Luce the Catholic Mascot | Fr. Patrick Briscoe & Fr. Gregory Pine
January 9, 2025
Fr. Gregory: And this is Father Gregory Pine.
Fr. Patrick: Welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all who support us. If you enjoy our show, be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcast. Father Gregory, I don’t know about you, but I was not much of an anime kid.
Fr. Gregory: Nor was I.
Fr. Patrick: Did you ever watch? Did you ever watch anything?
Fr. Gregory: Oh, you know what? Let’s take that back. There was a period during which we had cable and on cable there was a…
Fr. Patrick: The Pine family had cable?
Fr. Gregory: The Pine family had cable for a time. For a brief time. Well, it was Dish network.
Fr. Patrick: I’m very disappointed in your father.
So here’s the thing, I think it was like, Dish network was actually less expensive than not having anything. So we had like the nine nine-ty…
Fr. Patrick: They’re going to just net worth tax you for not having.
Fr. Gregory: Oh yeah, they gave you tax breaks in fact and they did your taxes for you everything imaginable with taxes, but I think we had Cartoon Network for a time and I think I watched a show called Zoids.
Fr. Patrick: Zoids. Very interesting.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. So if it starts with the Z you know it’s fresh, because like or if it ends with a Z, Dragon Ball Z, that’s a sure fire giveaway for anime based programming. But I think it was just Zoids. It was kind of like Transformers, but not.
Fr. Patrick: Were you a Pokemon kid?
Fr. Gregory: I was not especially Poke- Poke friendly. I was kind of in that weird in between, because like I did the things that I did and then I did the things that my little brother did, so there’s eight years between us, but there’s a gap of like programming for which I was not on board. So like when all those so the things that happened in when we were in grade school for instance like I was very into pogs. Very into pogs.
Fr Patrick: Loads of those.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, so very into pogs, but then like by the time, I missed a few. So Tomagachi, crazy bones, Pokemon, I missed all of those. And then I kind of picked back up again with my little brother for whatever it was. And then now I’ve picked back up with my nieces and nephews. So like I know everything there is to know about Frozen, that’s for darn sure. And it is my own ironic favorite movie of the last seven seconds. But nevertheless, yeah.
Fr. Patrick: Let it go.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, so I think Zoids, there might have been some points at which I watched some Dragon Ball Z. I probably saw some episodes of Pokemon. I probably put it on the Game Boy every once in a while, like going to and from the March for Life. Yeah, we were allowed to use Game Boy. I think going to and from the March for Life.
Fr. Patrick: Ooh, that’s a little bribe from your mom and I love that. I think the closest we got in the Brisco House was Powerpuff Girls.
Fr. Gregory: Nice.
Fr. Patrick: That’s kind of, right?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah.
Fr. Patrick: So that would be my little sisters, obviously…
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, anime adjacent.
Fr. Patrick: …Into that show, yeah. But I think that this conversation is serviced through the Jubilee in Catholic circles because of the announcement of Luce, the Catholic mascot. So that’s what we wanna talk about today. But before we get to Luce, though, I have an important announcement for all you starving liberal arts majors out there…
Fr. Gregory: There it is.
Fr. Patrick: …that need something to do with your lives…
Fr. Gregory: Exactly.
Fr. Patrick: …that would be me but for the Dominican Order.
Fr. Gregory: Become a Dominican! Wait, different announcement?
Fr. Patrick: I mean, definitely become a Dominican.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, okay, perfect.
Fr. Patrick: But for those that are not or cannot The Catholic University of America has this amazing program, a Master of Science in Business, which is a nine-month program rooted in Catholic social teaching and virtue-centered education. It is the only program I know of like this in the Catholic world. It’s designed for students with liberal arts, STEM, or business backgrounds.
Fr. Gregory: All backgrounds! Are there other backgrounds?
Fr. Patrick: I don’t think so, but I’m particularly interested in this idea of making liberal arts people useful. I am a useless liberal arts person. So I really like this idea. The accelerated in-person program gives each student a comprehensive mastery of business disciplines and equips them to pursue business as a force for good. Father Bonaventure would love that. –
Fr. Gregory: Nice.
Fr. Patrick: I can see him fistpumping. –
Fr. Gregory: Well he loves it so much that you and he had Dean Abela on the podcast. –
Fr. Patrick: We did, which is a great episode. Everyone should listen to that. So you could study with Dean Abela for example. The Master of Science in business program located in Washington DC has a long history of success with a 99% record of job placements within five months of graduation. –
Fr. Gregory: Do we employ any of those people?
Fr. Patrick: Not yet, but we should.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, here we go.
Fr. Patrick: To learn more about this program, go to msp.Catholic.edu. Again, that’s the master of science in business program at the Catholic University of America. And for more information, head over to msp.Catholic.edu. Back to Luce. The Catholic mascot. Okay. First of all, true or false, we have never had a Catholic mascot before.
Fr. Gregory: It depends what you mean by mascot. True.
Fr. Patrick: True you say. I think that’s probably right. I don’t think we’ve had like a mascot.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, I don’t know that anyone said like, hey, you Catholics, you now have a mascot. I think Catholics have risen up organically and said, “we take this for our mascot!”
Fr. Patrick: Right, we definitely have symbols, right? (laughing) Things like the Jerusalem cross. You know that would be like a symbol. That’s not like a mascot, I don’t know. (laughing) You know, like take the Jerusalem cross out of me. Like here’s my mask on.
Fr. Gregory: No, typically not.
Fr. Patrick: No, but that’s something that identifies you. Okay, so Father Gregory, from your perspective, where you said, you know, which is under rock most of the time.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. You know, hidden in my office. Trying to determine whether to turn the heat on or not…
Fr. Patrick: The intercessions, honestly.
Fr. Gregory: You mean to tell me we’re praying for that?
Fr. Patrick: Wait a minute. There’s a war in Ukraine. So tell us a little bit about how you received the news of Luce and what you made of this first announcement.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, so I received the news of Luce when Luce appeared on the Godsplaining Instagram page. (laughing)
Fr. Patrick: Yes! I spent too much time on Twitter. Go on.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, so it might have been like three, four, five, six weeks after the fact. But then I came to discover that it was a thing that people cared about and talked about, and I was fascinated because I’m like one of those weird creatures who is fueled not so much by food and drink as he is by the will of the Father for the one. And for the other, like ironic discourse, because like I’m interested how great of a space has grown up between people and their lives, and then like what’s going on in that space? That to me is fascinating. So yeah, that’s where I live and move and have my being.
Fr. Patrick: Okay, so let’s back up just a little bit. So for listeners who don’t know, Luce is the, and this is a great sentence, I can’t believe I’m saying this, Luce is the Catholic Church’s anime mascot. (laughing) Of the only year, 2025. Which is just a sentence I can barely get there. I love it, I really do it. I unironically love it, I think it’s awesome. (laughing) So, Archbishop Fisichella, who is the head of the Decastery for Evangelization, he’s the organizer for the Jubilee Year, announced Luce at a press conference. So you had the introduction of Luce was just a kind of wild thing because you had a sort of stoic looking Vatican press office photo. So everything’s gray. And there’s this archbishop who occupies a very important, very influential position in the Vatican. And he’s just sitting in this kind of a handover, this animed toy. And I saw the photo and I thought, what in the world is this? And originally I was just so confused by it because I thought the first photo was fake.
Fr. Gregory: Ah yeah.
Fr. Patrick: And we’ve got to get into this because I think there’s something really interesting there. But I saw the first announcement and I did not think this thing was real. I said, oh cool, somebody photoshopped. Do you know a little toy into a Vatican presser? And like that’s a really funny idea, haha, you know, and little toy into a Vatican presser? Like that’s a really funny idea. Ah, you know, and then I click and I find out whoa, the toys real. The toys controversial. Some people misunderstood Luce’s name. Luce just is the Italian word for light. Okay, but some people saw Luce and they thought Lucifer.
Fr. Gregory: Different things.
Fr. Patrick: Which is correct insofar as the etymology is related.
Fr. Gregory: Light-bear.
Fr. Patrick: But that is not, in fact, not in fact the toy, is not named after Satan. The guy is named after light, right? Because light is connected to hope, which is the theme from the Jubilee. I’m like, get on board. This is the Jubilee. We’re doing hope. Therefore, we’re not doing Satan. We’re doing light. That seems pretty clear to me. The other thing that people saw, that was sort of controversial when they first saw the image, they saw the rosary beads around Luce’s neck. They didn’t like that Luce was wearing the rosary. That is something that differs throughout the Catholic world. I’ve always taught it never to wear a rosary.
Fr. Gregory: As was I.
Fr. Patrick: But some places do.
Fr. Gregory: Some places do.
Fr. Patrick: So, okay, so you just have that. But then people looked at the rosary and they saw the multi-colored rosary and they thought the rosary is gay-coded. And they did not like that. Because it seemed like a kind of pride occupation of the rosary. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Because the rosary is in fact the world mission rosary, which was designed by the Venerable Fulton J Sheen.
Fr. Gregory: Nice!
Fr. Patrick: So that’s not what’s going on.
Fr. Gregory: Oh, interesting.
Fr. Patrick: So it’s a little, you know, it’s important that we learn to read our Catholic signs and symbols, so we know what they mean. And we don’t get angry about things that aren’t true.
Fr. Gregory: Just let’s get angry about the things that are true.
Fr. Patrick: But there are some things that are true. Like the fact that there was a little bit of controversy about the artists.
Fr. Gregory: Right, who has done things for the LGBTQ+ community and things for kind of dubious causes of a morally unsavory nature in the past. But then the question is whether you just cancel all artists who do bad things. And it seems like we’re already in a spot kind of in cancel culture like the waning years of cancel culture where we don’t do that anymore. You know, so obviously the church has been a patron of the arts for many years. And some of the people whom the Church is patronized have done bad things. And so there’s a kind of distance between artist and art and a kind of distance between patronage and embrace, which I think is part of the ongoing conversation of a Catholic’s relationship to these matters. So I think there’s also sufficient space there, but nevertheless, these are things that people are saying. –
Fr. Patrick: And it is a point of principle, right? Because if the Church is going to apply, and you’re speaking to someone who has argued to pull out certain mosaics works. –
Fr. Gregory: Yep.
Fr. Patrick: There is a real point of discourse, though, that would require the church to have dialogue with the world. Again, I’ve mentioned this before. I love when the Church engages with celebrities. I think it’s very interesting. I don’t think we should have to apply a morals exam in order to have that interaction in dialogue. I think one could legitimately propose that point in this conversation, you know, what kind of artists are we going to hire? And what does that mean for Catholic art and creations like Jubilee mascots?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. And I think too, Hallow has made this conversation conversationable in recent years. Certainly like Hallow is very invested in getting the word out that prayer is cool and that prayer is life-changing. And they’re going to deploy any number of resources to that end, one of which is to hire famous people. Even if those famous people may or may not have done things of a dubious nature. So it’s like, you know, cohabitation, speaking against certain Catholic positions, or, you know, even some of the more grave, like the question of Liam Neeson and abortion was the hottest topic. But now you’ve got folks like Gwen Stefani, you know, who are faces of voices of Hallow, and it seems like their strategy, as strategy is effective. Insofar as it gets this app in front of people who might not otherwise be prompted to pray in disciplined or consistent fashion. And it’s like 23 million downloads of that app by this point, by the way, which is like a big– –
Fr. Patrick: Incredible. Yeah, that’s right. And which exploded after their Super Bowl commercial. So not just having, not only do they have a Super Bowl commercial, which is amazing, but then the result of the Super Bowl commercial pushed people to this platform, which is really incredible. Praise God for that. Last two thoughts about Luce before we get into the, to what I think is the real bullet point of this conversation. Luce appears to be a pilgrim, which is great. She kind of like represents, and that way she represents what the Jubilee is, right? You’re supposed to go on pilgrimage if you can’t make it to Rome, go to your Diocesan Cathedral. This kind of thing, there are many ways to participate in the Jubilee through pilgrimage, but especially by going on pilgrimage to Rome. Luce has a, you know, she’s got like the raincoat, she’s got the muddy boots, she’s got blue hair, (laughing) a pilgrim walking stick, which some people have called a witch’s staff. The discourse is really wild.
Fr. Patrick: Yeah, everything that can be said is definitely said. She has scalloped shells in her eyes. Which her, which her which are a symbol of the Camino right, the pilgrimage, which you love so dearly.
Fr. Gregory: I do.
Fr. Patrick: So I think it’s very interesting how Luce has is actually representative of our tradition in important ways. Like like all those symbols I mentioned. But, but, Luce has not been received warmly by everyone. So what are some critics objecting to? Apart from the concerns about the artists.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly. I think the most serious criticisms have been along this line, namely, “Lucee is unserious.” So it’s like, okay, here we are. We have been baptized, confirmed in some cases ordained. So we have been marked with Christian consecration, which has permanently configured us to participate in the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s like serious business. And so the idea that we would in an effort to make the Church somehow relevant or somehow more pertinent to a younger audience, like distance ourselves from more sober or otherwise grave signs of our affiliation, take up this thing which is by comparison to what we’ve done in the past. So kind of like light and funky, seems like a kind of betrayal. So I think you’ve had a lot of criticism in the last 55 years, especially about the damning effects of trying to make the Church relevant. Because in that effort, there’s a kind of tacit infidelity where you don’t actually believe that God is God and that He does God things. You’re like, oh, well, we have to bring these people along because God won’t because he’s left the world to us his servants and it’s our responsibility to exercise stewardship of a certain sort. So what we’re going to do is just look at the ambient culture and then deploy everything within that culture that people find attractive as an effort to get them on our side. But it ends up being like kind of sociopolitical rather than genuinely ecclesial because it’s born of a kind of infidelity or it’s born of a tacit despair that God is at work in the world and that He can have His way. Whereas when you just point awesomely and adamantly to God to His Christ, to the cross through which He saves, people will always find that relevant because it corresponds deeply to our nature. So there’s a kind of fear, not fear, but there’s a kind of concern there that we’re actually failing to receive the patrimony and betraying the riches with which we have been entrusted.
Fr. Patrick: Now that hits home with me because, you know, when our coming of age, Bishop Barron had just released his Catholicism series on DVD set. So for listeners that are younger than millennials, DVDs were actual things that you put into something else.
Fr. Gregory: They were like laser discs, except smaller.
Fr. Patrick: They played a movie.
Fr. Gregory: Except small.
Fr. Patrick: So think a big record and then make that little and then you could watch a movie off of that without the internet. So it was kind of cool. So Bishop Barron made a DVD set of Catholicism where he went to a bunch of places and told us the meaning of those places. And it was, I mean, it was extraordinary because no one had done anything like that series. So that was how Bishop Barron became America’s bishop, you know, how he entered the media space because he had done something so beautiful, so compelling that nobody else had done, right? And he revealed the treasures of the Church in a compelling way, visually. I mean, it’s just a magnificent DVD series to watch. But also, I suppose you could stream it now. But also the series included an instruction that most of us had not been given about our faith, right? There was a richness of the tradition. And so Bishop Barron’s whole point was that Catholicism had been made bland, that had been made unintelligible, that had been dumbed down, and that it had been whitewashed. And in order to have a serious faith, we needed a faith that was visually robust, beautiful, and intellectually strong. And I agree with that completely. And I completely agree with that.
Fr. Gregory: 15, 20 years later, I think we can say he has succeeded.
Fr. Patrick: Yeah, he is correct about all of those things and that series and the project of Word on Fire has just made a tremendous impact to the Church. So and I think all of that’s objective. That’s not like a partisan thing to say, you know, I think God for it.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, come at me.
Fr. Patrick: So I agree with those that would be concerned about this. But what do you have to say, Father Gregory, to the point that not everything has to be grave or solemn, even when it comes to something like religion. Do you think that’s true?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. So it’s interesting, I think about it along these lines: the human heart gives rise to a variety of desires. What’s important is that you get rid of the lower desires and then just leave the higher desires. What’s important is…
Fr. Patrick: Thank God, because I’ve got this cup of coffee here…
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly.
Fr. Patrick: And I really desire it. I really need it right now.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. I think the point is that those desires be ordered in the sense that the desire for transcendence, the desire for worship, the desire for union, for communion with the most high God takes pride of place, not just because we will it so, but because it has an objective importance in our lives, which needs to be enshrined in our subjective inner sanctum. You know, so it’s like what’s the case out there? How does it take up residence in here? And then how do we interact with reality in a way that’s fruitful and faithful, right? That’s actually well-adjusted or appropriate onto the basis of what is. And so I think it’s like when we do things of a lower sort, which displace things of a higher sort, that’s when we’re in trouble. Classic example being like somebody who likes to drink a lot of alcohol and sleep a lot of hours and not go to Mass has that hierarchy all wonky on account of the fact that the lower is displacing the higher. So like drinking to excess is sinful. Sleeping in is not sinful but in so far as it prevents us from observing our duties, you know, like our responsibilities as worshipping sons and daughters of the Most High God, we’re in a problematic spot. So I think that like, I think it’s good for certain things of a light and funky sort to occupy our human spaces and our human culture. Not everything has to be grave, serious. Certainly we have a virtue, which we refer to as eutrapelia or play, which kind of breathes into us a recognition of this fact that everything can’t be serious. Everything can’t be grave. That every once in a while we have to unstring the bow or the bow itself begins to crack. It begins to lose its spring. And that we need both like mental and physical refreshment as a way by which to live our human lives in this body on the way with the hope of attaining to the end. So I think it’s like that’s a kind of, yeah, there are serious things in life and we ought not be, you know, trifling or frivolous about them, but there are also somewhat unserious things in life. And I think that’s like humor has a way of revealing that to us in a special way to kind of like reveal to us our silliness as creatures so that we can get a little space and so that we can take a look from a little vantage and say, wow, what a silly beast. How funky, how light and fresh.
Fr. Patrick: I’m thinking of that great story in our tradition of the novices that were walking along with Jordan of Saxony and and they were praying night prayer, praying compline as they walked along. And someone, I know… the details escaped me right, but someone at some point, you know, miss as a word or trips or whatever, they all burst out laughing. And one of the older friars begins to scold the novices and it’s Jordan of Saxony, right, who said, who stops the scolding, interrupts the friar scolding the novices and says, “Let them laugh, Satan has been defeated.” And there’s something to that, right? There’s the great tradition of the Easter laugh, of a kind of rejoicing in the face of evil. And then you’ve got, in addition to that kind of strain, you’ve got the really, what’s the right word, the really grotesque stories of the barter that are making jokes as they’re dying that have been handed down in our Catholic tradition [coughs] excuse me, like Lawrence saying, “turn me over, I’m done on this side”, or any of these other sorts of tales, right? So it does seem like there’s a place for that. Now, but part of this conversation is about the distance between what’s real and what’s not. Like when I first saw Luce, as I said, I didn’t think it was real. I thought the release photo, which most of us saw the Catholic TV Twitter account, which is kind of a hilarious thing too. I thought the release photo was some kind of weird, deep fake. So there’s a growing, it seems like Luce, Luce is kind of a problem, or at least inviting a conversation, if we don’t wanna be negative about it, between about the distance rather, between what is real and what is not.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. No, I think it’s interesting, like you can evaluate the merits of Luce on various paradigms or rubrics, is it good art? I don’t know anything about anime art, but it seems like people who do think that it’s pretty good. You know, like in a lot of people, just kind of in a pre-efficient, you know, like engage them with it, like, yeah, she’s like kind of silly. Like, she’s kind of cute. It’s like, fine, okay. But then this question here of deep-fakeitude is another one. It’s like is Luce conducting us to the term of our human existence, which is always going to be in the setting of a sacramental encounter? Like more and more we live on the internet. But as a result of which, we’re less and less sure as to what’s real. And like we can see this precipitated by advance and artificial intelligence and the technologies associated there with. But like we’re not actually sure what’s up and people talk about massive distrust in the media. Like American trust in the media has gone down in the past eight years from like 62% to like 39%. That’s pretty precipitous as far as declines go. So like we don’t trust the media, we don’t trust our politicians, we don’t trust our institutions, we don’t really trust our culture, we don’t really trust anything at this point. And so, like the way that Gen Z for instance consumes news items is they’ll like look at a headline, they’ll just skip the article, they’ll go down to the com box and they’ll see how like that is astonishing to me how people are reacting to it.
Fr. Patrick: That is astonishing to me, how they’re reacting to it.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, but they’ll just like see how the chat has borne out, you know, truth claims. So they’ll see like kind of how people have squatted up. They’ll recognize their voice and their kind of inclinations or predispositions in the voices of one half of the debate and then they’ll find their home there. So for us, there’s an increased tribalism. When you don’t actually know or when you don’t actually have certainty and confidence that you can gain access to reasonable discourse, you’re going to retreat to tribalism, you know? And so like in this digital space, there’s just a like, there’s a lot that goes by way of just strong contrarity or allergic reaction or like fear or hate or whatever else that’s not actually principal discourse. And I think that we lose sight of the questions that matter. Like is Luce going to convert anyone? Probably not, you know? But like is Luce kind of like charming and whimsical and hilarious? Yes.
Fr. Patrick: Absolutely.
Fr. Gregory: Where does that fit in human life? In a very, very lower, like very much lower place, subordinate place? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think those are interesting questions to ask, but to get to them is hard.
Fr. Patrick: Right. So I realized Luce was good because the memes were dank. So you know, I was sort of, again, like, really trying to figure out what is going on here with this thing. And you know, what do I know? I’m a millennial. I don’t know anything about Gen Z, except what they tell me. So so, you know, I’m following this conversation and I realized, oh heck yeah, you know, I stan Luce because the memes are great. Um, so you have like, Luce rescuing babies from an abortion facility. It’s so awesome. We’re like Luce standing over, you know, a bloody Satan with a spear, you know, threw his heart. Absolutely. Yes. Um, so there’s a way in which, um, there’s a way in which people can, people can kind of claim things. And in our discourse, people sort of rise up and want something. I mean, it’s something like expressions for traditional forms of Catholic worship, for example. That people want, that’s just a kind of groundswell that a culture is looking for. I think we saw that in Luce. That’s part of what was interesting too for me about Luce was that Lucestretched across different sections of the church. So you’re talking about the threat of tribalism and how if we don’t allow genuine discourse, that’s what we fall into. Luce was powerful because Luce provoked a bunch of different responses from a bunch of different sectors. And you’ve found people agreeing. So, you know, there were, there were trad sectors that stood Luce, you know, and others that didn’t. But the overlap was interesting, because it wasn’t the, it wasn’t the traditional or typical rather spheres of discourse in a Church. Luce sort of broke that. So that was good. I thought that was really interesting.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. So I think that like as we are increasingly just like in a digital space and live a digital life, it’s hard to host like fruitful conversation. And I’m not just like dialogue for dialogue sake. Like no one gives a rip, you know? I don’t think any of us are here just to talk about talking because death comes to those who engage in such conversations. It’s like I think that people do want to have, they want to be put in contact with principles and arguments that actually mediate contact with reality. And so on account of the fact that whatever comes out on the internet provokes a response and then people squad up or tribe up or whatever else up, it can feel hard to gain access to principles and to gain access to arguments which actually mediates said contact with reality. I think that when you have a sweet provocation or when you have something that feels a little bit different or a little bit on, off, whatever, I think that that brings people to a point where like now I want to have a conversation. I think like these conversations are the cool things that Luce has brought about. Insofar as it’s like, like, what are we doing on the internet as Catholics? And I think that conversation, especially as it’s developed in the last couple of years is fun. It’s light and it’s funky, you know, because I just think, especially as people are less afraid of addressing controversial topics and coming to a recognition that the point isn’t just to like show your credentials and say angry things, but actually to facilitate real contact that can help furnish people with resources. We did this episode about divorced and remarried, and it didn’t have an edge. It was just like these are the principles. These are the arguments. That’s how we grew up. I was so grateful for that. It was just like, and then the women who work for us were like, “What do you want to do with comments?” It was just like, “Just put our email addresses in the chat,” because the point of this is to actually resolve strange marital situations and to furnish people with the resources that they need in order to be reconciled to God in His Church. You know, so it’s like the internet, I mean, it’s the internet, you know, it’s like, it’s, there are no rules, you know, like it’s a bot run by advertising agencies that we’re just trying to navigate, you know, and it’s totally nuts. It’s totally insane. But like, Luce has made certain conversations kind of pop up in a weird way, which I’m like, happy to partake in.
Fr. Patrick: Same. I hope with my pilgrim heart that I receive all the graces of the Jubilee, that my eyes are turned to pilgrim shells. And, you know, I carry my staff, not a witch’s stick. I carry my staff and I have my mission rosary and my hope is restored. No, obviously I’m a Luce fan. I’ve been converted. I think Luce is great for all the reasons that we mentioned. I think the people want Luce in a Godsplainnig hoodie. (laughing) I do, we’ll see. We’ll see. We could do like the Archbishop Fisichella press conference photo, but we could just look real old and real confused.
Fr. Gregory: Like I still do that. But here’s the thing, I still don’t know what Luce does. Like I don’t know who she is, what she does, what she stands for because like…
Fr. Patrick: Well, she’s Catholic. She saves the babies. She fights Satan.
Fr. Gregory: But like with Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha memes. No, like I don’t know what they mean. Like I don’t know what half of the memes that I see mean like I don’t know what they said. I don’t know what they mean. Like I don’t know what half of the memes that I see mean. I don’t know. Yep. Just where we find ourselves at present.
Fr. Patrick: No, I think that really is the best conclusion though. The internet’s a rodeo and it’s kind of wild and we’re grateful to everyone who allows us to participate in said rodeo. And I think that’s a great place to leave it, having laid out some of these principles. So live, laugh, Luce.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, there it is.
Fr. Patrick: I think that’s it. Well, friends, thanks for tuning into this episode of Godsplaining. We have a quick announcement before we part ways, coming up here in Dallas on March 21st to 23rd. We’ve got a Young Adult retreat, which is going to be lit. It’s gonna be great.
Fr. Gregory: That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.
Fr. Patrick: Yeah, I’m excited. I love these retreats. I really do. I’m genuinely excited for them. And by the time that rolls around, I’ll be really excited for it. So we’ve got that retreat in Dallas. Again, a special word of thanks to all of those of you who support us. If you’d like to support the podcast, consider becoming a Patreon supporter. You make it possible for us to fight off the evil robots that try and hide our content from people. We can advertise and get the word out and do stuff like that we can ever treat programs and we can save souls, which is what the podcast is all about. If you’re so inclined, shop Godsplaining merch. You can find cool things like socks now in our store, which is super fun. Those have been out for a bit so get some Godsplaining socks. Follow us on social media platforms if you like. Comment on the episodes. Father Gregory is talking about this. We love that. Tell us what you think about Luce in the chat. And in the meantime friends, we ask that you would pray for us and know that we’re praying for you. God bless.