Judas never to have been born?, Suffering, Virtue, Purgatory, Integral Good, and Aliens with Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P.
This week we welcome Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P. into the studio because we got some questions…
In this episode we discuss:
- What is longanimity?
- Would it have been better for Judas to never have been born?
- Virtue
- Can people in purgatory pray for us?
- Should we watch movies that have non-simulated sins in them?
- And of course… aliens
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Transcript :
Intro: [00:00:00] Cheers. Cheers. Did you click it and have it work? Sort of an oaky afterbirth. What was that? She did tell me to get a beer and some cheese fries over at Eskimo Joe’s. That’s very nice, lovely. I only hope you feel this way when I’m done. Because I could destroy this night in two seconds. Why is that funny?
Well, I think it’s a bit funny to be trying to define nothing. Smooth as a bourbon on a summer day. Strong as a peated scotch in the winter night. This is a fair warning. The Catholic Man Show is about to begin. Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let’s go! We’re burning daylight! Welcome to the Catholic Man Show, we’re on the [00:01:00] Lord’s team, the winning side, so raise your glass.
Adam
Adam Minihan: and Anne here, sitting with David Niles in studio, Juan is still not here, as we mentioned last week. Be moved. So he abandoned us, so he won’t be here very often, but we have our good friend, father Bonaventure Chapman, Dominican friar, priest of God from up in Washington DC area. That’s it. Coming back.
We did two, we did two episodes with you last, last, last time you were here. We also done
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: SCOTUS and I think art.
Adam Minihan: Art. Yes. And so it’s great to have you back. for, thanks for like sorry, I’m fourth to record with us today.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Oh, it’s delightful. It’s a, I love Oklahoma. It’s always nice to visit Tulsa.
Friendly people. It’s different than the Washington D. C. kind of east coast people. So they’re, yeah.
David Niles: Thank you. Friendly. Thank you.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: That was a huge compliment for us. Yeah, down to earth.
David Niles: I mean, I’m sure that there are some good people. Wonderful people. In D. C.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I didn’t say there were. Yeah, I didn’t say there weren’t.
[00:02:00] I just said they’re not good. Yeah. You know, it’s like. No, they’re just different. They’re, look, I’ll put it this way. They’re not from Connecticut. That’s it. The New Englanders are a whole different bag. Now, this is all tongue in cheek, but that’s fair enough. Yeah, but yeah, just it’s refreshing to actually be with ordinary people sometimes because in DC you just, and you’re in
David Niles: city living.
You meant good looking, I think. That’s probably what you meant, but keep going. It’s all right.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. My humility
David Niles: doesn’t want to interrupt you.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, you’re doing great. Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s a lot of guns out here. There’s a lot of guns in here. Yeah, so, you know,
David Niles: here we go.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Here we are.
David Niles: Guns are almost like currency around here. No, ammo. Ammos, Ammos definitely. Ammos guarantee, yeah.
Adam Minihan: So hey guys, we’re drinking a Jebsons Bourbon Cask Strength. My mother in law got this for me. It is a bourbon that you can only get in the distillery up in Chicago, Illinois. So it’s, it’s cask strength.
Like I said, it’s like, see, almost 65 percent ABV. It is very strong. So we will drink [00:03:00] it very slowly in moderation. Well, we’re on the Lord’s team. Cheers. Winning side. So raise your glass.
David Niles: Cheers to Jesus.
Adam Minihan: Cheers.
David Niles: It drinks to me like a standard bourbon, like, this is just, this is, this is like, to me it’s like, kind of gives you a pow in the face.
Well, yeah, it is, like you said, it’s, it’s strong, it’s strong, but the flavors that are there, it’s like, yep, that is like classic bourbon.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: It’s got heavy spice it seems that in the back, kind of swings around so yeah, it’s got a lot of movement, it seems, that, I don’t know how to describe bourbon bourbon.
But if I were to describe Bourbon. Yes. I would say this has a lot of movement and a lot of spice. Ooh. And I have, I mean, that’s, that’s probably a horrible way to say it, but that’s.
David Niles: I like that. I need more movement in my life.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Chicago. That’s great. My, my my grandfather, my mother was born in Chicago.
My grandfather went to med school in Chicago. My brother did his residency pain fellowship at Rush in Chicago. So I love that. That’s a great [00:04:00] city. That’s how I really. Doing a pain, did you say a
David Niles: pain?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Pain
David Niles: fellowship, yeah. That’s there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of work there, there’s a lot of like, funny stuff you can work with.
There is, yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: yeah. He’s a specialist in pain surgery, and he was the 101st airborne flight surgeon, Afghanistan, two tours, and then finished residency, and now he’s head of anesthesiology. Pain, now he’s in charge of pain, yeah. Yep, in charge of pain fellows. So,
Adam Minihan: You, you’re one of the many, a couple hosts of Godsplaining.
Oh, yeah. There’s five of us. Yep. Yep. That’s right. So what are you what’s been going on over there?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well, we’ve got a taping coming up. We’ve got some retreats. We’re doing a, we just got back this started this year doing two person kind of prudent companion retreats. So Dominicans have this. You don’t go out.
We follow Guston’s rule. And Guston always says, whenever you go out, make sure you go. with two or three. I didn’t do that in this case, but I guess because you two are prudently companionable already. Yeah. Yeah. This is going really good so far. I’m here [00:05:00] to praise you, not to bury you. And so we started doing, going out to different different parishes and different things would say to Dominicans from the God’s point, and we’ll do.
Talk and then we’ll do like a little episode, live episode, kind of break stuff as opposed to like a Q and a type of thing. And it seems to work out well, it’s like a live audience, you could say. So it’s just with father Gregory pine out in Columbus to do one on the Eucharist on sign and sacrament. We did a day, a day or a day and a half on that, and then we’ve got a retreat coming up.
In the summer, we’re doing the sanctifier by Louis Martinez yep. And then, yeah, I think that’s the, the current stuff was, I’ve been kind of spreading out different retreats, days of recollection, and then this kind of our standard guest explaining, live explaining. I haven’t, we haven’t done object explaining yet.
That’s still my, I’m still pushing for this. Hmm. Where you have you, you have an interview with just an object like a fire extinguisher, and you ask questions to it, and and then you respond as if it has responded. And it hasn’t gone well. It like hasn’t, has not, no one’s bought this yet.
It’s a [00:06:00] shame because I think it’s, I think it’d be great. I think it’d be really, I’d be fascinated by it. You should
David Niles: start object number one, MAGA hat.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. Yeah, that’ll get some stuff. Yeah, a lot of really
David Niles: good responses, I feel like, from the MAGA hat. yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I mean, I mean, so I remember, I remember when I remember when, when, when that happened.
And I remember watching, so it’s 2016 right, and right before, and he’s coming to announce his candidacy. Yeah. And I remember seeing, getting, walking down from that plane to announce this, and he’s wearing that hat. And I thought That is the dumbest thing and then literally three seconds later. I said wow I’m
Intro: getting one
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: brilliant Like it’s just it’s just a simple very simple nice You know clear the guy is nice the guy is good at marketing of what I believe I mean like when you ask what do I want?
I and you said I say I make make America great again like it’s who doesn’t want who doesn’t want
David Niles: America to be great Like hope
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: and change. I don’t know change. I don’t [00:07:00] know if I want that You like forward. I don’t know if I want that. Make america great again. That was just brilliant. I mean who doesn’t want that, you know, I
Adam Minihan: totally agree.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, that was brilliant
Adam Minihan: Yeah, so tonight we thought because you know david we love having dominicans on on the show. We love being able to Pick your pick your guys’s brain cuz it’s like this thing you do you like study and preach, right? Yeah, this is like the things that you do.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, it’s not
Adam Minihan: good. I mean too
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: excited here
Adam Minihan: Like
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I keep expectations at a reasonable level on the lower side of things.
Remember, I’m just a philosopher
Adam Minihan: Well, yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: that’s why I’m not well, I’m not not a theologian.
Adam Minihan: Yeah. Yeah, so we just want to like We just have it we have questions that’s too much and so like
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah.
Adam Minihan: So can I start? Please. Are you
David Niles: ready to start? Shall we begin? Yeah, I think,
Adam Minihan: I think that’d be
David Niles: great. Should we ring a bell?
Ding ding. Okay. Oh. So, all of our questions for you today [00:08:00] are un, unprepared. Right. We haven’t discussed this. So Some of, just like, for clarity, some of our questions you might not have an answer for. Oh yeah. This might be one of them.
Intro: Mm hmm. Yeah,
David Niles: great. Do you have, like, is there a Dominican tradition, Easter tradition or anything?
Like, do you have a favorite Easter thing? Like, what’s the best part about being a Dominican? Oh,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: that’s a great question. Yeah, what is the best, I mean the Pass. Yeah. Jesus,
David Niles: next question. It’s tough because Jesus, next question.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, it’s tough because the triduum is the really, and that’s not Easter, like the triduum is the best part of being a Dominican, I think.
It’s that, those three, those three days getting up to that, I mean we have You know, you do, we start, we usually use we have a 10 embrace service on Wednesday at the house. So I’m at the house studies teach at the Catholic university across the street in school of philosophy. And but I, so I live with 60, 70 brothers a lot of student brothers and assistant student master there.
So I get to be around them and we have a big house. that has a great liturgy [00:09:00] great off choral offices, everything. It’s like the, it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s, it’s a flagship kind of thing. It’s, it’s where you’d want your brothers, your Dominicans to be learning because it’s, it’s just, we can, a lot of our houses have smaller numbers, but the, the big, you know, at the monastery, the kind of the fortress, this is where things get done.
So the liturgies are spectacular for the Triduum. And Dominicans, because we have a, we have a sort of, well, one long, long tradition, but two, a kind of penitential tradition. That we do penance as well in that time. We do celebrations as well, as far as I can tell. We do all things well. Sweet. But most things, yeah, yeah.
Humility, we don’t do well. It’s actually known
Adam Minihan: worldwide. Humility is known worldwide.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s the Benedictine’s thing that we don’t want to, you know, That’s theirs, take it off, you know, that’s theirs. But you know what, you
David Niles: can have humility. Yeah, it’s
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: fine. You know,
David Niles: yeah, it’s fine.
We’re going to take coolness.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. So we take, so, you know, it’s that time you’re wearing the, you’re wearing the kappa. So right now I’m not wearing the black cape, but they’re wearing the kappa for the, for the triduum. It’s a lot of silence. We have the [00:10:00] veneration of the cross has these beautiful aspects where we, we all get in a row and you, you have to go genuinely, you bow like three times in a row and finally kiss the cross.
So you’re, you’re all in a row with each other. Doing this in pattern you’re just you know stuck in this and also the the early offices my favorite offices of the year are morning prayer on holy saturday and on good friday because the The tabernacle is empty. All the the candles are gone and we’ve got a big, you know chapel everything just it doesn’t feel Right.
There’s no water in the In a holy water font. You just go in and everything’s, everything’s pared down. So all the liturgical chants get clipped, in a sense. It’s like nothing finishes. Yeah. And that just brings you into it because the, the liturgy is meant to be the, you know, the work of God, you could say, but it’s, it’s him doing the work.
Right, and I get a sense of that in the Dominican tradition especially because the liturgies are well worked over so that if you’re just there Then you can’t but come closer to Christ [00:11:00] Excellent
Adam Minihan: So we’re here with Father Bonaventure Chapman Dominican priest And we will be asking him I
Intro: don’t know how many more questions we’re going to get to How many more do
David Niles: you have in your back pocket?
I don’t know I have not counted Alright Alright, we’ll
Intro: be right back I forgot about this. I gotta tell my, yeah. I’m telling my answers, that’s right, I forgot about this.
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Welcome back to the Catholic Man Show. I’m David Niles. Here with Adam and Anna, our special guest, Father Bonaventure Chapman. That’s me. We’re just like rapid firing. We’re not
Adam Minihan: rapid firing. We are. I think curry is something like we shouldn’t be doing. Just like question after question as fast as possible.
No. It’s not what we’re doing. How do you guys like the whiskey, by the way? What do you think? I think it’s good.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Is it growing on you? It’s funny, the first one, you know, there’s a lot of movement and spice. That’s what I’d describe it as. It’s sort of a tango, you could say, in your mouth. But, Wow. It’s gotten, That’s a good description.
There are bad parts of being a Dominican. One of them is you don’t get to ballroom dance anymore. I [00:13:00] love ballroom dancing. It’s really delightful. Really? Weddings and I just kind of like shim around. I can’t do anything, so I can’t, you can’t. Because only women should dance in dresses. But I love ballroom dancing.
It’s absolutely, I don’t know if you, do you like ballroom dancing? So if you go to, if you go to
David Niles: a wedding, I get foxtrot. You’re not, like, is it, is there a rule against it or it’s just like,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Eh, you ought not to do it. Yeah. You know, if it’s, if I’m known, if I know the couple or something, you know, obviously I know the couple, Right, yeah, it seems like, really family then I might like get out there for something.
Obviously if it’s your, you could dance with your sister or, you know. Why was it, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe. I was at a so I was at one recently and it was a, it was a marriage of a Cuban Nicaraguan family and like an Irish family. Okay. And it was two, and it was the meeting of two different kind of dancing traditions.
Yeah. And by that I mean one can’t really for wedding dancing, because what Irish, no one’s gonna do Irish dancing, right? And then Cubans, I, man, they just have it. Even like, eighty, eighty five year olds, when that, when that music starts going, they’re whole, they just get there, and you, it’s just, I, and I got to, because I, I can get involved there, I’m just watching, and watching the, the two kind of cultures [00:14:00] can, like, you just, Irish just sit down.
It’s not your turn anymore, you know? It’s not your moment. It’s not your moment. Ballroom dancing, oh yeah, tango, spice and movement but after the first, after Couple sips of this. It’s actually like the spice has gone away. It’s actually
Adam Minihan: just taken a layer off your, your taste buds. That’s really what it is.
I’m sure that’s
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: what it is. Everyone who actually drinks whiskey goes, that’s exactly, yeah, you know, when I looked at the sun at first I, I could kind of see and then and then I couldn’t. I was like, we had that eclipse. I don’t know if you you guys got that eclipse, but I, I was going out, I saw some people looking Did you,
David Niles: did you get to see it?
Like,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: totality? No, it was pretty close for us, but not, not totality. But but I was running out between, it was exam, you know, it’s exam time over there. And so I went outside, I thought, I just don’t have glasses, shoot, whatever, it doesn’t matter. And so I just looked at it quickly, and then just, like, just focused for a second.
And then it hurts for a second, and then you close your eyes, and then you can see it. So I, cause that was pretty cool. So I like, yeah, and then I could see it for a little while longer. [00:15:00] Couple minutes. And then it went away. Permanently. Sitting there like, rubbing my
David Niles: eyes, and then finally. I haven’t been able to see anything since.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well I did, when I was I was a physics major in college. And we’d got this new big laser. And I thought, aw, this is so cool. And so what do you do with a laser? You put it in your eye. So I like, put it in my eye, and it blinded me.
David Niles: You, you put it in your eye.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I mean like aimed at my eye so it wouldn’t.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I, it blinded me.
David Niles: I would can we back up? Yeah. When you said like, what do you do with it? You put it in your eye. Yeah. No. Are you a physics major? I mean, I think that you like, see what you can light on fire. That’s what I think that you would say. Yeah, your eye.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, yeah. No, not my eye. Yeah, well you wouldn’t want to inflict that on someone else. You want to see if it works. So I blinded myself for like, I literally went, I was like, oh cool. I just, I can’t see, like I couldn’t see in my right eye. That’s awesome. And I thought, wow, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve, and then all of a sudden it kind of started to slowly fade back.
It’s like, oh cool, who cares? But [00:16:00] that, okay good.
Adam Minihan: Didn’t last long. I’m
David Niles: glad that that’s how the story ended. Yeah, exactly. Instead of like, but you are colorblind. Like being like Father Eyepatch. Were you colorblind before
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: that? I was colorblind, I’ve always been colorblind, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, now everything
David Niles: looks a little bit red.
Exactly, yeah, is there a red hue? I think it’s red anyway.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah,
David Niles: it’s what they say.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well, you all grew up with crayons, right, or crayons. Crayons. We called them here in Oklahoma, crayons. Crowns. Crowns. Crowns. Crowns. Is that really true? Yeah. Crowns. Okay, so yeah, I’m not gonna do that, but crayons. But you get a box of crayons, right, and you all, when you, when you went to them, you said, oh, I need a brown crayon, and then you got that right, whereas for me, like they have, the reason they have those names on there I’m defeated.
I’m undefeated. Yeah, exactly for me. For me, it was always like, well, I need brown. Let’s see. Pull. Ah, shoot. Pull. There you are. But I had to [00:17:00] read the names on you see any colors? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I can see, I can see colors. I think I’m, I think they’re just dimmer. That most of you, I don’t know, cause I remember they had those glasses that fixed them in chroma glasses that kind of fixed some color blindness things you can see.
No kidding. And yeah, it’s, it’s just, you are all way, it’s just way too bright. And so I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. Too much. I spun out for a second, no, no, I couldn’t do it. No, I couldn’t do it. So, but I, yeah, I can see the same colors, I just kind of, I think they, well, they just shift around a little bit, like, brown and green are one color for me and two different shades, it’s called brine.
Yeah. So it’s just like dark brown, that sort of thing.
David Niles: If you’ve got to lose color, I think brown is like That’s okay.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, some people, and or, well, cause green, some people like green. Yeah, green’s fine. Green does nothing for me. It’s nothing. Of
David Niles: course, I’ve never actually seen it, but
Adam Minihan: Yeah, whatever that is, yeah.
Okay, so here’s my next question. Yes. This is a, so there’s a virtue called long anemone. Oh, yeah. It is long suffering. Right? And that, this is a Interesting that it’s [00:18:00] a virtue. You know at first, at first glance, you’re like, what, like, wait, long suffering is a virtue? Like, It seems more like a, like a past.
Or like a history, you know.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Right. Something happened, yeah. Yeah. It must be a partial, a part of temperance, huh? Is that what that is?
Adam Minihan: I do not remember. I don’t remember what your sub virtue, or like, It’s a sub virtue, I can’t remember what, what, Yes. I don’t remember knows this stuff. Yeah. But so like at some point Yeah.
Or fortitude. I just don’t what long means could in this, I know what suffering means. I don’t know what long means in this situation. I don’t know, like, is this like a span of time? What is the span of time? Or is it more like, how
David Niles: long do you have to suffer before it counts as long suffering? It’s long suffer.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Like where’s the transitional period here? Yeah. This is great. I, I. So I’m going to say I have no idea, but that won’t stop me from making some comments. And there is a, there is a sense when quantity has its own, a quality of its own at some point, right? So I, I don’t know what [00:19:00] long suffering the particular distinction is trying to point out.
But, there is a, a kind of, maybe it’s the, the lack of, of ending, the kind of non, almost an infinite span on it, that although it might end at some point, it like, it’s quality is that it might carry on, whereas like, suffering for a long time might be finite suffering that you just, each, you’re checking in every, every time, but if you have a sense of, it’s going to be.
Like, I’m just, I’m stuck in this, I’m stuck in this. That takes on a different quality, a quality to it, like I have to adjust my virtuous life and controlling of my passions and how I feel if I know I’m actually not, not going to pull out of this. I may, but it’s not, it’s actually like, that would be a surprise, as the other, where the other is like suffering long, so long suffering versus suffering for a long time, right, it’s more like every time you wonder, am I going to keep suffering?
Whereas in long suffering, I can imagine [00:20:00] the phenomenology experience of it is something like when will I not, like, when will I not be suffering? So, maybe, and that, and that does flip it if it’s long suffering from suffering for a long time, that has a qualitatively different feel. Because anyone can, you know, it’s like, just another five minutes, John.
Just another five minutes. You can like keep kind of waiting. Whereas if you have like no actually it’s you’re committed to this and you need to say all right This is my life now, and it’s not a pretty one in this case So I expect that’s I have a suspicion that it’s trying to deal with the emotions because virtues are right of drawing up the emotions Into reason by reason to draw them up so that you can make them It’s human in a sense, the animal being brought up to the rational.
And I expect it to deal with that aspect of the emotions response to a very different situation. Which would be not a continuous checking in to see if it’s ending, but rather to suffering through it. And that seems like an instinctive thing. Adam and I
David Niles: talked about this a while ago. And [00:21:00] that was kind of my instinct on the answer too, that it, because you know, virtue is a habit.
And so, A virtue isn’t, like, measured in how long, it’s, it’s, are you habitually disposed? It’s a state, yeah, it’s a state of character. And so I was, I was saying, like, well, I think it’s really more of that habitual disposition towards like a resign a resignate, like, how am I disposed towards suffering?
Am I, am I readily willing? To say yes, joyfully, or, you know, in charity, towards a long suffering. Well, here’s a good Even if it only lasts 30 minutes, you thought, maybe, for a s you thought, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m a I’m about to be blind in my right eye. Yeah. For the rest of my life.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Now I’m gonna suffer this.
No matter
David Niles: Why?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. Okay.
David Niles: No,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: it’s quite obvious if you’ve only got a laser. You know no, I think when, when this is this interesting point, stoicism is huge now. It’s really popular. So we’re doing a a men’s retreat. We’ll have a retreat thing in August and it’s going to be on stoicism. We’re reading Epictetus in the handbook and Cridian and stoicism is really popular, but long suffering is not a, [00:22:00] so stoic fatal resignation, a kind of like, you’re going to suffer this for a while.
So let’s just bracket that and get on with it. Is different than the christian sense of actually no, it’s always good to remember that this is a suffering Even though it might be interminable right without an end Whereas a stoic or so I get the sense that actually like no, no, that’s just you just need to recalibrate your passions, your emotions.
And it seems like with this one, it’s like, no, no, respect, Christianity is always respect the natural, but draw it up and have it pushed towards the supernatural. So the long suffering, I have a suspicion, is a very different virtue than you might think. It’s kind of kissing cousin apathy or kind of stoic resignation, which you mentioned.
It’s because it can’t be, you can’t be resigned. If we think that God is good, and he’s going to work all his purpose, he’s good for our purposes, for his purposes, and those who called him, Romans 8, 28 kind of thing. So it’s it’s probably the virtue of that dealing with [00:23:00] realization that you’re still it is a suffering And it is interminable but it still needs a virtue to make sense of Because you’re not going to run away from you’re not supposed to run away from god all things supposed to bring to him That seems Yeah, it seems it seems plausible.
It’s nice. The virtues are distinct, very distinct things because our emotions are very distinct responses to very distinct, distinct situations.
Adam Minihan: Yeah, that’s, that’s a good point. I don’t know if I consider it that way before, but it seems right.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I like that. I like that. Look it up. Summa Theologiae. Secunda Secundae.
It’s in there. It’s in the second part of the second part. It’s always the second part of the second part. I wonder if it’s a courage attempt. I should know. I don’t know. We’ll be right
David Niles: back.
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Welcome back to the Catholic Command Show. We’ll I’m here with [00:25:00] Father Bonaventure Chapman. That’s me. We have a couple more ambrosian candles to give away. There’s a couple more left. If you go to patreon. com slash catholicmanshow, 10 or more a month, we send you two free 10 inch tapered 100 percent beeswax prayer candles.
As well as a glass.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I love it. These glasses are spectacular. Everyone should order at least 20 of these.
Adam Minihan: I mean You heard the man. You heard the man. Give them to friends. Yeah. Unless
David Niles: you have a lot of friends, then maybe more. Maybe more. Maybe more. Yeah.
Adam Minihan: Yeah. Okay, so we’re sitting here just asking questions.
This is like, not scripted, we’re just trying to figure out, like, we just have questions. My next question is,
David Niles: in England, what do they call an English muffin? Yeah. Yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Is it
David Niles: just a muffin?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, it
David Niles: actually is. It’s a muffin.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: When I was over there. It’s just a muffin, right? When I was over there cause I did school in there and, and I I Did you?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you know. [00:26:00] Yeah, yeah, I was there, so I was, I was in I was at the seminary there, St. Anglican Ordinance, so it’s the training college there. And and it was one morning, I looked and there were English muffins, and I said, to one of the se fellow seminarians, I said, Aw, I love English muffins!
And it was the weirdest, you know, like they just, they looked at me, befuddled, you know, like as if, you know, We came here and someone saw, I don’t know, pizza or something and said, Oh, American pizza! Right? Like it’s Is this, is this what, is this one of those American hamburgers? Yeah. Now this is, it’s not Yeah, it’s a hamburger.
French toast apparently is not like this. But English muffins are like this. I also remember the other, this was, for instance French fries, also. Yeah, yeah. Freedom fries? Yeah. This, so the, so the other story about this is that they don’t get the peanut butter business at all. Like, they don’t get spreading peanut butter on things, and that’s just a mistake on their part.
But I was, so I was at the same, I, it’s basically the same place. It was breakfast one morning, again. With another seminarian, and and I was I was spreading peanut butter on my, on my, my bread, you know, toast or whatever, [00:27:00] and the seminarian looks at me and goes, Ugh, disgusting, and I thought, and I was going to Do they have, do they use peanut butter for anything?
No, and I was gonna respond, and so I swung around, but it was a great, this is a great moment of reflection, I swung around, and at that point she, Was buttering her toast with ketchup, and it’s just good to know like I saw that I said well I guess reason isn’t gonna work So let’s like there’s no point for me talking to this person like I’m not gonna be able to to marshal She was putting ketchup on like wheat.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we toast. Yeah. Yeah, but she was so she was you know How you know how disgusting? And it’s like, it’s this principle of, you know, quid quid recipitur, so what is received is received according to the mode of the receiver. It’s kind of a little Latin tag, it’s beautiful. But you can shorten it, it’s just quid quid recipitur, what is received.
And it means like, yeah, that they will only understand insofar as they are able to understand. And so I looked over there and I thought, Nothing I say is going to make any sense to this person because she’s buttering toast with [00:28:00] ketchup So I mean that’s what I got to work with here. Nah, I this does look disgusting.
You know what? This is gross
David Niles: one time Yeah, this is a quick story back in the day members soccer camp remember like when you were younger used to go to soccer camp Well the English dude who was putting on the soccer camp. Yeah, football. Was football camp, right? He was staying at our house, and he brought his like nine or ten year old son with him, and so like one morning my dad makes waffles, his son comes down the dad was already like off at the camp.
With his kit? Yes, and so the kid, he’s like looking at the waffle, and my dad’s like, Oh, do you want some syrup for that? And he goes, Syrup? On a waffle. Yes. Like with this indignation about like, Oh, we said like, Oh, this is, this is like still one of like our family jokes. Like we will say syrup on a waffle, you know, it’s like, well, what do you, what do you put on your waffles?
He’s like, well, usually ketchup. Yes. And we were like, and we were like ketchup on a wall, you know, but then we [00:29:00] found out ketchup dude on a waffle. Howdy to him, a waffle was a, was a potato. Potato waffles, so then he, we told him like, no, no, no. You don’t want to put syrup on this. And then it was like, we watched it just blow his mind.
It was really, it was a great moment. You
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: know, we Americans, we make all the food better. Chinese General Tso’s, fantastic. Pizza, pepperoni pizza, hard to beat that. That’s
David Niles: because we infuse it with freedom and
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: winning. Yeah, and corn syrup. And corn syrup. Which is kind
David Niles: of the same thing. Freedom and winning.
Was that your question? No, no, no. So I wanted to ask you about the virtues and the relationship between them. Because I think one of the mysteries of virtue is about how growing in one, all of a sudden you grow in all of them. Supposedly, yeah. Yeah, can you explain the dynamic between the virtues about how If you grow in one virtue, you’re growing in other virtues.
Why is that? Like, how what’s the mechanics there?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, I don’t know. But I’m Good, well, I don’t really Yeah so the, the, [00:30:00] there’s a unity to the virtues. This is a thesis that goes way back to Plato and Aristotle, of course. They have a sense that the and Plato’s and Socrates have this start this trend that in a sense if you have one of them You’ve got to have all of them now by the time you get to the Franciscans the medieval So it’s done scotus and such we talked about before This is broken down a little bit the virtues have more they’re siloed off more so that you could be For scotus for instance you could be Have a really good prudence in some ways But not another way you could have a virtue for this a really good power of doing something like really be really courageous you But you could also be incredibly unjust.
Right? It could just be like, you know, So that tradition, that’s one tradition. The Thomistic tradition generally holds the unity thesis. And they do what I take it, if I philosophically try to figure out what’s going on here through prudence. Right, prudence is a sense, the, the governing virtue. So prudence is the one that’s, it’s very, you know, it’s very helpful.
Just doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. Just being perfect, you know. It’s just being, yeah. So, [00:31:00] that definition is hard to make sense of. Making no mistakes. Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent on your math test. It’s just, it’s kind of like being virtuous. You know? Yeah. Like putting the different hands in the defendantium.
Yeah, yeah. But, that’s right. But there is something to the fact that like, it, it is the intellectual the practical intellectual aspect of any of the virtues, because of course the, you know, justice is in the will, and then you’ve got the appetites, the virtues, fortitude, and temperance, and so prudence is like the reason applied, and of course virtues are reason applied to the passions bringing up in this way, so you can train them.
So, There is something to the unity of the sensible action, you could say, the right action there. And in the sense that, if reason is reason, then it kind of covers a bunch of things. And if you’re, if you’re just to someone, you also need to moderate and know how to deal with, like, your anger and resentment related to that person, right?
And also, you, like, you’re balancing out so that, you know, The avoidance and the [00:32:00] attacking the enduring and the attacking the one aspect and then also like the Not taking too much pleasure in it’s in a sense. You might think that just phenomenologically again our experience is that we’re unities of reason and will and passions and We don’t like
David Niles: which makes sense because we’re a unity of body and soul
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, it’s it’s all connected like we distinguish of course to bring out this sort of thing and there are of course metaphysical aspects to it When we get the whole thing running, it’s all working together.
So you don’t have, like, when I’m doing justice, my will is just involved. Like, you are an embodied soul, so you’re going to have the passions to be involved in it. So it makes sense that they kind of, like, in a sense, they grab a friend, and everyone’s kind of coming by the, by the end of the night. You know, everyone’s kind of wandering around to you and joining on.
So I think the, that we don’t, since we’re not isolated in that way, at least the faculties and, and powers of, of our souls, and, and our bodies in relation to them as they’re governed by that, It makes sense that there’s some kind of, like, hanging on effect, that, you know, if you push [00:33:00] one virtue, it dominoes around other things.
You know, there’s something to say about the Franciscan side of things, and actually, like, you know, there are these particular, some people you find are really good at some things, and just worthless at the other, at other things. So there’s some kind of, there is a disconnect some ways, but, I think there, the unity one, there is something about us being unified in that to make, to do something just, sometimes and very often involves courage to say, stand up, you know, and so developing the virtue of justice would also carry on the, the, the virtue of, the courage as well and fortitude.
David Niles: You know, I’m, I’m glad you said that because, but given kind of both sides there. Because, you know, I’ve read how Thomas talks about, you know, you grow in all the virtues at the same time, and if Thomas says so, like, that’s good enough for me, you know, as a general rule. However, that doesn’t seem to be my lived experience.
You know what I mean? It, it doesn’t seem, just what I said, I reflect on my own life, my own failings, and like the things that I have [00:34:00] made progress in, it doesn’t, like, oh, I’ve become a more honest person. It doesn’t just, to me, therefore, As I can, you know, at least make an assessment that I have become more fill in the blank.
You know what I mean? And maybe I have, and I’m not denying that. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t seem like I can add up the math in my own life. You know, I think it’s The way I would expect, maybe.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, well, the soul is complicated business anyway. Yes. You know, but I also think that it’s important to remember that just being connected doesn’t mean that all the ships rise the ships don’t all rise at the same level.
Right? So just because the connected thesis, the unity thesis, doesn’t mean, therefore, that if you increase in five points of justice, therefore you also increased in five points of courage and temperance, whatever the heck that means, right? No, it might be like, it’s just a little bit, you’re more inclined.
If I could
David Niles: assign, like, the points, like, at the end of a video game, you know, like, that would be helpful. Yeah, you can do it. If I could actually, like, measure it. It won’t mean anything. Yeah, the points don’t matter.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: You can certainly do it, yeah. This is [00:35:00] why I took you so This is the reductionist project, right?
Yeah.
David Niles: That’s why it took me so long to finish this level, is because I have, you It’s got nothing on charisma over here or something, I don’t know.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: You know, but you might think actually, I don’t know, you might think if the virtues are involving the passions and passions have certain intention, any levels, and we know, like, you know, you go to a hospital and there’s this sort of scale that it might not be crazy to think maybe we could sort of put numbers on this thing, but then you might think, just stop it.
David Niles: I think God could, Jesus could def, he could definitely give you a number. He can always give you a number. He could, he could totally do that. And it does make sense, you know, especially if you’re talking about if prudence, you know, if you grow in any virtue, obviously then, you know, It’s fair to say that you have grown in prudence in some way.
Well that one,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: that one is the, I think of that as like, it’s, it’s, think of it like a subway station sort of thing. And you have a bunch of different lines connected, and that’s one of the hubs, like you’re always gonna go through that
David Niles: one. Or charity, you could do the same thing with charity, or even justice, right?
You grow in a virtue. Obviously, you’ve grown in charity and love for our Lord. Because we’re not talking about natural virtue. Well, maybe we are, but
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well, it’s interesting, yeah. No, and that’s, I mean, the relation, so, you know, for Augustine, of course, all virtues [00:36:00] are, are, Charity is the unity of the virtue sense.
Thomas has to play around with this, because for Aristotle, that’s not true. But Thomas kind of puts and says, Yeah, both. Both is prudence
David Niles: and charity, that’s the key. Huh. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, that was a good answer. I I, yeah, yeah. Cheers. Yeah, cheers.
Adam Minihan: Sorry, I was just thinking about the whole pud, you had a weird look on your face.
Isn’t that nice? Yeah. Yeah. I, we’ll be right back. Yeah.
Intro: Yours,
David Niles: welcome back to the Catholic Man Show. I’m David Niles. You with Adam and Hannah, our special guest, other Bonaventure Chapman. Still here. Make sure to go check out our YouTube channel. We just had kind of an extension of our last question about the relationship between all the virtues and I thought our conversation between the breaks.
So if you go subscribe to our YouTube channel, you can see our conversation. All the stuff. Honestly, some of the best stuff happens, unfortunately like, between segments. Cause I guess we just dropped the, we dropped the guard, like,
Adam Minihan: Dang it, we should have said that on air.
David Niles: [00:37:00] Right, and it’s like, alright, well, okay, well, if that’s really the truth, you know, if that’s really the case, father, then whatever, you know, so anyway, some of the best stuff happens there, so go check out our YouTube channel.
Adam Minihan: Okay, so my turn?
David Niles: Yes, it’s your turn. So we’re
Adam Minihan: asking, Father, just like questions that have been on our minds and whether None of my specialties, but yeah, I’m doing my best. You’re doing great! No, you’re doing awesome.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I’m just talking.
Adam Minihan: Okay, so Thomas talks about how it is good to exist. Yeah, it’s true.
He does. Right? Like, it is better to exist than to not exist. Yeah. Right, even the souls in hell, it is better that they exist. Yeah, yeah. Natural, it’s a natural good or something. Like, natural good, whatever. Yeah, yeah. Whatever that, yeah. And so, Personally, like, It’s like,
David Niles: I don’t know if
Adam Minihan: you, I feel like I can agree with
David Niles: that as long as I’m not in hell.
Yeah, yeah. Right. If I was in hell, I don’t know if I’d agree with that. Maybe I didn’t want to be born. I don’t know.
Adam Minihan: Like, I’m not sure. However, I’m not gonna test my thesis. Yeah. I hope not. Yeah. Lord of the Link. In, in the gospel we hear Jesus say to Judah, about Judas, it would have been better for him never to [00:38:00] have been born.
Yeah. So how do I reconcile these two things? And is he in hell?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. No, that’s, that’s a great, that’s a great question. Those two great questions. So let me take the yeah, I’ve been pondering that second one more recently. I’ve tended to not. So, I say, yes. Well, the church hasn’t defined it. Right.
That’s okay. I still say yes. But you know, it’s, I mean, that is the tradition. Yeah. Right. And there’s no reason. It’s not like you have to wait, wait for the church to define something for it to be the tradition. It’s not like the Trinity wasn’t the Trinity of the church until Calvin and Isaiah. I hope
David Niles: he’s not.
Like, I want him to be in heaven. I hope he’s in heaven, but I just don’t think he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I think that’s, and maybe that’s, you know, maybe that’s the right way to do it. I mean cause you get, often with those questions, you want to ask yourself what, what is the real, what’s the real issue behind it?
When someone says like, well obviously he’s not in heaven, you know, and you think, well, well maybe, but bracket that for a second. What, why? Like, what’s, why, everyone knows [00:39:00] why you would say that. It’s like, well, because no one, no one can go to hell. There’s always hope. God wins in the end. God wins. And you’re like, huh, oh, okay.
Okay, okay, okay. But let’s deal with that first, and then let’s deal with the, like, I agree. God wins, yeah, but, but, how? And what does it mean for him to Yeah, but you can’t just say that. And what does it magically everybody’s
David Niles: in heaven. But often times,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: and often times we just get, but you get fixated on like the, we get fixated on the Judas issue.
When actually what the issue is like salvation and our relationship to it and whether we can actually refuse grace and this sort of thing. So that’s the first, and Judas one, I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t,
David Niles: I mean, it seems like he, he despaired, but you can’t, you can’t say that. Who knows? Because you don’t know his heart.
However, with, in his case, the fact that Christ says it would be better that he had never been born, it’s a like that. Yeah. If Christ, if that wasn’t in the gospel right, than I would totally refrain from even saying one way or the other.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I think it gives, I think it might give indications and clues and [00:40:00] such.
I think at the same time, it is, yeah, well, it is,
David Niles: yeah, yeah, it is, you know, and that is just my opinion, so I don’t want anybody to think that, like, that’s the opinion, that’s just, that’s just my opinion, and I hope I’m wrong.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, and I think that the church’s tradition generally has been, well obviously he’s the son of perdition and all this sort of stuff.
Yeah, Dante
David Niles: also thinks he’s in hell.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, yeah, he thinks a lot of people are in hell. And so does Aquinas, and so does, I mean remember, remember these boys are Massadonada people, okay? So like, I mean Augustine and Aquinas think that basically, like, The majority of listeners this kind of stuff. It’s like whoa.
This is serious like really? Yeah, so we’re all super libs Compared to these guys. Yeah, whether you agree like we’re all super libs They would not have made sense of us as far as I could tell and I just that and that’s a one and you got To deal with that like dealing. Oh my gosh, am I super lib and then lib and then think my gosh is really everyone?
So that’s just soteriology different question. Eschatology, but Then the the question, okay, so the hermeneutics questions. This is a matter [00:41:00] of meaning of texts, right? I don’t know. Maybe it’s my because of coming from a protestant background or something Is that I tend to lean on the the mysteries of the text I tend to let the text to be a little more mysterious or open to possibilities.
Okay, then bringing like A system or a hermeneutical key, for instance, like tomism or scod or communism or any sort of natural philosophy to come to, to terms with a reveal text? I don’t think that’s, it’s not, it’s not like we don’t, Catholics never thought about that, you know, but I think there’s a Protestant sensibility to like the, the text.
It’s not like I’m going to decode it. with a particular philosophy or theological viewpoint, because it’s always going to, in a sense, overwhelm that. So now, when I have a situation, for instance, when you have, you know, on the one side, St. Thomas says, acts like being as, just being as good. You know, sort of the convertibility.
Which is hard to argue with. [00:42:00] Seems right. Yep, convertibility of the good. And then you have like a saying of Jesus. They’re two, I take them as two different kind of things. They might have some relationship, but to be, we want to be careful about like saying, well, we’ve got a proposition of Thomas and a proposition of Jesus.
How are we going to do these sort of things? How are we going to match them? Now, one way you could say is, well, let’s just kind of logically chop them. It strikes me that Revelation and Thomas are different things. I know this might be controversial. But the other, the other way, especially for a Dominican, yeah, the other way is to say like, No, we got to side with one of the other, like Thomas is the one, you know, it’s a bad Thomas or
David Niles: Thomas or Jesus, you know,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: you know, Thomas, you know, yeah, Jesus versus Thomas one zero to one on this one.
Maybe we’ll get him back. Maybe Jesus will be in the next one. Oh, like that seems totally wrong. Right. Or we could go the other way and be like, well, you know, it’s revelation. We just whatever, you know, and Thomas was so our theological framework, which is generally Thomas and for us is, is [00:43:00] a whole different thing.
Yeah. Now, it’s, it’s gotta be some analogical kind of relation that means that there’s a mapping of it, so it does help and cover, because obviously, theology is meant to be derived from scripture in a way, and help us to reflect on scripture, and so there’s this cyclical relationship here, reciprocity, that has an asymmetrical feel to it in the sense that the scripture is the dominant, you know, it tells us, it norms us, right although we have our norms in the faith.
You know, in this way. So there has to be this balance, but it’s okay, I find it okay when you have situations where, well, it seems like this is the case, but then this passage doesn’t seem to make total sense of that. I don’t know what to do with it. But I’m not gonna let my theology correct that. Like, what I think is revelation.
Here’s another example of this, and I was talking to Adam about this earlier. There’s a passage in Hebrews, passage in Hebrews where he says, It was necessary, I think it’s Hebrews it’s necessary that Christ had to die in this way. Right. And, [00:44:00] theologically, It seems like it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Right? So then, you gotta decide, like, okay, well, what am I gonna do with that?
And you could be freaked out by that, or concerned about that, or you could say, okay, well, one, I don’t know. is a rhetorical genre, right?
David Niles: And the other one is Just to back up, because we could have been saved without Christ coming. I mean, God could have just, just waved his hand. Or, and just saved. Right,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: so God is, God is sovereignly free.
He’s constrained by no one but himself.
David Niles: He doesn’t have like laws of supernatural physics that he must obey.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, it’s not, not special physics here. It’s like, if I do this, then I have to do this. Like, oh shoot, it’s too bad that we have this issue going on. You know, no, he’s the guy who’s the issue.
Right, so it’s like, oh, it’s too bad God stopped me. Oh, I’m God, never mind. You know, nothing’s stopping me, right? So he could have done saved in all sorts of ways But he chose to save the cross for I think, you know, Thomas gives what are called fittingness arguments. Yeah, it’s convenient convenience It’s not convenient since, ooh, but like it’s it makes sense They would be this way for us like the [00:45:00] sacraments are like this.
It doesn’t seem convenient. Right, it doesn’t seem convenient. In fact, it seems so Very inconvenient for Jesus, but it’s very convenient for us because it’s not us and it’s him. So it’s good to go. Good to ask those things, right? But it’s not necessary in the sense of like strict necessity. Yeah. But surely the scriptures don’t Does that mean the scriptures are wrong?
Thomas is right? No, the scriptures aren’t meaning to speak in that way. So I tend to think We could easily fall on the other side. You want to avoid Scylla and Charybdis, the two errors, right? You’re gonna fall on one side of Wait, say that
David Niles: again. Avoid
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: what? So this is the, on the Odyssey. Do we have Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. In the Odyssey you have that point where Odysseus has to steer the boat between Scylla and Charybdis. Oh, yes. Okay. And so it becomes this trope that you, you know, both are bad. I thought you were saying a
David Niles: Latin phrase at their first, and I was like, okay.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: No, I’m good. So, I’m good. Yeah, I’m being.
Yeah. Here I am. So you want to steer from the sense of, like, letting your theology dictate to you what the scripture could possibly mean and freaking out if you can’t figure it out. But on the other hand, not letting it float such that the scripture doesn’t really matter, right? Like, it’s so different. [00:46:00] Oh, it’s a genre thing, this kind of stuff.
I think there’s always a creative tension between check It’s just
David Niles: hyperbole, or it’s just poetry, or, you know. Exactly. You can’t just write it off.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, so it’s always a matter of the theol the religion, like, when J if my theology says what Jesus can’t say, Then I’ve got something wrong. When Jesus says something, my theology won’t let him say, something’s wrong with my theology.
But with the sense that, of course, it is revelation in a particular genre, in particular terms. He’s speaking in a particular way. He speaks in hypotheticals sometimes without telling you that they’re hypotheticals. I mean, a lot of prophecy is like this, right? Like, this is going to happen. It has a conditional sometimes in that.
You don’t even see. But it’s there, nonetheless. So, the scripture stuff is trickier, but oftentimes we try to I think compass it in and box it in because we like simple boxes or I’m finite. Yeah, we’re fine You know and I our best theological system is still the thoughts of us Like Scientia [00:47:00] Dei, you know, the wisdom, the divine science, is the vision that the, the, the saints see, the science of the saints.
But our theology is a participation in that insofar as it is. But it’s still ours, reaching up in a sense, and also being infused by faith. But still in us, whereas the real, I mean Thomas says the, I mean the real theology is the theology of the saints, the saints seeing God. They have the seancee a day.
You know, we’re just falling.
David Niles: So, he’s in hell, I guess.
Probably, I don’t know. You know what, I thought that was a, I really, I thought that was a fantastic question. answer. Yeah, that was really good. So, hey guys, we’re out of time. Which we’ll keep talking about. We’re out of time on
Adam Minihan: Catholic Radio. So go check us out on, on our podcast, thecatholicmanto. com. We can continue this conversation.
We’re on the Lord’s team. The winning side. So, raise your glass. And cheers to Jesus. Cheers. Okay. I have at least one more. I have actually two more, but. Okay. Well,
David Niles: let’s go ahead then. If you, if [00:48:00] you, I was just going to keep, Talking about this, but if you have another question, I didn’t know you had more questions.
I have, yeah, I have, I, dude, I got, I got questions. Okay, well let’s hear them. I’m here. Okay. Wait, I want to answer first.
Adam Minihan: Just kidding. Do you think that the souls in purgatory can pray for those here on earth?
David Niles: I can tell what he’s doing right now. He’s like, what does Thomas say about this? I know he, I know he talked about this.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. Yeah.
David Niles: What was it? No, it’s funny. I read this. Thomas
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: does not think so. Maybe that’s why I should say. It’s my understanding. No, maybe I should, maybe that’s what I should be doing right now, but I’m not.
I’m going, trying to, I’m, I’m doing my kind of, okay. What’s a soul. What’s purgatory soul. What’s it powers, this sort of thing. How hot is it? Can, well, can they, or do they, or is it their thing? Yeah. Okay, these are the good distinctions.
David Niles: Look, I can. It’s just
Adam Minihan: not
David Niles: my
Adam Minihan: thing. Yeah, these are good questions. I mean, like,
David Niles: That was funny. Well,
Adam Minihan: so, I think if they could, then they would. It’s not their shtick. I think if they [00:49:00] could, then they would. Because they’re
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: growing
Adam Minihan: in
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: charity.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems not to be their shtick. So I, I, So can they do it? I just always hear that it’s like a metaphysical possibility one. It’s like, well, pfft, sure. Anything can happen, basically, except it violates the law of non contradiction. But, is it their mission? It doesn’t seem the tradition has a sense of, you know, the church suffering.
In a sense, they’re the recipients of prayers. And not the, the pray ers. Which makes, which has some plausibility to it. I think that seems smacks of, of credibility. So, I think that, can they, I don’t know, maybe, I mean, you know,
Adam Minihan: from a natural level, it seems like when you, when you have, when you’re in excruciating pain, like you are like, you get in a bad car wreck, you break your, your back, like, and you crush a bunch of bones or something like that at that, at that moment.
You cannot think about anything else other than that pain. Yeah, that’s right. And so like, if purgatory is [00:50:00] the process of of, yeah, this process of purging your, your natural inclinations or your, you know, your, your arousal appetite like, your, I don’t know how to say that correctly, but Well, it’s tricky.
Your inclinations to evil and like, your Yeah, it’s tricky because I mean, like,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I
Adam Minihan: don’t want
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: to be too, you know,
David Niles: too, yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about, like, I literally,
David Niles: you know. I mean, the truth is we don’t know. No,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: no one does. We just don’t know, but it, but
David Niles: speculative, speculative theology is my favorite.
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s always the best theology. Yeah, that’s true. It’s the most fun. Most fun. Sure. The eagle rare is the Yeah, everybody. So we also have this bottle of eagle rare here on the table, but that’s good. I, I pour some. Yeah. And after drinking this, it tastes like water. Like water. Yeah. It’s hard.
Tastes like
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: nothing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. Well, Purgatory, let’s put it this way, like, it seems like we know the most, I can, I feel the most [00:51:00] confident about talking about Hell, which seems bizarre, but since Purgatory gets, like, a little bit less, and then Heaven, I have almost nothing to say. And you might think that’s weird, considering that we want to be in Heaven, and we plan to be, Deo Volente, God willing.
For at least as long as we’re on Earth, right? Like at least 70 years. Maybe infinite time. But, so it seems like if you said like, Hey, what are you doing for the majority of your existence? You’d say, well, I hope heaven. You’re like, cool, what is that?
Intro: You’re like, I
Adam Minihan: don’t know. Just loving our Lord.
Loving those around us for the sake of loving our Lord. They say it rocks.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well, this is interesting, and so, Sometimes in philosophy, especially analytic, kind of real logic chopping philosophy, religious themes come up as topics to sharpen the tool on. And so the afterlife, right now, is sort of popular amongst, like, analytic, secular philosophy.
Because it’s a [00:52:00] great way to think about what it means to exist in time, and if it’s even possible to be a human as we are, in the sense of structured by reason and will and some sort of desires. with no end. Like, is that, or is that a logical impossibility? A metaphysical, I should say, not logical, but a metaphysical impossibility given what it means to be a human being.
So it’s, that’s a fascinating, but it, I think they’re right to, to note, to hone in on the fact that it’s weird to think about. To say that, so, the purgatory, so the farther I get away from, I get from hell, the less I have a grasp. I feel like you’re wandering up a mountain and your kind of oxygen is becoming super thin, you know?
And you’re just kind of like losing your breath, and you could start to like shout, but you might be hallucinating, you know? Get that thing away from me, this kind of stuff. Well, you know,
David Niles: I think that, that makes sense to me, because I have, I have, More of ex more experience with suffering. That’s right.
Than I do with [00:53:00] bliss. That’s exactly why I’m not I’m not worried about this. I know Suffering. I know the shade of suffering more than I know the like the illumination of gliss. Well, that’s exactly
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: so it makes it So it’s it’s strange, but it’s reasonably strange. Right. It’s like Con is this wonderful thing where it says like freedom and how freedom works.
This is a strong doctrine of, of freedom. Is how it works is incomprehensible. But it’s a comprehensible incomprehensibility. Because I know why I can’t know it, why I can’t understand it. And that’s the kind of, I think that’s with the afterlife, is it’s incomprehensible but it’s comprehendingly incomprehensible.
Like, I know why it shouldn’t make as much sense, and why the scale of like, I feel like when someone asks me, Hey, you gotta give a talk on either heaven, hell, or purgatory. What are you going to talk about? And I like, and you gotta, I think, you know, you think, I mean, this is why I think the Inferno, although the Purgatorio is fantastic.
Which is why the Inferno
David Niles: is the best, the [00:54:00] Purgatorio is second best, and Paradiso is did a, we did
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: a, for the Godspointing, we did a you know, a series on, on the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, and I was on the Paradiso one, and so I was reminding myself about the Paradiso, and you know, the Paradiso is fantastic.
Yeah. And I’m, so, but the Inferno’s one never really hits. But you don’t have people
David Niles: like that. Getting ripped open, or like buried in rivers of lava. I mean you’ve got Saint
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Bonaventure introducing Saint Dominic, and Saint Thomas introducing Saint Francis, You’ve got Benedict, and you’ve got the different stars.
You’ve got the weird cases of like the, the Saint on the lower realm, lower level, who, who, Like left the monastery to become, you know, to get married, but still gotten it’s, it’s actually a, I mean, it’s, it’s like as interesting. It takes, I take it as the inferno is. But it is funny that we don’t focus on it for all sorts of reasons.
The same reason why I like Milton’s Paradise loss. It’s so, I mean, he’s, he’s, it’s so clever because the devil is, Satan is so exciting in there and Milton’s a Calvinist, [00:55:00] so it’s like, yeah, you like that guy, don’t you? I mean, you really like him, right? Like, he’s great. Wouldn’t you like to be like him? Yeah, right?
You know? Like, he’s the coolest character in that, in that book and you’re supposed to enjoy, enjoy him the most. Yeah, do you have another
Adam Minihan: question? No, no. You don’t have other questions? Like this is like, I felt like you were time to shine. Like you have all these weird questions. Well, you had,
David Niles: I want to get your questions out.
I want to make sure we have time. You have premeditated questions. Mine are impulsive and sounds like minority reports like precogs. You’ve got premeditated questions.
Adam Minihan: Okay.
David Niles: Okay. Yeah.
Adam Minihan: So what are your thoughts on if there is aliens, if there is extraterrestrials? A lot of us were talking about this earlier, right?
David Niles: You’re going to aliens? Yeah, this is Dave’s. I deferred to you. This is Dave’s. So that you
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: could ask about aliens. Dave’s gonna ask about Dave’s. I wanna know, I wanna know if, like, Dave’s gonna ask about D’Auxilio’s controversy. Aliens. Aliens, yeah. Aliens, yeah. Aliens, yeah. Can you, like, like, frame it? Fluff your hair up and go straight up with it.[00:56:00]
Aliens. Speaking of hair, I, I know some people don’t like Widow’s Peaks, but I love, look at this thing. I think it’s distinguished. Yeah,
Adam Minihan: it’s really cool. So there’s a lot of questions I have about this. But,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I was thinking about this earlier, but there was a discussion, what were we talking about aliens?
Adam Minihan: Oh, the ham radios. Oh yeah, with the aliens. Yeah,
David Niles: sure. Yeah. You gotta subscribe to the YouTube channel. Yeah. That’s right. Best stuff happens on the YouTube channel. Yeah.
Adam Minihan: That’s right. Okay, so aliens are real, let’s just hypothetically say aliens are real, and they’re not demons. Hang on, wait, wait, wait.
When you say aliens, you mean little, you mean
David Niles: rational things, right? You mean, you mean rational, like, intelligent life. Beings. Not like bugs. Because, you know, like, in this, Mars bugs. I think they’ve established that, like, life has existed. Outside of the planet earth.
Adam Minihan: Do people call life existing outside the planet earth aliens?
David Niles: No. Okay. I just want to, I didn’t know. For the sake of clarity. Yeah, for the sake of clarity. Because it’s a rational hypothetical question. Yes. So let’s, might as well be specific. What color are they?
Adam Minihan: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t, it didn’t matter. Let’s say [00:57:00] purple. Okay, purple. Yeah, they’re great. So,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Sorry, I’m going to break up our focus for a second.
I remember growing up in Buffalo, there was this store called Be Quick, and it was kind of a place you’d get, you know, it’s a small shopping place, not a big supermarket, but just a little convenience store. A convenience store? What’s the difference? This is the convenience store.
David Niles: Between New York and the Midwest, you have a store called Be Quick.
Yeah. We have a store called Quick Trip.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Quick Trip. Okay. Oh, my bro, my, my friend, Pat Connelly, shout out to him, and and Kendrick Connelly in Wisconsin. Love Quick Trip. Quick Trip, it, it’s
David Niles: amazing. Yeah. It’s like, Bucky’s,
Adam Minihan: Quick Trip. Those are the two, like, Okay, but see,
David Niles: they’re in the northeast. Owner is telling you, Look, would you be quick about it, alright?
Yeah. Look, I don’t have, whatever, okay? I don’t have time. Would you please be quick? Whereas here in the mirrored west, they’re like, Hey, we’re here to like, help you have a quick trip. In the northeast, it’s like, would you speed it up already? Yeah, yeah. Alright?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, yeah, be quick. Come on! So yeah, now we got three.
Sorry. We [00:58:00] gotta get back to the second level so we can do the second conception, right? The second level. What level are we on? So here’s the alien, so I’m befocusing on this. So just be quick, there’s a convenience store, and they have those like, you know, the sun? Do you remember, like these kind of, these, the I know the sun.
The tabloids, what do you call them or something? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The magazine. The magazine. In the checkout line. And I just, I can still see this, this alien, I assume it’s the same picture, but it was, It was the alien shaking, like, Bill Clinton’s hand.
David Niles: And it was also,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: like, another week. Yeah, that was the best.
David Niles: I looked at this and I thought It was the best press conference. Isn’t that
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: the same picture that, when he was shaking Hitler’s hand? You know, just a little green guy, and you’re like, you know what? There are people who, and then I thought to myself, my God. There are people, I don’t know, I think it’s possible that there are people who actually, like, think I think so.
David Niles: Maybe that’s a picture. Okay, anyway. So, aliens. It has to be. Because I mean like those magazines or newspapers, whatever you, tabloids, they were everywhere. I mean like they were printing so many of those. [00:59:00] They had to be selling them. No, but, In order to like stay in business for decades. If
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I saw one today, you know, I don’t have money, but if I was like a married man or something, I might, you
David Niles: know, I
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: might,
David Niles: Buy
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: one,
David Niles: like,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: you might think that’s
David Niles: enough.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I
David Niles: wouldn’t. But carry on, okay, Alien, two questions. You know what, I assure you that if you were married, and like, weren’t living a life of poverty, you would not buy one. I guarantee you. Okay, so You know what you would buy? Oh, so great, I just
Adam Minihan: got rid of my, oh, you just bailed on your, your cord.
Okay, hold on. I’ll get it.
I got so excited.
David Niles: Yanked, yanked the cord right out of your headphones.
Adam Minihan: Yeah, yeah. Not that he couldn’t hear us anyway, but
David Niles: yeah,
Adam Minihan: it’s just better. Okay. So if like, you know, the incarnation incarnation came down at a point in time, it’s better. It’s, it’s just better. We got to switch this. God’s point is stupid.
So the incarnation hour over there is he came in a point in time on earth to save, to save us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So [01:00:00] there’s aliens. Like hypothetically, like, okay. Is it hypothetically possible that he came at a different time for others? This is Lewis’s,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: this is Lewis’s, right? Lewis has this so I love the space, the Ransom Trilogy.
Space Trilogy, yeah. Space Trilogy, Paralondria, so the first two aren’t books, but they’re fantastic. Third one’s a book, it’s not, it’s not any good. But perilandry is fantastic, and it’s this kind of issue, and, and Lewis does this in a couple other supposalism kind of senses, like what this would be, like, everyone, the incarnation, well, and I suppose, oh, that’s interesting I suppose he’s got it kind of Thomistic bent, like, what’s the point of the incarnation?
For Thomist, right, the point of the incarnation is salvation, like God is not intending to come down in the incarnation unless he has to fix something. Whereas for the Franciscan tradition, of course, God is always intending, and he gets like a second. When, because of sin, right? Lewis says, I think Lewis’s dynamics, Lewis says there must be an opportunity [01:01:00] for them, a savior for them, a Christ present in each fashion.
This is disposalism. I don’t think it’s true, but let’s suppose it. And it assumes then, well, because they would have to deal with sin in some fashion. So, the reason that Christ comes in incarnation is to deal with sin, the Thomistic kind of thing in general and therefore if they had sinned, then they would need a savior.
Now the interesting question is what if there were rational creatures that never sinned? This is what Paralondria is about this, right? The idea that like, let’s go, let’s replay the tape and see if we can get this, get this going, you know? And, and if they hadn’t sinned, If they hadn’t sinned. Well, they would meet us, for one, so they would need So in some ways that would
David Niles: idiots.
Well They need at least to be washed.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they would, but you might think actually like they don’t need, you know, like they don’t need another savior They would, they might like fall and then realize like actually they need Christ He’s the same, you know, [01:02:00] but he doesn’t save them because he saved, he saves by human nature, right?
He saves, this is the Incarnation, he doesn’t save by alien nature.
David Niles: But the fact that humanity is a rational, Like, with the, like, the rationality, you know? Well, that’s the thing is, he doesn’t
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: save rationality, though, because he doesn’t save angels,
David Niles: right? That is true.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: But, I mean, dang it. You know? Alright, good one.
So let’s put this, let’s put this way, it’s like, it’s a dangerous, we’re in dangerous modus tollens territory. Where, like, if there are, if there are aliens then it’s like, oh, this is problematic, like this really does throw a, a spanner in the works. Yeah. So, one thing that, that, I don’t think there are, that I, that I wonder, I don’t think there are, in,
David Niles: in all of these hypothetical, well,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: oh, let’s put this, sorry, sorry, sorry, Also, it could just be like what happened.
I mean it’s true for instance that we have most of us I assume you two believe in angels. I think it’s yes. I believe in angels. It might be a dogmatic with you on that Yeah, okay, so there are already rational [01:03:00] creatures that aren’t saved by the death of Christ,
David Niles: right?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: So you might think it’s weird that there are other rational creatures Creatures that are material like us that aren’t saved by the death of Christ, but Is it that it’s possible that category in your mind is already open?
So in a sense, it’s not weird Right
David Niles: so that Right, because if there was a,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: yeah,
David Niles: an embodied rational creature that would still not be an angel, right, you know, and so like maybe his death on the cross with us, like, okay, well, maybe angels are, you know, you don’t, you’re not embodied, and I don’t know. Well, no, no, but that’s it, like, we’re, you know,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: so,
David Niles: so,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: yeah.
So it
David Niles: might still apply to the aliens, like it, even though it wouldn’t apply to angels. Because angels not being in time have a, like, their decision, they’re eternally rejecting, rejecting God. Yeah. Okay, and, and [01:04:00] that decision, I mean, even if you could, even if you did offer them an opportunity for salvation, all of the demons would reject it because of the, the finality of their choice, right?
And, and, like, Angels never change Do you agree with that? They never change their mind. That’s, that’s, that’s right. That’s what we’re told. Yes. So if That’s what St. Thomas says. If that is true, once again, we’re only, we can only go on certain This is why I love having you on. If that’s true, then even, even the demons would continually reject an opportunity for salvation.
Yeah. Which we can also reject. our opportunity for salvation.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Right. I guess the point would be if, if these other, if there were aliens, if they were rational and therefore had the capacity to, so rationality and morality inclined, the capacity to reject God, It turns out they’re just like, [01:05:00] oh my gosh, cool, space slugs, whatever, don’t know where they need to work.
Savior question only comes in if you make a, make a moral choice if you sin, right? You only need a savior if you sin. So if they can sin, then when they sin, they would need a savior, right? Definitely. So they would, so, if, if they’re angels, if, I mean, sorry, if they’re aliens, if they’re rational, they If they can sin, then they need some kind of redemption.
It doesn’t have to it doesn’t have to be Christ in the same. I mean, yes, the angels, in a sense. I mean, the angels, in a sense, are saved by. But it’s it’s not by the incarnation, right? They long to look into that. But it’s a different. Yeah, it’s. So we’ve already got like different senses of how those because, you know.
Yeah, he Christ doesn’t die for death for this, for the devils. So we’ve The angels and the demons choose against them. So, we’ve already got different possibilities of people being on his side and opposed to him. So, it [01:06:00] turns out that category for embodied beings would just be expanded, right? I hope we don’t have to, and this would be a theological matter to take up, I suppose, I hope we don’t have to worry about that.
I suspect actually physically it’s impossible for us to worry about that. I’m not worried about it
David Niles: because I’m already human.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: I’m a human, raised by humans. You know
Adam Minihan: what, who
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: cares about the other things? You
David Niles: know what, because God will sort that out, no problem. The side of this question that I’ve never seen anybody take up is, what if the aliens are human?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Right, because of metaphysical I
David Niles: mean, what if, what if like, like aliens descend? And they’re just human. Right, but they, yeah, by, by,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: by laws of metaphysical possibility, they can’t, like, they just can’t be. Why? Because being a human is X, Y, and Z, which is us. And an alien is, by definition, not that. Not us. I mean, Okay.
So you mean like, do you mean like, what
David Niles: if they’re, what if they’re rational, embodied beings? There’s like a spaceship [01:07:00] that comes down, Yeah. And they land, and a bunch of human beings get off of it. No, no, a bunch of things that look like human beings get off of it. Okay, but it’s like, God, like, what if, we don’t know, what if, like, there’s the garden, and then at the fall, like, boom, space travel.
There’s just stuff, there’s just like stuff, that didn’t, there’s stuff happened that was not written down, okay? Well, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just didn’t get written down. We’re going Book of Mormon territory, right? Like, we’re getting really close to a bunch of nonsense. A bunch of nonsense. A bunch of the journal that got lost.
Yeah. Yeah, we’re moving to DC9 territory. Human beings getting off the spaceship. Yeah. At that point, we could say, totally saved. Yeah, yeah. Because you know what, human beings, or like from other planets, you might not know this. We have good news.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, this is a metaphysical question. About like the origins possibility.
Is it? Is it a meta? Okay. It is. Yeah, yeah. But the [01:08:00] Well, it’s a historical question in terms of like genesis space explosion. There might not
David Niles: be a category for exactly what
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: kind of No, no, this is a good question, but like what It’s, it’s, it’s philologically possible that, for instance, a spaceship arrives.
I mean, this is Vulcans, right? What are Vulcans, but like, kind of autistic, pointy eared humans, right? I didn’t know that, I didn’t
David Niles: know they were autistic.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: You know, or like, Asperger’s, what, it’s like, super, they’re super smart, kind of like, sort of thing. Yeah, the social
David Niles: cues, they don’t, yeah, I get it. Yeah, I
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: mean, I pick up, yeah, there’s some missing, kind of, some emotional part of it.
Very blunt, yeah. Yeah, or Klingons, you know, whatever, like, Star Trek. Also very strong. Star Trek is, yeah, Star Trek are basically, like, the aliens are basically humans with different, Facial structures, right?
David Niles: They’re like uglier humans.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, exactly. So those look darn close, right? That’s like dark, but they’re not humans.
David Niles: Yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: but you might think you know what maybe there’s like a it turns out We’re like a species of rational animal. So for us we tend to think of rational animals having one one thing in it, right? [01:09:00] Irrational animal has tons of things in it. It’s a genus that has a ton of species Toads, lizards, birds, dolphins, whatever.
Every animal, except us, is an irrational animal. But rational animal apparently has like one, one set. But maybe there’s more than that? Right, that would be, an alien would be another rational animal, you know? And the question is, the interesting part is, like, if one showed up, like, what would, you wouldn’t say it was a human, you would say it was a rational animal.
And we just thought that human and rational animal is a nice logical point. Were the same thing. Like the definition of human is a rational animal, but turns out like definition of human is a rational animal with like Circular, circular ears, right? and the definition of a Vulcan is a rational animal with pointy ears and a definition of a Klingon is a rational animal with like weird stripes.
It’s funny Wrinkly forehead. In the original series, they were just black guys with goatees and then like in the, in the movies They decided that was [01:10:00] maybe not what Klingons ought to be So, like, they gave him the ridge kind of, they spent more time with that, right?
David Niles: A little bit more makeup. Yeah. So, my follow up question to this is, did Pope Francis speak authoritatively?
Yes. When he said in response to this question if aliens exist then Christ is their Savior, too Oh, is that ex cathedra and therefore
Adam Minihan: no, it’s definitely not
David Niles: well Adam. I’m not asking you the question Oh, okay. Thank you for your answer though.
Adam Minihan: You know
David Niles: does that Does
Adam Minihan: that
David Niles: Make all of our conversation like is that an authoritative statement that if a like because let’s say they show up can we?
We’re like uber Hypothetical if they show up can we now say our Pope has declared Christ is your Savior? We don’t even need to worry about the whole like nature Like, because it’s already been authoritatively declared.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: No, that’s not [01:11:00] authoritative. Yeah.
David Niles: Because he, he did say. Did he? When did he say this?
No, yes. I didn’t know this. Yes, it was, I don’t know how many years ago, maybe 10 years ago. So I have a study policy. Oh, good
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: lord.
David Niles: Someone asked Pope Francis, like, do aliens exist? And his response was, Yes. If they exist, then Christ is their savior too.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: There’s no, well, Insofar, now when you have, like we talked about like scripture and like applying like theological categories too is something you might want to do, but like Men’s statements are fair game.
Insofar as they need a savior, then Christ is their savior. Indeed. There you go. Right? But, yeah, it is, is that authoritative, is an off the cuff comment of a pope an authoritative statement? I hope not. I hope not. We just, I mean, we’re still in the new territory for this. Yeah, no I don’t yeah, if they need a savior, he’s their savior.
Are
David Niles: all of Pope Francis statements off the cuff, off the cuff?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: No, you wish. I, oh sorry, this was, no, he’s a fine man, he’s the pope, he’s the pope and I have a, I have a studied I felt the same [01:12:00] way with Trump about this, I had a policy to both these men. And still do carry it. I don’t, like, listen.
I don’t, listen isn’t the right word. I don’t pay, I have a studied disinterest to what they say. Because then, when someone says, Hey, did you say, did you hear that Pope Francis or Donald Trump said X? I don’t know anything about it. So I can say, Oh, well, obviously. He meant
Intro: this,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: this.
Adam Minihan: That’s a good, that’s a good way.
Okay, can I ask, I wanna ask. Yes. I have at least one more. What time is it? It’s a little late. One more, one more. Can I ask one you want, I’m here. Okay. Do you know about the principle of the interval of the head? Have you heard of this before? It’s basically, here’s, here’s basically the premise. This is super philosophical example.
So I hope you’re okay with that. I hope you’re okay with this. Don’t try. You have a, you have a pan of brownies.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah.
Adam Minihan: [01:13:00] And you add a little bit of dog poop into the brownies. Just a little bit. Yeah. Is the brownie still good? What do you mean? Well. Do you want a brownie? Do you want a brownie? So, the, the, the, my understanding of this of this principle is that if it is not
Like, holy as in it’s all intact, like it’s all, yeah, yeah, integrity, integrity, you mean like the whole thing, the whole thing, integral good, yeah, yeah, yeah, if it is not all good, then it is not good, so there’s a lot of examples that are given to this, right, like movies, for example, like if, if there’s a movie that shows, there’s, you know, simulated sins and non simulated sins, like, there’s things you can do, yeah, taking the Lord’s name in vain, you can’t, you can’t fake that, you can’t simulate that.
You
David Niles: did
Adam Minihan: take the Lord’s name. Well the intention was, you know. Yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: it’s like so like sexual matters are different than like violence. Our student master, I remember always, when I was in Father Andrew Hofer we weren’t allowed to watch, we could watch some, it’s hard [01:14:00] to watch movies that don’t have R in some way, but he made a very strong distinction that’s right.
I think it was a good distinction. Violence is not real. Right.
David Niles: Nobody’s actually getting hurt. Unless Alec Baldwin’s there.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, exactly. Unintentional. And maybe not even foreseen. We weren’t there. But some of these other things are real. Like nudity.
David Niles: It’s not fake nudity.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Exactly. It’s not like, no, no, they’re just acting.
No, that’s not
David Niles: really her skin.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, that’s right. So the integral I mean, there’s something I mean, this is going to be helpful for me. But like, I don’t think, you know, brownies aren’t a brownies aren’t a thing for me. Oh, dude, they’re
David Niles: such a thing for me.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: No, no, no. Like,
David Niles: no, dude. No, let, let, let him talk.
I want to hear what he says. I want to know what he’s saying. But
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: like, so an integral good means you have basically one thing. Mm hmm. And so if one thing has a corruption, then that thing is corrupted. Makes sense, right? Yes. [01:15:00] But for instance, a brownie isn’t a thing. Mm hmm. It’s a collection of things. So that, so that the dog poop might corrupt the part that it’s touching, whatever it might be, but the other part of the pan, because it’s not one thing, we call it that.
I happen to think, like, everything is like this, except for us?
David Niles: I was gonna, like, that’s what I was thinking, it’s like, well, I have things about me. Right. That are bad, so it’s like, can I, like, can I, obviously no human being is good. No, no, but you’re,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: but no, no, your soul, though, Like this where, I mean, the soul is a sim your soul is simple, right?
It has parts, but it’s not materially complicated. This desk here, n not a thing. Can you define thing? Some unity of, of intention. So like, it’s not intention. So it’s so this, this, like this desk here. Mm-Hmm. , right? Is, is. I take it, you might disagree with this, but I take it, this is a [01:16:00] number of things arranged in a desk like fashion.
Okay. If you want to do this Aristotelian wise, this doesn’t have a substantial form. Desk ness. It, there’s no desk ness. It, it has an accidental form in the sense that, like, redirecting. It approaches desk
David Niles: ness, but it isn’t desk ness itself.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: It couldn’t, there is no such thing as desk ness, right? That’s just a convention we have for calling these things that come together.
David Niles: Wait.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: What?
David Niles: There’s no such thing as desk ness? No, in my opinion, and how can we say there’s no such thing as blank? I mean like, obviously desk ness is a thing if you can’t see, what’s it? No, it’s a verbal thing. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, exactly Yeah, I don’t want to go too far that way. It’s empty
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: intending.
So like the, the intro, I think there’s certainly, it seems that I mean, there’s something about that integral that good fashions like imagine if you are corrupted like if you have a corruption Yeah, then you are corrupted that makes sense, [01:17:00] right? But if if the thing isn’t a unified thing Then it seems it would seem strange to say well if one part of its corrupted and the whole thing’s corrupted Only if that part is an integral part to it the thing that makes it what it is You could say right like so if your hand is corrupted.
Oh my gosh a corrupted human No, but if your soul is corrupted that makes you a human well Then that make might you might be corrupted human that’s makes sense, but your your parts being corrupted It doesn’t strike me that you corrupt you. I mean, if someone, for instance, is missing a hand, in a sense, they’re a corrupted human.
But it’s a natural, yeah, it’s not, yeah, natural evil. But, but you’re not, you’re not evil because you’re not, you are not evil in that sense, right? So I think there’s something to the, I think, it takes a lot of truth to float in air or something, but I think there’s, there’s clearly something about the, this, this integral goodness, of course, integral, because, but integral has, it has to be an integrity, you know, a unity of the thing.
And material things just don’t have [01:18:00] any integrity, as far as I’m concerned.
David Niles: So, when we were initially exposed to this idea, Yeah, what’s the origin of
Adam Minihan: this?
David Niles: There’s a priest here in the diocese who Alright,
Adam Minihan: who was here? I’m sorry, go ahead. I know who you were talking about.
David Niles: Who was talking about this and We, our conversation Okay, well It’s a mystic
Adam Minihan: book, it’s a mystic thought And there’s a book called I was actually thinking about Father Healy Yeah, I know, but I thought you were talking about Father Roebucker Yeah,
David Niles: you’re right, yeah, it did start there, you’re right But that’s not what I was thinking But, you’re correct in the ultimate origin.
Doesn’t matter. Our conversation revolved around movies that particular night. Well,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: movie’s a good, movie’s a good point. Like, you, in this sense, like, the essence of a movie, the integral nature of the movie, you might say, if it’s, if the movie is about this corrupted thing, then it’s like, you know, it’s like that old, like, I read Playboy magazine, but [01:19:00] just for the editorials.
Right. No, no, no. Like, the magazine itself has a sort of corrupted nature to it, right? But you can imagine another magazine that has like, oh my gosh, they’ve got this kind of, there’s this bad article in there. But the magazine is still, National Review, for instance, might be still good. I think movies are, like, movies again, there might be a bad part in the movie, but the question is, is it an integral part?
Okay, so the question Is it a part that makes it that movie? You know, the essence of a movie has a particular, which I take it, the essence of a movie is a particular narrative. Played out in a certain way. So is that part essential to the narrative?
David Niles: So what you’re saying is that is it the essential like the message of the movie like what is the like the story line?
The unity, yeah. What makes it
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: that movie and not another movie?
David Niles: What is the message of the story, or what is the, you know, like, basically all movies except for, like, maybe Marvel movies, because Marvel really, there’s, like, [01:20:00] maybe a story, but barely. But most movies have a story that they’re telling. They have a
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: narrative arc, yeah.
They have
David Niles: a, yeah, exactly. There’s a hero or something. Yeah,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: yeah.
David Niles: There is a good that they’re proposing.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah.
David Niles: There’s a good proposed in every movie. Is the good actually good, or is the good A false good because there are so I have seen movies where no, no, no, the thing that they propose the story that like the thing that they’re uphold as good in this movie is actually not good.
It is a corrupt thing. So it’s easy to see in that in that instance where this is a bad movie. Yeah. But what about a movie that upholds a good that simply has Well, you know like yeah, so this is this is something I this is a question that bothers me in my own life So that’s why I’m asking your feedback on this if you take the Lord’s name in vain in a movie Yes, is it a movie that I ought to watch?
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Yeah, to me [01:21:00] if that’s not an integral part to the movie That wouldn’t sense of like it defines the storyline. Yeah, this is a movie But now it’s hard to imagine like it’s hard to imagine movie in this way But you can imagine a movie that was intended to treat God flippantly. And so whenever so there’s lots of taking the name or even even one case of taking it flippantly at a certain moment Because actually that’s the message the essence the nature of the reason of this movie Is to take the lord the name the lord the name of the lord in vain That would be a problem.
But if it’s just kind of Accidental to the to the movie itself. It’s just like for instance you watch movies that have someone of Disreputable character involved in the movie. Yeah, right. No, I think it’s fine As long as it’s not the essential aspect to [01:22:00] it, right? so watching a movie about say Say, Homosexual Lifestyle, for instance, if it’s That promotes
David Niles: that as a good.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: As opposed to a movie that has, for instance, a homosexual involved in it.
David Niles: Right.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: That’s a very different thing, because one is an integral part, integral aspect, and another is an accidental aspect to it. Hmm, so yeah, but is that a slippery slope? So I have everything is but I think the distinction, the distinction of the question is is the I think we can pin down More or less.
What is the nat what is the point of this movie, right? And then everything else kind of goes from that Now, if, if like, for instance, cursing is close to the point, you could say, I mean, this is, look, dealing with the modern world, we always involve ourselves in cooperation with evil. This is what this question is, right?
This is involved in the [01:23:00] cooperation of evil question. And there’s the difference between formal cooperation and material cooperation, as you all know. Everyone knows this sort of thing. And like, Right, so when you go to Starbucks and you buy a cup of coffee, you know, some of that money that you bought in the coffee May or may not go to something that is actually against the church.
Okay. Have you therefore, you know? No, of course not because Starbucks as far as I could tell is not formally a company that’s set up to support those causes It accidentally does that But that’s not the point of the coffee now you are but are you materially cooperating evil? Yes, you are adding to evil in a sense But because of a greater good ideally because you’re gonna stay awake and not cause accidents or something What if you might say about this if you think the Starbucks is acceptable to drink?
I don’t think it’s that different with like movies in the sense that again, it’s this distinction which Oh, Slippery Slope, Material Formal Cooperation, Nah, I think we actually feel, I got a pretty good sense that actually like, this thing is formal. Now there are some, just because there are some cases that are [01:24:00] vague.
You can imagine a case where it’s like, I don’t know whether this is material or formal. It’s getting pretty close, and there might be movies where, but I think we can feel comfortable with, well, that movie, you know, in
David Niles: a movie, can it ever, ever be formal? Like if you go into a movie not knowing if we’re talking about taking the Lord’s name in vain?
Yeah, good question. Obviously you probably don’t know. I mean, you, you can look it up, but actually I kids in mind, I have good website. I have tried to look it up. Before I go to a movie, because this is You did, you just
Adam Minihan: talked about it. Yeah.
David Niles: What, what’d you say? I mean, kids in
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Mind. Kids in Mind. It’s great.
It’s great. Kids in Mind is a great website. Really does cover. Okay. I have not heard of, of that website. Yeah. That’s great. IMDB,
David Niles: like they’re No, no not, they’re not, not as good. Their parental guide like is like some movies. Their parental guide is much, much more in depth. I have got burned by them. Right.
And then you, whereas Kids’ Mind Never Burn you. Yes, I have been burned because some, sometimes the IMDB parental [01:25:00] guide is like. Very thorough. And obviously just like some person took a lot of time on it. And then, and so you start to think, oh, okay, this is good. And then you, you know, you try, yeah. And then the next movie, it is not.
And so anyway, no kids kids in mind. It’s
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: great. Like that’s so I’m, I’m a movies. I’m movies are spelled
David Niles: out like you think it
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: would. Yep. That’s a mind. com. Well, it’s Google, right? You just, all you do is enter a bunch of things and you get stuff. Right. I was looking up, I was, I’m teaching marks right now. I was looking, I remember seeing back in my, in my, you know, like 10 years ago or something, a picture of Karl Marx in the middle of a field with flowers with a child on his shoulder.
And it’s like happy. Cause I’m trying to, I’m trying to get the students to, to treat Karl Marx with some respect initially, before we do any critiques, because they all love, we’re teaching, we’re teaching, I’m teaching Locke first. I teach Locke and Mill, political philosophy. And then, and everyone. It’s a side digression.
We’ll get back to this if I can remember correctly. So bring me back on them. We’re asking but so I teach, you know political philosophy And and so we teach lock and and they read lock and mill So I could [01:26:00] treat us and then mill on liberty and they go my gosh, you know I told him I said look you’re gonna think my finally a philosopher who I who’s who’s saying the right who’s who makes sense And it’s not that he makes sense more than the other philosophers.
It’s just that you’re american And you’ve been spoon fed lock You And Mill, we’re all disciples of somebody for a while and we need to, and what you need to do is, is I want you to. Bracket that for a second and ask whether these guys arguments are good on the other hand I also have to get you to to treat good old uncle Carl.
I would call him uncle Carl with the same kind of like let’s Let’s try to, because you’re naturally, you’re a merit, you’re initially going to read him and be like, Oh, wow. It’s Catholic University, of course. These are, what a horrible man. You know, look at this, Pol Pot and the, you know, Stalin and all this.
I need, there’s no way we’re going to be able to talk about Karl Marx. Unless you have a sympathy for him. So we’re going to have to like, so I wanted to get a picture of Uncle Karl. And I remember this picture of [01:27:00] him in the field with flowers and this child on his shoulder and such. And it’s a great part about Google is you just type in, you know, Karl Marx Fieldflower’s child.
Yeah. And you get it, right? So I got it. It’s fantastic. It’s a Chinese propaganda poster. It’s fantastic because it has just one child and his wife with him. He had he had seven children. Four of them died in childbirth, but the you know, younger. And then three survived and they’re all, he all named them Jenny after his, after his wife was his his, you know, Childhood sweetheart.
An interesting story. But like, so, but they only put one on there because one child, you know, only one child policy. Fantastic. Just a great teaching moment. Anyway, so kids in mind, just type in kids in mind. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about the URL. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of that stuff matters.
It’s like, I don’t need to know your phone number. I just need to punch your face on my phone, you know? Now as we’ve gone back and back to this kids, this kids in mind issue and the movie issue, I think it’s a matter of, you know you know, if you know it’s got swearing in it or something, I mean, [01:28:00] is it, is it realistic?
Like, is that, what is the point of it? So, like, swearing Augustin says at some point, let me put this, Augustin says at some point, I’ve always thought this is interesting, it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s a bit of scariness to it, but Augustin is He’s Augustine, Doctrine of Grace. He says, if you want to be involved in the world, you have to be willing to get your boots dirty.
And you could take that in really bad ways, but I take, and Augustine’s saying this when he’s a bishop. It’s an understanding of like, you know, if you want to save people, you have to realize that you’re going to have to get in the muck a bit. And it doesn’t give you license to go, you know, in the brothel.
I mean, I’m trying to save people, right? I’m just trying to
David Niles: fit in.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Right. But it, but it does force us out in this sort of thing. And, and I, I think the arts, especially this longer concept discussion, of course, have a sort of. [01:29:00] They go to the boundaries and the sort of flexibility because they’re trying to describe art when it’s done well.
It’s trying to describe the human condition to us, give us a mirror about the human condition. And it does absolutely no good. If your mirror of the human condition blacks out something that is actually real. Which is that people are doing the things, for instance, that they’re doing. Now, that doesn’t mean like nudity, you know, that overrides certain things.
You know yeah. Well, well, nudity overrides certain things?
David Niles: I think so, but Yeah, I mean, it’s a scandal, I mean, it’s Okay, hold on But not because
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: But not just because That’s a good point, but not just because of sin, for instance. Like, nudity, you know, like, so I mean nudity isn’t a sin right? Right. But it has but it let’s be honest.
So it depends on the nudity, right? No, I say Schindler’s List. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, but yeah, I say let’s put this way. Let’s put this way Nudity has more like, more like a cause of sin. It’s more likely to drive me, [01:30:00] it’s a pragmatic concern, than say swearing, for instance. What about taking the Lord’s name in vain?
I’ve heard a lot of people do that though. When you say, to me, swear is swearing. Oh
Adam Minihan: sorry, taking the Lord’s name in vain. Is that what you’re talking about? When you say swearing, okay. Because like, cuss swearing, no cuss words, no no. You’re taking the creator in vain. You’re a creator. Yeah. And you’re cursing him.
Yes.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Well,
Adam Minihan: I don’t know.
David Niles: Maybe, maybe, maybe, In vain. It’s just using his name in a vain
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: way. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think most people that, that use his name flippantly because there’s tend to curse him. There
David Niles: are two different, like when you say like the GD word, that’s like an extra degree of just using his, the Lord, like the name of God.
In a vain way. Okay, so there’s, there’s one way where it’s just like, Oh, you were just being flippant with the name of God. And then, like, When you, like, say the GD, that’s like, [01:31:00] that’s like, the highest degree of.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: This is, I mean, this is how language works though, right? Like, I think we’ve, this is a danger for our society.
That used to be a, I mean, when I grew up, remember, do you remember this, like H E double hockey sticks? Right? Yeah, you wouldn’t even say hell, yeah, hell, right. Exactly! But, I mean, this is, this is a linguistic point. Like, language develops in a certain way, such that, you know, the people who are using our lord’s, taking our lord’s name in vain, right?
It’s. It’s almost, like, accidental to them. They don’t, I don’t think they intend it in the way they do. They ought to stop. The Lord’s name, you ought to, when you hear Jesus name, you know, you should bow your head, right? In Mary as well, you know, as they’re not quite as much, but it’s especially in the liturgy, in the liturgy especially, right?
But I mean, the, the Holy name. I mean, there’s, and there’s something, the name of Jesus. Does bring, us to him almost immediately something about this name and the the [01:32:00] taking it in vain Detracts from that sort of spiritual good. So it’s not that it’s like the lord doesn’t like his name being said he’s fine Like it’s the fact that it detracts it’s a sin for us because it detracts from us actually Being able to come closer to him.
We’ve destroyed the vehicle of our salvation that way So Taking the Lord’s name in vain is a tricky one. The point point is, again, I think because it’s linguistic, and remember H. E. double hockey sticks, like, we can say hell now and you’re not freaking out by this. Or I can even say damn, right? And no one, G.
D. okay. But like, you wouldn’t have said that before. So, I think again, it’s a matter of, is it, is it essential, is it, how close is it to the point of the narrative arc of the movie particularly?
David Niles: And, you know, so can I get some clarity here? Is your point that [01:33:00] these, like the, some of the verbiage used in the movie is not essential to the integral good of the movie because these things are not integral to the essence of the movie or maybe whatever the, I don’t know what maybe the right word is.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Now you might think, again, this, no, is that, is that what you’re saying? Yeah, this gets back to our long suffering point, I suppose. That sometimes a quantity has a quality of itself. We like, I like inclusios sometimes the quality quantity has a quality. So if, if, if like, no, the movie’s about like a boy and his turtle, but the whole movie is him just like cursing using the Lord’s taking the Lord’s name in vain.
My thing, like, no, I know that’s what you intend the movie to be about, but it’s really about this, that taking the Lord’s name in vain. And that makes it a horrible movie. Like I can’t, I’m not interested in that. But like if it intrinsically
David Niles: bad not accidentally bad
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: exactly because and and actually the interesting part about that case is it’s not You might the director might be like no, I mean, it’s about a boy and his [01:34:00] turtle like no No, but but that’s not what actually the movie is about.
Mm hmm. You don’t actually you’re actually don’t have the custodian of you’re so bad
David Niles: It’s your art, right? No, it’s like this happened. It was about something else This totally happens because
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: it turns out that reality matters. It’s not just like a mind game, right? you can’t I can’t always fix stuff in the world, even though I will it I want it to be so like yeah You’re not a you know, you’re not you’re not the the sole caregiver of what you have and the caretaker so it’s it is there’s a in a sense There’s a slippery slope you always be careful with and it’s it’s prudent and wise To be careful of these things, right?
But does one particular thing like take the Lord’s name in vain vitiate and otherwise a salubrious movie. For instance like a saint movie, like Mother Carbini’s movie or something. There might be a man who takes the Lord’s name in vain in the street against her or something like that. [01:35:00] Does that, does that vitiate the movie?
Doesn’t strike me, in fact, it’s necessary to show the, the hostileness to her. Yeah, but can you do that in another way? It’s at least a, it’s a dramatic way to do it anyway. Well, no, but is it a real
Adam Minihan: way? Did that happen? I mean, you can make it, I don’t know. Right? I don’t know.
David Niles: Yeah, you know, that is a, I think, a different, a different question of like, hey, if you are quoting somebody actually said this, and it’s part, it’s a historical movie, and like, so that’s why.
But, you know, one, one of the things that, that, that, Kind of brought this like a to a new light for me was oh gosh, what’s her name? She’s the like the weird Catholic writer that I don’t like Flannery O’Connor. Thank you. Okay. She takes her care. I have a hard time with
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: her her
David Niles: character honest Take the Lord’s name in vain Like, a lot.
Okay? And The first time I, my, the first Flannery O’Connor book I ever read, I was reading out loud to my [01:36:00] wife. Okay? So you can, you can see the problem. I would get, and like, I refused, I will not say it. I will It’s like Adronai. Yeah, exactly. For the Tetragrammonon. It’s like, I will say like, oh my gosh, you know, but, or whatever, and it’s like, I was a little bit scandalized because this is, and this is my first Flannery book, you know, I just heard all these great things, oh, Flannery’s Catholic, blah blah blah, Flannery, Flannery, all these people who are just these Flannery fanatics.
Yeah. And so like, There’s a movie coming out speaking, speaking of. Thank you, I was, yes.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: Speaking of, there’s a movie by Ethan Hawke is directing, I think. And Maya Hawke is starring as Flannery Conner. B Bush Barron has an interview with the two of them. I love Ethan Hawke and he’s fantastic as an actor.
So on this movie and Flannery
David Niles: Flannery because No, it’s just, I don’t like her, but I think she’s great. Kind of. Anyway, No, I mean, she, I mean, it’s just, It’s just like [01:37:00] this philosophical conversation about, okay, if, Let’s not degrade philosophy by calling this a philosophical conversation. Okay, fair enough.
That’s fair. But, but, the thing is, I think that your arguments and the things you’ve said are very fair, and I think that they’re rational. And apart from that, As, in a more of a practical way, as I’m considering what ought I to watch, you know, like, if I was, if I was Mother Teresa, would Mother Teresa watch a movie where they take the Lord, like, if they take the Lord’s hand in vain, she’s just not gonna watch that movie, because, because watching a movie is not going to get her to heaven, right, and if she’s like saying, this is a watching a movie is like a leisure, yeah.
And so, she’s gonna choose her leisure well. And so, she’s just simply not going to watch. And so, anyway, I’ve tried to adopt these kinds of choices in my life,
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: you know? I think, no, look, this is a great point. I [01:38:00] think there, as we grow in virtue and holiness, there are things that we, I think the Lord is patient with us.
And with, with others in our condition. He means this is where we’re at in a sense, just use a stupid phrase. And I think that if you don’t find yourself not doing things that you did before, right? Not in a sense of like black and white, but like, you know, I’m just not gonna watch those kind of things anymore.
It’s just not as white. Right? I Then if you don’t find yourself changing this way, I think you might, you might not be growing in hoyness. Now, we all start in different places. So, Flannery O’Connor’s novels literally do save the lives of many people. This is, they read Flannery O’Connor and they think, if, yeah, that’s my experience.
If that’s what, if, if I can be, if that’s what Jesus is kind of about, then I can get on board with that, right? So [01:39:00] it, in a sense, has this like step wise function to it. I do think, like, I mean, I don’t know, it may feel the same way, but I have violence in certain things that I used to watch in movies. And even, you know, gra and even language, I’m just not interested anymore.
Not because I’m like, I’m grown old, but because it’s not good for me. Like it’s, it, where, maybe when I was 22, for instance, like, it really wasn’t bad for me, you could, oh, it was always bad. Maybe not. Maybe I was didn’t feel like it was. I didn’t think it was. Yeah, yeah, but, and maybe it wasn’t. But maybe it is now and for me like that is that that experience.
Yeah, so I think you’re I think you’re right So actually, you know just because and this is the black and white issue just because something is like wrong You you feel like this is wrong for me now Doesn’t mean that might be wrong intrinsically. It might be but it might be someone might not the greatest good I think I think that’s right and start to make
David Niles: that mental shift about it’s [01:40:00] right and wrong and As opposed to like, no, I’m just pursuing greater goods now in my life.
And you
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but at the same time, there’s always more good to be done. But I think it is, it is good that we never feel complacent, this is the important part, at where we are in our relationship with the Lord morally. And we ask ourselves, am I close, am I, are there any still hindrances?
To me between him and me and that and that can develop and I what I what I do worry about though is like Blanket prohibitions on things because I feel like sometimes that’s just it’s just kind of us being moralizing police Maybe that’s Dominican me in me speaking But I think it has to be again the free the choice realizing where I am.
I’m going towards that right? I think that is that is right. So I think I think right when you say pragmatically, I think you mean like Sankt sanctifying Lee, right? I think that’s That’s a good point. That’s a really good point. [01:41:00]
Adam Minihan: Father Bonaventure, it has been a blast as always. I appreciate you. I don’t know what time it is, but I’ve enjoyed this a lot.
It’s gotta be, yeah, it’s almost 11 o’clock. That’s fantastic. You guys are great. I really
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: thank you for having this time. Thanks for
Adam Minihan: like doing, like, that’s, that’s gotta be tough. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of fun, but like, we were like, Pelting you with ridiculous questions left and right.
What? You were a good
David Niles: champ.
Adam Minihan: I tried to do my best. Like, did
David Niles: Judas go to hell? And also, what’s the Intrical good about movies? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought we were going to talk about art. There are, there are, Very few people. I thought we were going to talk about modern art. Yeah, I even told him. I, I reserved.
I decided to reserve.
Intro: Oh. Because I’m so humble. Oh my
David Niles: this is my humility. You, you deprive me of truth. Ece Humilito.
Fr. Bonaventure Chapman: You deprive me of truth. You’re not my friend.
David Niles: I’m just, once we go downstairs, I’m gonna tell you all about it. That’s great. Yeah. Thanks so much. Cheers. Cheers.