Latest / The Manly Catholic: Training Soldiers for Christ / Ep 190 Revisited: New Adam (John Bishop)
Transcript
- James Caldwell: Hello all, welcome back to the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host. And before we start this episode, I just want to let you know that we are going to take a break for the summertime due to the craziness, the beautiful weather. But we Jeff and I have decided to take a step back and just spend more time in family, focused on our time with our family and just recharging and being refreshed. But yeah, just want to give you guys didn't want to leave you guys without any episodes. So we're gonna be playing replaying some of the more popular episodes that we've had over the last five years. Can you believe we've been doing this podcast for five years. So thank you all so much for your support, your prayers. We really appreciate it. yeah, I just wanna keep the podcast rolling and we'll be coming back in the fall with some new interviews, new episodes, and I can't wait to share that with you all then. Well until then, go out there and be a saint. This is the Manly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers, and leaders who refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the Manly Catholic. Let's get to work. Hello, all. Welcome to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host. And with me today, we have John Bishop. John, welcome to the Manly Catholic Podcast. Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me on this morning. Absolutely. You know, John and I were just reminiscing of how lovely it is that we are interviewing each other in the morning versus evening, where I feel like I'm half asleep. I feel like I'm awake. We have coffee. So this is a blessing. So thank you, John, for agreeing to a morning interview. Yeah, I got coffee. It is five AM Central Time. Got a workout in before the podcast, so I'm feeling pretty pretty stoked and ready to go. Got my coffee. Should be a good podcast. Did you cold plunge into the snow over there? Are you guys snowing over in Iowa? You know, we've had a heat wave lately. It was frozen tundra here for several weeks. You know, like where Des Moines sits, it seems like about once a year we have like a hellacious seven to ten day period where the highs are like right around zero degrees, you know, and then and then at at night it gets down to negative twenty five, negative thirty. But this year, that period was like close to a month. And so gosh. Yeah. But you know what? Yesterday it was sixty five degrees in Des Moines. And so Yeah, I'll take it. Yeah. Wow. So everything melted? Or is it still is still breaking through the layers of ice No, yeah, we didn't get as much snow and that that was what was so horrible about our Arctic blast this year was that It was, you know, I think we hit like twenty five days of sub zero temperatures, but almost no snow the entire time. So it's it's like yeah, it's all the cold without the pretty, you know? Yeah. And so I I'm happy we're we're through that. there's no snow outside at all. What about you guys? I mean, is it still like absolutely frigid there as it is for ten months of the year? Yeah, it is. You know, we are getting heat wave as well this week. It's gonna get to above freezing. So we are very excited. I think tomorrow's gonna be thirty seven and Friday I think we're hitting forty one. So but we do get the snow. So we got a little bit of the winter wonderland and then we got the the Arctic blast too. So it diminishes the winter wonderland esqueness of it. So but well, hey, all in good time. Spring is coming, right? So it was It's on the way. Yeah, I I think it's like a wimp. Usually the usually as the guy from Iowa I'm the guy who Can kind of boast the coldest temperatures. Not so on today's podcast. I'm sorry. You know, John too. I am from California. So for me, it's even like a double whammy because I'm never Californians complain when it drops like below sixty. So you know like ham half of that. This might color both of our personalities actually. So I am originally from Florida. And that's why lived first like originally, originally. So I I lived the first ten years of my life in the the deep formative period where you form your expectations on what the world, including the world's temperatures, should look like. I was outside of Tampa. I grew up in a suburb of Tampa called Brandon until I was ten. And then my parents moved to Des Moines, Iowa, 'cause my mom is from a small kind of farm town in northern Iowa called Algona, Iowa. So I too am forever spoiled. And found myself living in the Arctic after living in the tropics, just like you. And yeah, I don't I don't know what effect that's had on our personality, span, but it's certainly been a tragic story, to say the least. We we have become bipolar because of the weather changes. Yeah. So well, sorry, we're getting off on a tangent here, but this is good because what we are talking about today is John's new book. It's called New Adam. I will display it for everyone to see here. Now, John serves as the executive director of Forge, which he founded in 2023. He started his career at Focus and earned his PhD from the Catholic University of America, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on masculine virtue. Very applicable for the podcast. He and his wife, Caitlin, live with their children in Des Moines, Iowa. So before we dive in, which I'm very excited to talk about, we will start with the St. Michael Prayer, John. So we will begin. Name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him. We humbly pray, and do thou prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast in hell Satan, and all evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. Amen. John, I gave you like a five minute warning for my first question. We'll see what you came up with. If you could be the patron saint of anything, John. What would it be and why? Yeah, so the best that I could come up with, I'd love to be the patron saint of confused men. So I I say that for two reasons. One will become clear during the podcast today that what I hope to do in my apostolate and in the book that we're gonna be talking about today is to provide a picture of what healthy masculinity, what holy masculinity, strong masculinity actually looks like. Okay, not reductive, not machismo, not toxic, but holy. And my ultimate aim with that is that men who are confused about what it means to be a man might know what it what it looks like. The second is that, well, I feel as though this has kind of been manifested in my own life. I spent a lot of my my twenties in particular, kind of wandering. I say I'd lived gypsy twenties that I had no clue really what to do. One of the other hosts for this podcast, Father, it was in actually in seminary with me in a brief period. where I I I wandered in about seven or eight different potential career paths and or vocations before I eventually ended up on the one that I'm on today. And yeah, patron saint of confused men. So I think I'll I'll go for that one. Love that. Yeah I was bummed too Father Dom couldn't make it on the podcast because as I was reading this, Father Dom always talks about Adam and the garden. So I kept hearing his voice. yeah, he ha harps on it. I feel like he will write a paper on that Day. Because he always talks about that. And it's so true, John, as well. And I definitely want to dive into the you know the confusion that men experience, especially just like the lack of role models or even corrupt role models, I guess you can say of what it really means to be a man. 'Cause like you mentioned too, like they have the like the John Wayne character, which obviously he had you know, heroic values and virtues, but then he also had, you know, hyper aggressiveness and things like that. And then you have especially modern men nowadays, you know, like the Andrew Tace of the world who's right, you know, have taken the young young man out of storm. Again, things to that of course you can you can look to certain virtues that are good, but of course a lot of the bad that comes with that too, which is you know, hyper masculine. Kind of to the the toxic side, if you will. But I wanna kinda go even before that. I guess for you, a personal question, John, what what even drove you to write a topic on a topic like this because it's so vast and I'm sure intimidating. And like you even said too, there's not really a there wasn't like a whole lot to go on of. You kinda had to talk to just a ton of men and things like that and do a lot of your own research. I'm curious of of what made you even start this project. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Well where the book comes from in a way, you know, I suppose you could say it's the fruit of about a 10 year journey. And that journey began When I found myself working as a Catholic missionary for an organization that some of our listeners will probably be familiar with. It's called Focus, Fellowship of Catholic University Students. I was working as a missionary and at the headquarters for a large Catholic missionary organization called Focus. And in that organization, I found a recurring problem. And that problem was that the organization was generally limited. It's number one limiting growth factor. was its ability to engage men on college campuses and then in turn attract those men to the degree that some of them would become full-time staff members and missionaries. So I worked for Focus, which for those who aren't familiar with the organization is an organization that takes recent college graduates And makes them missionaries back to the college campus. So Focus has something in the neighborhood of a thousand, maybe a little bit more full-time staff members who are serving on a couple hundred colleges and universities around the country. Okay. And I was active with Focus, kind of had a reversion to the faith through Focus in college, and then worked for them after I did my master's degree for about eight and a half years. Found that Focus was having trouble engaging men, but to be honest. doing better than your average Catholic ministry. So while I worked for Focus, I also represented Focus to the United United States Council of Catholic Bishops and found ministry after ministry after ministry who echoed the same thing, that their numbers were very heavily skewed. Some ministries apostolates saying that only 20% of the people that they were engaging were male and eighty percent were female. This paralleled frankly my I my own experience. I said I was kind of a gypsy in my twenties, I lived in eight different cities. And in those cities, whether it was Chicago or Washington, DC, or Waco, Texas, or Denver, Colorado, or Ann Arbor, Michigan, or any of the places where I lived, all of those Catholic communities had the same problem that you'd go to, for example, a theology on tap, and most of those things would be 70, 75% female. And only something like twenty five percent, twenty maybe thirty percent male. Now, at the time, James, so I was single. Kinda chalked that up to divine favor. So it's like You're like, you know, Laura, this isn't bad. This is not a bad thing. I I'm gifted, I've got great words. I don't consider myself to exactly be Don Juan when it comes to looks. And so the odds being in my favor were a fantastic thing. And I didn't really think a whole lot about this, but I I became more interested formally, I guess you could say, in the topic of men and masculinity when I went to graduate school. So I'd I'd worked for focus for a long time, continued working for focus, but decided to return to graduate school and d get a doctorate in theology. I was really interested in the thought of John Paul II, but once again, I found Pope St. John Paul II, who's who's still just my hero. I found his thought, theology of the body, things like that. Generally more able, more attractive to women than to men. you've got the concept within John Paul's thought of the feminine genius, right? Or or those kind of charisms, the gifting of women that constitutes their their unique good for humanity. But there were there really wasn't a parallel line of thinking when it came to men. So I I ended up writing a doctoral dissertation. That developed John Paul II's thought on men. And the the formal title of the doctoral dissertation is something like an extension of the thought of John Paul II towards the masculine genius. So, like, what does it look like to develop JP2's thought to highlight the unique giftings of men, you know, and the ways that their holiness comes about, the way the the way that they're a gift to humanity. long story short, I didn't really end up thinking that I would ever do anything with that. dissertation. It was, it was there. I ended up founding an on-the-ground ministry for men called Forge that you mentioned. And Forge is one way to characterize it is it's taking a lot of the goods of focus on a college campus, but applying them to a metropolitan area and for dads. So I do a lot of small groups, big events, curriculum for dads. But little ways into this, I had a conversation with a publisher, our Sunday visitor, and said what would it look like to take your big more academic doctoral dissertation and make a very short, very accessible the actual text is 132 pages, book that would that would highlight the beauty of masculinity and give men a picture for what it looks like to be a saintly masculine man. And so there you have new Adam, which I which it sounds like you've already gotten through. So thanks, James. Appreciate it. Yeah, you got it. How long is your dissertation? Are we going to get the full The full release of John's dissertation, a thousand pages. It's you you can you can Google it. I'm pretty sure it's publicly available. Yeah, you know, I what did that end up coming to? I I think I was I was on the shorter end of dissertations, right around three hundred pages or so. I had a lot of friends that wrote tomes, you know, these like eight hundred to literally, you know, a thousand word or a thousand page manuscripts. And I couldn't quite hack that. I I did my th I I I was married with kids by the time I was finishing up and and by the time I was I was done, I was like, you know, you could write another couple hundred pages on that, but I think three hundred's fine. So yeah, if anybody if if anybody wants to get the long version, what I what I did in brief is I I took the corpus of of John Paul II and then found what I take to be one of the most reliable cross-cultural scientific data sets that illuminates kind of male raw material. So what is sort of part and parcel of every man. So I I looked at the the qualities that were selected for on evolutionary biology by our our evolutionary predecessors and said, okay, what would it look like if we were to take these qualities and then perfect them in original man man or man in Eden, fallen humanity or men in sin, and then humanity insofar as as as he, male humanity, is redeemed by Christ. So it's basically rubbing together evolutionary biology and the thought of John Paul the Second to construct a theology of masculinity. And for the real nerds out there, if you want to look it up, I think we've had a total of maybe fifteen people read that thing. But if you want to be number sixteen, then go for it. I will try to Google that and put in the show notes for everyone. Maybe you'll get up to 30, John. Coffee and prayer. It's the perfect blend. Mystic Monk Coffee isn't just another cup of coffee. It's handcrafted by the Carmelite monks of Wyoming, roasted with care and infused with prayer. Whether you're starting your morning or fueling your day, Mystic Monk Coffee has you covered. It offers rich, bold flavors that are as divine as their mission. By choosing Mystic Monk, you're not just enjoying exceptional coffee, but you're supporting a community of monks dedicated To their work, to prayer and to the church. It's coffee with a cause. So what are you waiting for? Visit MysticmonkCoffee.com and experience the brew that's fueling faith and flavor. But no, I I love the idea too of what you talked about. The yeah, because in in JP2, his beautiful work, Theology of the Body, but there is no like masculine genius. And I I just love the idea of bringing that out because all men have heard. Especially my generation and below us is, you know, that toxic masculinity and you know, defining that and yeah, because masculinity is I I I wrote or I I read this towards the end of your book too. It's like people are afraid if masculinity comes to its fruition it's in its fullness, it's genius, if you will, then it's going to somehow downplay femininity and women and things like that. And like the exact opposite 'cause when men are thriving women of course will be thriving as well. And that's, you know, the sexual revolution in our our culture. It's the women are quote unquote thriving. but is our society thriving? And the answer would be no, because men are, you know, have been told that if they are bringing out their masculine traits, that they're toxic, that they're, you know, they're misogynists, that they hate women and things like that, or if they have like strong values, then like you're bigoted or you're just not open minded. Like all these things that men are designed to do to provide and protect, it's just been kind of shut down. And so I wanted to, you know, talk to you or kick it to you. This idea of toxic masculinity and I maybe we can talk about, you know, the sexual revolution, kind of where this idea even came from and how, you know, going back to the new Adam, how we're sort of I think we too, we've seen now in twenty twenty six, we are starting to sh see a shift a little bit of toxic masculinity isn't really a hot topic issue anymore. I think it's still prevalent, but I think it's definitely not as pronounced as I think it used to be. So I want to just ask you about that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd love to talk about the toxic masculinity thing, but I think a great way to set it up would be to highlight something that you said just prior to that, and that's the the way in which masculinity and femininity. And I'll define those terms. I'll define masculinity as just, you know, what it what constitutes flourishing for male humanity. So if you if you have a a human male, what does his flourishing look like with respect to those those qualities of his maleness that are unique to him? That's masculinity. And both from a theological and from a scientific perspective, it's clear That masculinity and femininity thrive when they're in synergy with one another. So if you try and kill the one, you almost by definition kill the other. And that's true both from a theological perspective and from a scientific perspective. Theologically, Genesis 127 says that man was created in God's image, male and female, he created them. John Paul II reflects on that verse and says that it's only in the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds its fullest realization. So theologically, maleness, femaleness, masculinity, femininity thrive to the degree that that both do at the same time. And if both don't do at the same time, then both suffer. From a scientific perspective, you know, I maleness and and femaleness evolved in relationship to one another, right? And so even at the most basic raw biological level that you you you there's there's really no grounds on which to say that the diminishing of one sex is flourishing will increase the other sex is flourishing. It's it's not a zero sum game. They they increase in beauty and locksp with one another. All right. Now this whole notion of toxic masculinity then casts into sharp focus exactly how there were or at least one kind of story on which the you know both sexes lost because one was kind of in the the the sites of the culture war. Okay. So obviously in in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, you might think of the times of like hashtag MeToo and that cultural moment, you had toxic masculinity absolutely in center stage. But if you go back even further, we've seen declining rates of male flourishing for several generations now. So beginning in the 1960s with the sexual revolution and the sexual confusion, the confusion of the family that came in at that time, we've seen decreasing rates of male success in the on the job market, decreasing males rates of male success when it comes to education. I'm not persuaded that all people should go to college, but when the current rates of College education rates are bordering on two female graduates for every one male graduate. It kind of makes you sit back and think: is there something wrong with the educational system of our society? People interested in that topic should read Leonard Sachs or Michael Gurion, who've written extensively on these topics. At the same time, you see increasing rates of fatherlessness. So in the 1960s, less than one in every 10 American children grew up without a biological father. All right. Now, in in today's culture, If you hit your seventeenth birthday and you have both biological parents in the home, that makes you a minority demographic. So less than 50% of the children in this country grow up with both biological parents in the home. Think about that. It's actually true that if you hit your seventeenth birthday, the stats get more difficult to track after seventeen. So usually they they they take it to the seventeenth birthday. And you have both biological parents in the home, you're a minority. Like what a flip in American culture that is. We still, I think, especially in Christian circles, have it in our minds that the prototype of our culture is is father, mother, and child. And that our society is kind of operates in that way. It's just not the case anymore. You know, that the the majority of the population, it's not it's not mother, child father, it's it's mother-child bureaucrat. usually that that fathers have in many cases been replaced by by a different provider, oftentimes the government, and the family unit, though it in principle it ought to be the foundation for society is not for American society anymore. This is a tragedy for for this generation. The the absence of fathers both from society at large but also from the church. There's declining rates of male religiosity on e any given Sunday In the United States of America, your average church congregation is 39% male and 61% female. Or again, bordering on that two in one stat. All those stats are problems for this generation, but an even bigger problem for the next generation, because the study after study shows that both religiously and then also, I guess you could say just sort of sociologically, from considering raw human flourishing with no No religious angle. Kids thrive religiously if their dads are involved. And kids thrive naturally if their dads are involved and intentional in their upbringing. And all of the data bears that out. Best recent book on this is Brad Wilcox's Get Married. You can see that generally speaking, the best place for a young man or a young woman to grow up is when his biological parents are in a committed lifelong relationship, particularly one that involves weekly worship. And when that's not the case, then you see kids ultimately being hurt by the difficult choices that their parents and ordinarily their fathers have made. 85% of single parent homes are led by mothers, not fathers. And so what you have in the midst of that declining culture is not a beautiful vision of healthy masculinity that calls young men forward. In the midst of that culture that is on fire, what you have, unfortunately, is From some of our highest, most revered institutions, educational institutions, religious institutions, cultural flashpoints is a still kind of an accusing finger pointing at men and saying that masculinity is a toxic thing. So what do boys do? They don't have role models upon which to base their masculinity. Their fathers aren't present in the home, so they don't have that immediate role model. They look to the streets for role models, they look to YouTube for role models. They don't look to their churches and to their educational institutions for role models. And this cycle of men who are confused and suffering gets worse and worse and worse. So what do we need? We need a healthy picture of masculinity. We need a new atom. And that's that's really kind of the the stage on which the whole book is is built, is that we need to rebuild the picture of masculinity that we give, well, first off, that we imitate for ourselves, but then also that we give to our sons, give to our grandsons. Yeah, that it's so powerful too, and and the the importance of role models as well, John. you mentioned that in the book, like the l you know, leadership and things like that. And I think that is at least in our diocese, I mean, there's a pre shortage, but there are young seminarians coming through and even just Father Dom, I mean, he was just ordained in twenty twenty and like Clearly a masculine man. Yeah, well his parish is thriving, right? Yeah. And I remember when he first moved to his his parachute's at now, the the numbers dropped initially because here was this masculine man and he was confronting people in a loving pastoral way, but calling people out. It's like you you can't do this. Like this is not what the church teaches. And he got I remember he got a lot of pushback from that, but now he has, you know, going to his mass, he has, you know, five or six altar boys serving with him. Yes. Because that 'cause Father Dom is, you know, he is a great role model for young men. But men latch onto that when they see someone, and I think that's why a lot of young men they still look to like athletes and stuff too, because they see like, this is what it means to be a man. And now we're starting to see young seminarians come as like, no, that is what it means to be a man. It's like, you can have a priest that is like this perfect picture of what it means to be a masculine man. And we we ha you mentioned in the book too, we've missed that. Because young boys naturally look to someone above them for to be a hero and you know, the first one should obviously be their father. And I I love how you say too, I I think men often think, Well, I have to be the best at it in order to model it, right? Like I have to be the most intelligent person. I have to know like how to explain theology of the the body to, you know, a seven year old. And but often it's just modeling it in the best you can, even just saying, you know what, son, I don't know the answer, but I let's find out together. And going on that journey together. And my my oldest boy, he's turning seven next week. And like starting to introduce him to projects that I'm working on as well. And like watching YouTube, it's like, okay, this is what we're trying to figure out. This is what we need to look at. But just having him by my side too, and he can see like this is a problem. This is how you go about solving it. And also recognize like I don't know what I'm doing, but let's figure it out together, you know? And that a bit of that humility aspect of it as well. I think men need to see that or boys need to see that because you're not gonna have all the answers and that's okay. But then recognizing that, like, okay, who can I go talk to in order to find a solution to the problem? So I I just love that you you mentioned the importance of leaders. 'cause I think we can all acknowledge that. the church failed in that regard for a number of years. you can even argue if you want nowadays too. But I think again, the shift is occurring and now it's, you know, praying for good leaders, strong role models for our our young boys especially. But yeah, like you said, it starts in the home. It starts with the domestic church and and having men, I think you mentioned too, that it is it is something that men are recognizing, but now it's how do I go about and do that? You know, I I I have this call to I want to be better, but I don't know where to start. And I'll I'll kinda kick it back to John, whatever you want to latch on to that. Yeah, yeah. So many things to speak about there. First off, so I've got a chapter in the book that's for priests. I I spent some time in the seminary myself. Many of my closest friends are in the world, are are celibate priests and and what does a healthy picture of masculinity mean for them? Well The image of masculinity that I give, you know, as the title of the book indicates, which is is grounded in the notion of Adam in the garden, and then ultimately culminates in the new Adam who's Christ, right? That image has just as much, if not more, import for priests as it as it does for your ordinary married man. And that's that, you know, how do I set this up? So the data suggests. Insofar as kids imitate the religious patterns of their fathers more than their mothers, which they do, that generally speaking, when a child sees a man, a male role model, he's gonna sort of read God off of that man. That is, he's gonna say, What is God like? Well, God is is like these men who are in my life, most fundamentally the child's father. And so giving children a healthy picture of masculinity is utterly critical. One that is gentle and loving, but also one that involves a certain sense of justice because we we know that God is just, right? And his his justice flows from his love. We want to give kids a healthy picture of masculinity ultimately because we want to give them a healthy picture of what God looks like. Think about what that means for today's priests. Okay. Obviously, you as a dad, you are gonna be your child's first impression. Of the fatherly love of God. But all of your children, especially as they grow, they become older children, they become adolescents, eventually they become young adults, they're gonna, they're gonna look at the priests of their parish as another Christ. And so priests having a healthy, lived sense of masculinity is utterly critical for the sanctification of the church, so that the church and the faithful might know God, might know God's love. And so men. who are in the celibate priesthood understanding what it means to be a man. I don't want to overstate this, but that's critical for the future of the church. Okay. And I do think that you're seeing more and more, I've I I taught in a seminary. I lived in Denver for a while and taught at a wonderful Catholic seminary there in in Denver, Colorado. I did a intensive seminar on theology of the body, John Paul II and masculinity there two or three years in a row and would teach 30 or 40 seminarians each time had a great time doing it. Saw lots of young men, deeply masculine men, looking for the church, looking to the church for answers on what it means to be a man. And I think a lot of them are responding in in very masculine ways. You see, priests, I I haven't really been in contact with with Father Dominic since he was just Dominic back in the seminary. this would be 10, 12 years ago now. But It really encourages me to hear what he's up to in his parish. You see this a lot over the country where you have a young masculine priest who's obedient to church teachings, who comes and out of love communicates what those church teachings mean for the faithful and his flock. And sometimes that involves correcting certain moral problems in in the faithful, confusions in the lay faithful. Sometimes it means correcting certain liturgical errors on the part of the you know, the staff there at the parish. Initially, in a the very, very short run, that'll oftentimes bring about, say, a decline in numbers. But in the long run, and in fact, not the very long run, you know, I think usually within a year. I mean, it it doesn't seem to take that long at all. You see a almost like a hockey stick effect where you see this this radical increase in numbers, particularly among the I'll I'll say the the young. What I mean by that is the under 50 population of the church today, especially those that are raising families. And so more power to to priests like Father Dominic. I'm confident that we are going to see more and more and more of them. That's the future of the priesthood. I say that having been in the seminary myself and having taught in several seminaries along the way, that the seminaries are full of masculine men, of men who are in love with church teaching and want to live fatherhood in a way that is both loving but also just and grounded in truth, grounded in church teaching. So I'm excited, you know, for the future of the church in that way. Well hi everyone, my name is Father Dominic Katerior with Manly Catholic Podcast. And I'd like to take a few seconds to share with you about Harmel Academy of the Trades. Harmel Academy of the Trades is the all male Catholic Trade School here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's one year, two-year, three-year program where we're dedicated to building a community of prayer, work, and study. All the men are exposed to a variety of trades: Havak, electrical, plumbing, welding, machine systems, technology. We have multiple programs for individuals who are interested in certain kinds of trades. All the men work together, pray together, live on campus together. We actually move to a new campus as well, too, bigger living space, bigger dorms, bigger lab. So we're growing. So we're really excited about that with you. So if you're interested in checking out Harmel Academy of the Trades, please visit us at Harmel Academy.org where you can find out more information about this wonderful all-male Catholic trade school. Thank you. I agree too. And I don't wanna I don't wanna this to sound off putting or or wrong and maybe you can elaborate and explain it better. But I feel like the the the seminaries that are coming out, there's more of a reverence or a more I guess I don't wanna say seriousness, that's not the right word, but like they're taking their vocation very seriously. And at least again the ones I see here in Grand Rapids when they first come out, they're they're they're very reverent and how like being deliberate in how they are, you know, speaking to the congregation or just celebrating mass and things like that. And again, not saying like past priests weren't like that too, but I think It's almost like a reawakening. It's like what we are doing is very important and we are called to this and we need to take it seriously. Because I mean you can have a father who doesn't take their fatherhood very seriously. and then, you know, there's obviously repercussions for that as well. And I think just kind of what you said, teaching the seminarians as well, maybe you can speak more to that. I just have found I've only seen a handful of them come out and there seems to be definitely a shift just more Like return to tr tradition as well. let's bring back more incense. Let's make you know the novel's order as reverent as we possibly can. yeah, may I we'll kick that back to you before we before we move on to the next topic as well. Yeah. Yeah. So the church in our day and age is obviously under attack, and I think it's clear it's it's under attack more and and sort of more explicitly more out there in the open than hundred percent the last several generations. Now that's that's problematic in a lot of ways, but love always wins. God always wins. And he uses everything at every stage of human history for his glory. And I think what you're seeing in this day and age, you have a tragic shortage of priests. And in in my diocese, it's it's really tragic that they're it's it's difficult to find priests just to to fill the basic needs of the faithful. But fortunately, in the midst of this cultural war and persecution, the only men who are going into the seminary are men who are who are really committed, you know, and who are willing to take it on the chin. And they I think that that forms a mentality in them that they they really just don't want to mess around. They're they're not into their faith for the cultural trappings and perhaps the cultural benefits of being a priest. They're reviled in the culture for being a priest. I I say this With many dear friends who are priests. I I remember the year that I spent in seminary, there was an old priest, wonderful old priest there talking to the young seminarians. We were sitting at a restaurant, and he said, you know, it used to be the case that I would sit down in a restaurant as a as a priest. And it was rare for me to get to the end of the meal without some random person in the restaurant picking up the tap. He's like, I'd I'd rarely see a bill. I would just sit down and somebody in the restaurant would see that a priest was eating. And somebody would pick up the bill. And he's like, it's fine that that doesn't happen anymore. Nevertheless, he's like, Now I sit down in a restaurant and I this was eight or nine years ago. He said I I frequently get get negative comments and snide remarks, you know, like, are are you are you are you gonna do something, my kids? Do I need to yeah, do I need to hide them? And so the flip, you know, that has taken place with respect to the priesthood, you're not you don't go into the priesthood for shallow reasons anymore. You know, or I'm I'm sure some guys do, but probably a a s much smaller percentage do. And that that cultivates these wonderful priests where where God has used the persecution of our time, hopefully, at least in some instances that I've seen, to purify the culture of seminaries. Sure, there's still difficult parts about the culture of seminaries, but there's a lot of good that wasn't present twenty, twenty-five years ago. to to bring a focus. on souls to the Presbyterate. And there's really reason though that the numbers obviously we still pray and fast for an increase in vocations to the priesthood, but there's really hope, I think, for the future of the priesthood given the seminaries that I've been in contact with across a number of states, a number of seminaries. I'm really excited for the future of the masculine priesthood. Amen. Amen. And then now I want to shift gears here a little bit. Let's talk about Adam. Yeah. Adam in the garden. Let's talk about So obviously we're talking about the new Adam, but before we go to the new Adam, we have to talk about the old Adam, so to speak. Here we go. So Adam, so I guess let's just talk about the Genesis story, creation story. I guess how God intended man to be and and where Adam fell short. Here we go. I'll kick it to you, John. That's a lot to unpack. Yeah, so much to say. Yeah, and you know, for our listeners Not to give a shameless plug, but just an invitation. Give it make it give a plug. Give a plug, John. Right now we're gonna be talking about chapters two and three of my my recent book, New Adam. And I encourage all of our readers to to listen to to to read it, to digest it. Read the book in men's groups, implement it in your lives. Chapter two talks about the Genesis stories, particularly Adam's story within Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two, and then ultimately Genesis chapter three. I'll just tease out a few things here in this podcast that I think are really interesting to note about Adam's story. And the first is that when God created humanity, it's clear that the first person who was created was a male. It was Adam. And you can kind of tease out a number of really beautiful things about that. And that's that. When Adam first opened his eyes in the Garden of Eden, there existed the kind of the first call that Adam received in the garden was a call that many men will deeply sympathize with. That it it it it hits our heartstrings very deeply, and that's that Adam's first call was to develop the garden or to work. So Genesis says that that prior to Adam's being placed in the garden, the garden was kind of incomplete. It's almost as though God had created the whole universe. 99%. You know, you've kind of taken taken things to the one yard line. We're recording this the day after the Super Bowl. And so I've got football analogies on the mind, but you know, God, God takes creation to the one yard line and then kind of hands it over to Adam, you know, and says, Well, you take the football into the end zone. And so it's Adam's responsibility to, to cultivate the garden, to name the creatures within the garden. There is a sacred call to work. That is placed upon Adam and constitutes something of his unique charism, his unique vocation. Oftentimes I think the working world is reviled as something unholy, sort of dirty, low, if you will, especially manual labor, or maybe even more so, corporate America, things of that nature. But I'm deeply inspired, and I think a lot of men are inspired by Say, for example, movements like Opus Day, if you're not familiar with Opus Day, you've got individuals, men and women, but but men who take their vocation to work very seriously as kind of part and parcel of their holiness. And in any man's calling, I there's I think there's so many biological reasons to think this. His having a right relationship with his work is part and parcel of his feeling grounded as as a man. As a provider, if you will. And so raising our sons and going through life ourselves, recognizing the holiness of our calling to work is critical for us to be healthy as men. And I don't just mean men who are involved in kind of the work of the church, if you will. In fact, I think I'm actually talking more directly to men who don't work in the church, who are whose whose life parallels the work of Adam. Perhaps more closely. I mean, Adam wasn't a priest. Adam wasn't a youth minister. And he wasn't leading a nonprofit. If anything, Adam's work resembled more like a farmer or a contractor or something like that. He's working with the physicality of the world and bringing it, you know, to its natural completion. Adam had a sacred calling to work, and he nevertheless realized, though, in the garden that as sacred as work was, it wasn't something that could fulfill him. In the way that he as a man needed to be fulfilled. His life didn't really make sense. When he was only working the things of the garden, his life didn't make sense ultimately. The picture of his life didn't click into place until there was another person in the garden. So there's the creation of Eve taken from Adam's rib, something. John Chrysostom, father of the church, talks about this. That that denotes her equal dignity. And Adam, upon Perceiving Eve utters those beautiful lines, This alas is bone of my f bones and flesh of my flesh. And in that moment, all of the things of the garden became about the person of Adam's garden, became about Eve, and his life is rightly ordered. He is a provider, he is a protector in the garden, and he gives himself completely over to Eve. And that's what that's the old Adam before the old Adam was affected by sin. He he savored the things of the garden, but all the things of the garden just like the work in any man's life today, we're ordered towards the person of the garden. In in Adam's case, Eve, in our case, our wives, our children, the people of our lives. That's what Adam's life looked like. There was no lust. Upon perceiving Eve's naked body, her her beautiful naked body was for Adam an occasion for him to contemplate her soul, right? To contemplate her f indeed her physicality, which she found beautiful. Adam's experience of Eve's body was an experience of her entire person. He didn't separate her body from her personality, but rather the two were blended together. And that's what that's what masculinity looked like prior to sin. There's so much more that can be said about that. But there's a little tease for what Adam, the first Adam in the garden, what his masculinity looked like. Right. That's gosh, that's so beautiful too. And and just the design that that God intended for Adam too. And I love the idea too of unpacking his his role was to till and to keep the garden. I love how you unpack that too, because I I don't think I've ever really his role didn't really make sense until Eve was present. Because like this is this is my purpose. This is what I'm doing this for. It's not just to which is beautiful in itself. Like you said, you know, God made the you know the earth ninety nine percent complete and then it's like okay now I'm giving it over to you to finish the work, so to speak. And I just love that image too because yeah, 'cause man, we are all called to be those providers and those protectors. And yeah, it talked to any man who is unemployed or lost a job or anything like that. There's a sense of identity or almost crisis. I remember when I lost my job for a period of like three or four months. And with with the covet crisis, I was like I was a contract physical therapist and my contract ran out and I and a way to no work. And no one was hiring. I was like, my gosh, like what am I going to do? Like how can I provide for my family? And it it was almost like a mini crisis moment. You know, and because we are called as men, because especially when you have family, when you're single, it's I mean, it's still there, but when you're like, I have this this woman and these children that rely on me, it really shakes you to your core because that was the whole purpose of God and inclining men to work. So yeah, again, I love how you unpack that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think for our listeners too, there is a calling to most I mean, most men spend the lion's share of their working hours or of their waking hours working. Right. Yeah. So call it, you know, thirty five to sixty hours a week. If you are a a man with children in the home, that's that's oftentimes where you spend a lot of your time. Is that work something That you embrace as a route to your holiness? Or is it something that you in some way, shape, or form, sort of just get through? Realize that when Adam was created, the first experience that he had of the world at large involved really only work. And that work was the occasion for his holiness. That's the way that God set it up. Now I know that your average corporate job, any job, physical therapy job, you know, you mentioned that, contract work, what you know, in the trades, whatever it might be, it doesn't look like the Garden of Eden. Right. But we on this side of heaven have a responsibility to embrace it in a way that brings about our sanctification. Not to move this forward, but I think that that provides a great transition into, you know, if if you speak of Adam in three acts, if you will. So Adam in the Garden of Eden before sin, act number two would be Adam in the garden, or Adam, Adam after sin. And then act number three would be Adam insofar as he's redeemed by Christ. Let's look at act number two now for a second. The fact that we approach our work differently speaks to the fallen nature of masculinity today, that any man, insofar as he is affected by sin. One of the ways that he's affected by sin is that he doesn't work as he as he previously worked. And sometimes we find ourselves as men embarrassed. And one of I think one of the worst feelings that a lot of men who read the book and who are listening to this podcast can can relate to is you find yourself in some way having failed in the working world. And then you're like talking to your friends or or more embarrassingly, say talking to your wife and and you find yourself unable to provide. So that thing that Adam did in the garden. you you can't do right and in a way that you deeply want to that stamped into your nature. I mean talk about if you want to talk about just like the natural biological ramifications of this in the reproductive process. What was the job of the male members of of like a herd of Neanderthals, for example? Well, what they did is they protected the females While the females were having their having the young and they did the things that were out there, they protected from enemies and they and they provided for women and children so that the herd could survive. It's so deeply stamped into our DNA that, yes, in some way, it almost inevitably affects our identity whenever we experience something that calls into question our ability to work. All right. And we feel ashamed. when we feel that kind of shame, the instinct. For most men is to hide, just like Adam hid in the garden, right? Adam hides behind the trees. He shields himself from God and he shields himself from the woman. And isn't that exactly what we as men do? That when we feel a sense of shame, whether it's shame about work or s shame about some sin, maybe there's a sexual sin, for example, that you're struggling with that causes you. to feel shame and say, well, I should I shouldn't talk about this or that, because after all, I sin myself. And who am I to speak up? What it creates is a lot of very quiet men. And when I reflect on the sin of Adam and the and the sin of male humanity at large, this is one of the biggest things that I became convicted of over the course of my research and the process of writing this book, that perhaps Adam's greatest sin was his silence. You know, the fathers of the church, when they reflect on the Garden of Eden, Eve, who, of course, in some sense commits the first sin of humanity, right? She takes the fruit of the tree and eats of it and then gives it to her husband. But there was something that happened prior to Eve's taking the fruit of the tree that some fathers of the church actually reckons to be the first sin of humanity. And that's that Adam allowed the serpent to come into the garden. Adam. didn't do anything. He was just quiet. He saw the serpent. Serpent, in some instances, has been translated as dragon. The dragon comes into the garden. And what does Adam do? He just sits idly by. He's quiet about it. And that silence is suffocating for humanity. It kills families. In our day and age, it looks like the dad. Who knows that he needs to say things to his children? Positive things, I love you, you are good, you are beautiful, and also negative things. Please don't do this or that. You know, see you see your 15 year old daughter walking out the door wearing nothing, going to a college party or something like that. And you're quiet. You don't say anything when you're called to say something. You're called to speak, right? But in our shame, we don't that and that silence is deeply harmful. To marriages, to families, to society at large. And it it began with Adam. it continues to the present day. So anyway, that's Adam number one, Adam number two. You see this flip where Adam, who is so strong in the garden, becomes so quiet and so weak, so hidden under the effects of sin. and then I'll I'll I'll just tease it with you here. I I I think we might be nearing the edge of our time. But the good news is that this second Adam. The Adam who has been affected by sin, who is struggling with shame, he doesn't have the final say. And it's interesting to note that when Christ saved humanity, when he goes through the paschal mystery, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, that whole tale begins in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ meets humanity once again in a garden, the same place where humanity fell. And then when he rises again, he also rises in the context of the resurrection garden. Almost as if he's saying to to the ancient Adam and to every man in this present day, you can be a new man. Right. Humanity and masculinity in particular can be made new. That sin that you have committed must not hold you back. And in fact, I can I can make that sin an occasion for you to know even greater strength than you ever knew without it. So there's new Adam in brief, and I'm yeah, I'm excited for for people to check it out. Well, I and one final note too, John, is and I actually was reading that this morning, is that I don't think it's an accident that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus as the gardener. The gardener. Isn't that beautiful? It's all coming full circles. Like, are you the gardener, sir? Well, kind of I was the person that was working the garden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. Well, John, I really appreciate your time. I feel like I could keep going on for another hour at least with you, but Where can our listeners find the book? Where can they find out more about you and what you're doing? And then I'll I'll kind of give you the final slide before we wrap up. Yeah, I appreciate it. So the book can be found I suppose all of the major places where books are sold, you know, so I you can most people will buy it on Amazon. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A friend of mine told me that he bought a copy from Target the other day, going Target, so you c it looks like you can you can buy it pretty much anywhere. Lot of a lot of local Catholic bookstores, of course, on the R Sunday Visitor website. I there there is a website out there for guys that really want to dig into it, newadambook.com. You can you can take a look and in the weeks following the release of the book on February sixteenth, once a week we're posting a discussion guide for each chapter, and that's specifically for men's groups that are That are digging in and looking at the book. And yeah, if you want to find out more about what I do, go to myforge.org. So outside of the book, we release courses for men who are interested in leading their families well, who are interested in working in holiness, who are interested in positively impacting their communities and their church. So look up www.myforge.org and you can see all about my organization and what we're doing with Ben. I'm going to leave links to all this for you guys as well in the show notes. so you can check it out. And John, when is the book released? Is it officially released now or is it just pre-orders right now? So it's just pre-orders right now, but February sixteenth is the official release date. So if you want to perfect if you want to jump on, then grab yourself a copy, then you can you can go for it. There there is a chance I haven't looked at it in four or five days, but I I think the Amazon link might be active a touch before then. So maybe a few copies will go out in advance of February 16th, but the official launch day is February sixteenth. Perfect. Well, I was gonna release this on Ash Wednesday. So you by the time this is released, you'll be live and ready to go. So perfect. All right. Well, John, thank you so much for your time. Nikki for the work that you are doing. Really appreciate it. Again, I I really enjoyed the book. I encourage all of our listeners to go out and get a copy. It's a quick read. but it'll definitely change your perspective on masculinity and what it means to to truly be a man. Again, John, thank you for your time. Thank you all so much for listening or watching on YouTube. And until next time, go out there and be a saint. Brothers, thank you for listening. But do not let this end here. If this episode stirs something inside of you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a brother who needs to hear it, a man who is tired, a man who's drifting, a man who's under attack and does not even know it. This podcast exists because the battle is real and souls are at stake. This work has helped you. Please support the channel so we can keep fighting. Your support will help ignite the mission to keep us going. We need your help, brothers. I know you will come through for us. Pray for us because we need it as well. The enemy does not rest, and neither can we. Now go and live this. Be a saint, not tomorrow, but today. Choose the hard thing, reject sin, get back up. Go to confession, pray your rosary, love your family. Carry your cross without