the answer when he said, "When I was studying at Franciscan University..."
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I LOVE the recognition of the fact that Darwinian, ableist, antiChrist and DEEPLY EVIL capitalism is a complete cancer on society. Hungary, Singapore, and many other places are not going "woke" precisely because they are not shallow, atomized, brain-dead pseudo-libertarian neoliberal hellscapes. The illusion "freedom" isn't the be all and end all of any sane civilization's life.
Only Jesus died of a broken heart for the world, for God so loves the world. It's breaking my heart too but it's not killing me. Yet
In regard to pronouns at school. I am in medical school and they push it constantly. I was doing my first OB/GYN session and they were compelling us to ask for pronouns and give them ours. While everyone else did because they are part of the cult, I refused. It was awkward, especially considering what we were doing, but I stood firm. If I have to ask someone their pronouns for a GYN session, what are we doing? Please pray for our medical schools to come to their senses and go back to the truth. Happy Easter.
I would love to hear how the med school responded…
I like that this guy is much more focused on what it means to be Christian rather than just being anti-woke, which is what conservatism is now. I struggle to even consider myself conservative. I have no interest in conserving whatever lead this country to where it is. And that's the best part about being young in today's world. I have plenty of technology and opportunities to build a new life and a new vision of how to live life. An opportunity to start from the ground up on how to create a Catholic lifestyle and future, without any attachments to failed past ideas - but with all the benefit of knowing, or being able to easily find and learn, the beautiful Catholic customs and writings that have been passed down. God used all this sin and horror to break our attachments to everything that we have been placing above Him. At least for me that's how it feels.
Most of the anti-woke Christians are just too afraid to say they are pro- Christian
I am 78 years old. No geographic change for me. I am stuck in evil Illinois. So l will be content to be a prayer lady.
We need to jam pack adoration chapels 24/7.
Isn’t there the beautiful St John Cantius in Illinois? So beautiful! I watch their mass on line occasionally. Would love to visit in person!
@@j2muw667 you should visit the church. Breath taking. They also are a stand out at Walk For Life Marches .
@@karenglenn2329 I’m in Illinois too, 18
I’m so thankful to have Christian, long form content to listen to while I’m working or at home. I’ve been really convicted recently to unfollow and unsub from a lot of different channels that weren’t pleasing to the Lord. God bless you and your team!
Same! Love listening to long solid catholic/Christian Godly content! So tired of secular stuff full of a corrupted agenda.
I’m trying to put God first in all things! Love finding like minded people exist everywhere. I was feeling lost, until I discovered so many Godly people in U tube channels!
Great talk! Never heard of Jonathan until now. My goodness the amount of knowledge and information he shares is impressive
I'm from the province of Québec (Canada) I really hate what is going on regarding abortion, dying with dignity. Like we can see, we have politicians that hate our nation. I'm part of the 1% (most rich and most with degrees). I had in mind to live in Florida . Why I'm staying still in Québec, is surely regarding where I go to church (Catholic). Once again I hate what is going on in my province and also in my country (Canada). Justin Trudeau is as bad as his father (Pierre E. Trudeau prime minister in the 80s). Boy !! I would give much to have a politicien like Governor De Santis .
Even the verbiage "dying with dignity" gives ground to the proponents of the culture of death.
Florida is one of the most Catholic states in the USA I don't think finding a Catholic church would be a problem
@@YiriUbic3793 I think of Nebraska and Kansas as “the most catholic” 😆 mostly because of the higher amount of seminarians in some of their diocese.
@@kellibuzzard dying with dignity doesn’t involve someone being put down like a dog
Dang not even 10 mins in and it’s already exposing how dark and disturbing Canada is💔💔
Matt is such a brilliant interviewer. He asks the perfect questions at the perfect times and lets his guest answer it with minimal interruptions. Well done ❤
I find that accepting that the west as we've known it is dead makes life even more interesting.
I'm Irish and it seems we're very close to Canada right now. Our culture has completed changed.
I'm a musician and I play at wedding receptions, most of the time I feel like I'm visiting an entirely new culture and observing an emerging religion
Thanks. How would you describe the new culture?
@@mattgibbs1184 good question. I guess I would say it's quite hedonistic, no shortage of drink, drugs and sex. In a positive way, people really want to show how you how kind and accepting they are. They have no clue how to dance so the men tend to throw themselves about in a childish way which is actually very interesting when you consider the purpose of dance but at the same time the ladies will be very provocative in they're dancing.
The same sex weddings are quite unpredictable, different social rules are at play
@@petemaguire8677 thanks
Care to expound on the social differences in gay weddings? Is it usually male gay marriages? Have you been to female gay weddings?
Ironically, I learnt to swear at Catholic primary school between the ages of 5-11. It wasn't until I participated in an early music church choir with my wife that a real change took place. We would sing plain chant and polyphony and we'd come home and keep singing afterwards absolutely moved by the beauty of the music. And that was it. The swearing radically reduced and I'd like to say that the chant, composed by Pope Gregory through the inspiration of the holy spirit, having passed through my throat and vocal cords sanctified them. A recent video by Fr Ripenger about the qualities of chant explains how chant tempers the soul and I can attest to what he says.
I don't think that Pope Gregory was the composer of the chant style but a sponsor and promoter. Before the advent of Gregorian chant, Roman chant had an affinity to eastern chant. I recommend videos of early Roman chant (5th century et al.).
I wish Catholic Churches would have chant in services instead of these Protestant sounding hymns (I’m a convert and have no Byzantine Catholic Churches near my rural location)
Everything in my education (GenX) was to say that there could not possibly be reality or validity in the dominant religion in our country. So wiped out was it, the notion of remaining a Christian society, that the early part of this discussion is what I've spent months writing about since returning to faith, not even realizing that I wasn't alone in those thoughts.
I know Tillsonburg Ontario very well!
I was born and raised in Brantford with my grandparents owning farms in Burford. Tillsonburg and Burford were big tobacco producers back in the day. I'm in Windsor now.
I'm very impressed with Jonathon; also feel called out by him in some ways which is good.
We should always be willing to grow in our faith and conviction.
This interview held my attention the entire time. Awesome talk.
Great discussion. I really appreciate how hardcore Jonathon is. I get the feeling we're seriously gonna need to toughen up if our religion is still going to exist in western countries by 2100. We do need to adopt an attitude of suspicion towards everything produced by the culture. There's a time and a place for assimilation, and there's a time and a place for suspicion and partition. When the Church dominated Europe, when it was ascendant politically, economically, and culturally, it made sense for us to take on board the products of surrounding culture - to cherry-pick the good pagan customs and artifacts and Christianize them. It's a wise strategy when you're operating from a very strong position to be magnanimous and open. But we're not operating from a strong position anymore.
If anyone still needs to be convinced of that, consider the following. The Catholic Church is effectively a political non-actor at this point. We haven't negotiated a treaty between nations in centuries. We have little or no voice in western national politics, and even less of a voice in international politics. Economically, the Church is in dire straits. The deficits are constantly increasing. The Church is in debt due to generations of mismanagement, official corruption, and embezzlement. The Church is being harvested for its wealth by outside, secular forces. We seriously need to watch out for that, since it's remarkably similar to patterns in the late Byzantine Empire which presaged its doom. And culturally, the Church is hanging on by a thread. The Church is still a potent force within relevant subcultures, but it speaks with a very weak voice by its own historical standards. Compared to the Church of the 13th century, the Church today speaks in hushed tones for fear of a backlash. By contemporary standards, it does have significant authority within its sphere of influence. But outside that sphere, in the West, its cultural influence is effectively negative in value. Not only do western societies not listen to the Church and heed its admonishments; the most influential people in the west actively do the opposite of what the Church says. They promote the exact opposite of whatever the Church promotes, and they achieve fame and success doing so. Thus, the Church has negative cultural influence in dominant western circles.
Clearly, with respect to our Church's security and influence in the West, we've seen better days. I'm not forecasting doom by any means, it's just important to acknowledge and accept the situation. You can't respond to conditions that you're unwilling to admit are prevailing. Like Jonathon said, we have to admit we've already been defeated for us to even stand a chance of surviving. We have to stop pretending that the pendulum is about to swing backwards in the other direction, as if the world is gonna suddenly forget everything that it's believed for the last 300 years and elevate the Pope to his rightful place as the world's leading spiritual and moral voice. We have to admit that we're a resistance movement again. We're a counterculture. After 1400 years, we're a persecuted minority in the West again. And that's okay. There's a lot of good that comes with that. Christianity thrived and grew exponentially in the age of basement Masses. Even now, it's currently thriving in China's _present_ age of basement Masses.
Having accepted that we are a resistance movement, something akin to an opposition party in political terms, we need to be realistic about what surviving is going to demand of us. It's not just about our own personal relationship with Christ anymore. If we want the Church to still exist where we live in a hundred years, we simply can't afford to be lukewarm about anything. We need to cultivate the clarity of vision and force of will that our ascetic forebears, the Desert Fathers, possessed. We need to be able and willing to reject the most tempting products of our own culture, of our own peers. For young men, I strongly suspect porn and sexual deviance more broadly will be the greatest test of each individual's commitment to the resistance. Young men today have awful ideas and habits surrounding sex. Young men are obsessed with particular "kinks" that have been drilled into them by pornography. Rejecting those in our personal lives is a challenge _every_ single one of us needs to rise to. We don't all need to be ascetics, we don't all need to be quasi-puritans, but there is a bare minimum here. We all need to partition ourselves from the mainstream culture to at least some degree. And collectively, we need to get in the frame of mind of viewing _everything_ the mainstream culture produces with automatic suspicion.
That's my main point. Our default response can no longer be to adopt the culture's newest thing. We've been lulled into a false sense of security, to the extent that we've forgotten that we're fundamentally a counterculture movement. We've dominated our cultures for so long that we mostly define ourselves FIRST as members of the mainstream culture, and only secondarily as Catholics. Most of us don't see ourselves as outsiders. We don't feel it down in our bones. Because for the longest time, we shared 90% of our values with the mainstream culture. So that 10% that we differed on really was secondary. "Catholic" was just an adjective for the better part of the last 2 millennia in the West. We could afford to consider ourselves "Catholic Americans" rather than "American Catholics," because we only needed to reject 10% of what the culture offered. So we could maintain a default strategy of assimilating _ourselves_ into the surrounding culture, and only resisting it in special cases. But that just isn't gonna work anymore. We don't overlap with the culture hardly at all anymore. And these days, to the extent that we, as individuals, overlap with the surrounding culture, it almost always represents a personal failure. For that reason, we need an entirely new strategy. Our default response to the culture needs to be rejection. When your tenuous commitment to the eternal truth is under such concerted, sustained threat, closed-mindedness is a virtue, not a vice.
If we don't change our approach quickly, things will just continue as they are already trending - the culture will just get better and better at parasitically siphoning off our children into their death cult, and we'll eventually go the way of the dinosaur. Which will most likely cause the total collapse of the West, since religious communities will be the only people actually producing any children at all. All the other "communities" will just be cults that are highly specialized at stealing more fruitful people's kids. That's already the situation now with the LGBTQIA+ culture. Some of the least fertile people on the planet are already operating some of the most successful child recruitment campaigns in human history. It's a deeply troubling ecological situation, since the people themselves aren't reproducing. Their lineages-the genes themselves-go extinct. It's the ideology that is propagating as they steal children to indoctrinate with it. The ideology has become the organism. It's a virtual parasite on leftist humans, and it's rapidly adapting to turn Christians into hosts and vectors.
And that's basically the first premise of my thesis: we need to adopt a mindset of "quarantine and containment" with respect to modern culture. And I don't just mean "The Left" proper. I mean ostensibly neutral technology, science, art, philosophy - everything. Especially anything with materialistic/naturalistic/positivistic roots. We don't necessarily need to reject all of it, there's a lot of great value there (e.g. penicillin). But our _default position_ on everything should be rejection. If we're going to _absentmindedly_ make a decision whether to accept or reject something, that decision should always be rejection. If we're going to make an educated guess on something produced by the mainstream culture, that guess should always be "it's toxic." It's obviously better to do your research. I'm just saying we should apply a heuristic of suspicion, _not_ a heuristic of the "benefit of the doubt." We should view all mainstream, modern, western cultural products with suspicion. The burden of proof is on the mainstream to prove to us that its cultural artifacts are benign. The Amish have the right strategy. And we all know the Amish are among the best bets to survive modernity. If you had to bet on a religious community to survive modernity, you'd certainly pick the Amish before you'd pick most Christian denominations. And that's because the Amish _by default_ reject everything the modern culture expels from its bowels until it's proven itself benign.
And I totally agree there's a lot of relief in accepting that. Make a clean break and start over. The sooner we start developing a new culture, cleanly partitioned from the festering carcass of the old one, the better chance we stand of surviving the next few hundred years of Western "progress." If we wait too long to sever ourselves from the conjoined twin that is the mainstream western culture, it'll be too late. We'll have already accepted way too many of the catastrophic errors of the culture of death, and we'll have failed to hone our strategy of defending our insular culture from the mainstream's efforts to colonize us. There's a good chance that the virulent strain of anti-Christian bigotry we're seeing brewing in the West is only going to continue growing in power and aggressiveness. It's not going to stop mercilessly crushing dissent. Why would it? It's so close to achieving its ends. There might be an occasional populist backlash against our satanic elites, but that's been the case for generations now, and it hasn't yet stopped the left's scorched-earth march through our institutions. Haven't we learned the pattern by now? The left goes a bit too far, and the center wakes up and sides with the right... for a few months. The left goes into hiding, realizing it's gone too far, and pipes down for the briefest of moments. But all it needs to do is wait for the unprincipled center (the overwhelming majority of citizens in any western nation) to inevitably lose focus and move on, and they can go right back to ratcheting up the pressure. It's just this constant tactic of bullying us and taking advantage of our pacifism, getting away with as much as it can possibly get away with, before retreating and crying foul and playing the victim when we _finally_ react to their latest onslaught of outrages. They're just gonna keep doing that. And that's a big problem, because every time they do that, after the dust has settled, we realize they successfully moved the goalposts about 50 miles toward moral chaos and despair. That's why leftist "progress" is always a ratchet. The movement stops and starts periodically, but the needle only ever moves in _one_ direction. The Overton window only ever expands to the left, to encompass new atrocities and degeneracies, new forms of self-worship and rebellion against God. It virtually never expands to the right. If we keep allowing ourselves to be played in this way, we'll simply be gone within a matter of generations. The only _realistic_ strategy for survival I can see (i.e., excluding imaginative alternatives like moving to Mars) is to act as quickly as possible to _totally separate_ ourselves from this "conjoined twin" I mentioned before it hurls itself off of that cliff we can all see looming large on the horizon. That's not to say we should stop evangelizing or that we shouldn't, like Jonathon said, give people an off-ramp. We should always welcome defectors from the culture of death. I am one of them, myself. But one way or another, we each need to make a spirited effort to reject the culture's attempts to insert itself into our daily lives and worldviews. That doesn't mean severing every single tie that binds us to the culture, it just means our interactions with it should be one-way by default: we influence it, not the other way around. Paul went to Rome to preach, not to consume Roman entertainment. If we're playing the game right, then the surrounding culture will need to make a very convincing case for us to accept one of its products.
@@ToxicallyMasculinelol The Amish are scared of the world. We can’t be that. The Holy Spirit is stronger than the smut
FANTASTIC comment!!!! You are 100% correct, IMO. Just the other day, I wrote in another comment on a Matt Fradd video that we need to become "Luddites" again, canceling our toxic cable; watch only select movies and listen to select music; instead of screen time, spend time outside, play board games with your family, hang out with friends IN PERSON, cook, read good (paper!) books, garden. Buy loads of classic books from used-bookstores (because the woke crowd is starting to rewrite classics via "sensitivity editors") to preserve the original versions. Take walks in nature, pray, go to church and Adoration, start Bible study groups, etc.
This conversation is just amazing. Thank you for it.
One note of hope, my older kids didn't get phones until high school and even then, no internet, no snap chat, no camera, etc. They thought they would be social lepers too but they are not! In fact, very popular and fine. Now, our youngest is asking for a phone at age 13 and she is using the same arguments the older ones did but unfortunately for her, we know the arguments are not true. Turns out, you can still be cool without it. It might upset them to not get what they want but parents need to wake up and do the hard stuff. Now, my older son is 19 and paying for his own phone. I still worry that he is sucked in as we all struggle with but he is an adult now and at some point, he is in charge of his own life.
I wasn’t acquainted with Jonathon van Maren til now. I will be looking for him and following him. Excellent speaker!
This is so refreshing. I'm on board with just redefining our subculture. I'm also on board with his economics. My husband and I converted last year and we bought into the two-income household family set up because for one we were raised that way. But now I'm trapped Because of exorbitant student loans. I would happily have 5-7 kids God willing if my student loans would be forgiven so I could stay home and be a barefoot homesteader. I want 5 kids as it is
I am really enjoying this talk. My only pushback to the entertainment discussion is - what is the heuristic we have to determine what is well ordered entertainment, and what is disordered? I mean for goodness sake much of the old testament would be worse than R rated if you turned it into a film or TV series. I think the biggest thing we need to do is raise our kids on the good stuff. The word of the Lord. classical literature (from peter rabbit to the hobbit to Narnia and so on). And bring up them up as good Christians, who can then go out and recognize bad entertainment as that. When something is being pushed on them, they'll be able to recognize it and shut it off.
But we still need to develop that heuristic that is simple and allows us to categorize the good from the bad. And that's where I'm really interested in a robust discussion. I want to come up with a good one. And be able to use that to determine what not only my kids watch, but what I and my wife watch.
Jonathan, I love your knowledge, thoughtfulness, and your energy!
Honestly i think the issue is parents aren't talking to their kids, or they are waiting too long. If your kid is 13 or 14 before you give the talk, well his friends have already been talking to him about it for a couple of years by that point. Another issue is parents aren't creating an environment where kids feel comfortable bringing these subjects up to their parents. My husband and i have always tried to have an environment of free flowing discussion, and it worked. So my middle son was first exposed to porn on the school bus when he was 10 or 11. He came home and immediately told us. He also wasn't embarrassed to tell us exactly what he saw. What he had seen was a woman performing oral sex on a man. Because he told us everything, we were able to do two things. First we were able to tell him how bad porn is and even give him the science on what it does to your brain (it actually changes the structures of the brain and causes neurological disorders). So he had a good understanding of why its bad for you. We were also able to teach him about sex and marriage. We taught him that what he saw isn't always a realistic expectation of sex, and that it all has to do with consent. We were also able to teach him that what he saw isn't necessarily a bad thing in the confines of a marriage, again, assuming there is enthusiastic consent. Some women enjoy pleasing their husbands that way and others don't. So we were able to have a conversation about sex acts, and how you really need to get to know your partner and never cross any boundaries. Sex isn't wrong, but it can be disastrous if it's not respected. Now then, if we hadnt made sex and relationships an open discussion with our children, theres no way our son would have come to us. Because he came to us, we were able to teach him our values, instead of his friends teaching him. Its been a few years now, and both of my teenage sons are disgusted with the idea of porn, and both of them want a good woman they can marry and share these things with.
Allowing women to work "tax free" for having 4 children, just means the women will birth kids to give over to the state. It should be "if a woman gives birth to or adopts 4 children and will homeschool them, their husbands can work for life "tax free". That supports the family.
The black community has practiced something similar for the last fifty years: welfare babies.
This guy is a straight shooter. Loved this talk. Couldn't pull myself away.
Many in this young middle-age generation in their 40"s have remained Catholic in their rebellious years perhaps because they had parents who behaved and openly kept their faith. At least in this country. I am hopeful.
Mr. Van Maren had come to my school earlier this year. Amazing discussion.
This was a fantastic episode! I listened with a notepad nearby to keep track of the significant list of recommended reading offered here. So many great books to check out. Thank you!
I'm glad to know these discussions are still happening.🙏🏼
Have really enjoyed this conversation. The one with Jason Evert was also fantastic! Keep up the good work.
Good interview...challenging ideas, suggesting changes...encouraging courage. I am a Catholic convert, haven't been to church but twice since the 'before' time (by that, I mean SARS Co V 2) struggling with EVERYTHING going on in the world today, most especially the controversies within the Church herself. Asked now where I fall on that continuim, I answer that I am, at present, a Christian-at-Large (or maybe a Catholic-at-Large). I can now use my Christian Prayer without the little cards, and use a missal for the daily readings, so have not abandoned my devotion to my personal faith. I so appreciate programs such as this which help me ask myself the same important questions. I am on a journey that I hope will land me back at church and the Mass.
I was an English major in school, and a professor who I respect would say, "Reality is a construct of language," to illustrate the power of language. At the time, students would have to stop and consider what he meant, but the meaning so obvious nowadays. "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power" by Josef Pieper has been on my reading list.
This guy needs a podcast
Good news, he's got one! It's called The Van Maren Show..
Loving this podcast! I stopped watching Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, and others. Don't miss them 😊
I only watched Tim Pool was Seamus was on.
Same here Sunny. ❤
Just read Heidi and just started Little House in the Big Woods with my wee ones. 🎉
Not a classic but the boxcar children is a really sweet series too, and we also love billy and blaze books
Love this! And small world … so cool to hear Jonathon lives in my home town, good ol Tillsonburg ❤🙌🏼
What do Marta Kauffman (creator of Friends), Bob Iger (CEO of Disney), Larry Fink (chairman and CEO of BlackRock, one of the biggest owners of Walt Disney), Ben Shapiro (DW), Dennis Prager (PragerU), Bari Weiss (journalist), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (President of Ukraine), David Zaslav (CEO of Warner Bros Discovery), etc. have in common? 1 Th3ss 2:15
Where are they directing our eyeballs? Often called the windows to our souls M@tth3w. 18:9
La C!v!lta C@tt0lica
1 hr 32... the Jewish Culture was very good at passing down their culture. God gave them the rules and feasts and taught them to remember what God did for them; How God saved them from their enemies; brought them out of Egypt; parted the Red Sea. Perhaps Christianity needs to get better at celebrating our Feasts and passing down our stories of how God saves us! Personal testimony helps people to share and increase their faith. Thanks for all your interviews and pints!
Christianity is the real continuation of Judaism.
@@hamie7624 So therefore is Judaism the real continuation of Samaritanism?
@@enijize1234 no, it's just talmudism.
I don't care for entertainment. I will always choose real conversations or listening to conversations rather than watching something to be entertained.
All conservative Canadians are welcome 🙏 come get your US citizenship ❤️❤️
No thanks.
This guy needs to be a guest on the yes no game
Catholicism is exactly sanity. The universe is Personal.
This was a great episode!!! I hope Jonathon comes back on again!
Re: finding decent kids and family shows and not supporting corrupt streaming companies: buy a DVD player and used DVDs. There used to be excellent shows and movies available.
Exactly. And just watch old material, there is decades worth available already, nothing new is needed.
I'm only twenty minutes in and I'm absolutely terrified of the world we live in. God, have mercy on us
Canada doesn't deserve Jonathon
Listened to the entire three hours. Makes me think about talking to other parents about smart phones when my sons enter school
I don’t know why, but it hit me hard when he talked about the images taken of aborted babies saying, “Only by actually showing the only baby photos of these children that were ever taken can these children take their rightful place among us.”
It brought tears to my eyes.
On Ukraine: very sad, not my fight, the imminent danger to Americans is our own government long before it is Putin or Xi
why is this his only interview in the last year on when I search Jonathon Van Maren???? wild. great interview
This was such a fantastic episode! Would love if PWA had Jonathon back on soon!
Awesome episode, thanks so much guys❤
I have to push back on your characterization of Me Before You. I have only read the book, but I interpreted it as a criticism of assisted suicide. the main character does everything in her power to prevent it, and spends the rest of the story (and sequels) feeling betrayed and heartbroken that her loved one would make such a choice.
Oooh, I like this insight.
I havent seen the movie or read the book but even if a movie is based on a book they are different things.
Maybe you are right about the book but that doesnt say much about the movie because the producers and director can take the story and frame so differently that the message can be the other way around.
I'm not a Christian but I absolutely love this podcast and this conversation in particular. I find myself in the Douglas Murray camp. So many social ills can be solved by adherence to Christian teaching. But I can't find it within myself to fully adopt the faith.
Maybe because the faith/religion isn't just about a set of rules of various kinds, an intellectual model for social harmony, etc. It's not about ideology or political/social model. It's about the relationship with God first and foremost, all the rituals and rules are ordered towards that goal. It requires the conviction of the whole heart.
Maybe,just maybe, God is slowly pulling you and opening your heart. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate the social and cultural values of Christianity. But Christianity is ultimately more than that. No one can force you to change your heart, to make you internally convinced. Faith starts, when intellectual, social, cultural considerations end.
hello, i'm homeschool, to the Iphone section, giving a 14 yo a phone I agree that it takes the child away from the family which is bad. For me, I live in an area where my mother won't let me walk outside our neighborhood but my father would (if my mother let me), i am also one of 5. my mother regrets getting me a phone, due to the risks that it poses, i won't lie i have been exposed to those risks and they have effected me. my point is i don't see kids my age very much kids at school see ppl abt 40hrs a week. i see other kids abt 5 separate occasions in a week and those are usually for abt an hour or two at a time. within that i see kids *my* age abt twice a week. and those i call my friends (aka. those who have similar morals to me, that does not mean they are catholic) i see abt once a week twice a week if i am very lucky. my friends (this is about 3 people) who I trust and either share my catholic faith or are Christian in some way, get to see about once once every three months to a year (the year is for the two who have moved away but we make a point to see bc we know the whole family). my parents can only drive us so many places. I want to meet ppl and make friends but the opportunities for me to get out and meet new people and interact with my current friends is few and far between. i went to a camp abt a year ago and the whole week I had to continuously remind myself to talk to people and to not shut everyone out. using a number/ the internet has helped me stay in contact with my existing friends. especially my close Christian friends.
The core message I am getting from the interview is: « The world is out of joint and its degree of out-of-jointness is unredeemable, hence flee it into nodes of sub-cultures. » How is this Christ-like?
Levi Shalom
Regarding Hungary's policies, whilst I disagree with the overt religiousity of the origin of the policies, as a UK-based athiest in a committed relationship with a Catholic convert... I'd kill for the opportunity to buy a house, marry my partner and raise a family.
It is about time that the economy served the actual human beings existing within it, rather than the other way round.
Tuttle Twins is truly a great conservative kids cartoon!
When you were talking about that the West is dead, I was shouting inside like "not that fast! Look a little to the East, Hungary is still holding her ground.":D Later I was glad you talked about it. My country usually gets criticism from everyone.
Btw Pope Francis comes on Friday, there will be a huge Papal Holy Mass in front of the Parliament. And on Pentacost the Flame of Love Movement organized a gathering for 10.000 youngsters at an old Marian Shrine. Everyone is called to send rosaries.
The Holy Spirit is alive here and works! God Bless, great show!:)
Good work. Keep up the good work, Matt and Jonathon
WOW ... LOVE this fellow Canuck
I really like this guest and find myself agreeing with him on many things. He's very Canadian in his worldview in terms of his distrust of free market nonsense and his advocacy for policies that seek to strengthen the family. This is what American conservativism gets wrong; no one is interested in having children or staying married if there's no support for them when they lose their job or can't afford a medical procedure for their child. True conservatism is providing the supports people need to thrive within a family environment. Canada has a national childcare benefit, universal healthcare, and publicly-funded Catholic schools. That's real conservatism.
Excellent interview. Top notch quality, as usual-thanks!
Phyllis Bowman who founded 'SPUC' in the U.K should be recognised at the proposed Shrine. She was my old Boss. Glad to say I went door to door campaigning for the 'No' Vote in the abortion referendum in Ireland in 2018.
2:07:00
Every DW host has called for the banning of porn.
What a fantastic conversation!! Jonathon's come to many of the same conclusions I have come to on my own having delved into moral theology since studying myself back into the Church with regard to watching modern TV (e.g. UFC, boxing, training for self-defense vs. actually engaging in violence for others' entertainment, the more obvious question of consuming what Hollywood puts out, etc.).
Excellent. Watched every minute!
Jonathan, Canada needs to hear your voice.
watching this a few weeks late... can't believe matt would dare to drink a Budweiser?!? lol
GOOD LISTENING! ☆☆☆☆☆
For kids, Adventures in Odyssey radio episodes are very well done. $10 month. My husband is a construction worker who hears such immoral garbage and he even gets drawn into the stories. It's a great way to form kids consciences.
This guy is great but on Russia he is very wrong and I write this from my house in Eastern Europe. I am not pro Putin or like Russia but history and geopolitics are very clear. To say that Russia attacked unprovoked or to see it as a Ukraine vs Russia conflict is borderline crazy. This is quite literally a fight against unipolar system (read american supremacy). This guy should really listen to Victor Orban.
You are right, but other will understand this only when bombs will drop on their head, their homes will destroyed, their children will kidnapped. th-cam.com/video/7GKx5i7YDjg/w-d-xo.html
UFC and porn are far from being a 1:1 comparison. Apples and oranges.
This show was great tbh
Jonathon's comments about media are spot-on. A media empire is about the *only* thing American conservatism has managed to achieve (with the possible exception of judicial originalism). Heck, what does it even mean to be a conservative in America? It means that you consume one form of media rather than another. It means that you line Tucker Carlson's pockets rather than Rachel Maddow's. Congratulations! So much conserving!
I dabble in civil-society stuff, and it never ceases to amaze me how uniform the acceptance of The Latest Thing is. All these cultural institutions which supposedly exist for the sake of conserving things-conserving literature, conserving knowledge, conserving the visual arts, conserving music, conserving local history, conserving buildings, conserving whatever-and . . . conservatives are nowhere to be found. You might run into some out-of-touch retirees who don't really get what the kids are doing-and don't really care, either. But that's the best you can hope for. 92.3 percent of the people who involve themselves in their communities in any meaningful way seem a-okay with the cultural revolution. It never seems to occur to anyone that it's *weird* that you're more likely to encounter a "conservative" at a random keg party than at your local library, but here we are!
Sorry for the rant, but this stuff makes my blood boil.
Really? Because to me, what the Daily Wire is doing--maybe failing at times but doing--IS conserving culture. Is creating content and conversations around it.
Conservative vs. dissident is a great distinction... a great way to explain people like Murray, Wiess, etc.
Being dissident in itself isn't really a virtue - some groups have tendencies to be revolutionaries ("revolutionary spirit"). We just live in such times that being a conservative or traditionalist Christian makes you a dissident.
This was good for me to watch a bit with my son who it helped to understand the effect that media is having on him. It also gave me some ways to talk to my daughter about the sexual revolution versus God's view of gender, sex and family.
Are in case anyone here in the comments is from Alberta Saskatchewan or Manitoba we love you since you’re from the cool part of Canada we wish you were Americans
Secede and join us!
Manitoba here!
Great ep
This is my entertainment. I just watch Pints and similar stuff if I want to sit still. Watching with a cigar is great. As a cigar lover I'm always trying to get a glimpse at the bands.
Jonathan's looks like DE Undercrown Connecticut, good choice as he seems a bit new to cigars. Hope he liked it. Matt's...I can't tell what it is.
Absolutely. TH-cam Catholic Channels are what I mostly watch. And Classic Movies, pre 1965, and period dramas.
Jonathan is fantastic!
I never put two and two together. Listening to your accent, I never thought about you not being from America until today when you mentioned you're from Australia.
I’m a conservative and staunch Atheist. It’s a weird place to be as someone who strives to be grounded on logic and reason while his peers are still lost in religion. Especially those who pick and choose the convenient parts, and ignore the parts they know are immoral as science and technology has advanced. If anyone actually practiced what’s in the Bible as it was written, they would likely be in prison or a mental institution.
If Covenant Eyes could offer parish subscriptions, the wealthy could help their poorer parent brothers and sisters have for their kids. Would be cool if priests/pastors could announce such a powerful spiritual -techno tool to their flocks
The comparison of fighting to pron is actually astoundingly bizzare. Fighting is a deeply spiritual endeavour. It gives us a chance to mortify the flesh, to surrender ourselves as sacrifice to God as the apostle tells us. It connects us with deep parts of our nature. It allows us to care less about our comfort and wellbeing then we do about glorifying God. The UFC is fantastic for reminding us of this.
We need to emphasise the warrior vain of our tradition, e.g. the Crusaders, not this 60s lovey-lovey-love-love peace and love liberalism. How can you not see that you're siding with the pagans on this one? Violence is part of our nature, which we according to Aquinas are meant to perfect. Let's.
Personally didn't vibe with it. I wrestled in high school and appreciate the sport as they remind me of the fun times I had then competing.
I wonder how watching people fighting allows you to care less about your comfort and well being.
I have no children. I pretty much tapped out if the culture. I watch king of the hill, Andy Griffith and mash. Mash has some issues and the commercials are too much sometimes.
Thanks
Daily wire- I think it’s unrealistic to expect movies to be completed perfect in every way. When people do that you get hallmark movies. Evil isn’t so bad it is worth fighting, everything is bland and cliche, and sedate. At this point you accept the portrayal of some debauchery so that the hero can be depicted fighting it, or you simply nix entertainment over all. Otherwise you might as well watch some psychedelic looking shape shifting colors to white noise and elevator music. That’s about the value you get out of these tightly controlled and mild films and tv shows. Slightly comforting and slightly annoying. I say do puzzles, listen to good music, have a hobby, draw, have people over, garden. Watch a well made documentary maybe. But please don’t try to make “pure” films. That’s not a new idea. We know it doesn’t work.
Benjamin Cello!!! My daughter loves that show!!
The issue with the Russian invasion and conservatives is certainly that conservatives feel the need to take the opposite position of the liberal. However, the reason that no one is talking about the Ukranian's perspective is that everyone in America is viewing it through the lens of American foreign policy. The main question is whether we should be funding the war, not whether Russia was correct. Unfortunately, most conservatives can't seem to make such a distinction.
I have some friends in Ukraine that I am very seriously worried for. And at the beginning of this conflict, my view was that we should have immediately put troops on the ground to stop this. If we had just annexed Ukraine into the collective west, Russia would not have invaded. Instead, we pussyfooted around. Since we didn't put troops on the ground, I thought we should not do anything. No funding, no aid, because Ukraine will loose this war, but instead of taking the 7 days everyone thought it would at the beginning, it would take two or three years, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths. It crushes me how correct I seem to have been. The west is using Ukraine as a weapon against Russia at this point. We are utterly unwilling to fight to defend her, yet we want her to fight this war in hopes of causing regime change and the potential collapse of Russia. It blew my mind that when things looked even slightly positive for Ukraine around April of last year, editorial after editorial came out about the collapse of the Putin regime, with some authors going so far as to imagine how many different countries would be formed by the west out of the Russian Federation, and which ones we could immediately count on being pro-western. It was insane.
So I repeat exactly what I have been saying from the beginning. If Ukraine wants to exist as a state, they have no choice but to fight. Yes, Russia could end this tomorrow by withdrawing. But the west could have ended this far earlier. We could have pushed the Ukrainian government to abide by Minsk I and II. We could have not helped initiate a color revolution in Ukraine. We could have put boots on the ground if we think Ukraine is this important. The west is making errors here, and is getting people killed. I can't do anything to change Russia. I can't make Putin more or less truly Christian (his mother did baptize him in secret at great risk to herself, so it is possible, even if I have always seriously doubted it.) I can't force Russia out of Ukraine. But I can recognize that America is pursuing policies to the detriment of the Ukrainian people, and I can recognize that America wants Ukraine to be LGBTQified. I can recognize that America is using Ukrainian lives to try and topple another regime. I can recognize that America may be putting its ability to adequately defend itself at risk as we get ever nearer to open conflict with a million-man army in China. I can vote to try and make sure that we rectify these issues. And I can try to help others understand that what we are doing is wrong, that we can't have things both ways, and that we will loose if we keep this up.
You know Tolstoy has a theory of history, which can be summed up as he who does God's will wins the battle. In War and Peace, he has a line asking why the veteran army runs from the new conscripts, or why the large army is routed by the smaller? Why doe the seasoned general make an obvious mistake, and the moron win the day? Why does the Dnipro river thaw as Napolean attempts to retreat, resulting in a near total loss of his army, and a loss of all hope of overwintering in Poland to fight another day? Because God wills it so.
Constantine was not a true Christian. He didn't convert till his deathbed, was a pretty vicious dude, and was a womanizer. But he legalized Christianity. He furthered the cause of God's people. Thanks to him, Christianity entered its Golden age and expanded as it has never done before or since. Putin may not be a true Christian. He may be using it out of pure cynicism. I have always thought that to be the case. But he is trying to push Christianity. The entirety of the Russian Church is suspect, in my opinion. I have always thought Kyril to be nothing more than a Putin stooge. But I can't say that the west is closer to doing God's will than Russia is. We are out here fighting for it's destruction. We have people who only stopped supporting Ukraine when they found out that they were Christian. We are pushing abortion, contraception, porn, homosexuality, perversion, atheism, and all manner of evil on the world. Quite frankly, I do not think we deserve to win this war.
I just wish the poor Ukrainians weren't caught in the crossfire.
I think that's more than a pint in the intro there
Thursday, so cool your dad made biscuits and gravy almost every weekend - my dad would too on Sunday mornings! I took over the tradition when I was older, so I make some bomb biscuits and gravy (plenty of friends and family will back me up on that, so I'm just being humble ;)).
Did anyone else just listen to this (without watching) and keep forgetting the guest isn't Michael Hitchborn?
My movie viewing rule is nothing made after the mid 60s.....when Hollywood had the much maligned Hayes code there was at least a moral framework for storytelling
Great talk!
I’m so old I was one of the few kids that had a pager in high school lol
For media consumption we need to ask ourselves, "would I watch it if Jesus was in the room with me?" Spoiler alert, He is!! Lord help us.
I do sympathize with the point Douglas Murray made. I'm not gay and I still can't get myself to believe in the historicity of the resurrection & other theologically important ideas
Great talk! I’m writing a YA novel, actually, that my goal is to write it as something I would give to my own (older) child. In the back of my mind I’m worried about who will publish it? Will they twist it into something I’m not trying to express?
If the West is dead, and we need to create subcultures….fine. But how? Where? These are questions it’s important to answer bc otherwise it just sounds defeatist, even if it’s true…
Find the homeschooling communities and build up from there.
I was atheist, and I moved to the Bible Belt just to learn how again
I want to move to Steubenville too 😎
When EXCELLENT new pastor arrived,
When our EXCELLENT new pastor arrived, for months I was wondering how he got to be such a good and faithful priest.
Then, one day, in a homily he unknowingly gave me the answer when he said,
"When I was studying at Franciscan University..."
Please turn on closed captioning.