Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #533 Getting Real with Author Steven Thomas; Sex, Love, Mystery and Adventure

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#533 Getting Real with Author Steven Thomas; Sex, Love, Mystery and Adventure · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigg, your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining me today.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Today, we're witnessing violent attacks on human dignity, marriage to family, especially on children, the most innocent and vulnerable of all.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: What's amazing to me is how many people support this, case in point being the DNC here in Chicago.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I'm a Chicago guy.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I'm out in the western suburbs, thank goodness now, and in front of the DNC, we're giving out Planned Parenthoods out there with a mobile truck giving free vasectomies and abortions.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: There's a big IUD somewhere near the entrance.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: What's going on.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Of course, kamala Harris loves to promote abortion.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: We've normalized sin.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: We've normalized the fall.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Stephen Thomas, who wrote a novel to combat these attacks, to challenge us, to rise up.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Both lay and religious be witnesses to the truth.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: While I was doing some research on Stephen, I also found out he was given the grace to complete this book after walking across the country with a friend of his, and they traversed over 4,500 miles in the form of a cross over the US Praying for God's mercy and favor on their country and church.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Stephen resides, as I do, in the suburbs of Chicago with his wife, jenny, eight living children.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You know he's a good Catholic guy when I say eight living children.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: That's what's going to save the world, stephen, are those kids?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So, stephen, welcome, thank you.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you, jack.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah's what's going to save the world, stephen, are those kids?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So, stephen, welcome, thank you.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you, jack.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to outpopulate them.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just simple demographics, right.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, as a DNC is promoting abortions and vasectomies, you're exactly right.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it might take a little while, right, but it's good work.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: It's good solid work, if you can handle it, brother, raising all those kids, right?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen, what compelled you to walk across the country?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And you said the grace came out of that.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: What compels a guy to walk across the country?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And how do you get the time to do something like that?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I might have to figure this out myself.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, dude, you know what?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And the thing is, jack, is I really couldn't afford the time.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: At the time we were financially struggling and it was a real prayerful thing where again, going deep with God, with our Blessed Mother, just trying to figure out what they wanted me to do, and I felt like God wanted me to do it, even though financially we were kind of going hand to mouth at the time.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: You know, big family, right, we're not flush with cash, so so anyway, so I it actually started, actually started about 18 years ago, when I was praying, I was getting ready to jump in the shower and I was talking to her Blessed Mother.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I was like I was like, all right, blessed mother, what's something we can do just for Jesus?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: No-transcript, a Eucharistic year revival.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: And so immediately, and again at the time, I like I couldn't afford to take time to even you know, one minute to like, and I felt like you know what I just need to trust.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So I reached out to bishop cousins.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So, long story short, really push for a national eucharistic.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: They call it a pilgrimage.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I wanted to call it a march because, because we're going out in battle, we're taking jesus in the eucharist.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: We're taking them across the country, we're going to like, basically, you know, cast out the demons and just reclaim the, you know, reclaim our land for Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So I so I started with talking to Bishop Cousins down the line, to people, and it was actually, it was actually my son's order that actually really pushed, because the bishops at first they didn't want to do it.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: They were like this is too much, too much liability to you know, we don't, we won't have enough priests to man it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: And I remember his father, john Anthony Boughton, who said listen, he goes.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: We will promise to have a gray robe at every procession with our Lord.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And so it was really because of the pushing of the Franciscan friars that it happened.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And so originally I was going to be involved.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: I brought a friend of mine in and then something didn't work out.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: So I ended up bringing other people in to manage it, which is probably a good move.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And so my friend and I it was actually his idea so decided to walk, you know, kind of like a precursor to the Eucharistic pilgrimage.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: So we walked from the north, south, east and west.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I walked from the east coast, which we were walking from Marian Shrine.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So I walked from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the Grotto at Notre Dame, walked through the Appalachian Mountains, and it was just an incredible experience.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: So I walked with Bud McFarlane and then Randall Terry Actually Randall's running for president, he's on the constitution ticket, he was operation rescue back in the day, back in the nineties, but we just had a fantastic time, very tough.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: There were times where every step was just like sheer agony, but there was a lot of prayer Again, praying for our country, praying for our church, praying for the success of the Eucharistic pilgrimage, and it was, from you know, basically taking a month out of my life of just walking, praying and smoking cigars too.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And just having fun.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So it's not all bad.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not all bad, no, no, no, it was fun.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: It was from that In the preface.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Stephen, thank you for that.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: In the preface of your book, two things caught my eye.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: It says Catholic Joe, which is the novel that you wrote, is based on some real people and events, especially the supernatural experience in one of the chapters, chapter 32 to be exact, as well as a little fiction.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So you're putting some real stories in here.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, can your friends and family, can they identify who's in here?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, so I mean everybody in there.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: obviously, everything is you know I'm borrowing from different life experiences and such but of course, yeah, it's.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I mean it's hey, look at most most good novels are based on a lot of truth, right?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: otherwise they wouldn't they wouldn't touch people's hearts exactly.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so though you know it's, it's a I say it's a fiction, but it really, most of it, is true.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: So you know, I did a of research, talked to people like Philip Nielsen.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: He had the Red Cap Report.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Basically, he hired ex-Catholic intelligence so FBI, nsa folks to do research on Back when they elected Archbishop Bergoglio as pope.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: They had cardinals going on Wikipedia to find information about other cardinals and he was like that's not a reliable source, let's just put it that way.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: So he actually put together a dossier on every cardinal just to kind of let again other cardinals could see it was something they was going to share with everybody.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: And actually he gave me a lot of information in the book.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So it was very, very tightly researched.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: He mentioned the supernatural experience.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that was something that actually happened to me and again, I don't know if it was a dream or it was a vision.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: It was so real that I literally woke up in tears and every time I would mention to somebody I would break into tears because it was just.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It was so vivid and I'm not going to give you the what it was, but it's in the book, but it was something that was so powerful and so vivid and fits so well in the book that it was like it was meant to be there.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And the other thing is and I and I and I think this is so important, it certainly is for guys like us I'm with the john paul to renewal center, of course, so we've studied john paul the second a lot.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: He always says that that all the evil that you see out to the world begins in the individual human heart.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It's a battle of the in the individual human heart first between love and lust, truth and lies again, and then we manifest that in the world right.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: We first between love and lust, truth and lies again, and then we manifest that in the world right.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: We become a vice president, maybe of the United States, and maybe even the president of the United States.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Even though I lost that battle in my heart, and I now might be a socialist or a Marxist, you know, you could be the most powerful person in the world, but still still, the battle starts in the individual human heart.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: So you quote proverbs 1632 here and you say it says it all more noble a man who conquers himself than even he who conquers cities.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: How true, uh, steven, how true is that I used to you know what jack I used to always share that.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: So I coached inner city kids and I would always share that with the with you know most of them didn't have dads right that that were, at least weren't with the families and and I would always chicago I was in the joliet, in joliet area.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, so there.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: So that was one of the things I constantly, constantly told them is that you know you could do anything in the world, but the most important thing is you got to be able to conquer yourself.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: You know the, the passions and all that stuff.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Now you mentioned that that saying so, actually it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I remember reading that same thing about evil goes through every, every, every human heart and and that's the, and that's the key, and the book talks a lot about that.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: It talks a lot about, you know, I really try to go deep in the book and it's great to get feedback from people, because you never really know how the Holy Spirit's going to work.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: And, again, I've gotten feedback from so many different types of people people in prison, from women, from young women, young men, older, you know, men in their 90s and I've just it's just amazing how the Holy Spirit works Because, again, it was the, it was an attempt to bring people really deeper into the heart of Christ as well as into themselves, into, you know, understanding themselves.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of hard topics in the book.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's some very.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: In fact, I had a friend of mine.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: He goes, steve, he goes.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I didn't know if you're going to go there.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You went there and again, it convicts them, but it convicts them away.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: It convicts them in a way to know that there is hope beyond their shame, and so I don't know how many men who have reached out to me who have had vasectomies.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I mentioned that in the book and I try to again, you try not to beat people over the head with these topics.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: You try to weave them in, but you also try to weave in that sense of hope that even amidst sin there is still hope.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of these guys— let's dwell on that, for people that are tuning in here maybe aren't even Catholic right, our audience is not only—they're mostly Christians, but they're not all Catholic.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: When we talk about things like vasectomies and things, they don't get it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: They really don't understand it sometimes.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But I think the reason you have to bring it up in the book and the reason we have to bring up in public is because I've met so many men especially that their marriages have gone bad.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And when we start to talk about this and I'll tell you why this is what happened to me the first time.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: So, when my marriage got rocky many years ago, I've got three small kids at that time.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: They're all grown now with their own kids.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: But we're talking about divorce and separation and a buddy of mine goes Jack, are you contraceptive?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And I said what has that got to do with anything?
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And he said well, it's got a lot to do with it.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: And so he explained it to Catholic teaching to me the beauty of the sacraments, et cetera, et cetera, and the beauty of lovemaking man, you know, when it's open to grace and being filled with grace.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: We're created in the Imago Dei, in the image and likeness of God, made so perfectly beautiful and clear in marriage and the family.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It's a reflection of Trinitarian love in the world.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But, anyways, after he explained this to me, I said at first, steve, and I said that's the stupidest thing I ever heard, and I walked away.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: And then I found out he was correct.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Right, I found out he was real.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: So the reason it's important to bring it up to people is sometimes they don't know what has gone wrong with their marriage.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of times it starts in the bedroom.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: A wife feels this lust, this selfishness, and it's a distortion.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You try not to be selfish.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't purposely become selfish, but when you are contraceptive, it's more about that act right, it's that feeling, you know, and it's no more about this love story anymore.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: And it's not done on purpose.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: But a woman can feel that, and so, as a woman rejects us, our egos get stroked and we think, well, maybe I'm married to the wrong person, maybe I should be married to another person or another person, and so it's important to bring this up so people can contemplate that right and talk about that.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So, I know that's look, we don't have to stay there.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: You've got so much in this book, but I just wanted to bring out.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: But it's important though.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's important.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, st John Paul II calls marriage the primordial sacrament.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: It's the beginning of everything and it's the beginning of life.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: If that's distorted, it's like you know, anytime you change something, that of nature, there's consequences, just like when you split the atom there's enormous consequences and devastation.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: The same thing when you split the marital act, when you take the unitive from the procreative, when you change that, and the thing is that you really don't understand at first glance why it's so devastating.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: But when you really start to research, look into it, yeah, but that's throughout.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I mean throughout the book.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: We try to talk about the beauty of love.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Right, there's actually a sex scene in the book which is you know, I thought you know I can't shirk away, so I tried to be very tasteful with it is it's all about marriage.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know he's a military guy, he's.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: You know he's one of the baddest men on the planet.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: You know he can, like it says in the book, he can kill an enemy with his bare hands and caress his wife with those same hands.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: And you know, so he's, he's kind of like the perfect guy.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And you know again, if you, if you could create the perfect man I.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: That's what I try to and that's why, when women like the book so much, I'm like, why do you like it?
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I wrote this for men.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: I go, I don't understand and they go.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: There's just something beautiful about this masculinity that you've portrayed and you know, and because a lot of times you know, obviously, jack, in our culture, you know, masculinity is just getting bombarded, right yeah.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I haven't met too many women that like a wimpy man actually to be honest with you, I really haven't.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: There's something beautiful Look, when a woman, especially if she's pregnant, she's in a vulnerable time, right, and she needs someone to be there for her.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: She needs, maybe physically, obviously for protection.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It's like if I was a martial artist for for many, many years and taught it for many years and and if I would get hurt, my back would go out, my knee would go out.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: You know, you feel very vulnerable.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I'm still that person, right, but I go out into the world and I go oh my gosh, I hope I don't get in a fight or something today because I'm hurting.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't hardly defend myself.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Well, a woman, she can be in a very vulnerable spot then when she's pregnant and so she wants that, she needs it, and that's why men were created to be their protectors and we're sacramental, visible signs and a man's masculinity is supposed to be there as a sign of being there to protect, right To love, to protect, to initiate this gift of love right.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually you know so, and one of the reasons I wrote it again, I specifically wrote it for men.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I wrote it because men need hope and they also need encouragement, they need to be ignited, and so I gave a talk just the other day at there's a big men's group here and and one of the things we talked about is, you know, a lot of the guys are older, right, and they're they're like, you know, I'm kind of thinking to themselves you know what, what could I possibly do?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, dude, I go.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: We all have our part to play, and that's the thing is that it's actually Catholic Joe Superhero.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So that's the title and people always ask they're like, why superhero?
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Because by the merit of our baptism we are baptized.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: People don't realize the power of our baptism.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: When we're baptized, we are anointed Same oil as you anoint to kings.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: We're anointed priest, prophet and king, and those aren't just symbolic terms.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: We are anointed priest, prophet and king.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: We're grafted into God's family.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: So the father we have the ability to call the creator of the universe Abba, or father, or daddy.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: We have the ability to call the redeemer of the universe brother.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And so the thing is is, with those relationships.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: We've got enormous power and people don't realize the power that they have.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: And that really, and one of the things I think that hit the guys the most is I said I go, think about it, I go.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: If you pick up the gauntlet, if you get in this battle, there's going to be souls in heaven because you cooperated with God's grace.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Souls for all eternity will be in heaven because you got up off the couch, off the golf course, whatever, and you got in the fight.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: But, conversely, if you don't get in the battle, there will be souls in hell because you did not pick up the gauntlet, because you did not fight, and so that's something we need to realize.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you connect those dots from what you just said, it's only when you stand up and go out and you know you too go out into the vineyard you know Jesus would say that you really find that power of your baptism.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: In other words, if I sit on the couch, I never make it efficacious, I never really bring that grace into action.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: When I go out and I do things that take courage, strength, move me beyond my own courage and my own strength, I see that I have something deeper and then that baptism becomes alive for me.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: How do I know that?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: That's everything you said was true, unless I step out into the arena and find out that I can do things that I could not do on my own until I ask God for help Right, amen, amen, amen, and that's what your book says.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: That's what that's what a super well you said.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: You know why do we call him catholic joe superhero?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: That's why because he's a man of action and he followed out right that he has resources that are beyond himself.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Somehow I was given those resources, and then you know what priest, prophet and king mean, right amen, amen.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was given the resources and it really was his faith that propelled him.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: It really was his belief in God and I wrote a lot of it in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: So I would go in there with my laptop in the back and usually there might be one or maybe no people in there, but a lot of times, as I'm writing it, I mean you know, I am, I'm talking to Jesus, I'm like Jesus.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: You know how can I say this?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: What should I?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: say here, and you know, and we have this person over our house and she, she goes.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I read your book and she goes.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I just, I was just crying throughout the whole book.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: She goes.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know why, and I just you know.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Again, I attributed all to God's grace, everything is a gift.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, you know, everything is a gift.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: People say the book is like anointed, and that's the thing is that you know it's.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Every engaged couple, every married couple should read it, because it really will challenge you and it really will push you to be a better husband, a better wife, better spouse for each other.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: So unpack that gift a little bit to be a gift right.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: And one of the things John Paul would say, and I would say, of course, mimicking him in a lot of things you can't give what you don't have in essence, I can't give it, I can't give it to my spouse, I can't give it to my friends, my family, until I'm filled up.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know, I just did a an interview and had a discussion with a young woman who's a doctor and and and she's becoming a life coach and stepping out of the profession she loved because she was burnt out and frustrated, like so many medical people are today.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Right, this big medicine moved away from patients to money and power.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: You know, at the end of the day, though, they're coaching one another, they're trying to help one another, but they all run out of.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: You know it tanks all empty.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And it's not until you go into prayer and realize that, yeah, I'm called to be a gift to these other people that are coming to me for help, but first I have to receive that gift.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: I'm called to be a gift to these other people that are coming to me for help, but first I have to receive that gift.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I have to go to the eternal well, and we all have to do that.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: We have to do that in our marriages and our families until I fill up my tank and then I can be a gift to others and I never have to worry about running on empty anymore, do I?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And that's what you were doing in that adoration Chapel?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: John Paul II did that all the time.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: He wrote a lot of his encyclicals and things in that Adoration Chapel.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Stephen, yeah, yeah Him and actually Fulton Sheen too.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that about Fulton.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Sheen.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, All of his talks were written in front of us.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Huh, oh, beautiful.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: He's a hero.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: So when I was in seminary, for five years.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: He's a superhero, isn't he?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he was one of my heroes because I remember when I was in the seminary back in the 80s it was a really tough time to be in the seminary.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: They were not in good shape.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Let's just put it that way.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's an understatement, my friend, yeah right, right, we'd get a six pack and put some chew in and listen to Fulton Sheen on a Friday night.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, it didn't get any better.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You get some inspiration there, huh.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: And you know, and in a lot of the, so actually you know, fulton Sheen, st John Paul II, I mean a lot of these heroic figures are kind of you know, sprinkled throughout the book as well.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: So it's, it really is a, it's a fruitcake you know of, you know of faith and and people.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Again, I never wrote it for it to be an evangelization tool per se, but you know, I've had guys call me and say I, you know, I've read the book and I just there's things about my faith I never even knew and so you know.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: So that's been, again, some of the things that I really think.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: When you say that, is there a theme that comes up, there's things about my faith that I didn't know, or is a repetitive theme that you're finding?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: What are people discovering when they see that?
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just so.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Basically the characters.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: There's a cadence of faith throughout the life, so it's not go to church on Sunday.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: His faith is every part of his life.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: When he wakes up in the morning to sing the Angelus throughout the day, to go into confession, to witnessing to some young kid that tries to rob him, there's some great.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: It was enormous fun writing the book, the book now marketing it, that's been a real but.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But writing the book is just.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: It was just enormously fun because, I mean, part of it was therapeutic for me because, again, everything we've been through in our culture with covid and all the other stuff you know, I mean think back to what.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Do you remember when the fbi raided mark hauck's?
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: house, of course.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Unpack that a little bit for people that don't know who mark hawk is yeah, he's a pro-life, you know, he's a pro-life warrior.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: He's got I think he's got like eight, you know seven, eight kids, yeah, and and the fbi raided his house in the early morning with guns, drawn in battle gear.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Kids are screaming just over 20 over 20 FBI agents, by the way Right.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it was September 23rd, was it 2022?
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: But anyway.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: So they raided this house and I just remember how I felt.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I was so appalled, I was so disgusted, and so I wrote a chapter in there about when the FBI tried to raid Joe's house to intimidate him, and let's just say that it ends differently than it did with the house.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: So it was fun.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It was fun being able to write that in.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: There's other chapters.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: There was a school board meeting where Joe just happens to show up, and again the FBI.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: They want to try to paint, you know, parents as domestic terrorists and again it it ended up very differently than what you know, than what, what they would have expected.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of there's a lot of fun, really fun, like chapters in there, and probably my favorite chapter is the is the last chapter 33, and that's where the usccb, they they want joe to come in and you know, and kind of talk to them and so because their idea with corruption in the church.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that was was tough, because you don't want to, you know, you don't want to just go airing your dirty laundry out, but but I I uncover some corruption in the church and I talk about that in the book, as well as corruption, the government, in fact this, this nun who I absolutely love and she's still alive, you know, in fact she was a godsend for me.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: But she started reading the book and she said I was in tears and then she got to the last chapter where I kind of go after the bishops a little bit and she was, you know, she kind of like pulled back and you know, sometimes it's hard, you know it's hard to hear the truth sometimes.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a lot of that in the book where again, his big thing with the bishops is fixed marriage.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: He's, you know, so it's Lieutenant General Joseph Salvatore.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: His thing is to the bishops fixed marriage.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Because, again, if you've got 95% of your people contraception, you know, again we say that that's a serious sin.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: If you have full knowledge, if you understand it, it's a serious sin.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: You should not go to communion.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, and I was going back and forth with some very prominent, you know, bishops and priests you know, with with the dialogue on that and they're, and they're like, you know, we feel like it's you know, it's, it's it's kind of the lay peoples and I'm like, listen, I go.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: If 95% of priests were fornicating, the bishops would do something about it.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So we have to yeah, sorry yeah no-transcript, and that's important for people to hear.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: We had some great opportunities for people to come into the Catholic Church, except that we hear all of this confusion coming from Pope Francis and on the way down.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And when you have this confusion, the problem is people then say well, you guys are all messed up too, and I say wait, wait, wait.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: We have the tradition and the scripture.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: We have 2,000 years.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: We didn't start this yesterday.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: And it's very easy to find the truth.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: It's very easy to read all the way from Benedict and John Paul and all the way backwards, and so that's the beauty of it.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Right that a man or men in leadership today say that, and not all of them are bad.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Obviously, there's plenty of good ones out there, but we shouldn't be afraid to say that we have a deep church, a deep state.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: We know all this stuff.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: But here's my whole point in saying this.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Getting back to Bishop Sheen now, bishop Sheen was asked this in the 40s and the 50s.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: He said how are we going to change the church?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And do you remember what he said, stephen?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Probably the laity.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said the laity.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: He said because the laity need to step up.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: He said it's the laity that's going to make sure your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your cardinals and your religious act like cardinals and religious, and so that's what we have to do, stephen.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: And so when you put that in the book, it needs to be in the book, otherwise they're going to think we're a bunch of fools that don't know what's going on.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Right, we know what's going on.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: In spite of that, christ's power comes in, doesn't?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: For sure?
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree, I think the lady and that's my again.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: When I go out and give talks, jack, that's one of the things I try to emphasize is that and I share the story about my reversion was in high school, so I came from divorce, so my parents divorced.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: It started when I was young my father is an alcoholic a lot of dysfunction and a lot of pain.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I call it the crucible of divorce.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: It was very, very painful, but it was probably some woman with a babushka on her head that left this little white booklet, the Mother of Christ Crusade, about the story of Fatima in church.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: It was that one woman that left that book there that changed my life.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: So the thing is is no matter what, you know that's a very small act Leave this little thing.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: How old were you, Stephen, at that time?
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I was probably 17, 16, 17 years old at the time.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: So you picked up this book.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, you pick it up in the church.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: It was just sitting somewhere, just sitting in the back of church.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I picked it up.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I read it do you remember what got you to pick that up?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Because these are important things, you know, sometimes we don't, we don't think about this, but is it just a god moment?
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: just boom, pick it up it was, it was god, it was god's grace, because I was not into religion at all.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I was again, I was.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: I was drugging myself from the pain of the divorce.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: You know living a, you know living a bad lifestyle.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: And something just made me pick it up.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I started reading it and it just changed my life.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: I read the story of Fatima, how these children were making sacrifices, how souls were falling like snowflakes into hell, how our blessed mother just dearly, dearly, loves us, and it just changed my life.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: And it was from that little booklet, that tiny little thing that somebody did and think about.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it changed my life.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And it was from that little booklet, that little, tiny little thing that somebody did and think about it.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: It changed my life.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I've got eight children.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: My oldest is going to be a priest and all my kids love God.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: So I mean, it was that one little thing that somebody did that changed the trajectory of my life.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: So I just want to urge people, no matter how small, nothing is too small.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Everything has a part to play and we just have to engage each other.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: We have to get ignited in our faith in this battle.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: That's what Joe does, doesn't he in the book?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Because he says you say in there what can one man do?
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And well, what could one lady with a babushka do?
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: She could change generations, right, she changed your life, which could change generations and generations.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: We don't know, but we know the power of one person stepping out, because we always say it's me, right, stephen, but it's not you, it's you united to Christ, christ, who can do all things, and he does.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: He took little Therese of Lisieux, who wanted to be a great missionary.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Right, she had all these dreams and she never left the convent and she died at 24 years old.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: And look at the amount of lives she changed, right.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: And how could she do that right Well?
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: she couldn't do it on her own, you know.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Beautiful, yeah, beautiful story, even you know, in the book I talk about Joan of Arc because, you know, joe is a soldier, he's a warrior, and he was again.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: He was facing some really difficult situation.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: And so he's walking in the church and he sees this little icon of Joan of Arc and it strikes him, icon of Joan of Arc.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: And it strikes him.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: He's like here's this little peasant girl, couldn't even read or write, who changed the course of history.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's the beauty.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: If we open ourselves to God, there's no limit.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And I always, when I finish up adoration, I try to go to Mass in adoration every day if I can, and I kneel there and I say, jesus, you know, I renew my baptismal vows and I say you know what?
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Jesus, let's yoke together.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: How are we going to bring God's kids back to them?
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: And you know, anything, anything, that's the rest of my life.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Again, that's why I love writing, because it's a way to scale that ability to touch people's hearts.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: And that's, you know, that's all I want to do, is just continue to write.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: And this is, you know, this is one of many.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: This is good.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: There's going to be at least two more sequel, prequel, whatever you call it.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh, that's beautiful.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Well, and I tell you what you know, what you know.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I latch onto what you just said, stephen.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It's an injustice what's being done to our young people?
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: today.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: It's an injustice and I can say that very easily, because they're given choices that are not really choices.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: They're given choices of one garbage dump over another garbage dump, or even in the church sometimes.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: They're given a choice between don't think about this, don't think about sex, don't think about the beauty of a woman or a man or whatever, and that's so lame, that's so not what our Catholicism teaches.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Our Catholicism doesn't say push it down, push your arrows, push your desires down.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Those desires have been given to us.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: See, this is what you do with a book like yours, right?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Those desires have been given to us to step out into the field, not be afraid of those desires, but not to indulge them either, but to open those desires to the one who gave them to you, so that he can take those desires, untwist, undistort them.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Satan doesn't have his own clay, does he?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: He can only take our clay, twist and distort it.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: If you allow him to untwist and undistort it, you too become a superhero.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: And that's because we're not natural people, we're supernatural.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: We've been given grace.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Joe.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Joe knows this right.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: That's why you wrote this Catholic Joe superhero.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: He knows this.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: He's been given grace, which that Ruah in Genesis 2, 7,.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: God blows himself into us and makes us different than the rest of creation, and we either bring good or evil into the world, and there's a lot of evil coming in.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Stephen a lot of evil coming in.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for what you're saying, jack.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: So there's one chapter in there it's called Rainbow in the Cathedral.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: There's one chapter in there it's called Rainbow in the Cathedral and there's a there's a dialogue and interaction between Joe and a young man who's struggling with his sexual identity and and it's I really wanted to have that conversation between the church and and the homosexuality and, again, people that that struggle with their identities, and actually it was something that, yeah, I really enjoyed writing that chapter because it was an opportunity to show, you know, really just the beauty.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Again, our church, we love our brothers and sisters, no matter what they are struggling with or what you know.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: But we also have to be, you know again, because the kid asked Joey, he goes, you know, have you ever had, you know, desires to?
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: You know, but we also have to be you know again, because the kid asked joey goes, you know, have you ever had, you know, desires to?
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: You know, be with another man?
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: He goes, no, not really, because I just I just really like women and it was, I mean, it's a very frank, you know, I mean just a very frank conversation and, you know, very direct.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: But he didn't back off of kind of who he was.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: But he loved this guy because the guy you know the guy it's severe struggles and and problems and but joe showed, you know, this unconditional love to him, even though you know they had this exchange where the kid tried to hit him and stuff anyways.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: But it was just, it was an opportunity really to have that, that dialogue, because I think we we need to have that open and frank dialogue but also to be kind of true to who we are.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: And again, we just want the church, jesus, we just want people to be happy and if you go down some of the rabbit holes that society opens for us, you're not going to find happiness.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: And again, heterosexual, homosexual, if you're not living a right order of life, you're not going to be happy.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: You know, at the end of the day, there's a lot of, there's a lot of dead ends out there and you know, unfortunately, once you slap these labels on yourselves and you become your attractions, right, you become your sin.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I'm a liar, I'm a cheater, I'm gay, I'm this, I'm that, I'm a drunk.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: And then that's who you are.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And that's not who you are.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: You know and who you are as a beloved child of God, you know.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Once you find yourself out of that rabbit hole, you look back.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: If you're lucky, stephen, and you'll go.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, by the grace of God, go, I I didn't get myself out of that hole.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Somebody got me out of that hole.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you, jesus.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: You know and my guardian angels rescued me more times than I, than I deserve, that's for sure.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I can say that very honestly.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I always think that when I die, my guardian is going to look at me with this look of like do?
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: you realize?
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Do you realize what?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you put me through.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Do you realize what?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: you put me through.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, I can.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I can relate, stephen.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I always say that.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: I always say, always say that Satan lives in the past.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: He always wants to take us backwards, he always wants to show us what we did.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: And that's why you know whoever's listening right now your past does not define you.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Your past does not define you Again.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: We've got now the God.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: The beauty of our faith is we always have the ability to convert.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: We always have the ability to open our hearts, to turn back to God, who's always waiting for us right.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: So, no matter what we've done, no matter what shame and there's one chapter in the book where they talk about really toxic shame that has kept Vinny really in prison, kept him in prison and I try to go into spiritual depth describing how that demon, that demon constantly wants to show him that shame, that thing that he did, that he's most ashamed of.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: When Vinny wants to start to like convert, when he wants to start changing his life, the demon constantly brings his nose and his face back to that shameful thing that he did.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: And so that's the thing is that you know again, to show people that we're not defined by our past.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: You know the beauty of reconciliation, confession, the beauty of God's grace.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: You know we're children of God and we're all broken.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: That's the thing, is everybody.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: The older I get, jack, the more I realize it's not always our fault.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, everybody's wounded, everybody's wounded.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: And we didn't come into a sinless world, did we, steven?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we came into a fallen world and we're fallen.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: So, hey, look at get over it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I think once in a while, you know, it's good for me personally to look at my past and some of my failures, not to dwell on them, but just to realize that, wow, I've been liberated from a lot of that.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And I think maybe that's a good reason to look back once in a while.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, don't dwell there, don't stay there, move on, hey, listen we're winding down here as we're winding down, give us a little contact information where we can buy the book.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I know it's on Amazon, but there might be better places to buy that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: No, we don't.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't want to go to Amazon.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: They take like 90 days to pay you and stuff.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: They're criminals, yeah, so we got to help you out here a little bit.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: So anybody listening here?
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Where are we going to go?
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: It's catholicjoesuperherocom, so catholicjoesuperherocom.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: And again, if you want, like for your church, I've had people that wanted to buy there's 20 books in a box.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: If you want to buy a box for your church, it's like half off for the book.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: So yeah, go there.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: And I guarantee, if you've got somebody struggling with their faith, have them read the book.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: It will change their life.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I could tell you story after story of people whose lives have been touched and you know, praise God.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, good, and on that catholicjoesuperherocom you can find your contact information if they need anything for sure, yeah, my email's on there, okay, good you got it, steven you're a joy, my friend, good to be with you all right, hey, thanks yeah, thank you.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.