Latest / Sword&Spade / Apologetics Without the Ego: Joe Heschmeyer on Winning Souls, Not Arguments

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Apologetics Without the Ego: Joe Heschmeyer on Winning Souls, Not Arguments · Sword&Spade

• Welcome everybody back to the sword and spade podcast. The podcast that was, born out of a magazine that magazine is still in print seven years. If you haven't signed up to get your next issue, you you're going to miss it. it's in print and we don't just put it all online. That's right. There's people still doing that. but my guest today is somebody who is online. Joe, I'm just going to admit something yesterday, our content editor called and said, do you know you have Joe Heschmeyer on the podcast tomorrow? And I hope this is not meant to be offensive. said, who? And then he said, no, he's he's like a he's an apologist. And then I got excited because I'm a convert. But I converted and I just celebrated my 20th anniversary as a Catholic 2006. And I've told this story many times. And I leave out a detail that I remembered yesterday because of you, which is when I was still. annoying Mostly evangelical but very Calvinist Young man who thought he knew a lot. I got a stack of Catholic answers magazines Do you guys still have because Joe you're a Catholic answers apologist Joe Heschmeyer (02:22.538) I was just mourning when you were describing how you still do print. We were doing print until about a year ago and it just was costing too much compared to, I mean, it was a real revenue loser and we knew that and tried to kind of stick it out as long as we could. And we had a couple donors who really liked the magazine, which helped us prolong its life beyond what mere market forces would have dictated. Jason M. Craig (02:36.203) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (02:51.906) But alas, we had to kind of come face to face with that reality. So we still have, the magazine is just digital only now. Jason M. Craig (02:59.839) Well friends, I have good news. Sword and spade refuses to see reality and we are printing this thing. cause it's that good. And if, if all those big donors from Catholic answers are disappointed, we'll be happy to help you subsidize. Cause it's ex it's expensive. but we, guess part of just, you know, the background of, of sword and spade is, Attempting to help what we call, I want to call average Joe's just Catholic men that are in the trenches raising a family. Joe Heschmeyer (03:11.345) There you go. Jason M. Craig (03:29.227) do that. And one of the things that they often ask for help in is just I'm addicted to my screens. And I'd like, and I'd like to be like a reader and be intelligent like Joe Hashmeier, but I don't know where to start. And magazines are kind of a good bridge. So that's the thrust of that. Catholic Answers was certainly, I mean, that magazine was, you know, apologetics in print. And I can tell you someone handed me a stack of them and I opened it up and it was some editorial about how why priests should be maybe giving some apologetics on baptism and that might, you know, and it seemed like back then Catholic answers was like really trying to show that apologetics. You don't have to be embarrassed about defending Catholicism because sometimes it seems it can seem like those in the church clergy even are embarrassed to be like to sound triumphant or defensive. But now it's changed a lot. And and apologetics have gone. Joe Heschmeyer (04:25.248) Yes it has. Jason M. Craig (04:28.617) really big online and it's brought in a lot of young men. So how long have you have you kind of been watching this change or how has this change been from like it's not a fringe thing, but apologetics was not front and center now. I mean. The you know, the the bishops can put out as many documents as they want, but like a Catholic apologist on YouTube can have the you know, the ears and eyes of a million people, you know, really quick. So have you been watching that unfold and how long have you been involved with it? Joe Heschmeyer (04:58.253) Yeah, I've been involved in it about the span of time you're describing. I started in 2009, so a little under 20 years ago. So I was beginning to consume apologetics content in roughly the time period you're describing, and then began an apologetics blog in 09. And you're right. Yeah, I was Catholic. I was learning a lot more about the faith. I had come of age in the era you were describing. Jason M. Craig (05:04.352) Okay. Jason M. Craig (05:17.983) Wait, so you were a Catholic. You're saying. Joe Heschmeyer (05:26.529) where focusing on the Catholic distinctives was sort of frowned upon because it was viewed as either triumphalistic or divisive or something like that. And as a result, Catholics didn't know why they were Catholic instead of just some generic non-denominational Christian. And we see that in the numbers because a ton of them just became generic non-denominational Christians because it's like, why do the harder thing if you haven't given me any reason to do this over Jason M. Craig (05:30.145) Mm-hmm. Jason M. Craig (05:46.005) Yeah Joe Heschmeyer (05:55.074) the place down the street that has better music and people seem more excited to be there and everything else. And I think we've seen, yeah, you can drink coffee during, exactly. you know, just, was actually, was recently at a Catholic Protestant ecumenical event and they had both a Catholic mass and a Protestant service there. And the Protestant service, in addition to that, a bunch of talks, I was given a short talk there and a bunch of other people were. Jason M. Craig (06:00.351) and I can drink coffee while I'm worshiping God. Joe Heschmeyer (06:22.413) And the Protestant service was very pleasant, but it really, it seemed like one of the other talks with some music beforehand, whereas the mass was this completely different thing. It didn't look or feel like, sure, there was a little bit of a homily in there, but it was unmistakably the mass and not a talk. Whereas if somebody had shown up five minutes late to the Protestant service, they would have thought, oh, who's the speaker in this slot? And again, mean, look. The Protestant pastor who preached was one of the best speakers of the day, but it was a real reminder of the difference between these liturgical experiences, to put it mildly. And obviously, not all Protestantism looks like what I just described, but you know. Jason M. Craig (06:59.583) Yeah. Yeah. Jason M. Craig (07:04.609) No, but sometimes it, well, I want you to go back. want to make sure we go back to your experience in the long run, I was, there's a, church in St. Augustine, Florida, that is, I believe. A Presbyterian church, but Henry Flagler who was, building churches for people. Anyone w I hope people are watching this podcast and they don't edit this out, but like my, it's like having a, my microphone is like having a sock. That's a quitter. It just keeps sinking and I just keep following it and then adjusting it, which that's, that's fun. I I could put a center. If I put a center block on it, that'd be very sword and Spadey. but this church is, when, Flagler built it for them, they said, well, we want like an, so they basically asked for like a Byzantine shaped church. big beautiful dome in the middle, kind of cruciform, but then inside it's just a pulpit in the middle. I mean, that's it. There's no ornamentation. It's like a really elaborate lecture hall oriented towards worship, but there was just a pulpit. yeah, that was a stark. Joe Heschmeyer (08:11.297) And that is, I mean, this is probably clear for a lot of people, but that is an intentional theological as well as architectural choice where you create a space where you have altar calls and no altar because you don't believe in a sacrificial dimension to worship. so an altar, particularly an altar upon which is laid bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ has no place in their theology. So it has no place in the architecture of their church. Jason M. Craig (08:19.961) yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (08:39.991) So they see and admire these older, beautiful churches, but the theology that led to that church is radically different than the theology that leads to the kind of lecture hall style of church, where it's a podium and a bunch of comfortable seats, and you even have, and a lot of the more modern ones, sort of movie theater style seating, which really sends a signal. Like architecture's not neutral. Jason M. Craig (08:54.239) Right. Joe Heschmeyer (09:05.417) And so if you've designed this thing so it feels like a lecture hall or it feels like a movie theater, that tells the person experiencing it what their role is. You know, they are the people who are going to passively enjoy the spectacle, or they're the people who are going to receive this kind of content. And they might have a limited amount of audience participation, but they are the audience. are not, you know, celebrating this liturgically with the presider. Jason M. Craig (09:29.281) Yeah, they're there to listen. Jason M. Craig (09:34.028) Yeah, my kids, they know that sometimes I go places and I give talks like whatever you go in somewhere to give a talk Papa, know, and they're not interested in going to one of my talks because they have to listen to me talking all the time. and they don't understand why people would go to that. then when I, when they ask like what this denomination does or like, do Protestants do? I'm like, it's they go to a talk on Sunday and they sing, they got to talk and they sing. Joe Heschmeyer (09:40.47) Yeah. Jason M. Craig (09:58.591) A lot of the ones we live in the South around here, that's basically what they're doing. And they're like, they can't fathom not worshiping, not doing something. You know, we have a very traditionally minded parish. Joe Heschmeyer (10:09.898) Yeah, this is something where... I think what got us on this kind of tangent was I grew up in an era where the difference that leads to why we have those two different liturgical experiences was never really explained to a lot of the laity. Why we should be Catholic rather than Protestant. Why we should take this road that is in some ways the harder road to walk in terms of more as expected of you. And if you're not told why... At best you're told here are the rules, but these are just the rules, and there doesn't seem to be anything deeper grounding them. You can imagine why a lot of people walked away. And so I had a lot of questions, and eventually, through a combination of reading and discovering Catholic apologetics for the first time in my 20s, I was able to come to a much deeper knowledge of why we believe what we believe and why this isn't just... Jason M. Craig (10:49.833) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (11:08.082) needless sacrifice, but is actually something really good and beautiful and came to love my faith in a much deeper way than I had before. you you were talking about how 20 years ago a lot of the argument was, hey, we need apologetics. And we did. And now we have it. And I think that we're seeing the fruits of it in a lot of ways. I don't want to exaggerate the role apologetics plays in all of this, but I do think apologetics serves two purposes. One, you have the immediate direct. Somebody's got a question and they type it in and they find an answer and that intellectual obstacle is removed. Or maybe they're just browsing online and they see a video or an article and it plants a seed where it causes them to think about faith differently or think about the Bible differently or think about a particular doctrine differently. Those things happen all the time, but I think there's a second order effect where we maybe don't even notice it. which is as Catholics learn more about why we believe what we believe, we fall deeper in love with Catholicism. And so then somebody, you know, looking into the Catholic Church is much more likely to find Catholics who are passionate about their faith rather than Catholics who are lukewarm about their faith. And that has this tremendous attractive quality to it. So maybe the person, the seeker to use the kind of Protestant lingo, Jason M. Craig (12:15.275) Right, yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (12:35.988) The seeker doesn't even know what apologetics is. They've never done it themselves in terms of looking anything up. But they still find people who've been transformed by apologetics to have a deeper love of the faith. And again, I don't want to isolate this from all the other ways of growing spiritually and everything. But it's an ingredient in this larger thing. And so as they're in... yeah, go ahead. Well, as they're finding people transformed like this, that has this attractive quality. Jason M. Craig (12:55.797) Yeah, I would argue. Oops. Sorry. Go ahead. Joe Heschmeyer (13:03.03) So they're still being helped by apologetics, even if they don't know it. That's all I'm saying. Jason M. Craig (13:06.347) Yeah, yeah, I think one of the reasons, especially Protestants, they don't even use the word apologetics. mean, some of them do now we've got the, like the James whites and the Doug Wilson's, but they don't use it because Protestantism operates in a, the way that Catholics, when they think of apologetics, which is I need to be able to biblically defend what I believe. That's really common conversation amongst, mean, when I was a Protestant, if you're talking to this charismatic or this Calvinist or what they're, they're pretty well versed. mean, of a more serious, maybe conservative, maybe even leaning fundamentalists or, or, or historical sort, they're accustomed to having to defend, and, seeing the need and the value of defense, not any sort of negative light. This is just what we do, you know, like it's okay. Whereas Catholics one, they have a sense of, well, I have a magisterium. And I like, I like to say the only downside of a Magisterium and I'm not, I'm glad it's a gift from Jesus. I'm glad, but the only downside in the way we receive it, is that like, I'll just go get the answer. I don't ever have to have to go through the process, which actually strengthens you of having to defend, understand, explain. Whereas Protestants, when they come to this, though, you know, you kind of have to, and then Catholics, so they have the Magisterium, but then they have that old attitude, which I'd like you to continue. Jason M. Craig (16:07.571) now that's changed or they had the attitude of like, it's basically mean to do apologetics. You don't have to tell someone they're wrong. You just have to like keep it on the inside or I don't know what the answer is, but they didn't engage before, but now it's everywhere. I mean, it's very common. you, let me get my timeline right. You started apologetics blog and you found yourself My understanding is you were or are a lawyer. So did you just find yourself capable in this arena and it just kept snowballing or? Joe Heschmeyer (16:43.915) Yeah, mean, yeah, I originally started it as a sort of side project in law school. And so I was doing it on the side as a student and then as a lawyer. And it was honestly one of the ways I sort of unwound, you I would have real work where I had to do a lot of research and writing and everything else. And then to unwind, I do a bunch of research and writing. So something's wrong with me, I guess. But I found that very enjoyable. I mean, partly when you're Jason M. Craig (16:56.021) Mm-hmm Jason M. Craig (17:07.467) Yeah, sounds like it. Joe Heschmeyer (17:13.451) Doing research and writing about arcane subjects that don't matter to you know, like so one of the things I had to learn a lot about at the time as a lawyer was different regulations on outdoor heating devices. You know, like if you've got a chiminea, they were being regulated the same way an indoor fireplace was being regulated in terms of efficiency and that doesn't really make sense since the outdoor ones are just inherently less efficient because you're dealing with the entire outdoors. Jason M. Craig (17:42.977) Wait, you live in California, right? Joe Heschmeyer (17:43.262) So I don't, I live in Kansas City. At the time I was in DC, but it was a federal regulation during the Obama administration that was a proposed rule. So we had to do a bunch of research about the regulation of indoor versus outdoor, you know, fireplace, equipment, personal heaters, et cetera. And it's as exciting as it sounds. So then to go from that to talking about the Eucharist and talking about these things that are a real eternal consequence. Jason M. Craig (17:46.547) Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Joe Heschmeyer (18:11.877) Or just discovering, like, hey, here's this little thing that maybe you've noticed but don't know anything about. For example, on Holy Thursday, we don't ring bells after the Gloria. So we do bells in the beginning. There's a ton of bells at the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the Gloria, but then they stop and we don't hear them again until the Easter Vigil, which means that there is one institution of the Eucharist between those two points, which is the Eucharist at the Mass of Lord's Supper. Because, as you know, on Good Friday, it's not technically a Mass, it's pre-sanctified. So there, like, they use this wooden thing that makes a clacking sound. say, well, what is that? What's the history of that? Why do they do that? What's going on? You know, that's, again, it's a small thing, but it's the kind of thing where once you learn about it, you're like, that's actually really beautiful. The way Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil are one liturgy divided over three days and that's why you don't have the same kind of introductory and concluding rights is pretty astonishing once you learn about it and you start to view it as a single liturgy and it changes how you experience it. So those kind of things just really drew me into it. I had no game plan. I had no plan to try to get a job out of it. It was just this stuff is either beautiful or important or both. Jason M. Craig (19:37.91) Yeah. And the, and the truth is thrilling. mean, I, I remember the, the, the cohesiveness of Catholicism or the intellectual consistency, the way it all sort of looks like a total mess, which it is, and because it's got, I got a lot of humanity in there, but then it's this coherent, beautiful whole is, was just, it's what's in it's still exciting. I'd like to ask you a question though. and maybe you experienced this cause I was, Joe Heschmeyer (19:38.129) and I really want to share it with other people. Joe Heschmeyer (19:43.743) Amen. Jason M. Craig (20:07.529) You mentioned how, cause I'd like to really ask you about like the phenomenon and the results of the explosion of basically internet apologetics and you know, the, the, the YouTube world and the, and the reaction videos, by the way, if I ever did a reaction video, which I'm not, I think it would be listening to all the, the terribly explicit, sexually charged songs that they played at sixth grade dances. And just play and have a reaction as an adult and a father to what they let us listen to at my public school. What came on the other day, my wife and I were listening to the radio and I can't even say the words. I can't say the words out loud to you. I mean, it was like and I'm I said they let us this was like on the radio when we were in sixth grade anyway in the world. Joe Heschmeyer (20:37.595) It's crazy the way, I mean, yes. Joe Heschmeyer (20:52.555) I mean, not just lettuce. Those of us who didn't want to listen to that kind of music were basically subjected to it, sometimes even in Catholic schools. Jason M. Craig (20:57.664) Yeah. You gotta be, you know, don't be weird. And it made us really weird. So as far as the effect of the reality of internet of projects, one, the first question is, because you mentioned how it was really exciting. And I remember that. I remember actually Catholic answers forums like a protest. Do remember those? Are they still around? Joe Heschmeyer (21:19.972) yeah. They're not still around. They're a ton of work to maintain. And if you don't maintain them, you get some bad characters who are spreading heresy or bullying people or being creeps or whatever. the amount of work you have to do just for good guardrails, we had to eventually just pull the plug. Jason M. Craig (21:24.853) Okay. Jason M. Craig (21:28.266) Yes. Jason M. Craig (21:32.715) Yeah, I re- Jason M. Craig (21:36.618) Yeah. Yeah. Everything on the internet gets ruined eventually. Right. So anyway, I remember being, I was on Catholic answers forums because it was a great place to go there. You could ask questions. There was like at the time, I mean, this was, you know, 2005. I don't know. It was pretty, I mean, there were some weird guys on there. but maybe, no, maybe I was the weird guy, but I remember coming home and wanting to get home from work to like, get back to this conversation that I was in with this guy, this debate and like, was in Joe Heschmeyer (21:59.018) you Jason M. Craig (22:06.961) that being said, that's obviously that sort of spirit is intensified. You experienced that on the side you were doing this. And I had a man the other day and he was telling me and he said, this was a common experience, but basically he had to repent to his family because it was an escape and he was, and because he had his phone and because he would get so jazzed up on these debates that he actually stopped being a good Catholic man while he was online being a battle warrior, whatever. for Catholic truth. Yeah, what sort of the, you ever experience kind of a dark side of obsession about these things and maybe how, or maybe you have some advice for men that get, because I think, and I'm saying men, I mean, I think when a man gets on an argument, you know, and on a certain type, some of them are just passive, they don't care, but when they get on it, they're on it and they can, now that we have the age of phones, maybe it goes a little too far in their intensity. Joe Heschmeyer (23:04.978) Yeah, that is a good question. There's a natural male desire for conflict. And we should probably just say that more often. That men are bred and prepared for defending and going to battle when need be. And this, obviously, for those of us living right now, for most of us, this is not going to be literal combat. I mean, that may change. The world is a crazy place right now. But the sort of successors, the sons of war, as it were, are sports and debate. And it's these different ways of having the kind of conflict, of having it out in a way that is regulated and no one is getting killed. And it can be very spirited. And it can be on anything. mean, before we even talk about the spiritual dimension to it, we should just recognize that there is a natural male aptitude for and... inclination towards conflict. As you say, it's not everybody. But a lot of men really enjoy sports and or enjoy arguments and debates, either watching them or participating in them. And the thrill of winning can be fun on its own. I was a debater in high school and in college, and then I was a lawyer. I knew this about myself from a very young age. My mom knew this about me from an even younger age, and she really steered me towards debate just to try to get that energy out in a healthier way than just constantly picking arguments at home. So that's like just an important thing to recognize. Like sometimes if we're being honest with ourselves, we are probably not defending the faith because we're enthusiastic about defending the faith. We're defending the faith because we're enthusiastic about having a fight. And when we see that in ourselves, Jason M. Craig (24:58.537) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (25:01.342) that's something to repent of if it's getting in the way of doing the Lord's work. Because if you're doing it just as kind of a recreational hobby, that's not what this is. Like this is too important to trivialize in that way. Now, by all means, this is something you enjoy doing and you're good at doing. God can use all of that. And it's not bad to enjoy doing things that the Lord has given you the gifts to do. You know, if you're someone who has a great gift for art, say, The fact that you might make beautiful religious art and enjoy making it is not a sin in any way. My point is just make sure that you have the spiritual good in view. And that's not just a pretext for something that is basically just a natural outlet. Second, I always go back to Ephesians 6 where St. Paul says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and the forces of darkness. This idea that your enemy Jason M. Craig (25:45.963) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (26:00.348) in the real sense is not the person you're debating with. It's the forces of evil. And if you keep that in view always, then it should tell you that there's two ways of kind of a fire victory, a victory where you really lose. Number one, if you undermine the truth in order to win a debate, you've lost the debate. Like you are not defending the way, the truth and the life. if your defense involves sacrificing the truth. This is the kind of, had to bomb the village to save the village mentality. It's completely self-defeating. But number two, the worst sin is pride. And so if you have this haughty spirit in it of just, I'm going to crush the other person and I'm gonna, you know, crow over them and really make them eat the dirt, you might... rationalize it to yourself of, they need to be humiliated because humility is good for them. And it's like, yeah, maybe there's a log in your own eye and you have just done a tremendous disservice to yourself. Like, the devil is only too happy to have you perform mighty works in the name of the Father and not do the will of the Father. Like, this is explicitly what we're told in the Gospel of Matthew, the fate of those people. Jason M. Craig (27:16.481) Hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (27:22.596) Is that our Lord says to them I never knew I never knew you depart from I never knew you And so see how do I avoid that? Well for one you got to get to know our Lord Which is much more than knowing clever arguments or much more than being able to give a systematic theology It involves prayer. It involves actual encounters with the Lord so in my own life I had a wake-up call in my 20s where I realized that I was sometimes skipping daily mass to fight with people on the internet and Jason M. Craig (27:50.719) Hahaha Joe Heschmeyer (27:53.082) It was like, what am I doing here? You know, like what's the goal? And why is this kind of how... And when I say skipping daily mass, I realize daily mass is not obligatory or anything like this. It was something I did devotionally whenever I could. You sometimes work was such that I'd have a project come up right before I would normally leave for mass, but I was five minutes away walking from a 1210 mass. And so I could just leave at 12, get in there with, or 12 or five mass. So could basically get there right before mass started. And then it was a half hour mass. I could grab a little bite to eat, make it back to the desk within an hour. So it was a perfect setup. It was very easy. So I'm not insisting people who would be a lot more of a sacrifice need to do that. But for me, it was something where it was very clearly like, God has placed me in this spot where I'm this close to the church or this chapel and my spiritual director's there and I know people there. It was spiritually nourishing me. And to cut myself off from that so I could sit alone in my office and fight with people on the internet in my free time was just obviously not the plan God had for my life. And when I realized that I had to sort of do a course correction of saying, OK, what am I doing here? And why am I doing that? And so if you're mindful of that, it does take a little bit of self-knowledge and a little bit of humility because you're able to find, particularly, look, if you're halfway good at apologetics. You can give arguments for things and that's great. But the danger is you can also rationalize things that are indefensible. Like you can say, here's this thing I obviously shouldn't have done, but I can give you 20 reasons why I was okay. And it's not okay. And so being able to just have the humility not to fall for your own crud and just say like, all right, I put myself too much in the driver's seat rather than putting God in the driver's seat. I made it about my own ego. I made it about my own victory. I need to. Jason M. Craig (29:32.661) Yep. Yep. Joe Heschmeyer (29:49.64) let it be God who gets the victory. If you can make that shift, you can do great work. And if you can't make that shift, then it can really become a stumbling block for you. Jason M. Craig (29:59.488) Yeah, it's hard. I think it'd be hard for a man to hear that that you can be doing Catholic stuff and it's bad for your soul, right? Because it's sort of the discussion I'll have with people about the Internet itself. like, well, I'm scrolling at least I'm scrolling through Catholic content. Yeah, but the problem is the scrolling like this is. I'm a firm believer that the reason scrolls come from the bottom up is that they're just bubbling from hell. This endless search for in curiosity toss. That's my, that's my, and it doesn't matter if it's Catholic stuff. If it's taking you away from being alive in grace in the, in the present moment where you are, that's, it's probably bad. so maybe that would lead me to it, to another question I have for you. I was thinking about, as you tell your story, when we think of apologetics today, you know, thanks to you guys, we don't think of magazines anymore. We are thinking of the rise, the internet, the medium of the internet itself. Have you, and it sounds like you went from reading some books to a blog, eventually, you know, the YouTube thing came, Catholic answers. But it does seem, and I remember feeling this shock that you're talking to people in real life and they're not convinced. I remember having the experience that John Henry Newman describes when he converted. He was just expecting to be able to go talk to his friends and they would all become Catholic with him. And I remember going to all my Protestant friends thinking, hey, I'm just gonna explain to you what I read and what I understand now. And you're gonna join me and being really disappointed. And then having to come to grips with the fact that my conversion was a grace and not me being smart and God's lucky to have me. What has been, yeah, how have you learned the difference between being online where people are sort of searching out maybe, and you were talking about young men, they're searching out conflict because they don't have any, and we actually need conflict, we do, we need it, we're made for it. So they're searching it out and maybe it's not the healthiest way, and then they're shocked that in person they're just a jerk. What are the skills that you would give, and I'm thinking of this, my church is one of the ones that experienced this past Easter like, Jason M. Craig (32:13.345) something like 30 or 40 convert and this is a little church, you know, and like these young men coming in, you know, internet stuff. Um, and as I, as I converse, I talk with them, like, love these guys and I see where they are. And now they don't even know you've only just now begun walking in faith and the whole idea of being at humbly living within the body of Christ. This is a whole new life that they never lived. What's the advice you would give to men on engaging what we would, you know, Joe Heschmeyer (32:16.339) Beautiful. Yes. Jason M. Craig (32:40.875) Taking the skill set of apologetics, which if we're honest is honed in the context of apologetics, debates, online discussion, that kind of stuff. What does that look like and how do we harness and use that in the context of, you know, real life and not being weird or a jerk or weird jerks. Joe Heschmeyer (32:57.097) Yeah, it's really good question. I want to actually, if I may, just to put a cap on the last thing we talked about, I wanted to share just a line from the Catechism. In paragraph 1755, it says, morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, that's the goal, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself. And it gives the example of praying and fasting in order to be seen by men. So if you're doing this, for the wrong reasons, or you're doing it in the wrong way, even though it sounds like a good thing on paper, it can become an evil act, which is a thing that should alarm us. Like when the Pharisees fasted, it was evil. When the Pharisees prayed, it was evil. That's what the Catechism says, and that's what Jesus says. Like they've already received their reward. They're praying to themselves, he says, elsewhere, because their motives are egocentric rather than seers. Theocentric rather than centered around God. So when we're approaching it, we should approach it with that spirit. And that's going to actually help answer the question of how do we make that concrete kind of in person? And the first thing to recognize is exactly what you've said. That when you are dealing online, you can have this tremendous amount of selection bias because number one, the people who are engaged with this stuff are the people who care enough to be engaged with this stuff. And number two, the algorithm right now is so incredibly sophisticated that it's not just people who are generically engaged with this stuff. It's people who are engaged and really care about your particular perspective on this topic or whoever's creating the channel. Whether that's because they passionately agree or passionately disagree, you're having a very narrow conversation on virtually whatever topic you're talking about. And this is true. not just in apologetics, you could have a sports page where you've got some channel and you take a particular approach to analyzing sports. Maybe it's super data heavy and you're gonna attract a bunch of other people who are really into a data heavy analysis of sports and then you go to a Super Bowl party and find out that ordinary people don't understand sports that way and if you start talking about really obscure stuff, saber metrics or whatever. Joe Heschmeyer (35:21.064) Their eyes are gonna gloss over and You just have to say okay, like I gotta how do I put this into ordinary people speak? It doesn't mean people are dumb, but it does mean that they might not be approaching things with the same framework you are and They might not be interested in the same questions you are I Jason M. Craig (35:39.103) Or you might be like the Pharisee who's praying with himself. You're actually just talking to yourself. You're not, you're not getting to know the person in front of you at all. Joe Heschmeyer (35:43.684) Sheesh, yeah. Yes, and you just said the right word. Like, getting to know them is so critical. Blaise Pascal, who's been one of my big influences in how I think about apologetics, talks about how people are better persuaded by the ideas which come into their own minds rather than those which come into the minds of others. So, like, if I tell you, Jason, like, I think you should pray more or I think you should, you know, do something more in your spiritual life than you're currently doing, you'll probably just quietly think, I'm never having this guy back on the show. He was a real abrasive jerk. Because it's an idea that came into my own mind, and I imposed it on you in this way that I wasn't listening to you, and I was just sort of giving you the solution I thought made sense. And that's very easy for us to do. And that's not the right way to approach it. And I want to be clear here, that's not even the right way to approach it even when you have objective truth on your side. To just say, hey, go be Catholic. by itself is almost never helpful at all. People find it annoying and they find it annoying for completely human reasons and if we spent even 30 seconds trying to imagine things from their perspective, I think we would recognize that. Or if you imagine someone doing an equivalent thing to you on any topic, you would probably roll your eyes, be annoyed, et cetera. And there is another way of getting to the same conclusion. but you have to be a little more patient, you have to be a better listener, you have to find out where the other person is coming from, and then you can help guide them along. So Pascal would say, no, no, no, I mean, please. Jason M. Craig (37:23.551) Yeah, that human skit, I'm sorry, keep going. Well, I want you to tell me the quote from Pascal. Just, you know, sword and spade is born out of fraternist fraternist is a brotherhood of men. One of the big things you're doing is is mentoring, guiding your own son and young men. You're initiating them into manhood. That's the the idea and that skill, that art for for for a young man, especially when they're hyped up on apologetics or like obscure Catholic stuff is having to pull aside a young man and go, hey, don't bring up. burning heretics in a way that sounds like you're pretty into that. now I would love to have the nuanced conversation of church and state relations and, and, and the burning of heretics, but you just brought that up in front of a guy who just showed up to get to know people cause he's new here and he's not even Catholic. You did not just do a good thing. It was imprudent. It was uncharitable. So in the, you're giving them the main lesson is not as don't go in. Joe Heschmeyer (37:58.899) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (38:19.378) Yeah. Jason M. Craig (38:24.969) Just wanting to like regurgitate stuff that's churning in your mind because of the internet you have to go into conversations Learning how to you know do what jeez which is to love the person in front of you and and that's a mat. That's that's a matter of prudence humility and charity and I just i'm finding in this this might just be me. no, it's not i'm right. that when we're trained and have profound intellectual conversions online Joe Heschmeyer (38:37.17) Yes. Jason M. Craig (38:53.397) the ability to take that like out into the real world is not resulting in people that are basically, you know, grace builds on nature. They're not like on a they're not being naturally enjoyable. They're not being friendly. They're not being kind. They're not being so then therefore they're not being persuasive. So I love that idea of like, well, what is the idea that's coming in their mind? Because there's the combative people that when they hear you have an idea or, know, they hear the other person with a dumb idea. They're so eager to like whack it with a baseball bat with the truth and, know, potentially lose a soul as was CS Lewis, right? No one ever converts because they lose an argument, you know. Joe Heschmeyer (39:36.344) Yeah, this is the big thing. The role of apologetics is often about removing intellectual barriers to making the ascent of faith. As you said earlier, Jason, it's a grace. Conversion is a grace. It's a grace that people can and do resist, though. And a lot of the reasons they resist it are because it seems irrational to accept it. And so what we're doing with apologetics, particularly when it comes to presenting people Jason M. Craig (39:43.617) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (40:04.828) with reasons to say yes to the faith is largely getting those obstacles out of the way so they can make that yes with more freedom and more firmly so that they can then cooperate with the life of grace. We can't give them the grace and we can't move their interior intellect and will, but we can get rid of the exterior obstacles to it. So... Jason M. Craig (40:20.32) Mm-hmm. Jason M. Craig (40:28.577) What was your plays Pascal quote or you? Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (40:31.118) Yes, when we wish to correct another with advantage, we must first see from what perspective he views the matter, for from that perspective it is usually correct. And then we must affirm what he's getting right. I'm paraphrasing here, but it's very close to this. And then show him in which part that he errs. And he is usually content with this, for he sees that he was not all wrong, but just didn't see the complete picture. So that approach. takes a lot more listening and a lot more humility and it's a lot harder, but it has this advantage. It works a thousand times better than the other way works. Like the two models that don't work very well are number one, the sort of peacock preening. You know, this is the thing you alluded to. Somebody's read an obscure work and they're just waiting for a chance to drop like, well, I recently read in this commentary from the 17th century on the summa. Jason M. Craig (41:07.915) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (41:27.7) that this obscure thing is true and we've to separate the material and the formal. That sort of thing persuades almost no one, alienates almost everyone, but makes you feel very smart. And so that should be a big, like when something has those three properties, that starts to look like we're doing it for ourselves rather than for God. Jason M. Craig (41:48.438) And can we say, think we need to say if anyone's tempted to talk that way, you're also never going to get a spouse. And, I know there's a lot of reasons not to marry various persons, but that's a really good one. Don't, you know, I call that, I have a name for that and I'm going to, I call the, Dungeons and Dragons Catholics, right? That just come in swinging and it's, it's, it's like, okay, okay. But the, the, bad news is you're just, you're just not going to get a spouse. That's really bad news. Joe Heschmeyer (41:54.088) Yes! Joe Heschmeyer (42:06.576) Nice. Joe Heschmeyer (42:15.725) Yeah, I mean I call it peacocking because you know the peacock he fans his feathers to make a big show of himself to try to get a mate that's what it's for and so a lot of peacocking is to want to get noticed so people will admire you or some girls will like you as you say it's terribly miscalibrated on that score because I I don't hear people walking away being like man that guy who dominated the conversation with obscure things that no one asked follow-up questions to he really I want to more time with him because it's you're a bad conversationalist and and a bad listener. So that's Jason M. Craig (42:45.749) Yeah, I'd like, yeah. Yeah, this is a by the way, I'm completely this is a self examination because I can be holed up in my books and stuff like, yeah, you want to talk about that? Let's talk about it. But learning, I mean, being with people regularly, this is why community life fraternity is so important, especially if you're learning stuff, because it just gives you an opportunity to go, OK, this like this thing that's the center of the universe in my mind is not the center of the universe. The other follow-up, yeah, to your point about Pascals, I recently had to go, I went to, OCI, that's a very helpful tip because I went to an OCI class the other day because as a convert, you know, give your spiel and, and there's a lot of, a lot of the converts that are coming in, they're not like Catholic answers converts. These are not people who read Catholic. A lot of them are just, it's just, I don't know. It's a moment of grace. They're coming in for various reasons. so a lot of them were there. Kind of, they were more reverts and they were just asking. Joe Heschmeyer (43:44.827) Yes. Jason M. Craig (43:49.43) But I live in the South and you know, they have these people like, why are you worshiping Mary? Why? And, and they were, they were scandalized and they were angry at their Protestant friends who had kind of attacked them. And I did take the time. said, as a convert, I need to tell you, need to understand when you say tradition, I hear manmade customs that probably get in the way of a genuine and organic relationship with Christ. And it hinders your prayer life in it. Like I hear things that are harmful to you. Now I know you can explain it another way, but my motivation is that I really think it's hindering your life. That's a little more spontaneous or whatever. Or I really do think that when you give attention to Mary, that you're taking away attention from God. And that that's actually, if that were the whole picture, that is, that's a good thing for me. I want you to worship God. And I think this thing is keeping you from worshiping God. So you should stop. creating your Mary statues around or you know, and on and on that actually putting yourself in that perspective, which is what Aquinas does. That's the reason he's so persuasive is his argument for his, his articulation of his opponents argument is usually better than his opponent. And that's a very charitable thing to do because it can actually not just get into his mind, but get into his heart. Cause I have found very often, that, that my opponent's desire. I'm sorry, I shouldn't even, mean, know, not my, don't have many, I'm not surrounded by opponents, but, their desire from a Protestant perspective, when they're attacking you, there might be some prejudice there, but there might be the lack of charity. There might be all the same sins that we have, but we're never going to go wrong. Presuming that they probably have some decent motivations in the framework from which they're looking, they're coming towards you. Um, makes a lot of sense for your good. Joe Heschmeyer (45:40.005) Yeah, I think well said. The advice that St. Thomas Aquinas gives, he has a homily called Puer Jesus, which just means boy Jesus. And afterwards he gives a reflection called the Collation or Collatio. And in it he talks about this line about Jesus growing in wisdom before God and men. And he gives his own roadmap, Thomas does, where he says for a man to grow in wisdom, four things are necessary. Namely, that he should listen willingly, seek diligently. respond prudently, and meditate attentively. And so as you are reading, as you are praying, as you're studying, and as you're encountering other people in conversation, if you keep that approach in mind, you can grow in wisdom. And Thomas points out that when we find Jesus in the temple, you know, a lot of the paintings and everything showed Jesus teaching the teachers as a boy. But that's not what Luke says. Luke says that he was listening to them and asking them questions. And it's true, they were amazed at his understanding and his answers. But Jesus was not just dominating the conversation. He was asking good, insightful questions that were thought provoking. And this was shocking to people. And that's the actual model we're given. Look at how often Jesus asks questions of the people that he's with. That's not because he needs it, but it's because they need it. So getting back to that Blaise Pascal quote from earlier, if you want to correct somebody else with advantage, and this is true in apologetics, but in really every corner of your life, you should understand why they believe what they believe, which means number one, you've listened to them long enough to figure out what it is they believe in the first place. And number two, you've given them a chance to explain what it is that they believe and why they believe it. And then you're able to figure out what is good about it. Because often, even if they believe something that's wrong, or even if they have a plan for society that is terrible, it's motivated out of some good end. Somebody says, hey, we should become a communist country because poverty is terrible. Now, you could just go into all the problems of communism, but if you instead say, okay, look, it's wonderful that you're concerned with the poor. I'm also concerned with the poor. The only question Joe Heschmeyer (48:05.25) is how best to serve the poor here, not should we care about the poor or not. That's already put the conversation in a completely different light. Because if you don't do that basic groundwork of understanding why they believe what they believe and affirming the parts they get right and finding that common ground, then you're going to have this conversation where you think you're doing a great job saying, look at the Soviet Union and look at all these examples where it went really badly. Jason M. Craig (48:10.719) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (48:33.572) And they're going to come out of there being like, man, that guy does not care about poor people. And you won't have actually made any good common ground. You won't have built on anything. So if you can find that common ground, you can then say, given that we want to serve the poor and help people who don't have enough, this way of doing it sounds great on paper, but doesn't work in real life. There are other ways like this that we can do it that are much more effective. That conversation is much more likely to move the needle. Jason M. Craig (48:37.768) Yes. Joe Heschmeyer (49:03.748) Now I'm using that as an easy example, but this is true whether we're talking about abortion, we're talking about theology, whether we're talking about you fill in the blank, and you can actually find these situations where if you listen enough, you can help people change their own minds. So, you know, let's, I'll take. Jason M. Craig (49:22.059) Yeah, you didn't bring up where this fits perhaps one of the best places, speaking of young men needing to get married. It's a good way to talk to your wife. I had a good mentor of mine, he's just, it's like, usually whatever you're arguing about is not what you're arguing about. this is work when men go into, and I think this is important, of this interplay of apologetics and how it actually works in real life, because a lot of us, the biggest place of argumentation is gonna be with your spouse, right? That's where you really hone. Joe Heschmeyer (49:30.232) It is. It is. Jason M. Craig (49:50.934) But if you're just trying to, if you, if you go into a disagreement with your spouse and your goal is to win, you've are, you've lost, right? You, you've lost really. And, if you can go in and say, I actually want to understand why she's feeling, thinking, acting in this way that perhaps I'm not. And it's in conflict with the way, if I actually want to understand that, or, know, to, as, as they, I don't remember what book it is, you know, seek to understand before you be understood. Joe Heschmeyer (49:58.908) Yes. Jason M. Craig (50:16.769) You actually do that as a husband. It's that's not a platitude. It is the most helpful. Now, the problem is usually you will arrive at you are the problem that that actually in my experience is very often. Oh, I am the problem. But if I start with winning the argument, which is if you're a combative person, you know, that can be who you are with your family and your friends and and you wonder why nobody wants to be around you. So anyway, good advice for husbands there to Joe. I know if you did that on purpose. Joe Heschmeyer (50:44.574) Yes, very much so. My wife was joking, I just did a debate with Doug Wilson and my wife was reading through the comments and people were saying that it was a, you know, I did a good job debating and she's like, yeah, imagine what it's like being me. And just like, you know, joking about it. She's like, say that again? Well, I mean, she just made the point that even if I'm wrong, I can sound like I'm right. So she's, she's a little cynical of my, but it is something I have to watch out for. I have to make sure that I'm not just, you know, steamrolling her or. Jason M. Craig (50:55.969) Can I ask about that with Doug Wilson? All right, keep going. What else did your wife say? Yeah, I want to ask you about the Doug Wilson debate. Jason M. Craig (51:07.702) yeah. Jason M. Craig (51:13.013) No, I do too. I do too. Joe Heschmeyer (51:14.8) You know, putting her on the spot, give me 10 reasons why we should do it this way instead of this other way. And instead to actually listen, but notice Pascal doesn't just say listen, but also affirm the part they're getting right. So if you listen to what it is your wife wants to do and you can understand as best you can her motives behind it and you can show her that you share those motives, but then show, but I think we can achieve that better. Or I think there's this other dimension where Jason M. Craig (51:17.985) Yeah, yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (51:44.112) those motives are good and true, there's this other thing as well we should think about. And we want to make sure we're getting both, know, like that's a great idea in terms of keeping the kids safe, but we want to also make sure that they have some autonomy and can grow or, you know, this is a, it's good that you're worried about their health, but we also have worry about the finances and all of like doing the actual work of, yeah, those are all very real sounding examples for a reason, I'm sure. So, Jason M. Craig (51:58.146) Ha Jason M. Craig (52:02.187) Yeah. Yeah. you are married. You are married. I can tell. Joe Heschmeyer (52:12.261) Do the groundwork, lay the groundwork of listening and affirming, and then you can offer a different perspective. It doesn't mean you just roll over. I know some guys really resent having to do that. But I think that's a human failing. That if your resentment is you have to actually listen to people and affirm where you agree, that's a you problem. That's not a problem with your wife. That's just a general problem with the way you're approaching reality. And I say that as a person who... Jason M. Craig (52:34.497) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (52:41.699) That's kind of my default setting. I just want to be like, okay, just tell me the right answer. I don't care about the feelings and the motives. Just give me the right answer and we'll move on. But that's not how human beings are by and large wired. And you just have to adapt to that, like it or not. Jason M. Craig (52:55.199) It's actually a form of wisdom too. think we we live in an age where there's a huge confusion between how the sexes interact in the home as male and female and head and body. And I see a lot of foolish advice coming from mostly young men that don't seem to be either married or happily married or they don't seem like they would be. And I think they're completely getting headship wrong. Wrong in the idea because even the way you were just are taking that we teeter towards well, what do we do? Listen to their feelings. I'm the head. I got to make decisions. I'm a man of action, but it's like, no, no, no. And this is where Aquinas was really helpful for me and understanding my relationship, even with my, my spouse that I'm the head of the home. It's like Christ is the head of the church, but the head is a trustworthy and very receptive, like in the way that the body works is the mind, intellect, the will can only act. When it receives correctly from the senses of the body reality itself. So in a certain way, the intellect requires that it is very receptive. We think about it as, as active, but if you don't receive accurately the information, the data from your senses, I in this analogy, your wife, your children, the people around you, if you're not receiving accurately what's actually going on, well, then your action, your will, is, not going to be prudent. So just like the body, when the body is healthy and the senses are active and your passions are actually honed and trained, not just denied, then the will and the intellect are fully alive. And in that, I, so I appreciate that. That's what headship looks like in a family. just, it's not passive. It's not rolling over. It's actually what a head does. I mean, this is what, this is what happens. And I would also bring in our relationship with children. You made me think of my tendency and I see it. I can see when it's happening is My kids, they're not honed on argumentation, reasoning. You know, they're learning how to do those things, but they're also becoming men. I've well, I've not the girls. They're not becoming men. But my young men, they're becoming men. And I know that I am capable of doing what C.S. Lewis, his father, C.S. Lewis, great apologist later in life, clearly understood the heart of man. But he didn't understand the heart of man from his father because he describes his father as a man. Jason M. Craig (55:14.145) like keen and powerful intellect who would just overpower with his reasoning. This is in surprise for joy. I don't know if you ever read it or recall it. He describes his father sort of standing over them and everyone knew he couldn't be defeated sort of in the argumentation that was going on. And in that moment, CSO is essentially knew that his father didn't really know him or seem to want to know him. You know, that's the headship of Joe Heschmeyer (55:39.14) Yeah. Jason M. Craig (55:40.894) I can go up there right now. I will give the command. This doesn't mean I listen to Mike. I don't need feedback on everything I can make. Like this is not we do not have a democracy in my house. Like I'm not falling for the pitfalls of, you know, family by committee. But at the same time, I know that my tendency, which can be honed and perhaps an argumentation will be or articulation because I write. That's what I do a lot. I do a lot of writing. So trying to be persuasive. The way that comes out to my kids, I could be a real. gadfly that's dominating them. ultimately, it's not that I'm annoying, it's that I don't know them. I'm not taking the time to know them. Joe Heschmeyer (56:17.793) Yeah, I think that's exactly right. mean, imagine a company that ran like that. Imagine the CEO doesn't care about what the sales department is saying, doesn't care about what R &D is saying, doesn't care about any of the data coming in from outside or how things are being received by the public or employee morale or anything like that and just says, well, this is my plan, so we're going to go full speed ahead in this direction. That company is not going to last long. You're going to just do tremendous damage in that way. Jason M. Craig (56:23.551) It's not hard. Joe Heschmeyer (56:47.171) Yeah, you will find this vision of headship that describes marriage in this way that is not just unrealistic to marriage, but unrealistic to any kind of leadership. A bishop who led in that kind of imperious way, a political leader, a CEO, office manager, like you name it, it would be a disaster. A parent who governs that way is doing a terrible job. I mean, it simply is the case that you cannot lead that way and we're given pretty explicit teachings from our Lord on that subject. At the Last Supper in Luke 22, when the disciples are arguing about which of them is the greatest, Jesus doesn't knock them wanting to be great, because he put them in a position to lead and to lead with greatness. Magnanimity is a virtue. But, he says, the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become the youngest, and the leader is one who serves. And then he gives himself as a model and says, for which is the greater one who sits at the table or one who serves is not the one who sits at table, but I am among you as one who serves. So that's the model. That's the actual model Christ gives us. If marriage is to reflect the union of Jesus and the church, the Last Supper where Jesus is washing the feet of the disciples, we see him describing that as what this leadership looks like. where it doesn't mean he has to be like, what do you guys think we should, should we do the cross or not do the cross? There are times where you just have to say this, know is the way we're going to have to go, but you're still listening and talking and conversing and hearing the objections and the struggles and the problems and responding to those and doing all of that work. And if you're not doing that, then you are letting down your family and you're failing in this role of being like Christ and, also Jason M. Craig (58:18.313) Yeah. Joe Heschmeyer (58:43.716) particularly in the parental context, like God the Father. Like St. Paul describes bending the knee before the Father from whom all family in heaven and on earth derived their name. Pater, Father, is the source of the word for patria, like a fatherhood or a family. And so you, as an earthly father, are a dim reflection of the Heavenly Father. And you, as the bridegroom to your wife, are a dim reflection of Christ the Bridegroom. you can make that a dimmer or a brighter reflection. Maybe reflection is not the right word for that, but you are, you know, dimly revealing this, and the better you do it, not only the happier your marriage will be and the happier your family will be, but there's a real theological importance to this. I mean, put very plainly, there are statistically a wildly disproportionate amount of atheists who have father issues. like absent fathers, father wounds, damaged relationships with their fathers. And it's not shocking that if they have no experience of a loving father in the sense that we want them to know God is a loving father, that they find that hard to believe in. And there's no mystery to that. Like people who are the children of divorce are more likely to get divorced because the idea of a lifelong marriage sounds like a fantasy. Whereas those of us who've seen loving lifelong marriages from growing up, it's much more believable. We can say yes to it much more easily because we've seen it and experienced it and have some sense of how the thing works. And so you are doing a service or a disservice to your wife and to your kids and really even for future generations, both in terms of their ability to have healthy relationships and in their ability to have a healthy relationship with God. Jason M. Craig (01:00:34.377) Yeah, this is your, point you're making is very important, which is actually the arguments, the discussion, the apologetics are completely secondary to the formation of your, your humanity. And when it comes to us being fathers, just imagine though, and I think this is problematic these days, just imagine how much work you just laid before someone to get to know them, to listen, to understand your family, like their temperaments, their person. Like it's, if there's anything that the job of a father and husband is it's work. And think of the easy out of having a vision of patriarchy as command, right? And then the receivers of commands and it just flattens all that out. And you can see, you can see it on the eyes. I'm just going to say it. You see on the eyes of women stuck in this situation where in the name of Catholic truth, a man has taken a tyrannical dominating idea because he doesn't have the skillset and the wisdom to learn how to listen as a true headwood and the best analogy. I would say is there are times where I will and I do command in my home as the father is the head what we will do and it might go against where other people think we should have done. And the analogy is though, and hopefully we have when that happens, there's trust in the actual submission. They could just submit, but the submission of love is a lot like the analogy of Christ being our head that Do we trust him because he knows us? You say, yes. Do we know and trust that he wants what is good for us because he knows us? Yes, he knows us. He sees us. He understands us. So I'm going to pray to him, right? Yes. Cause he's the head. So that's like the senses of the body going up to the head and, and, and, and he's going to command and he's going to do something that I didn't expect him to do, but it's okay. I trust him because he knows me, cause he loves me. Right. So just as the church sends up this, this data and the, in the form of prayers to the head, We and us as individual souls, we set up these things and in trust, we know that but your will be done. I think in a family, a way fathers need to they must understand they're not, you know, they're not lawyers. They're not commanders. They're not even kings. I like to say the family is not a kingdom. The family is a is a body, right? The family is a body, an integrated body. There might be some analogies in these things, but when the husband can be. Jason M. Craig (01:02:59.517) when he knows his family and they trust him, then his commands can come sweetly even if they are not exactly what everybody wanted, right? Or what they thought. But it's because they trust him, which is why I think, know, the one the father's like that, that C.S. Lewis had, he might not have had that. But even yet, you're describing that I don't think the loss of faith that we've seen in the world, I know this to be true. It's not because we lost an argument. It's because we lost the family. And yeah, the, the, faith of the fatherless by Paul Vitz, you know, the, the, work of Mary Eberstadt has shown when you lose the context of the family, you don't have the sensible experience of what family and what a loving father looks like. Or if a loving or loving father is not only absent, father's actually not loving. They're essentially tyrannical. Well, when someone comes to you and says, Hey, I got a religion for you. It's this one where the son came to reveal the face of the father. And when you pray, you say our father who art in heaven, doesn't that sound great? And they say, no, that doesn't sound. Joe Heschmeyer (01:03:58.498) Yeah, I think the bit about being known is so important. You see this especially, I think, in the Joannine literature, like the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation. So I'm just going give you four examples, if I may. In John 1, Nathaniel hears about Jesus. Philip finds him. So you already have this kind of the intimacy of the personal sharing. Philip says to Nathaniel, we found him, of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote. Jason M. Craig (01:04:12.885) That's it, only four. Joe Heschmeyer (01:04:27.607) Jesus from Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And then he kind of scoffs it off and says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip says, come and see. But when Nathaniel comes to Jesus, Jesus says to him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile. And Nathaniel's question is, how do you know me? And Jesus says, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And so what he reveals isn't some astounding miracle of he changes the sky a different color, he makes a new plant grow from the earth. What he reveals is, know who you are. I know these things that are hidden from men. And Nathaniel's response to this is, excuse me, yeah, Nathaniel's response to this is one of faith. And so that's that first encounter that he has there in John one. And this is a recurring theme. In John four with the Samaritan woman, She goes away and says in verse 29, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? Like what he reveals to her is that he knows her. And then at the resurrection, when Mary is looking for Jesus and sees what she thinks is a gardener, Jesus's way of revealing himself to her is to just say, Mary. Like he is not just revealing himself, but he's revealing himself as one who knows us. And then in the book of Revelation, we see this same kind of theme. Revelation 2, verse 17 says, So the manna is this Eucharistic image. So you have this image of an intimate encounter with our Lord and it's hidden, like it's a personal communion between you and Jesus. And the manifestation of that is this stone with a name on it that he knows you not only by the name the world knows you But he knows you by this name that is known only to him like he can reveal your truest self to you The way he could reveal simon to himself as both simon and as peter He can do something like that to every one of us. So my point there is the model christ gives us Of kingship is a king who knows everyone Joe Heschmeyer (01:06:44.681) intimately and personally and cares about them and their stories. And if that's not the way you're living out fatherhood, you don't resemble Christ the King as much as you should. Jason M. Craig (01:06:55.635) Or maybe as much as you think you do. That's yeah, that's excellent. That's beautiful. That's the the. The hard work, you know, that's surprising, I guess, since, you know, my apologetics awakening in 2006, I became a Catholic and all that. The real grace begins in self-knowledge, right? Actually knowing yourself, which is one thing you've brought up a lot is that. Joe Heschmeyer (01:06:58.135) That's right. Jason M. Craig (01:07:19.765) If you're not aware of how you're being received, if you're not aware of your true motivations, for example, because you know, scratch the surface of any man's actions in vain. Glory is, know, it's pretty close by, which is I think everything you were describing it that's earlier, which is I'm vain. Glory. Yeah. God wants to glorify you. That's, that's what he wants to do. That's his intention. Vain glory. And he will reward with honor and people reward with honor virtuous acts. But if you do the actions for that honor and you just bypass the goodness, that's, fang or you're doing them for the, for the praise that that's what you're doing. And that's what, you know, that's what we're doing one. So the hard work of self-knowledge of our real motivations, we don't really want to face them. We don't, we don't really want to, but once we start doing that, you actually get to do the glorious thing of getting to know, or the very fatherly thing of getting to know the ones that you've been called to love. That's your family. It's your it's your spouse. It's your children. But then I would also argue the delight in this. I've been thinking about this because we have a lot of new converts in the church of the hard work of community, which is to know other people and to care about them without them needing to fit within some predetermined goal that you have. But just that in some weird way, your sanctification involves the people in front of you. And this is where I'm speaking of, you know, the writings of John, I have found his epistles to be the constant supply of what I think to be just a beautiful articulation of what it's supposed to look like, which is you're supposed to be brothers. You're supposed to love one another. If you don't love the brothers you do see, you don't love the God that you can't see. And if you say you do, you're a liar and you're still in death, which is not very subtle, not very subtle. You're a liar. So those things we were talking about earlier, if you're coming off the internet, Joe Heschmeyer (01:09:06.015) Yes. No. Jason M. Craig (01:09:12.021) from your swinging at all your opponents, you know, and your snarky hot take comments, and you're not loving the people you do see, right, in your community, that there's a real danger that we're completely delusional on where our faith is and where our virtue actually is. So, that being said, sorry, I didn't mean to monologue at the end there. See, you wouldn't even wanna hang out with me now if, because I'm just gonna monologue at the end. That being said, Joe Heschmeyer (01:09:30.407) Yeah, well said. Jason M. Craig (01:09:41.302) I was just thinking of that because of all the new converts that, Hey, you've now begun, you've now, you've now entered the church. You've received the sacraments. You know, if there's one thing I think we're getting wrong these days and is putting all the, the formation before the sacraments are received and OCI, Hey, and then, which is just a lot of usually a lot of talking. Now we actually have the graces of those sacraments. So we don't, we don't do a lot of that follow-up, which I know in the early church, they didn't even tell people about the Eucharist until after they were baptized. Cause they presumed. Joe Heschmeyer (01:10:10.422) Yeah, mystagogy is a big thing. It's okay. You got baptized. Let's tell you about the sacraments. Yeah. Jason M. Craig (01:10:11.681) they presumed I could how can I talk to you about this that's right I couldn't even tell you about it because you weren't baptized you had heathen eyes before but now I can tell you about the Eucharist so as a parting question because I want to thank you you've given a lot of time already but as a parting question what's some you know I'm a convert so I had my my thoughts about this but you know what what's your advice for a young Catholic man who just came in the church where should he go from here Joe Heschmeyer (01:10:39.308) So I'd say, number one, find good in real life community. I love, on the feast day of Basil and Gregory in the Office of Readings, it is, I never remember whether it's Basil writing about Gregory or vice versa, but the two of them have the same feast day because they were friends. And one of them, remarking on the death of the other, said that in him, I found a standard for holiness. and said something like, dare to say he found the same in me. That they viewed each other as sort of a benchmark to know like, okay, you know, like, let's put that competition in a good way and strive together and brotherly love to grow in holiness and find guys you can run with like that if that's available in your parish, you know, get a men's group, get something where ideally you've got guys in a similar state of life, but also got guys who are a couple steps ahead of you who can... be in a little more of an older brother role, that can be incredibly helpful. Like one of the biggest life-changing things in my own life, back when I was a student, around the time I was telling you earlier, or shortly thereafter, I joined a men's group. was invited to it. I was in Adoration one day, a guy by name of Adam Winchell came up and I'd never met him before. And he just said, like, hey man, are you in the men's prayer group? And I said, I don't know about a men's prayer group. And he said, it meets every other Tuesday or Wednesday, whatever it was. And here's the address. And he's like, you should come to it. And I mean, he took the bold initiative to just make the invitation. And I came and I met friends who I'm still friends with today. And I met guys who helped me really grow in my faith. And that kind of community, which was back when I was a single young man, was really helpful. And now that I'm married, we have couples that we're friends with from our parish and our kids are a similar age, and we can kind of still run together. Having that can be just incredibly helpful. There's a lot of Jason M. Craig (01:12:47.253) Joe, do you know what fraternus is? Have you ever heard of fraternus? Joe Heschmeyer (01:12:50.722) I mean the word or what you're specifically doing with it. No, I'd never heard of your particular program with it. No Jason M. Craig (01:12:54.369) I don't know if Oh, it's not a program. It's a brotherhood. Uh, but no fraternist has been around. It what's been around since 2008. Um, so, and I didn't mean to interrupt your advice, but you know, the, the, actually had been involved with a Protestant youth ministry for awhile. Then I became Catholic and had a big conversion about how we think about that. But the way young men actually mature. Joe Heschmeyer (01:12:59.98) Tell me more. Jason M. Craig (01:13:17.629) is not we have to reach the youth with relevant materials and presentations. That's not how men actually mature. They mature by being invited up and initiated into mature fraternity. So what fraternist does is helps basically establish and form the intergenerational brotherhood of men that challenges each other to virtue. But not just for the men's group itself, because I think the one part that you're talking about, it's multiple generations. This is what we do in the church. know, kids over there, men over there, women over there. The only people we should separate is not the ages. We should just separate the sexes. That's what scripture does. Um, you know, when Paul's given advice, he's like, you know, have the older men teach the younger men, same thing with the women. It's pretty simple. Uh, so fraternist establishes the fraternity. And then what's fascinating is we have fathers, we got men with no sons. We've got granddad, we've got the young, you know, 23 year old, and then you got the sixth grader, the seventh grader, the high schooler, and they're all just kind of jammed in there. And it's a bit of a mess, but it turns out we need that kind of brotherhood constantly. And Joe Heschmeyer (01:13:54.529) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (01:14:04.566) Yeah. Jason M. Craig (01:14:15.019) people would say, yeah, we need that. So, but when do you do that? And just fraternist just makes the framework to make sure that happens. So just set that aside, but I want you to know about it. It's been around, you know, there's a lot of wisdom in there that has been hard won from men really building brotherhood over, you know, the last 20 years or so. Joe Heschmeyer (01:14:22.795) There you go. Joe Heschmeyer (01:14:31.394) Yeah, I mean, as I was starting to say at the end there, you can get a lot of stuff off the internet, but you can't get that. Like you can get an online community, but to actually have people that you're living in Karne with is something distinct and something that's very important. For some people, it's going to be virtually impossible, depending on who's listening to this and where you are. If you have something like that, great. If you don't, maybe work on building it. and seek out the fraternity that you can find in whatever context you can because it really plays this critical role of creating rootedness. And the more rooted a person is, the more durable they are. And a lot of that stuff is unglamorous. A lot of that stuff maybe even seems irrelevant at the time. know, like maybe you're going over and just having an evening together, hanging out, and you're not even talking about the faith. Even those contexts. help create more of a rootedness. It doesn't have to be a program where you're getting through a book or an agenda or anything like that. It's just human life together in this shared way rooted in Jesus Christ. That's the key. I'm firmly convinced and there's a wealth of data supporting that idea that that's the key to keeping people connected to their faith once they've got it. And also, as the sociologist Rodney Stark showed, This is one of the ways that the early church grew, that people were invited into this life and they weren't argued into it. They, you know, weren't reading some pamphlet that was slid under their door. They just overwhelmingly saw, this is the community of people that I am drawn to and gravitate to. These are the things they believe in. And their own minds and hearts started to drift in that direction until they became Christian. Jason M. Craig (01:15:56.597) Yeah, the primary way. Jason M. Craig (01:16:18.197) Yeah, I think us converts and then people that are an evangelical apostolates and things. I think we get ahead of ourselves and what we think our impact is and Rodney Stark had a huge impact on the way I think about this and the next issue of sword and spade. I took this up and I'm hoping it's not, it's not meant to be controversial for its own sake, but trying to call breaking the evangelical spell, which is. A lot of times the constant emphasis on evangelization in the church, especially from the top down, I think is a huge mistake. And I think that, now hear me out, wait, the emphasis on being, on all of us identifying as missionary, in the sense of all of us being sent out and go is also a mistake. Because one, the overwhelming, and I don't mean overwhelming, I mean like all of the writings to the early laity in scripture and from the fathers is a rooted laity that loves one another. The apostles are sent out, they leave their home. Whereas all the writings of St. Paul, know, they and Timothy and, and John, they're presuming the necessity to, to love your neighbor, right? To fulfill the command of Jesus, to be rooted. And then to such an extent in in the early church being so in a sense, huddled and insular looking, we would ask, well, how did they grow so much? And Rodney Stark does provide a beautiful reason, which is they loved one another. And it turns out The reason most people actually convert is not argumentation, which is what you've been arguing. It is to be drawn into a body that exists, is basically loving. And we tend to retroactively, after we do that, retroactively intellectualize the decision so that we can rationalize why we've done it, which is why a Catholic might drift into a very loving Protestant church. Jason M. Craig (01:18:15.605) And then retroactively get into why Catholicism is, you know, biblically an air or whatever. so I'm not opposed at all and please don't get me wrong to evangelical efforts. The point is that in, our day and age, in the fragmentation of, of bodies, of cultures, of people, of rootedness, one of the best ways that we can actually spread the faith is what you just said, which is to be rooted in the community that we have, because when people are invited into that, hospitality is the essential evangelical virtue of the layman. This, the hospitality is, is so central, in scripture, in the early church, and even in the ideas of, you know, the, the, the rule of St. Benedict, which had such a strange effect of being a completely insular in a, in a certain way, right? It's a wall building rule, literal wall building. But when you build those walls, when you have a home, then you're able to open the door and invite people in. So I think that we're in an age where us men, think one of the things is not going out to find the arguments, but actually having loving community that we can invite people in is tremendously powerful. So not to riff too long on that, but Rodney Stark was, highly recommend his ideas for us to sort of reframe some of our efforts and emphasis in the church. All right, so be rooted, find a community, be rooted there. Did you have a third? Joe Heschmeyer (01:19:34.368) Yes, sir. Jason M. Craig (01:19:40.865) piece of advice or are those the main pieces? Joe Heschmeyer (01:19:42.85) Well, yeah, I mean, obviously grow in the life of prayer. It's easy to, particularly if apologetics played an important role in your coming into the church, it's easy to think you have to then turn around and immediately become a kind of amateur apologist. And that's not the kind of biblical counsel we find. So Paul warns against laying hands on a new convert, for instance. People need time to bake. And it is a process of baking, not microwaving. You know, it's a slow process. Jason M. Craig (01:19:55.893) Mm-hmm. Joe Heschmeyer (01:20:12.967) of learning this thing that you've been invited into. as you said earlier, Jason, the patristic practice of mystagogy, you would have the overall arguments for the truth of the faith made at extra, like two outsiders. And then once someone was convinced and they got baptized, then they got to learn about the sacramental life in this deep way that was much more personal. So a lot of the early insights we have into what the spiritual life of the church looked like come from these homilies that were written down to catacombs and to new converts, explaining to them baptism, the Eucharist, everything else, the kind of inner life, the spiritual heart of the church. If you're somebody who's just walked through that door and now has access to all of these means of grace you didn't before, live in that. Like just live in that for a while and allow your rhythm of life to match that. Allow your affections to be turned in that direction. Allow your heart to be transformed. And don't immediately worry about, you know, trying to package this as something marketable to outsiders, so to speak. Because if you do that, it's not going to go well for you or for them. Like it's better for you just to be patient and to allow this thing to sort of settle in and take time. mean, St. Paul takes few years before he goes out and talks to anybody and does anything about this conversion. you have to have some time of living with. Jason M. Craig (01:21:42.015) Yeah, I think he gives that advice to, I think it's in Thessalonians when he's somehow, know, the qualities of a bishop and he says, don't let him be a neophyte, not a new one, lest he be puffed up with pride. So there is a. Joe Heschmeyer (01:21:49.557) Yep, right. Yeah, because that's, mean, one of two things is gonna happen if you do this. Either you're gonna go out and be great at it and it'll go to your head, or you're go out and be terrible at it that's not gonna go great either. And either way, it's not good for you. Like just allow yourself to be formed before you, you know, like your freshman year of college, you didn't start teaching a college class. So similarly, drink it up first and then you've got something to share with others. Jason M. Craig (01:22:04.735) Yeah, it's not good for you. Jason M. Craig (01:22:18.849) All right, guys, you heard it here on the sword and spade podcast. Joe said, go have a drink to all the new converts. That's that was his advice. And then share one with others. That's his advice. Joe, thank you so much for being on the sword and spade podcast. This has been a very edifying conversation. Joe Heschmeyer (01:22:23.755) Yeah, something like that. And then share it with others. Joe Heschmeyer (01:22:31.178) My pleasure.