Podcast: Patrick Novecosky on "John Paul II's Lasting Influence on…Everything"

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0:04 Greetings and welcome to another episode of the Faithful Presence podcast. I am your host, Reverend Michael Langer, founder and president of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders working in our nation’s capital to flourish as they participate in Christ’s mission of making all things new. We do that through offering spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational,

0:30 ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation. You don’t have to move your head the same way I just moved mine. And supporting the local church in equipping their members for Christ-centered engagement with the public square. In other words, whole life discipleship and the whole of life formation. for the whole of the public square.

0:51 It is good to be back with you. Today, our guest on the podcast is actually a guy that I would say I met first through a local Fokker County, that’s a real county, by the way, Fokker County Magazine. And I noticed, I’m like, oh, hey, this guy seems interesting.

1:11 And so we’ve met a couple times for coffee and And so it’s a real privilege to invite Patrick Novikoski onto the podcast. Patrick is one of America’s most accomplished Catholic communicators. And that’s saying a lot because I know a number of them that are really, really wonderful. So that’s saying something.

1:35 Not saying he’s the best, but he’s one of them. He’s a… He’s an international public speaker, is the author of the bestselling book, 100 Ways, John Paul II Changed the World. Patrick has been published in five languages and received more than two dozen national awards for his writing and editing work.

1:54 He’s also the managing partner of Nova Media, a public relations firm specializing in the Catholic space. And he serves as the executive director of the Warrington Pregnancy Center. We’re going to learn all about more of those here in just a moment.

2:10 What he would also want me to mention is that he met Pope John Paul II five times and made him laugh out loud. So with that said, welcome to the podcast, Patrick. How the heck are you?

2:27 Hey, Michael, good to be with you.

2:30 Okay, so you have to open us up with a story of making St. John Paul II laugh, and I’m going to ask you then, is this because of his love of clowns? It was news to me that he loved circuses and clowns when I read your book.

2:48 Well, first of all, let me back up just a little bit. Okay. It was actually Pope Francis that I made laugh out loud. Okay.

2:58 That’s not to say that Pope John Paul II doesn’t have a sense of humor.

3:01 He certainly did have a sense of humor. Yeah. And he also had a sweet tooth. So we can talk about that. Okay. I want to hear about that. But okay. So I’ll tell you just in a nutshell how I met John Paul II. I was working for a religious order, a priest and brothers in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

3:22 And they’re Polish-Lithuanian in origin, and they had some very strong connections to the Pope and his office. Matter of fact, the superior general of the order at that time had been a student of John Paul II when John Paul, before he became a bishop, was a professor at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland.

3:47 So they had this really tight connection. And it was Christmas 1996. They had a raffle, an employee raffle at Christmas. And the grand prize was a trip for two to Cancun. And it was back, was supported by their local travel agency back before the internet was used to book your online travel. And they pulled my name.

4:11 I was the new kid. I was 28 years old and I want a trip to Cancun, but I had no desire to go sit on a beach in Cancun. So I called the travel agents and I said, can I go to Rome instead? Because I’d really love to see Rome. Sure. Why not? The city.

4:28 And my boss found out and he said, well, you know, we’ve got a house there. So you could just stay at our house instead of renting a hotel room. And, and, oh, by the way, would you like to meet the Pope? And I was like, Yes, I like that idea a lot. So they set me up.

4:45 I was the webmaster of their website at the time. And so I put together this beautiful portfolio to present the Pope. They put me on a list and it took about three, four days before I got the phone call to say, you’re going to see the Pope in the morning. So He has a pretty busy schedule.

5:04 And October 1st, 1997, I stood beside the Vicar of Christ and presented him with my work. And it was a little intimidating because, you know, I have Polish-German blood and… The Polish in me was very proud that there’s this Polish pope. But at the same time, you know, I’m a farm kid from Saskatchewan.

5:26 I grew up in Canada. And I’m standing beside one of the most important people on the planet. But when he walked in the room, Michael, it was like standing next to my dad saying, hey, dad, look what I did at work today. It was that easy.

5:40 I cannot even. We both work in Washington. So being around people who are on the news is not uncommon. I cannot imagine standing next to the Pope and thinking, oh, this seems like a normal thing.

5:56 It didn’t. It didn’t. But when he walked in the room, all that anxiety was just gone. He just has this aura of peace. It was just so easy to be around. So that led to a series of events. The Pope had tasked this religious order, the Marian Fathers, with re-evangelizing Eastern Europe.

6:13 This is late 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The eastern states of the Soviet Union were independent. So I went to Ukraine and Lithuania and Czech Republic, Slovakia. And I gathered stories about what these priests had been doing during the Cold War. and after the Cold War. And my stories were very successful.

6:37 They got a lot of traction. So they kept sending me back to Rome to meet the Pope every year. And I kind of felt like the Catholic Forrest Gump, you know, I got to meet the Pope again.

6:50 I feel like that when I get invitations to go back to act in Socratic lectures, I’m like, am I the comedic foil at this event?

6:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that one thing led to another and the Pope died, we knew Pope, and I traveled a little bit with Pope Benedict as a Catholic journalist. And then Pope Francis was elected. This is one of my claims to fame. I was the closest lay person, non-clergy,

7:17 to Pope Francis when he stepped out for the first time. I was on top of the colonnade in Rome when he stepped out and made his debut, what is a dozen years ago.

7:30 That’s incredible.

7:31 And then a couple years later, came back to Rome and got to meet Pope Francis in person in a room with about 100 people. And each person kind of came up to greet him individually. And at that time, I had started to run marathons. And the Rome Marathon coincided with my visit to Rome. So here it is.

7:51 It’s a Friday. And the Pope was in front of me. So I just said, Holy Father, on Sunday, I’m running the Rome Marathon. I waited a second because his English isn’t so good. And then when I could tell he understood me, I just said, like I said, I said, please pray for me. And he laughed out loud.

8:14 The Pope literally said, I do, I do. That’s awesome. I ran my fastest marathon ever. I’ve since done better. But yeah, I ran the marathon and the Pope prayed for me. And I made him laugh. That was quite a thing.

8:30 That’s more than most people have done. Most people haven’t run a marathon. Like I haven’t run a marathon. My daughter’s run a marathon. But most people haven’t run a marathon. And the number of people who’ve run a marathon after receiving a blessing from the Pope is very small. Like that number is just… Very small. So here’s,

8:51 I think we talked about this in the coffee shop, a little shout out to goodness and grace in, in downtown Warrington, because it’s just an amazing coffee shop and we love everybody in there. Uh, but during one of those, I think I was telling you that my, I have some like tangential connections to the Catholic church.

9:06 So when I was, when I was little, um, my aunt i had an aunt vivian who was a sister of mercy and she was i i think her order was based in kansas city at the time kansas city or omaha but i remember that every

9:21 christmas i would get a little book from her they were like i think they were called arch books and they were these little kind of like i mean they were they were books but they were very very thin and they usually had like some some jesus some some bible story in them

9:38 But I also just remembered that my aunt Vivian was really sweet and was very loving and very kind. And I was going through a lot of things as a kid. I didn’t have the greatest childhood in the world, but I just always loved my aunt Vivian. And then her brother, my uncle, my grandmother’s brother, was a Jesuit.

9:58 And he was the first president of Sogong University in Korea. And then he came back home and to be the dean of Creighton University and then went from there to the Loyola Marymount School of Business before he retired. So those were my two kind of like Catholic touch points. Nice. Until I went to seminary.

10:22 And, you know, I grew up in Iowa. And in the part of Iowa, you know, Iowa is a wonderful state, very, very intelligent folks. I was definitely not among that group of people. Because I was, when I became a Christian at the age of 17, I came in to kind of the Bible church, kind of traditional,

10:41 kind of evangelical door. Yeah. And part of coming in through that door is that basically anybody who’s part of a denomination is not a Christian. That’s just kind of like the pool that you swim in. And for sure, every Catholic needs Jesus. Like that was for sure a thing.

11:05 um well if you just cut out that little segment every catholic needs jesus i applaud that 100 yes okay yes every human being needs yes i i yes so when i get to

11:17 seminary i’m taking a class from uh one of my professors anthony bradley who was also like a visiting fellow at the acton institute at the time i think now he’s a full-time senior fellow there but he’s like hey your questions about work and faith um They’re taking up way too much time in class.

11:35 I’m going to send you to this thing called the Acton Institute. And I looked it up and I’m like, this is like a bunch of Catholics. And he said, yes, it’s imagine if Catholic social teaching from John Paul II were to meet Dutch Reformed theology from Abram Kuyper and sphere sovereignty.

11:53 And you just spent like an entire week thinking about that. And he said, you know, I’m going to send you out there. You’re either going to come back and love it or you’re going to come back and think, what is that? And my brain almost exploded.

12:07 Reading, as everyone does when they do their first act and event, you read Centesimus Annus. And I just remember thinking, oh, This guy has thought about a lot of things, but very deeply. He’s thought about economics. He’s thought about social issues, cultural issues, spiritual issues, like you name it. He’d thought about it.

12:32 And so that’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast, because I love John Paul II. I also remember when I was in junior high, I was in the lunchroom and they came on the overhead and they said, we have really sad news. The Pope has been shot.

12:51 And I can remember in my junior high lunchroom, people crying. that he had been shot. And so I just, he, he, I think this, he was a figure that kind of transcended what anything that I knew about the papacy before then, which is like, he was a, he was really a worldwide, wide figure by that time.

13:10 So I’d love to hear how do you, how does, how does a guy from Saskatchewan come to write a book on John Paul II? Yeah.

13:21 Well, it was precipitated by the meetings that I had with him. My meetings, I have to say, were very brief. Three of them were in private audiences in the papal residence. Two of them were in St. Peter’s Square. And the brief audiences in the papal residence is, were me presenting him with my work.

13:42 But getting to be that close to the Pope kind of makes you, especially me as a journalist, a sponge for everything about him. And so I went back to my childhood when I heard that he was shot, first when he was elected and then when he was shot, and kind of looked at his life and his influence.

14:05 But the book came from me recognizing that 2020 would have been his 100th birthday. And I wanted to write a project, create a book that honored him on his birthday. And I write in short little segments. Most of my writing was writing editorials, writing opinion pieces.

14:30 So writing something that is 500 words, 1,000 words, was kind of where I maxed out. So what I did was essentially found 100 ways that he had a significant influence and wove those together into this book. And I think it came out pretty well.

14:50 And I wrote it particularly for people that knew about him, but really didn’t know him. But what ended up happening is that even some scholars who had written books about him read my book and go, oh, I didn’t know that. Because they focus on one particular part of his papacy,

15:08 his economic thought or his theology or his philosophy or his evangelism. But they don’t focus on the whole breadth of what he did. So really, it’s a primer for understanding who John Paul was, what influence he had, and how that resonates with us 20 years after his death.

15:29 Yeah, that was my, you know, so I’m not Catholic. And so there were chapters in there that I’m like, I have no idea who this person is. You know, somebody in Catholic history or martyrs. I’m like, okay, I don’t know who this is, but this does seem like a wonderful interaction. It’s a wonderful story.

15:53 It’s a wonderful anecdote about a guy who was a fully rounded person. We tend to think of folks like St. John Paul II, and we think to ourselves, oh, well, he’s… not normal. He doesn’t experience things the way that we experience them. And he did. I mean, he grew up in Poland.

16:17 He grew up in a very difficult situation. And he really, in a lot of ways, had to become ambassador to the world. The fact that he spoke, I think you mentioned in there, he spoke eight languages fluently. And people were stunned when they, so they know, oh, hey, we have a new pope. The Pope is apparently Polish.

16:40 This is going to be a big break for us. And he comes out and he delivers his first address in fluent Italian. Just talk about kind of what a, I don’t know, kind of a cosmopolitan individual that he was.

16:55 He’s not the kind of person you would expect to develop into because he was raised, his father was in the military. His mother was a lacemaker. She was a seamstress. They grew up in a small town in north central Poland. His mother died when he was young. He was, I think, eight,

17:18 nine years old when his mother died, essentially raised by his father when he was 12. His older brother, who was a doctor, died. And it was just him and his dad. And then he was 18 years old, graduated from high school, went to college.

17:33 They thought he was going to be an actor because he had this great… He was athletic. He was good looking. He had this charisma. He was interested in the stage. And… He spent a year in college. And matter of fact, he was just entering his second year of university when the German tanks rolled into Poland in 1939.

17:52 Fundamentally changed his life. And his way of resisting the Nazis was by keeping Polish culture alive. The Nazis really wanted to obliterate Polish culture and transform it into a German state. And that was his form of resisting. But then his father died. And he, at 20, 21 years old, was left orphaned. Everyone that he loved was dead.

18:19 He felt God’s calling him to use his gifts and talents on a bigger stage, if you will, and join the priesthood. Matter of fact, during that time, the Nazis were shooting seminarians. So just by saying yes to that call from God, he took his life in his hands and allowed himself to be in God’s hands. And then…

18:43 Just because of his brilliant mind, he studied philosophy and theology and languages, and he picked up languages very easily. But it was mostly because he wanted to read source material in the original language. So instead of getting a translator or someone to help him with that, he was like, well, I’m just going to learn the language.

19:06 Who does that? Said me never. Yeah. And that was before they had all the apps where you could kind of… So he was just intellectually curious about everything. And he became a brilliant priest, a brilliant theologian, a brilliant pastor, particularly a brilliant pastor to young people.

19:26 He had a passion for young people because they had so many questions. And so he would… really who we are as human beings. So his thought on human anthropology really was core to what he was. Who are we as human beings created in God’s image and likeness? What does that mean and how can I unpack that?

19:48 How can I dive into the depths of what that means? So That’s really the heart of John Paul II, is who are we? What is man, really? Man being humanity. That was his quest to kind of figure out who we are and how we fit into the great plan that God has for the world and for salvation.

20:12 Yeah, so it’s interesting because I agree with everything that you said, which is you multiple times referred to John Paul II as a great theologian. And in your book, you kind of make this distinction between John Paul II and Benedict. And the distinction that you’re making is, well, you know,

20:34 John Paul II was really more of a philosopher. He was. And Benedict was more of a theologian. And I see John Paul as this you know, just really kind of once in a, I don’t know, millennium, almost fusion of those two things,

20:58 right?

20:58 That you have a person who can do philosophy and do theology and is able to weave them and connect them together in a way that most importantly, makes sense to people who don’t live in the ivory tower. Right. That’s, you know, when we look at people like, you know, in the Protestant faith,

21:18 you look at people like C.S. Lewis and maybe more recently Tim Keller. The ability and the ability to take philosophy and theology is, you know, that’s that’s kind of an academic pursuit. But to take it and to make it pastoral. So that people go, oh, I understand the implication of the thing that you’re talking about.

21:42 I understand why it matters. And so what I want to do is just kind of go through some of these things and talk about them in the context of what Faithful Presence does, which is providing spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation, which I often mention spells service if you’re keeping track because a fully formed

22:04 disciple. serves, but I think each one of those is its own facet in its own right. And so one of the things that has struck me the more and more I have read papal encyclicals, and so sometimes people will come over to my office and they’ll be like, what is this Fratelli Tucci? What is this?

22:24 I’m like, oh yeah, it’s a really fascinating pastoral encyclical by Pope Francis. They’re like, and you’re reading it? I’m like, yeah, it’s amazing. So in my spare time, I like to sprinkle in papal encyclicals because they’re so good. So let’s just start at the top.

22:44 And that is that Pope John Paul II had everything that he did seem to be about spiritual and evangelical formation of of the Catholic Church, of followers of Christ. And so I want to start with this document, and please correct me if I pronounce this wrong, Redemptoris Missio in 1990,

23:12 where he really talks about the importance of evangelism, that evangelism, that being a follower of Christ is more than just going to church on Sunday. It is actually trying to reach out to other people and bring them into the faith community. And he made three distinctions, or you did there,

23:36 that that includes evangelism among existing vibrant Christian communities. against maybe post-Christian communities, and as well, again, among pre-Christian communities or communities that don’t really know anything about that. Talk a little bit about the work that that document had and the influence that John Paul II had on Catholic evangelism, especially kind of post-Vatican II.

24:05 Well, that’s a big question to unpack. So John Paul’s predecessor, Paul VI, in 1976, said the church exists to evangelize. And how I interpret that, and I write this in my book, is that the first thing Jesus did in his public ministry was to say, come and see.

24:26 An invitation to ask that question, who do you say that I am, right? And the last thing he did was, of course, the Great Commission. Go out and make disciples of all the world. So Paul VI, in writing about this, said that the core… existence of a church that Jesus founded is to evangelize,

24:46 to take the gospel to the world, that great commission. And the church, Catholic church, the Protestant church, at times we get distracted, we kind of get off track. But John Paul wanted to bring particularly the Catholic church back on track when it came to evangelism. So ultimately, and in my book,

25:09 the 100 ways John Paul II changed the world. The top 90 are not in any particular order. They just kind of go as a flow and connect to each other. But the top 10 are really what I think are the core influences that he had. And number one is what he called the new evangelization.

25:30 That means bringing Jesus to what he said in Redemptoris Missio in 1981 is to people who really don’t know the gospel. And then secondly, to service people who do follow Christ faithfully. And then third, to this fallen away group of Christians that were once…

25:55 part of the fold, but have kind of wandered off, the lost sheep of the world. John Paul II is still, and probably will be until the end of time, we’ll see, the most seen human being who ever lived. He would regularly draw one million people. Matter of fact,

26:13 I was in a crowd of a million people in Krakow once with John Paul II, and it was surreal. The closing mass for World Youth Day in Manila, early 90s, 7 million people. So we don’t have a calculation of how many people actually saw him,

26:32 let alone the quarter of a million people that went to his weekly audiences in St. Peter’s Square every week. It’s a staggering figure, the number of people that saw John Paul II live. But all of that work, all of his writing, all of his traveling was for this evangelization to bring Jesus Christ to humanity, to the world,

26:54 in a way that’s never been done before. So… That kind of first document, the first papal encyclical of his work as Pope was kind of laying the groundwork for why are we here? Why are we doing this? And how much the world needs Jesus Christ?

27:15 Yeah, and that’s what I really appreciated about that document is— It’s not just, you know, I mean, I think both Protestants and Catholics do this. And that is you come up with some kind of technique that works for a period of time. And then, you know, it’s maybe it’s all the rage and then maybe it falls away.

27:39 And so then you keep trying it, and you’re like, well, why do people not respond to this? And part of the reason that people don’t respond to the old methods of evangelism is a lot of those old methods of evangelism were developed in a kind of a Christian context.

27:56 And since then, we’ve moved into postmodernism and maybe even post-Christianity. And so a lot of the presuppositions that some of the evangelism requires, people are like, yeah, I’m not starting there. That’s not my starting point. And I appreciated so much the fact that John Paul II understood that. He’s like, look, there are communities that have kind of

28:20 So Christianity has kind of left them behind or, you know, as Paul would say, you know, they’ve they’ve left the train like they’ve they’ve gotten off and and we have to bring them back as well. And we have to figure out how do we communicate. The truth of the gospel in a way that people in this age,

28:40 in this current context, are going to understand, and more important than understanding it, are going to respond to. They’re going to see, like, this is hopeful. This is offering me something that I don’t have and that I desire. What aspect of Pope John Paul II do you think it is that, like,

29:02 how did he come to have such a craving for evangelism?

29:07 Wow. I think because he witnessed… as a young man, inhumanity to man. He saw what the Nazis did to the Jews. He had so many, he grew up in a town that was essentially half Jewish. And when he played soccer as a little boy, he would often play goalie for the Jewish team because they didn’t have enough,

29:29 there were more Catholics than Jews. So he was like, I’ll play goalie for the Jewish team. And he loved, I mean, he grew up loving the Jewish faith, even as a Catholic, because He saw that as, as well, Jesus was Jewish. So what could be wrong with being Jewish?

29:45 And, and as he got older, he came to understand the beauty of, of, of Judaism. Um, But then the Nazi tanks rolled in and he saw his friends being slaughtered, Catholics and Jews and intellectuals, because the Nazis didn’t just go after the Jews. They went after anyone who was an intellectual, anyone who was a leader,

30:08 anyone who was Jewish, anyone who was Catholics were getting picked off left and right. And he saw that brutality. He saw people murdered in front of his eyes. He was actually struck by a Nazi truck and left for dead, picked up and spent two weeks in the hospital when he was 20 years old. So…

30:31 I think that was kind of the spark for it. He was like, what is going on in the hearts of these human beings that they have such hatred? And he said his father was his first seminary. He would often see his father up at night late praying alone.

30:48 And his father was kind of the school where he learned to get on his knees and have a relationship with the Lord. So There’s a stark contrast there. His dad’s faith, the vibrant Catholicism that still is so much a part of Poland, and this inhumanity. And then when the Nazi regime was replaced by the Soviet regime,

31:15 that inhumanity continued in often more brutal ways. Right. So I think that’s what kind of triggered this discovery that he wanted. Who are we? How are we wired this way? And how does this happen when people are separated from Christ, that this inhumanity happens?

31:35 And that’s why he said that the solution to all of humanity’s problems lies in Jesus Christ. There’s nothing more that humanity needs than Jesus. And that’s the answer to everything. The deepest longings of our hearts are found in the person of Jesus Christ.

31:52 Yeah. Which then brings us to this, you know, Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God. And it’s Jesus is the person through whom we get probably the best picture of how do we form an anthropology? Yeah. And this next one that I want to talk about is his Theology of the Body, which just really,

32:16 as you mentioned in the book, kind of comes over a series of years of kind of these Wednesday evening lectures. But it is really kind of almost like a magisterial work on why anthropology matters to not just our ability to know God, and to love God, but to also understand how important humanity is, like as a whole.

32:43 You would just talk a little bit about that work and its impact on, I would say, both Catholic and Protestant scholars.

32:55 Yeah, I think the whole origin of John Paul’s theology of the body lies in his pastoral work as a young priest. Now you have to put yourself back in Nazi-occupied Poland, and then the early Soviet regime. John Paul was ordained a priest after the Soviets took over Poland, and it became officially communist.

33:21 These young people had grown up in an era of secrecy of authoritarian governments, and they had no safe place to ask questions of their parents or their loved ones or even priests. So John Paul II, being the athlete that he was, would often take these young people on kayaking trips or hiking trips.

33:47 and give them a safe space as a group to ask him these questions. Like, why is this inhumanity happening? Why are these people so angry? What does it mean to be in love and have a family? And so he would ponder these questions because ultimately he was a philosopher and

34:11 he would come back with answers for them and away from listening ears in the city. where he could minister to these young people and give them some real good answers to these deep questions that were in their hearts. And then he became a bishop in the late 1950s.

34:31 In 1960, he wrote a book called Love and Responsibility that unpacked really who we are as human beings, and particularly when it comes to sexuality. Now, this was revolutionary. This is 1960 communist Poland, and a bishop is writing a book about human sexuality. I mean, that’s… That’s mind-blowing, really, because this is pre-sexual revolution in the West.

34:58 But he’s unpacking these deep ideas in an era where we had barely had Elvis Presley for four years, right? Yes. And then 15 years later, he’s 1975, he’s working on this new book, yet untitled. 78, he’s elected pope. And the people around him say, well, popes don’t write books. They write encyclicals. They give talks. They give homilies.

35:33 They write letters. But they don’t write books. And he thought, well, OK, well, then I’ll just roll this out as a series of teachings, which he began just a few years later. But he later learned that a pope can do whatever he wants. Sure he can. If he wants to write a book, he’ll write a book.

35:49 Yeah.

35:50 So Theology of the Body originally was supposed to be a follow-up, a sequel to his Love and Responsibility book. And what he says in that, and it’s very complex, but ultimately he says that the answers to these deepest questions in our hearts about who we are as human beings, male and female, are stamped into our very bodies.

36:12 So he unpacks… Why are we male and female? Uh, does it really matter for male or female? What is the, the, what is, what does sexual, uh, married love, what does married love mean? And how is, how is that part of God’s plan? Um, he was a priest, he was a celibate.

36:31 So what is celibate love and how does that fit into God’s plan for humanity? Um, And I think, you know, this teaching on who we are as male and female is needed now more than ever. We have a very sexually confused culture.

36:48 And we’ve kind of fallen away from the biblical truths that have been distorted by the culture. And to be frank, some people in the church. So I think what he’s done is given us kind of a template for teaching authentic human sexuality from a Christian worldview.

37:12 Okay. I absolutely want to go there, but I also want to give folks a moment to kind of catch their breath who are maybe like, oh boy, here we go into the sexual thing. But we’re going to get there. It’s in my notes. But before we get there,

37:26 I want to talk about this next great work that he did with Ratzinger, which is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I read this a couple of times and I thought, no, this can’t possibly be correct. Um, because, you know, as a, as a Presbyterian, I, you know, for my ordination,

37:49 I had to memorize the shorter catechism of the Westminster, uh, confession, like the, the, the catechism, the question and answer. And, and the rule was the reason that you memorized the question and answer part. The more concise part was you were told, once you do your interview for, hey, we’re going to recommend you for ordination,

38:11 you’re going to have to go before the floor, before the group, the council. And they would tell you, hey, by the way, no one wants to hear your theology waxing eloquent. If you’re asked a question and you can answer it with the answer from the catechism,

38:29 do that because we all agree on that and just stop talking don’t you don’t need to like unpack well you know this person said this and you know i’d like to you know build a bridge to that because then you’re going to you know your your um your

38:44 ordination exam is going to turn into something you don’t want it to be but 2865 articles yes really yes Talk about the need for… what it was that motivated St. John Paul II to say, we need an updated catechism for the church.

39:09 Yeah. Well, the first, the, the, the previous catechism was the Roman catechism, which was written 400 years ago in response to the Protestant reformation. And that held sway for 400 years. And then second Vatican council, mid 1960s, um, 20 years after the council ended. So the council was 1962 to 1965.

39:37 1985, John Paul II brings together a group of bishops. They have a synod. And one of the recommendations was a new universal catechism. A lot of people in the church, in the Vatican, said, well, we don’t need a new catechism. We’ve got this one. It’s 400 years old here. Yeah.

39:53 John Paul II said, so much has happened since then. And one thing that he saw as one of his key tasks was to unpack the Second Vatican Council. The council was called by Pope John XXIII to kind of… be a breath of fresh air for the church that had gotten stagnant.

40:15 And there are a lot of people in the Catholic Church who think it was unnecessary, but it was necessary. It was necessary for the church to find new ways to bring the gospel to the world, and it still does. But John Paul II was a very young bishop in those days, He was part of the council.

40:34 He became a leading voice in the council. So when he was elected pope in 1978, he kind of thought, this is one of my tasks that God has given me to unpack the council. So 20 years on, 1985, 20 years after the council ended, these bishops recommend this new catechism. And despite the pushback,

40:55 he brought together a group of theologians and said, let’s get to work on this. It took seven years. But it’s not a Q&A format like all the previous catechisms had been. Give me the number again. Over 2,000 citations. Paragraphs. Paragraphs. So these paragraphs, some of them short, some of them long,

41:21 kind of unpack what does the Catholic Church teach on this subject? What does it teach on, for example, adultery? What does it teach on the death penalty? What does it teach on the sanctity of human life when it comes to abortion, contraception?

41:35 And a lot of this, too, because the Catholic Church put its foot down on contraception in 1968. And as you know, But up until the 20th century, all Christians agreed that contraception was a moral evil. That started to degrade in the early 20th century. So… That’s what the Catechism is. That’s what it does.

42:01 It became an international bestseller. I wrote an article about the Catechism just a couple of years ago, I think five years ago, and tried to do an update on how many copies it had sold. 100, I think 100. 100 million, tens of millions of copies in over 20 languages. Matter of fact,

42:22 when it came out in the 1990s, I remember seeing it on the checkout at the grocery store. It was everywhere. Yeah. But this is a book that lays out in very great detail what the Catholic Church believes and why it believes it with great references back to saints and other Catholic teaching over the course of 2,000 years.

42:44 Yeah, and this is really one of the things that distinguishes the Catholic catechism from a lot of the Protestant catechisms, which are really primarily about doctrine. Like, let’s make sure that the doctrine is correct. which is absolutely essential. And I know you and I am a Protestant, you’re a Catholic, we disagree on some of those things. Um,

43:04 But what the Catholic catechism does is say, so what? So how then shall we negotiate things like the death penalty, abortion, same-sex marriage? What do we think about all of these various topics that we are surrounded with? So having an idea of what does the doctrine of sanctification teach,

43:31 What does, you know, what should we view about Mariology? Like those are great things, but if you can’t apply them in your normal, normal life, then they’re just, it’s just, they’re just words. And, and so I really, this is where we’re going to go now back. So everybody can grab back to your seats again. In, in,

43:51 in the nature of cultural kind of cultural formation, he wrote a couple documents that were, just filled with good truth, and yet truth that was hard to swallow. And the first one was Evangelium Vitae, and the second one is Veritatis Splendor. And in both of those, he’s taking on issues that were culturally relevant and

44:19 and are still culturally relevant today, issues of abortion, issues of, of human sexuality, um, of, of, you know, how do we, because, you know, Veritatis Splendor is really about moral relativism, right? It’s about what happens when we, we move away from biblical truth and we just develop our own, um,

44:43 And where are we left with if we’re the people who are going to decide what is true and what is right, which then again flows back to this theology of the body. And so one of the things that I wanted to do here is just read a quote from one of these documents. And this is in 1986.

45:04 This is his teaching on homosexuality. You write in your book, the congregation in 1986, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued a letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on the pastoral hair of homosexual persons. And just already, I love this because it is on the pastoral care of of homosexual persons. It’s not saying, oh,

45:32 well, you can’t refer to yourself as a homosexual because we can’t identify ourselves by our own sin. He’s like, no, no, that’s not what I’m doing here. What I’m saying is they only have homosexual attraction. These are people who have not experienced heterosexual attraction. The pastoral care of homosexual persons, the letter explained the following.

45:59 Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, and I know this is an issue that a lot of people are going to want to debate, but that’s not what this is about. It is a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.

46:21 And thus, the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore, special concern and pastoral attention should be directed towards those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not, end quote. Amen. So talk just a little bit about,

46:57 you know, I believe that when he wrote that, it probably got a lot less pushback than it would get today.

47:04 I agree.

47:07 But part of the thing that makes these words so beautiful is the way that he frames them in the context of pastoral care. It’s not about just saying, oh, hey, here’s a doctrine. It’s saying, hey, here’s how we interact with this issue. And the same thing on abortion that comes from this idea of the body.

47:30 Just talk a little bit about how John Paul II was exactly a man for his time, but also a man for our time in… in saying to the church, you have to talk about these things. Not talking about them is not going to help you because Facebook and Instagram would love to help you on these issues.

47:55 And they’re not interested in discipleship, right? That’s not the point. Talk a little, just a little bit about how he was able to navigate these cultural issues pastorally and yet doctrinally.

48:08 Yeah, I think it comes down to just two things, that love the sinner, hate the sin, right? And if someone has an inclination toward a sin, I can speak for myself because when I was a young man, I watched lots of movies and TV shows and I developed an inclination to become a cat burglar.

48:27 Now, that’s not deeply embedded in my soul and I’m not making a moral equivalency here. But I was fascinated with this idea of sneaking around in the dark and stealing jewels. And I actually… was starting to look into how to pick locks and how to, so that was my inclination as a young man.

48:49 I was, because it was fascinating. It was exciting. It was dangerous. It was, it was, you know, and fun. But then I realized that that is an evil thing to do, right? That would be an evil lifestyle to do. to do that, to pursue that. So I pushed back on that inclination. And I think for some,

49:17 not all, and again, not making the moral equivalency, for someone to have an inclination as a young person, and then to dive headlong into that inclination or that thought, maybe what you’re doing is just cementing it in your soul rather than, um, feeling like you’re born that way.

49:37 Uh, you know, so that’s one thing, love the sinner, uh, love the sinner, hate the sin. Right. And having pastoral care leads to the other thought that, uh, God and, and we, and the church desires that all men, all people be saved. Um, And for the Catholic Church or any other church to neglect the people who need

50:05 Jesus the most are clearly—we all do—but clearly the ones who are furthest from the truth, who are among us— We’ll probably talk about this later, but the least among us. Jesus, when he laid out that doctrine, he didn’t make it optional. Who are the least among us in our culture?

50:27 I say they are the people who have been greatly deceived by the culture, by the devil, by the flesh, the… The flesh, the devil, and the world. The world, the flesh, and the devil. There you go. Who have been deceived. The unborn, and the poor, and the illiterate, and the migrants. The people who are here legally, illegally.

50:56 The people who are in our communities who are the least among us, it is incumbent upon us and not optional that we be Jesus to them, that we bring Jesus to them. And I think that’s where the heart of the church comes when it comes to this

51:12 pastoral initiative to reach out to people who have this inclination to homosexuality or to transgenderism, as it would be in our day. It wasn’t a thing in the 80s. That our greatest desire, our greatest love, what is love? It’s willing the good of the other, right? And to be other-centered.

51:34 And if we’re not doing that, then we don’t have the heart of Christ. Because Christ died on the cross for our sins, yes, but he died on the cross for them and God. What does the scripture say about if a great sinner is saved? I mean,

51:48 all of heaven rejoices when someone who is so far from Jesus comes to know him and serve him as their savior. I mean, that is a great victory. That’s the 1% that comes back into the fold or enters the fold who has never been there. So that’s really where this teaching is coming from.

52:10 Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. So much for that. It’s I think that the, the church would, um, do so much better if we would take a pastoral approach to these issues instead of this kind of culture warrior type thing that we have that ultimately really turns people off because they say…

52:34 Oh, no,

52:34 go ahead.

52:36 Just one other thought. The other thought in this regard is that we need to treat sinners who want to come home like Jesus treated Mary Magdalene. the repentant sinner. We don’t treat them like the Pharisees did. And too often, people who are far from the church because of the choices they’ve made,

53:02 whether that’s a woman who’s had an abortion or someone who changes their gender or someone who’s living a homosexual lifestyle, if We need to be Christ to them. We need to help them to see Christ and to know him and to love him. And in whatever way we can, if we come at them with condemnation and judgment,

53:28 they’re going to run away. They’re going to say, I want to have nothing to do with your church, because then we’re being pharisaical. Then we’re being judgmental to them, right? And we need to be like Jesus to them.

53:43 Yeah, there’s a few things that that brings to mind. One is, I was just reading in Romans this morning, you know, what a lot of folks will call, oh, those are the clobber verses in chapter two. But if you see it through the lens of, I think what Paul is attempting to do is to say, no, no,

54:02 listen, what I’m trying to do is explain to you what it means to be fully human. And to embrace the ethic of being a Christian, like this is the way you’re supposed to live. And it just kind of occurred to me, I was like today years old when it occurred to me, that Romans is written to Christians,

54:24 right? It’s not written to people who don’t know, like, oh, I’ve read Romans and look at me being condemned in this book. No, it’s written to Christians, right? And so when Paul starts by saying, hey, if you adopt a judgmental attitude towards people who are doing these things, you just condemned yourself.

54:45 You do not get a free pass because you’re like, oh, yeah, but I grew up in a Christian home. So, you know, those people, though, they’re really bad. And that Paul’s saying, no, no, the fact that you think that there is a moral absolute that you can judge against is the thing that’s going to condemn you.

55:03 Because now I’m going to bring the full weight of the law to you. And yet you have the picture that you mentioned, which is Jesus moving towards Mary Magdalene. Jesus moving towards the woman at the well in Samaria. Samaria, where half-breed syncretists lived. And Jesus is telling his disciples, hey, we’re going here. We are going here.

55:27 And I know all about the rules about the kind of women who get water at midday. I’m fully aware. And then the real beautiful one is, you know, the story of the father of steadfast love and faithfulness, which is also known as the story of the prodigal son.

55:48 That upon hearing that his son is making his way back after just basically squandering everything and trying to, you know, what can I do to humiliate my father and bring shame on him? The father hears he’s coming and runs away. to embrace him like that.

56:08 That should be the posture of the church. It was shameful for men to run in those days. It was incredibly shameful. It was not done.

56:17 Right. And this posture of the church towards folks who think, okay, yeah, but there’s no way, there’s no way that there could be a place for me in the church. No, well… no, there’s really no place for anybody in the church if it’s not for Christ and his sacrifice.

56:37 And so before we close and people leave here thinking, oh, this was really just a segue for talking about a bunch of cultural ills, I want to talk about one of the things that I most, I respect John Paul II for kind of most. That was kind of my earliest introduction to him.

56:57 was that he was able to kind of thread this needle between saying, hey, social justice is absolutely essential, but social justice is not the gospel. The social gospel, which, you know, there were Christians, there were There were Catholic ambassadors of this who are kind of pushing this, especially in Central America in the 50s and 60s,

57:25 and that John Paul II is responding to that saying, hey, Communism is bad. Marxism is bad. Socialism is bad. But doing social good things is absolutely essential. And so towards that end, I want to talk about what you would call numbers 52 and 53.

57:44 Those are numbers in my book, The 100 Ways John Thomas II Changed the World.

57:59 importance and brought together things that I think most people today, as we were talking before the show, don’t think go together. Like John Paul II, when I go to an Acton event is, oh, free market, free market, free markets, which John Paul II wrote Centesimus Annus about the importance of free markets.

58:18 But as you read that document, he also talks about the importance of labor unions. And you think to yourself, well, no, wait a second. You’re either for free markets or you’re for labor unions, but you can’t be for both. There’s just no way you can make those work.

58:33 And the fact that he said, oh, and also there’s a preferential option for the poor. We have to defer to the poor. And a person’s work, regardless of what it is, is worshipped. And the quote that you have in there is that work makes the person more human. That work isn’t part of the curse.

58:54 Work is the blessing. It is the way that we image God. And so just talk a little bit about the fact that it wasn’t just the cultural issues. Well, I guess it is the cultural issues because sinning against people who are doing work Sinning against the poor has the same weight as sexual sin. And we tend to,

59:21 as a church, say, oh, well, sexual sin, I can put it up here because that’s not my issue. But I’m going to go over here and I’m going to exploit the poor and I’m going to exploit the markets. And, you know, well, it’s just what the markets do.

59:33 Talk a little bit about that kind of holistic view of the workplace and economics that John Paul II is so known for.

59:43 Well, again, it comes down to our intrinsic value as human beings. If we’re using other human beings for our gain and profit without giving them an equal share in what we’ve produced, then that’s an intrinsic evil. People are not to be used in any way, shape, or form. That’s why the church is against things like…

1:00:10 IVF, for example, and that could be a whole other show. But more children die with IVF than are produced by IVF, 15 to 1. So, you know, that’s using human beings to have your own child, you know, in a sense. And using people economically for your own profit and gain, again, without them sharing…

1:00:38 In that prophet, fairly, that’s exploitation of human beings. And that is fundamentally against who we are as Christians and should be roundly condemned. So… Work in itself, though, you could go back to Genesis and say it’s part of the curse, but God, this is my own analogy, and I’ve never shared this publicly before or written about it,

1:01:05 but God could have created the universe so that we could sit back in an easy chair and watch TV all day and just lie around and be comfortable. He could have, but he gave us the raw materials in this planet so that we could discover the table of elements, right?

1:01:27 And we could figure out how to put those things together and to make things and to build things and to make things better and ultimately to send a rocket to the moon. I mean, the ancients would have been in awe

1:01:41 of of where we’ve come i mean i’m in awe i’m only 50 56 years old i’m in awe of where we’ve come since my childhood and where we’re going it’s exciting but if god had kind of just given us all that stuff no but it’s the work the discovery the

1:01:58 sharing in god’s creativity god is the ultimate artist and creator and and When he created the world, it was just the beginning. He allows us to share in that creativity. And part of that creativity is being a father, being a mother, creating new human beings with God’s participation to have new life.

1:02:19 And that is what makes us fully human. I mean, ultimately, the church needs to support human flourishing. in the best way possible, not for this prosperity gospel, but because we are part of God’s creative process. And he’s allowing that, and it’s exciting, and it’s fun. You know, I watch my kids as they build Legos,

1:02:43 and then they get a little bit more complex, and then they add motors and things that I can’t even understand now. And But I’m watching their discovery of how to create and how to build. And it’s so amazing to be part of that. And God’s probably up there. He’s not just up there in heaven.

1:03:02 I mean, he’s here. And he’s watching us, how we’re participating in this creative experience. And he’s marveling at us. And he’s delighting in us. And it’s good. So work is part of that, part of God’s discovery. us participating in God’s creative heart.

1:03:24 Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned there that I thought, oh, this is how some people will receive what just Scott said, is you said that having a business and making money is not wrong as long as the people who are involved in the creation of the wealth share the Share fairly.

1:03:47 Share fairly in it, which some people are going to hear as, oh, that’s socialism. That’s some kind of move towards everybody’s got to share equally. And you’re arguing for equality of outcome. not a quality of opportunity. And again, this is exactly what Centesimus Annus is about, is, hey, no, no, no.

1:04:18 Because in that, he is going after hard people Communism and socialism, and it is a complete indictment of their anthropology of mankind and of our work. And so if somebody is hearing this and saying, oh, well, I see he’s had a Catholic on here and Patrick’s clearly one of these socialists. No, no.

1:04:45 He’s not, and neither was John Paul II. John Paul was all about free markets, but he was about virtuous markets, the free and virtuous marketplace. And there’s an important distinction about how do we engage? And this is one of the things when I’m at churches, I say to them, look,

1:05:08 When people come to Washington and they’re engaged in the public square, or they’re just at the local cafe and in talking about the public square, they are talking about things that God cares about. Deeply, deeply, he cares about all of these issues, sexuality, workplace, workplace safety, the environment, what’s being put into the air and the water,

1:05:35 whether people are being paid a fair wage and whether they’re being appreciated for their work. He cares about human sexuality. He cares about children, both the living and the unborn and the people who are going to spend three years dying, you know, from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He cares about all of those things.

1:05:57 And the church has written about this. These are not topics that, oh, well, we just don’t have any information about how to think about that. We may not have anything written in the last six months about it, but we have centuries of information about this.

1:06:17 And John Paul II is one of the biggest contributors to a lot of that. And so maybe just kind of in closing, you could just talk about kind of the legacy that he leaves, not just the Catholic Church, but the larger church that is trying to figure out, how do I navigate the public square?

1:06:36 How do I take my faith? and put it into real action in the public square regarding policy issues and things like that?

1:06:44 Gosh, big question. When I talk about John Paul’s legacy, I talk about his teaching on the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death. And even there’s teaching on, and laws, about how to treat a human body after death. So the human person is is of infinite worth. And that is really core to his teaching.

1:07:09 And on top of that, that there’s nothing that humanity needs more than Jesus Christ. So infinite worth of the human person, dignity, and the need for them to know Jesus Christ and to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That sounds like a Protestant thing, but that’s a Catholic thing too. And a lot of Catholics hearing this.

1:07:31 We agree on this. Better come to understand that they need to be talking to Jesus every day. They need to dive headlong into the scriptures and know their scriptures and pray. and give God the worship that is due to him. That’s really the heart of John Paul II.

1:07:51 And the second thing is the idea of mercy, that God is that prodigal father. The prodigal means lavish, right? So the prodigal son, he spent his father’s wealth lavishly, but the father lavished upon his sons. And so God the Father wants to lavish us, but that starts with mercy, the mercy of God.

1:08:19 The greatest thing that God the Father ever did was to send his son. That was an incredible act of mercy. But God wants all these sinners, all of us, we are all sinners, but the hardest sinners that have the greatest need of, of God’s mercy, the greatest, in a sense,

1:08:36 the greatest right to God’s mercy because they are farthest away. And we talked about that a little bit earlier, but John Paul’s teaching on the mercy that the merciful father is a great teaching to, John Paul’s second encyclical was called Redemptoris Missio was the first one. It was called Divas in Misericordia, Rich in Mercy.

1:08:58 And it talked about this whole idea of the prodigal father, how God the Father wants to lavish us with his mercy and to forgive us for the ways that we have fallen short and how we’re supposed to let people know how merciful God is. So those two things I think really define John Paul II.

1:09:20 And just a story on that. So you mentioned in 1981, it was May 13th, 1981. He was in St. Peter’s Square for a Wednesday audience and about five o’clock and shots ring out. He, he is rushed to the hospital. He almost dies. He has several blood transfusions and, uh,

1:09:41 Before he even passed out from losing blood, he said, tell them that I forgive this man. I forgive him. Not only that, he lobbied the Italian government not only to let this guy out of prison, but to not charge him with any crimes. That pardon actually did happen years later. John Paul II said,

1:10:03 a year and a half after being shot, went to the prison where his attacker was held, left the door open, walked in, and sat down with the guy who tried to take his life to show us that mercy isn’t just possible, but it’s necessary for peace.

1:10:23 Yeah. Thank you so much. I got a message a couple of days ago from somebody who had signed up for the podcast and the person said, Hey, yeah, I’m going to listen to this, but it’s going to take me a few days due to the length of the podcast. And I messaged back. I’m like, man, look,

1:10:42 if it was up to me, these things would be three hours long because the guests that we have on before you, we did a We did an hour with a guy on AI. And I could have gone for three hours because of the way he was discussing it in relationship to Christ and a Christian view.

1:11:02 And I would suspect that if John Paul II was here today, he would say, there are so many wonderful things about AI. It is going to help us flourish in so many ways. And I commend it. worldwide for the good that it can do and yet i am concerned about it being used to

1:11:25 exploit people and to propagate evil and and here are the ways in which the church has to stand in the middle and and and that’s like as you said we should be amazed at the at the wisdom that god has given us to figure things out. He wants us to think. He wants us to think deeply.

1:11:45 He wants us to move into the public square and have good conversations.

1:11:49 He wants us to discover what it means to be fully human. Yes. And to be fully human is to be part of this creative process, to be part of the work, to evangelize. It’s an exciting life. Life can be very difficult, even in the best of times for those of us who follow Christ.

1:12:11 But for those who don’t know him, it can be devastating. And how do you help others navigate? I think ultimately we’ll be judged on how we helped the least of these, how we brought people to Christ, how we lived a Christ-centered life, how we lived an other-centered life.

1:12:29 And like this technology, if it’s used to help human flourishing and evangelization, And bringing people into right relationship with Jesus Christ, then let’s go. Let’s take that, let’s harness it, and let’s move it forward. But steer it away from ways that it exploits people and dehumanizes people.

1:12:50 Right, that’s right. Patrick, will you come back if I ask you? Will you come back on? This has been so good and I’ve got so much more I wanted to get to. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How can we pray for you in the Warrington Pregnancy Center that I know that’s where

1:13:06 you are right now?

1:13:08 Yeah, have a heart for the unborn and particularly for women who are used, exploited. We could do a whole podcast on human trafficking, on abortion, on ways in which technology, pornography… is feeding this machine of abortion and IVF and the distortion of humanity. So pray for the unborn, pray for their moms and support your local pregnancy center.

1:13:38 Find out what they’re doing. And if you look for one near you, support them, find out what they’re doing and pray for them, volunteer and donate. That’s my mantra for supporting the pro-life movement.

1:13:52 Thank you. So we have Jamie Dangers is coming on. I think she’s coming on here next week. And she is a legislative director for the Susan B. Anthony list in Washington, D.C. And she’s going to talk about just the landscape that has changed for their work post-Dobbs, because it used to be all aimed here in Washington.

1:14:13 And now it’s aimed at 50 states, right? The conversation just moved. It didn’t go away. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for this book on John Paul II. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about, you got any new books you’re thinking about working on?

1:14:31 Yeah, as a matter of fact, I’ve got a new book in the works about John Paul II and Mother Teresa. And the two themes that I lined up, human dignity and mercy, those were core to Mother Teresa as well. She and John Paul II were like spiritual siblings. I mean, they were so like-minded. Yeah.

1:14:51 And the story of them together, what they accomplished together, two towering figures in the 20th century who, in my book, this is what I say, they bent history toward Jesus Christ. So I’m very excited to tell that story.

1:15:07 That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you. That’s it for the Faithful Presence podcast for this episode of it anyway. We’ve got some other exciting, exciting podcasts coming on. I’ve already mentioned we have Jamie Dangers from the Susan B. Anthony list is coming on.

1:15:25 We have Jim Belcher who wrote Deep Church and a book called Cold Civil War. I’ll let you imagine what that book is about. And we’ve got a bunch of other ones also. But thank you so much for tuning in and listening. I hope that this was a blessing to you.

1:15:41 I hope that you were able to learn just a little bit about how to navigate the world and how John Paul II can help and has written so much about It’s very helpful for Christians, both inside and outside of the Catholic Church. And so with that said, if you enjoyed the podcast, do us a favor, like it,

1:16:01 share it, promote it, make comments on it. It helps all the social media algorithms. There aren’t many things about social media that I enjoy, but one of them is Instagram. bending the arc of social media towards faithful presence. So feel free to do that. Thank you so much to Andrew Brinkman,

1:16:20 who’s going to make this podcast sound way better than I can imagine it sounding. And thank you to Josie Reisinger, who schedules all this and makes all of this stuff happen on the back end. But with that said, receive this blessing of the Lord.

1:16:36 May your father in heaven make you one as he and his son are one so that the world will know that he loves them and sent his son for them. Amen. Go in peace and into the public square. Bye now.