Friends with the Long-Dead | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Bonaventure Chapman
February 6, 2025
Fr. Gregory: This is Father Gregory Pine.
Fr. Bonaventure: And this is Father Bonaventure Chapman.
Fr. Gregory: And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoyed the show, consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. Father Bonaventure.
Fr. Bonaventure: Father Gregory.
Fr. Gregory: So in the lead up to recording episodes, that’s incoherent. So when we record episodes, there is usually time before we record episodes, when we’re not recording episodes, that’s how recording works, right?
Fr. Bonaventure: Correct.
Fr. Gregory: We typically pray and we ask for the intercession of certain saints.
Fr. Bonaventure: Correct.
Fr. Gregory: Now, in your world, you live with people who may or may not be saints.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, yeah.
Fr. Gregory: Whether living or dead.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah.
Fr. Gregory: So you study people who like, you know, might think that God exists and might not think that God exists. You like live in a philosophical world that I think I’m on accustomed to even sympathize with. What’s that like, what’s that like hanging out with people who don’t believe in God?
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. You mean like the living people or the dead people?
Fr. Gregory: I think we’ll get to the dead people in due course.
Fr. Bonaventure: Living people first.
Fr. Gregory: Maybe yeah, I mean like I don’t want to like call anyone out or free it. Yeah. It’s like the social sources of yeah, you get it.
Fr. Bonaventure: No, it’s unlikely that anyone going to at the conference as I go to be listening to these sort of podcasts. So it is striking because I you know, I teach at the Catholic University of America. School philosophy is very Catholic and of course. And so there’s no you know, we’re all on the same page. But then when I go, this semester, I was out at a bunch of conferences, different places, and they’re mainly for Kant, scholarship. And I’d forgotten, I forgot every six months or three months when I do one of these, that I’m a little weird there, right? That I’m one, I’m wearing weird stuff.
Fr. Gregory: Right.
Fr. Bonaventure: Two, I’m a priest. I’m almost always, I’m always the only religious priest there. I’m always the only priest there. I may or may not be the only Catholic there.
Fr. Gregory: Uh huh.
Fr. Bonaventure: I may or may not be the only person who believes in God there.
Fr. Gregory: Right.
Fr. Bonaventure: So they, it’s, so I’m always reminded that I seem weird and have weird views for them, but you know you just kind of get used to it and if you’re just playing nice with them, they’re a little bit some of them are a little bit of standoffish initially. They don’t know what to make of you. But then once the, usually I try to ask questions early on the first paper, good questions, pointed questions to kind of let them know like I’m interested. I know what I’m doing. And then by the time my presentation rules around, then I’ve got a good command of the material.
Fr. Gregory: You flex your crucian muscles.
Fr. Bonaventure: Just a little bit, just enough to make me… like he’s a part of the team. But it is–
Fr. Gregory: So that when you put your signature rings together, you can summon Captain Idealism.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yes, Captain German Idealism. He’s here, he’s gonna complete the system. But it is strange that when I’m with a room of people who just don’t all believe in anything outside of this life, which is for Kantian is really super bizarre because that guy, whatever that guy believed in, it was definitely a mortality of the soul and like absolute, you know, given it. Yeah, so it is, but it is strange that the most of them I assume most of them are materialists. I remember I was talking to one of them and I was saying how I missed one, I never got to talk to this philosopher and he said, “I guess there’s still a possibility. “See if it makes it, I’ll get to see him later.” And the other philosopher said, “Well, there’s another way too, “that I mean we can always carry on with him and our ideas.” And it’s not like not enough. Like I want the person, I want to see.
Fr. Gregory: If I have to choose between thoughts and prayers, I’m always going to take prayers.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, I want my thoughts to be aiming towards people. I want persons, I don’t, thoughts aren’t interesting without persons. I think, therefore I am. You need to have the I am. It’s not just the [unk], but the [unk] as well.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. I think this should become one of our episodes where the goal is not to necessarily communicate anything. It’s just to have a weird conversation.
Fr. Bonaventure: Bingo!
Fr. Gregory: Like the Borges episode.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh yeah.
Fr. Gregory: I don’t know what the comments are on that video, but my suspicion is that the comments are like, “Did you guys know that you were recording?” You know, or something along those lines. So, all right. I think like environment is formation and you just kind of become like the people with whom you live and we like think ourselves strong or think ourselves better and imagine that we’re like leaven in the culture and are going to evangelize all those whom we meet maybe there’s a gree to which that’s true, but I also think that we’re just becoming like those with whom we live here and now and in a certain extended sense, you know, like the people whom we read, the people whom we encounter in history, in biography, in literature, in the study of reality with the help of those who have described it in past years. So we thought that for this episode, we could talk a little bit about becoming friends, not just with people in the here and now, but also with people who have gone before us. Now, and so far as it’s Godsplaining and so far as it’s conversations for conversions, I just made those both plural because it felt right at the time or at least that’s what came out of my mouth and will never know what’s going to come out of one’s mouth until such time as it does. And then you have to deal with it. But like that with that person with whom we are most friendly. Yes, who is most…
Fr. Bonaventure: The most friendliest person…
Fr. Gregory: The greatest of all friends. Yeah. Uh, is our Lord Jesus Christ. So there’s a sense of which this has like an especially important evangelical application. So like friendship as a paradigm for understanding our Christian faith. I mean, does it work? Does it not work? It seems like it works. Insofar as Jesus said that it works. So we’re just like bound to that friendship. Is it is friendship a good paradigm for understanding our relationship for those, with those who have gone before us and may or may not still abide?
Fr. Bonaventure: I think so, because friendship is something about uniting of minds and hearts with another. Like that’s why I take French to be is not just about like, you know, holding hands or something or high fives. Like it has to be because you can…
Fr. Gregory: Apparently holding hands is like normative between men who are not romantically attracted in certain cultures, not our own. Have you heard this?
Fr. Bonaventure: Yes, I have. I’ve seen it.
Fr. Gregory: You’ve seen it.
Fr. Bonaventure: I can testify to it.
Fr. Gregory: Oh my gosh.
Fr. Bonaventure: I remember I was at [unk], there was a talk or something, and there was a Middle Eastern group, and a son and a father, were seeing next to each other, and the son extends his arm over his father, and just like, just cuddled up with him. And this was like a 19 year old son. Yeah, and a father. Yeah, it was just totally natural or like walking holding hands with each other and the sort of thing talking yes, so anyway, that’s beautiful, but it’s not the whole of it Well, no, at least for us I suppose special Americans like with the vet we’re gonna get close with minds and thoughts But in any case even if they were just holding hands and they hated each other, it didn’t like, you couldn’t have friendship, right? And then CS Lewis has that beautiful in the four loves and friendship where its friends, friends are side to side, right, or back to back. But they have a similar project too. And I think that’s true about friendship. Like your friends with people who you are attached to by history or contingencies, just people you run into, you could say, but you stick together with each other, not just because of family bonds, but because you have common interests, you start to see the world in the way that they do. And C.S. Lewis also has that beautiful thing where you have three friends and one dies and you miss not only like that, you see, but you also miss what C brought out of B and what C brought out of A as well. So with friends, you’re trying to learn to think and to love and desire in the way that they do. And insofar as that’s conducive to your flourishing and such, and I think the friendship flourishes as well. So I think friendship is a good model for our relationship, not just to our Lord obviously, but also with those who are long-dead, those we read. I tend to be a guy, and you’re probably different on this, who I love to, I see books as conversations with someone. It’s like a second best. Ideally, I want to talk to that person, but they’re dead. So the best I can do is read them, but it’s still first and prior, it’s gotta be a conversation with an actual person, because I’m trying to, again, be friends. Like I want to know this, this guy or gal.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. It’s interesting. I think I might just be a worse human being in that regard because like I think sometimes I just read books to get the good stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I’ll start doing that. They’ve got the stuff.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. Give me it.
Fr. Gregory: And they’ve laid the stuff up in the pages. Yeah. And you’ve got to flip through the pages with a modicum of attention in order to display the pages of the stuff up in the pages. And you’ve got to flip through the pages with a modicum of attention in order to display the pages of the stuff. Not in the sense that I feel better when I have burned the book after I have read it and just spoiled it. But because I’m there for the goods. And if those goods are communicated to me by person A or by person B or by person C, I just don’t care.
Fr. Bonaventure: Incidental.
Fr. Gregory: You know, so there’s a sense in which I gravitate more towards person A than person B on the basis of testimony that person A knows more of the things, has more of the goods, and that maybe person A’s methodology for expositing or communicating said goods is excellent and commends itself to the subsequent tradition for whatever reasons. Right? There’s a thing, but like, I don’t know if I care about person A.
Fr. Bonaventure: Right.
Fr. Gregory: Or at least…
Fr. Bonaventure: Well now, hold on a second, you read St. Thomas. So we talked with this because we’ve got, both have doctorates and doctorates are like deep friendships. So that’s the D stands for in the doctorate.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly. And the ‘octorate’, what does that stand for?
Fr. Bonaventure: I don’t know what that’s…octopus?
Fr. Gregory: Nice! So it’s a deep friendship, octopus, rate your professor.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, and so like we’ve spent time with these dead figures who may be living in some fashion because of immortality and living in some condition considering Catholic sacraments and whatever Kante’s doing right now. (laughing) But, (laughing) there we hope. (laughing) But you spent a lot of time with St. Thomas Aquinas and you talk about St. Thomas Aquinas and most people identify St. Thomas Aquinas or you with St. Thomas Aquinas. Most people in the world probably know St. Thomas Aquinas because of you.
Fr. Gregory: Wow, bold statement!
Fr. Bonaventure: Right, I mean, it’s getting close, right? If you’ve made it to China and then you’re good to go, right? Like, but a lot of people associate St. Thomas Aquinas…like, I remember we were sitting down one point and some some fellow came up to us and said, “You’re the next…Father, Father Pine, you’re the next Saint Thomas Aquinas”, and I thought that’s such a bold statement so I love it, so but I take it that that’s because you’re also not just like know his stuff but because you think like him in some fashion, I suspect you’ve had experience where you’re reading him. Like you feel like you’re getting to know him, right? You’re not just like, give me that stuff, give me that stuff, give me that stuff. But like there’s something about his character of thought which only after deep reading you get to actually appreciate. Most people are just at the stuff, but you start to see this is wisdom, right? See how he thinks, why he’s thinking the things he does, where he’s going to, and even anticipating what you’re going to see in the next page, just like a good friend can anticipate a conversation, right?
Fr. Gregory: Like language, in fact. I had an experience recently which was helpful, fruitful. It was like a kind of recollection, all in an instant. I’ve now preluded. So now it’s time to ‘lude it. So we had the skull of St. Thomas Aquinas here.
Fr. Bonaventure: There you go.
Fr. Gregory: Wisdom from skull.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. Wisdom from the skull.
Fr. Gregory: And as I was thinking about praying about what to say, you know, because I was in the presence of the skull, I was supposed to give a little homilette. And I said some things, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, often it’s like writing a dissertation. You write a bunch of stuff down. And then you’re like, I wish I had the moral fortitude to throw that all the way and then write the actual good thing that need be written, but you’re like, I don’t have time, and I don’t have energy.
Fr. Bonaventure: Go to the skull.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. So I just let rip the things that I had prepared over the course of the previous however many days. But the thing that I ought to have said slash wanted to say, kind of goes like this. So here’s the opportunity.
Fr. Bonaventure: Nice.
Fr. Gregory: When you say like, I love whatever, name your predicate or name your object, I’m usually what you’re saying is like, I love this thing. And there’s a kind of distance between you and the thing, but there’s a union begotten by the love. Nevertheless, it remains elsewhere. All right. Whereas I was realizing that like with certain relationships, when you say, I love, that’s in such an blah, blah, blah, it’s so potent. Like your relationship with it is so rich that it actually gets back behind the out, like it gets back into the deeper parts of the sentence, such that like you can’t even say, I, and love…
Fr. Bonaventure: Without the other, without the other already present.
Fr. Gregory: So it’s not like you’re not like traversing distance, you’re not overcoming whatever.
Fr. Bonaventure: More expressing something as opposed to aiming at something.
Fr. Gregory: You’re like naming the fact by which you are profoundly influenced or even constituted. And obviously that’s most true of God. When you say like, I love God, you aren’t, until such time as God gives you an eye. And you can’t exercise agency unless God also breathes that until life.
Fr. Bonaventure: You love us always a response to His loving you even in the most basic sense.
Fr. Gregory: Like beloved, we love because God first loved us. Okay, so it’s just, I mean with respect to God, it’s an absolute claim. But then you think about like your country and your parents, we talk about the virtue, not only of religion vis-a-vis God but of piety vis-a-vis country and parents the sense that like they’ve given you life in different ways as secondary causes are instrumental causes but they’ve given you life and as a result of which like you love Like I just end my parents and I loved as my parents do in ways that are deficient or excessive like an interpretation of Information to date.
Fr. Bonaventure: It’s a part of identity, that’s fair enough.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, but I realized that like, I’ve read St. Thomas Aquinas so much. And thought with St. Thomas Aquinas so much that like St. Thomas has gotten into my eye. He’s gotten back behind the object and he’s actually begun constituting the subject. Because like the first time I encountered St. Thomas was my freshman year of college and it was a lecture, Aquinas on the nature of love. And it was like, in hearing the way in which he described or characterized love as an activity. I was like, whoa, right? So even just saying I love St. Thomas Aquinas, it’s like, there’s a deep resonance there.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. Oh, I liked that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, has that kind of relational aspect to it when you see you first feel attracted to someone and they’re at a distance, of course, initially, like you very like you very rarely think oh my gosh the person next to me but but then you move towards them and then until they become like yeah con natural with you in a way and because of the and this is not true physically of course we can’t because of you know impenetrability all that sort of silly physics stuff but with knowledge and love right we can in a sense penetrate or share with each other the same space and time in this.
Fr. Gregory: Think the same thoughts, love the same thing. So you kind of breathe the same spiritual air as we were.
Fr. Bonaventure: Exactly. And that’s what when you spend time with an author, which is a gift, just like, I mean, it’s a bit like when you spend time with a friend, you know them better than anyone else and you hear someone talking about that person and you feel like they’re talking at the distance, but you’re, they’re just like you, I mean, they’re closer, they’re close to you. They’re in like at skin level, basically. And when you spend time with an author, who’s worth spending time with, I suppose, because like you might find with a friend like, (laughs) but spending time deeply with with an, you know, living, sleeping, breathing, all the time, surrounded by compass about, then he does, here she does start to, yeah, constitute your eyes such as you think like him or her and you can’t help it. I often find, I’m one of the, over at the CUA, I’m talking to other philosophers, I often catch myself saying, no, I know this is gonna sound kind of Kantian, right? Or like I know, I know this is gonna be a little bit Kantian, but because it’s the first thing that comes to mind, it’s just you’re shaped by that kind of relationship because you’ve had this friend who you’re committed to and you feel devoted to in a way who has in a sense trained you or taught you to think. There’s also something about the fact that since they’re dead or since they’re distant in this way, you could have a sort of fidelity or a fealty or a sort of commitment, as opposed to where friends like, you know, I’m committed to them, but they’ll be okay if not around. Whereas like with the dead, I feel like responsible. Like, I know you’ve got to hold on to him, you know, like someone has to remember his memory. Yeah, it’s a bit like grandparents or the family traditions too, which is nice. Yeah.
Fr. Gregory: So two things that I would like to pursue, one of which is why it’s sometimes difficult to host conversations over generations. And then the other is maybe we should do this first. So I think a lot of people will be like friends with Jesus? Absolutely. Friends with saints? Absolutely. Friends with German idealists? Wait, what? So like, obviously there’s like, there is a kind of risk as it were. It’s not a real risk, but like a risk that we just go to the past in order to dispoil it of its riches. The richest of riches is sanctity. You know, so it’s like clearly we’re going to be motivated at the prospect of a relationship with Jesus even as kind of selfish Christians where like, I just want to be holy. But like, if we get over, I mean, this is such a complicated conversation and we don’t have time to go through the various distinctions that need to be made. But like, nevertheless.
Fr. Bonaventure: We got 10 minutes, we can go for it.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. Nevertheless, like we go there because that’s where our life lies. You know, because it’s with Christ who is not just past but present, who is the same yesterday today and forever? So that’s, I mean, God has contact with all times and places on account of the fact that He’s eternal, even though we’re temporal nevertheless. You know, it’s just like, so that’s different. But then with the saints, you know, like they are, they’re kind of applied to the present by virtue of the Divine Power, but like in an extended sense, even the philosophers sharing something of that with without the same kind of faith and sacrament, a dimension or without the same kind of grace-bearing holiness, but they’re worth it.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, I think so. Again, it’s more the memory kind of thing to commitment to. I think it would like a family member or something like your family members, ideally hopefully died in the state of grace or something so they have some relation to our Father and you probably don’t see them every night or something. But you want to carry on their memory and you want to think like them and live up to them in a way. And I think sometimes with the philosophers or the seculars, you could say who have profoundly affected you, you’re still grateful for the fact that they’re humans like you and have seen the world in a particular way and help you to see the world maybe in a way that you never thought about. And that’s something resonates. Second point is that because God is eternal and because He orders all things, because He relates us, there’s no reason to think that he hasn’t put people in our lives that he might work through in these particular ways too. Like he might attract you to a particular person because of your own temperament such that they will mediate to you a particular relationship to him, not through themselves, like I’m not saying intercession wise, but just because of the simpatico nature of the thought. So I think, I do think that God works through all things and is able to, and it’s not like if you pick up a book of, oh, I don’t know, a manual 11-os or something like obviously since he was doing it, she couldn’t possibly help you relate to God except accidentally. I think that God works in order as all things so that the books we read and such can direct us to him as long as we’re aiming for him in that way. But there’s a sort of, I’d say it’s a profoundly, this is not a supernatural experience. I suppose, but a profoundly human experience, which opens one to the sort of springboard into the supernatural. The fact that you can communicate with people in a way across time and space through their thoughts because we’re all humans, and we all have thoughts, and we all have desires, and we all have not. And sometimes we learn from the mistakes that others have made in spectacular ways. So it’s a, to my mind, reading the long dead is a very human experience that connects us across time with the fact that we’ve been on a search for truth for a long period and that sometimes we can be distracted by things that aren’t that significant. I assume this is what reading St. Thomas helps as well is getting just to mind what’s really important and remind us because our culture isn’t going to be teaching us Kante or Thomas Aquinas or anyone else like that.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s like, so I think dialogue for dialogue’s sake because often a waste of time, because if the other person doesn’t genuinely want to talk to you, then what’s the point in hosting a conversation. So I’m like not on board for aimless or otherwise undirected conversation. It’s just like I’m too busy and I’m too tired. So it’s like either let’s talk about something that matters that we both agree matters or I’m just gonna finish whatever project I have in the hopper and then get to bed as soon as possible because I’m just dragging my corpse from here to there and it’s just costing. It’s just costing a lot. So when it comes to people in the past with whom I take an interest, I can’t do it on the basis of some inorganic standard. So it’s like there is the objective importance assigned by the subsequent tradition which I think is a good judge. There are some people who are more worth reading and there are some people who are more worth reading. And there are some people who are less worth reading. But then there’s also like the, okay, how did you make your best friend? It’s like…accident. It’s like the things that we did and here we are doing the other, you know, it’s just like we were born under the same roof or like whatever else happened.
Fr. Bonaventure: Contingency takes the form of necessity.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly, so in this case, I think there are certain people who are presented to us or kind of offered to us as potential companions for life. And it’s not necessarily like we like them because they’re the best. We like them because they’re ours. And it’s not like it’s not like there are in some megalomaniacal way like they’re mine, but in the sense like for whatever reason, I’ve been interested with carrying this torch. And I’m not gonna like define myself by my weaknesses or carve out some strange niche so that I can have a competence that no one else has and kind of buffer myself up against the reality that I don’t really matter that much and nothing that I say really matters that much. You know, but there’s like, there’s gotta be something organic about it. And I think that we have to be on the lookout for the movement of God’s providence so as to acknowledge and then embrace those opportunities whereby to a company or whereby to kind of invest in these types of relationships.
Fr. Bonaventure: I think it’s also important that when you read deeply someone from a long time ago, say whether it be [unk] or St. Thomas Aquinas or whoever, they live in a world that is like ours but also very different. Like also has different emphasis, different structures, different focuses, all this kind of stuff, different folk I suppose. And it allows us with that distance, right? If we’re not just going out, so we’re not picking just random thoughts they have, but we’re trying to get to know the whole view they have of things, like what’s above them, what’s below them, what’s to the left, then what’s the right of them, what’s in front, what’s behind them. If we get this full kind of, you kind of three-dimensional coordinate system here, then it allows us to wonder if our coordinate system is perfectly right. We have this view of chronological snobbers and I think it’s absolutely nonsense. This is C.S. Lewis again, he’s just showing up all of the boys. We know the dead friend. His fate is a little more certain than cons, I suppose. But still, I never know, that the idea that we’re just getting better all the time. And so we don’t only need to go to the past to find particular things, mistakes they made and to avoid those and then grab the goods as opposed to, no, we go to the past to check our whole system, our whole framework, our whole view, not in the sense of like, oh, Trinity’s out of it. But I mean, the way that my daily coordinates of life, right? Like maybe running from here to here to here, or working this way in particular in this way, or in caring about this particular thing, are not actually central to human life, because these guys didn’t care about that, you know, oh, they didn’t have technology. Well, maybe that made them more attentive to particular circumstances of human interaction and the values of silence or quietude or what have you in a way that we’re not. So you get, when you spend time with one thinker for a long period of time and delve deeply and drink deeply from their found in wisdom, such as it is, you also get a whole framework. Like that’s why I like you get the person and the person is embedded in particular contexts. And that allows you to see things different. I mean, St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, just had different views about say, material wealth than we did. Part of because he didn’t own cars. You know, but parts because he was really committed to evangelical poverty. And so when I read him, I always feel kind of convicted by the kind of poverty of spirit he has, even as a Dominican, not a Franciscan, because he just seems to have this kind of evangelical openness to giving to the poor and being aware that everything belongs to the poor, that’s not his absolute need. And that’s not just like a random proposition. I think that’s a way of life from it’s a way of viewing material things that I certainly raised in the 21st century don’t have myself and find alien to me and I’m deeply suspicious and concerned about it.
Fr. Gregory: And I think too, not just in the sense that we as a human community tend to think of our own time and place as the best, perforce. But like we as individual reasoners, like we as persons have a kind of tendency as a result of the fall to ideological and demagogical thinking. In the sense like we get convinced like this is definitely the case and it can’t not be the case. And like you need to see that this is the case and it can’t not be the case. And I think there are some of us who are more inclined to that, some of us who are less inclined to that varying degrees of certainty and confidence as concerns like propositional truths, which register in our minds and then the practical truths was registered in our behavior. Nevertheless, we just like tend to think that whatever we hold to be true or whatever we profess to be good just is the case because that’s how it works. That’s how human nature works. And so sometimes it’s good for a little destabilization to rock the proverbial boat. Well, this is an amazing…
Fr. Bonaventure: And maybe this is like, we tend to say this, we tend to think that we’re the only “I” sometimes, but then there’s a bunch of different thoughts. And so I have thoughts, but I need to fix my thoughts from taking from other thoughts, whereas when you read people and actually try to treat them as first full persons that have a sort of history, a family, a desire as they have a will, they have passions and all this kind of stuff. When you read them deeply and try to get behind them, you find another I. Now that I has thoughts, but you’re going to get, take their thoughts with their eye in a way and relate to them again as friends, because friends about eye, one eye, relate to another eye. So seeing the saints and seeing books you read as encounters with other subjects, not just like subjects in the sense of like biology, chemistry, but another subject who has thoughts and who has a worldview. And in a way, Thomas Aquinas is fine if you don’t help him. Like he’s good. He lived fine. He’d be okay. Emmanuel Kante was not wondering where we were. He had his own positions. And so you can get alongside that and think, how did he hold it all together? And what do I agree with? And what, you know, of Emmanuel Kante, what I disagree with on these sort of things, but like a full embodied sense of an eye with thoughts that then I can try to think and that I need to have some relationship too. And that’s just a beautiful encounter to use a Giussani kind of communal liberation where the encountering not only ideas out there, that is, if we were alone today, and there’s a bunch of people around us, but when read books were alone, no, you’re actually, there were people there. Like, we’re not alone. You know, no one’s ever alone if they have a book. And I love that thought.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, I have the experience when people say, like, you know, I differ with Thomas on this or Thomas is wrong on that. Like, in my mind, I just do like a kind of picture perfect long island like Sussex County like, you know, like score and snarf. I’m just like, oh, you know, like just what I don’t care about. You know, because there are certain things where it’s verifiably false on account of the fact that the biology or the cosmology is antiquated or whatever else. But like as you say, often smart people are smart, you know, but I think what I would take umbridge is an overly fast little dismissal of those who have gone before us. Those who have like fought the good fight as it were, as if we were the sole arbiters of the truth, not only of statements, but of realities. And so I think that that’s especially because I’m sensitive to it with respect to St. Thomas Aquinas. It makes me more sensitive to it with respect to other individuals because I think that like what we’re trying to elicit, not just as like a life skill, but as the very point is sympathy because like what’s the goal? The goal is to be with people, right? So like the goal is union. The goal is communion. That’s the point because like knowing is for that loving is for that They are the intellectual and volitional components of whereby we Ingender union and come into rich thick bonds of communion. So the point is to be with, and if we’re always judging people from a distance. But it’s a kind of lack of sympathy so as to what prop ourselves up and our like flimsy little egos There were always going to be alone. We’re always going to be a little yeah So like the point is to cultivate sympathy, not so that I can patronize or pat people on the head and say, “Aren’t you so smart,” but in the sense of like we can congregate around the same goods, like we can enjoy a genuine kimono katsuo boni on the basis of which like this life can last forever. We can enjoy each other forever in God whom we enjoy in the ultimate sense. Because it’s like who cares who’s like at the end of the day, who cares who’s smarter? Our dignity is not on the basis of smartness.
Fr. Bonaventure: It’s not like the giant checklist with like who got the most life as a bunch, is a giant quiz. And this is gonna sound like silly and like my thought you Dominicans, don’t you care about truth? Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, yes we do. Yeah, Truth is a person. That’s why it’s great. But at the end of the yes, checking off propositions that you couldn’t be held accountable for holding it is a silly way to think about it. Rather, it’s about persons and their commitments to the truth and how well they did with that, but that it’s more than just propositional pugilism. You know? Ins-again. We love it.
Fr. Gregory: All right, any final thoughts?
Fr. Bonaventure: I’m trying to, what, if people know about reading and spending time with authors, I think people do get this with literature figures, for instance. You get used to an author, you might read a ton of, Cormac MacCarthy or something, you get used to their writing. But encourage people to read when they’re reading spiritual treatises or something too. So, work through the saints, obviously. But also just the theologians or something. If they’re reading like Father Gregory Pine’s book on Prudence or something, realize that they’re reading a person’s book. And realize that that’s from a person and that makes it, I think, approachable. And also prepares you to enter into communion with other persons because Heaven is about persons. I take it not like fraggy and floating propositions or something.
Fr. Gregory: Dude, let’s leave fraggy and floating propositions to be the last word of this episode, and so far as last words are followed by other last words. So…
Fr. Bonaventure: Penultimate words.
Fr. Gregory: Pen-anti-penultimate. So thanks so much for tuning into this episode of God’s Planning. Be sure to like the episode, leave a five-star review, subscribe on YouTube, around your podcast app. You can also follow Godsplaining on all manner of social media channels. So we’ve got sweet updates coming out, especially on Instagram with cool events and promos and exclusive merchandise of various sorts. We’ve also got, yeah, when it comes to events and cool things coming up. So we’ve already made mention of the fact that at least Father Patrick and I, for this Jubilee Year of Hope are going to the jubilee of youth, which goes from July 28th to August 3rd and culminates in the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorggio Frassati. So we’re going to plan some events there in Rome, small, medium, large, so that folks who are making the pilgrimage can join in the Godsplaining community. So you’re on the hook for your travel, you’re on the hook for your accommodations, but it looks like the Vatican’s going to be planning stuff, the Dominicans are going to be planning stuff, and Godsplaining friars are going to be planning some stuff so you can kind of pick and choose amongst various options for your Jubilee experience. And then, of course, we’ve got retreats coming up, so Dallas at the end of March, March 21-23 for young adults. And then we’ve got other cool things besides, but I’m going to save those reveals until the appropriate moment. So, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us, and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.