The “Virtue” of Tolerance | Fr. Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk & Fr. Gregory Pine
September 19, 2024
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: And this is Father Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk.
Fr. Gregory: And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. There was a little Father Bonaventure pacing there of the words, so that way people didn’t actually know what was being said. It’s just kind of like a “haha” but moving on, seeing as you’re not especially enthused with this particular line of reasoning.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: No, I have a crick in my neck. So I’m…
Fr. Gregory: From having slept funkily?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I think so.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, funkily being the opposite of groovily, although they sound very similar because they would pertain to a similar musical genre, but when used in the ‘crick in the neck’ kind of taxonomy, they are directly opposed… which brings me to the subject of this podcast, but I want to lead into it briefly, because we’re gonna talk about tolerance and you’re a man who puts up with things…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: In a particular way [laughter]
Fr. Gregory: So you know, let’s not name names, right nouns include people, places and things. So maybe we should limit ourselves to like, places and things. What is a place or a thing that you have had to put up with recently and how did you uh, comport yourself heroically? Do you feel like you, you, you’d done did it? Yeah, this could be like, I was in a seven person line at the grocery store and I didn’t hurt anyone. You know, like that’s great.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Let me think, give me a second to think about that. But while I think about that, I think my responses to things are eminently predictable.
Fr. Gregory: Uh huh.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: And it doesn’t take long to figure out how I’m going to react or respond. And it’s taking a little longer than I’ve liked at the parish, but I think I’ve gotten there, especially with some of my staff. Because people have stopped asking me questions, because they know that I’m going to say no right away. So they’ve taken to asking my staff questions than and to ask me. So that’s become like, okay, well, I’ll check with Father. And now that’s been the thing for a time, and now that’s stopped too, staff has begun to respond to. And they tell, you know, someone asked about this. And I just told Father’s going to say no, so I’m not going to ask for a minute, which I really like. A lot.
Fr. Gregory: The heart of the Father. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will tell you, ‘no’.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Heroic moment though, of tolerance. So on my flight out here for our recording session, I sat next to a gentleman. So you know this about me too. I never talked to people who had travel ever.
Fr. Gregory: Right.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: So this was like the first time in years that I’ve spoken to another human being after like leaving where I am to get like on the road to travel. But it was actually enjoyable, but he had a few, too many drinks. And then when we were landing, he was trying to get, not belligerently, but he was like, I gotta go to the bathroom. It was like, we’re like, just like I can see the ground. You can’t stand up right now. So I thought I behaved very well because I was very, it was amusing to me and I wasn’t annoyed. Had I been annoyed, I would be like, you need to sit down and stuff, like whatever, but that was heroic. I was very kind.
Fr. Gregory: Nice, okay. So you tolerated the tipsy slash mildly and knee-brated high-jinks of your seatmate.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: That’s correct.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, nice. All right, yeah.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: And you? I mean, because you’re not as patient either.
Fr. Gregory: No, I’m not especially patient.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: You’re just nicer about it in ways.
Fr. Gregory: What I try to do, I’ve noticed this recently because I live my life rushing from A to B, not because A is important or B is important, but because like I derive a kind of adrenaline rush from the aforementioned hustle, I have to like tell people when I sit down like, I’m not… you, you’re not, it’s okay. You can, you can speak like it, like, normally. You don’t have to rush just because I’m this way. Like it’s my fault. You know, like you should, it’s going to be great. You know, so I was having a conversation with somebody yesterday in my office about a conference that the Thomistic Institute is hosting. And she was like, I’ll make this super quick. I was like, you don’t have to make this super quick. This is my problem. (laughing)
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: You’re good.
Fr. Gregory: You’re good. I’m just a maniac. I suffer for it between two and four in the morning when I’m still just going like a little crazy.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: You see the panic in somebody’s eyes when you enter the room. (laughing)
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. So Father Gregory’s here, so let’s cut the agenda in three fifths and no one say anything / share your thoughts because he might be frustrated with it. I was also in a meeting yesterday and at the end of it, you know, the contents of which were somewhat dubious and at the end of it I just looked at a compatriot and I said, “These are my kryptonite”. [laughing]
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I don’t know if this is best practices for a meeting, but these are meeting practices. I’ve also, like for different meetings, for work meetings, I’ve also taken to like, not dismissing, but letting people go when I’ve kind of dealt with, you know? Which I think is good for everybody, because you don’t have to sit there and deal, but it’s like, we’ll address these, where everybody has a great present, and then we’ll see ya, and then we’ll just like whittle it down.
Fr. Gregory: I think the best meeting practices for me is like all of us have a chin up bar like in our kind of corner of the room and we all have to hang onto it and when you drop you just got to go. So like that gives us maybe top three and a half minutes for the day. Three and a half now people can hang for more than 40 seconds. There’s like Instagram like things on it.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Are they really?
Fr. Gregory: Like to hang for like two minutes, just like holding on with people can’t do that.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Oh no, okay, perfect. That’s great, then that’s better, I suppose.
Fr. Gregory: And I tolerate that. Yeah, exactly. You can use like one of those wide receiver gloves to give you a little grip if you’re really…If you’re really concerned about carrying the point. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah.
Fr. Gregory: Maybe it’s time to talk about…Okay, so in this episode, we’re going to talk about tolerance. What motivates the question for me?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: That’s tough for me.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly. What motivates the question is that a lot of our, you know, like friends, family members, you know, you could talk about them in general terms as our contemporaries, but that sounds kind of like a sad and angry distance has grown up between us and others in the world. But like a lot of folks out there talk about tolerance. Like it’s a good thing. So like why? What do they want? What are they doing? What’s at steak?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Is it a good thing?
Fr. Gregory: Lead us into it.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: It’s a good question. I was just going to say that it’s, I don’t think it’s a good thing, but that’s not really a lead in that’s more of like a conclusion.
Fr. Gregory: That’s like a bam! Yeah, thanks for listening to Godsplaining. (laughing)
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, Patreon. (laughing)
Fr. Gregory: But also, though.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, so there’s this, I would say, so I don’t think we have to explain, people know, like when we’re talking about tolerance, so we don’t have to kind of explain that. But like what’s sort of at play or what’s kind of the underlying what like vibe? What I want to say is I think that it comes from a good place.
Fr. Gregory: Okay.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Generally.
Fr. Gregory: Okay.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I think that it’s the sort of contemporary blah, blah, blah, idea of tolerance and acting tolerance is very misguided. And if we want to use like a classical word like disordered, because we also have to ask the question and I’m sure we’ll talk about it, it’s like to what end? What is it with anything? Here’s X and what is it supposed to accomplish? So I think that it comes from a good place of a desire to be accepting and loving, but I think that in trying to be accepting and loving, it’s misunderstanding how it is that we are supposed to engage and encourage people, others and what that sort of engagement and encouragement is really should be aiming at. So I do want to affirm the goodness that’s at heart. I think yeah.
Fr. Gregory: No, I think that you know like the kind of vague cultural narrative is that there were times in humanity’s history where people did bad things to each other whether that’s for reasons of creed or reasons of social or political ideology or reasons of whatever and like one person imposed upon another or visited violence upon another one group imposed upon another or visited violence upon another. And so I think that a lot of folks want to carve out a space in which at least things sufficiently reasonable are going to be tolerated because, you know, like especially in a kind of post-liberal dispensation, we try to be as a human race somewhat neutral with respect to core values. So as to leave others free to establish their core values. I mean, we can discuss the merits of that, which there aren’t any, but regardless. So it’s kind of like here we are in the West and people are trying to leave room for each other. And, you know, is it possible to really leave room for each other if you don’t make a stand or take a stance? I think it’s exceedingly difficult to do so. But in certain regards, I think that people would celebrate their rights or their kind of duties and responsibilities. So I think that in trying to identify the good place from which it comes, I think people are trying to create space in the public square or in civil society so that people can disagree while minimizing conflict or people can disagree in a way that they feel safe, not aggressed, not as it were, menaced. So it seems like what’s really at stake here is a kind of freedom to self-define, to pursue whatever, and then a kind of peace or minimization of conflict. So then I think that we can talk about Christian resources for attaining these goals, because I think what we found, especially with the devolution of the discourse in the last 10 years or 25 years or 50 years, is that it’s unsustainable, because if you try to create that space, it’s always going to suffer the incursions of the strongest. And if not creed or social and political ideology, it’s gonna be something else. And I think that we see that, people talk about the “woke mob.” So it seems exceedingly difficult to do that. So if there is something good intolerance, namely a modicum of freedom, and then a kind of modicum of peace, how do we as Christians seek to achieve that? I know it’s something you think about, slash preach about with some frequency. So I don’t know if you have first steps or initial recommendations.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, I think at least in sort of what, like considering the problem or how to live well within the sort of context of living with each other. I think the sort of modern idea that there is space to self-define is just not true. It’s just objectively not true. There is not space to self-define or self-create in such a way in what I mean by that in such a way that like every person is responsible. Not only, yeah, is responsible for kind of creating the world and the metrics that kind of define what is good and what is fulfilling and what constitutes like flourishing. And also with that, that everybody has the freedom to do that. I don’t think we do at all, actually. Not because we’re not free, not because we don’t have free will, but because as you were describing, we’re always slaves to something. We’re not the arbiters of creation and reality. So whether or not we want to pretend that we are, it’s just not true. And we could see how this has come to be, you know, even in what, like more kind of self-proclaimed tolerant circles where it’s just like, well, we’re only tolerant if you’re like us. That’s the case all the time. And every side of the aisle and like, there’s only tolerance in this sort of sense for what I’ve created or the kind of mob rule. If you’re not in the mob, then we’re not tolerant of that. But we proclaim tolerance and that sort of thing. So I think that’s important, at least for me in beginning to think about it, I just have to deny those things from the outset. And if I deny that there’s this like wild sense of freedom that I get to, and then this wild sense of ability to create and self-define, then it’s like, what are we left with? Well, it’s a kind of corresponding to or conformity to something that already is. So in that there’s that lies for me like the question of like tolerance. So, like what is that thing to which we are uniting ourselves or pursuing? And I think there why is the question of tolerance one there because if there is something to which I am being united or conformed, and that is subject to truth claims, I guess. Is it a good thing or is it not a good thing? And if it’s not a good thing, we ought not have tolerance for it. And that’s not to mean to, that doesn’t mean to say we burn everything at the stake. That doesn’t, but we ought not treat it with the same kind of acceptance as something that is a good thing.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, okay, so let’s think a little bit about the process and a little bit about the goal. So with respect to the process, something that concerns me is, you know, you see a lot of these kind of more recent ideologies deploying Marxist strategies. So it’s like a lot of push-pull. It’s a lot of just kind of rearranging matter. So it’s like, you know, I go into a hipster coffee shop in Louisville, Kentucky, and I’m like, I’m pumped about this hipster coffee shop because they make very delicious espresso and they put like a little leaf on the top and it’s all decorated and I’m jazzed and I can read my little book about the Sacrament of Confession in my corner with all the people who have come to this place with me, many of whom look a lot different. So I go up to the cashier and you get that very distinct sense, like everyone is welcome here except for you, you religious fanatic. It’s like, oh yeah, so that kind of gets to the tolerant if you fit the standard or if you fit the bill. And I think that with the kind of dialectical materialism of Marxism or communism, it’s just a matter of getting power. And so it’s like, we stayed our community values and we’ve heard enough from white males. So everyone here can speak except for you. It’s like, what is that actually doing to heal us and to grow us? What’s that actually doing to bring us together? Because if it’s just cycles of violence, then that’s going to be perpetuated onto ages of ages. There’s no real resolution to that because it has no transcended horizon.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah. There was like kind of similarly, this was, I don’t know, earlier a couple months ago, there’s, I was in town and one of our students, one of the students at Dartmouth works at a coffee shop in town just on Main Street. So myself and another, and the campus minister from Aquinas, he was working, so we went down to grab coffee, say hello, whatever, and we’re sitting there, and I’m sitting there in my habit, and there are a couple other people at tables, you know, next sitting there and I’m sitting there in my habit and there are a couple other people at tables next to us. I’m sitting there in my habit with our campus minister and we’re just having whatever and like we leave, no, nothing, whatever. The student is wearing like this t-shirt as he’s working there. I think it said, “God loves you”, with like a smiley face on it. You know, just like kind of one of those like cool kind of looking t-shirts and apparently the woman who was sitting at the table next to us got up and went up to him after we had left and said that his shirt was radically offensive and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, you were just sitting next to me in this habit and you didn’t have the courage or the guts to say something to me, but you were fine kind of attacking the student, but you’re very liberal and tolerant in this place of… it’s like, that’s the sort of thing that I’m, that’s like an example, par excellence of what I think is the problem with tolerance. And as you’ve kind of described it, and it’s worst kind of sense.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. And I think, okay, so then, turning to the goal, I think what a lot of modernity’s difficulties, I mean, this is a radical, radical oversimplification, but modernity can’t get out of its own way because it can’t get beyond itself, it can’t get, it can’t transcend itself. Whereas like the Christian solution is like, we’re not going to find it here. We just won’t because we’re going to find it in God and then finding God will come to discover that He’s brought us together. I think often of the description that St. Thomas like the way that he describes peace and we can talk about mercy too. So like he’ll say what we’re really after here is love and then from love, flows joy, peace, and mercy. And when he says peace, he says like people think about arranging their relationships with brothers and sisters with whomever else. He says, but it’s more about arranging a relationship with God who’s going to rectify your interior life. And from that peaceful interior life, you have radiating without peaceful relationships. So it’s only in getting out of our way and getting to God that God makes sense of us and then makes sense of our relationships. But like if you’re always at the level of the horizontal and never even think of the vertical, then you’re going to be trapped in just like, “Ah!” Because, you know, there’s this image that I think it’s C.S. Lewis uses of a flotilla of ships.” He says, “Picture of a group of ships they’re trying to get to harbor. Let’s say it’s super cloudy, let’s say they have no navigational instruments. This is going to strain credulity. Nevertheless, he’s like, how do they navigate?” You can make your adjustments on the basis of the other ships, but you’re gonna be making billions of adjustments and it’s gonna be nuts, cacophanes. He says, “Or they can all pick a common point on the horizon and proceed towards it.” Are they going to have to make slide adjustments? Absolutely. But most of it’s taken care of by the fact that they have a common goal and that that goal kind of puts them on a trajectory of peace. And so I think that like with tolerance, what we’re doing is a lot of horizontal and there’s just no adverts to the vertical. And you can’t expect our secular contemporaries to think about God too terribly much, but there has to be that space for it. But what we see now is that there’s no space for it because “God loves you,” that’s an offensive t-shirt. And so it’s like the very possibility of genuine tolerance has begun to dry up or evaporate from the culture. And so it’s like, yeah, what do we do in turn? But I know that you talk a lot about love and mercy as a kind of solution to it.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, I think that there’s this, when we look at tolerance, I think, as I mentioned at the beginning, that it’s rooted in a type of goodness and a type of like desiring even the good for the other. Now, we’ve already laid out a few ways and probably could identify more how that goes wrong or where there’s misunderstanding in the pursuit of that. So tolerance in itself, I think to be a tolerant person, you have to recognize the situation or the person or the setting before you. There’s a recognition of where that of what that person is and a sort of acceptance in a way of that. But as you’re saying that, that’s the limit, that’s the upper bounds. It’s just an observation of what that person is. And attempt to give them space to live that. But I guess compared to mercy, which is really at the heart of what if who Christ is in His love for us, I think was it John Paul II? It was somebody, I don’t know. But said like mercy’s God’s expression of love in the face of sin or yeah, it’s love when there’s a need for a sort of sense of forgiveness or a call to greatness. So mercy also begins where tolerance begins with this recognition of this is who this person is, this is where they are, this is, you know, where they are that sort of thing. But with mercy, there’s and charity that there’s a call to greatness, to fulfillment, to happiness, to forgiveness. So they both recognize, they both start in this good place, but again, in this question of like, to where is it leading, or is that right? Yeah, where is it leading? I think mercy kind of, sorry, tolerance kind of stops with the recognition. Mercy recognizes and calls and beckons forth to something greater than oneself. And I think that’s an important thing to recognize. Does that mean that I think we need to be intolerant? Or that sort of thing? Like, no, right? Like, it’s not. But in this sort of contemporary sense of, is it a good thing for me just to look at somebody, no matter how well put together, or how whatever not well put together, or whatever they might be, or I might perceive them to be, or they might perceive themselves to be? Is it a good thing just to say, okay, great. I don’t think so. Like, and this isn’t me saying like, we need to, I need to like, psycho-analyze and pick apart your life and say, here, fix this, fix that, fix that, but it’s a, it’s a base recognition that, yeah, there’s goodness in who you are, as a son, as a daughter of God, created in His likeness and in His image. But where each of us is also called to something greater than what I get to find for myself. And as like providence plays out, and as I’ve been put in your life or whos ever like life for a short term, long term, I think we have to, too recognize that we are involved in that journey, in that movement, of one another’s progress in growing and goodness in truth and beauty. But I think tolerance doesn’t allow for that in this sort of contemporary secular sense.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, yeah, I think that, so in thinking about, you know, we talk often about fraternal correction in the context of these conversations, maybe that just makes it sound too formal, but when we’re talking about talents, usually we’re talking about I see something in another, that’s no bueno, you got the two categories in life, the bueno and the no bueno. So it’s no bueno, and then the question is like, what am I supposed to do about that? Because I think we feel a certain responsibility. And then the question is like, what am I supposed to do about it? Because I think we feel a certain responsibility. And then the question is, is that a real responsibility? Am I going to write every wrong? No. Charlie Sheen might write every wrong as he made famous in his interview with Katie Couric, but I’m not going to. That’s for darn sure. So then which wrongs are my wrongs to right? Well, I think already there we have like a weird kind of patronizing and/or condescending note introduced into the discourse. It’s like, listen, it’s just all beyond us, right? But like, it’s not just a mirror matter of like me performing my duty, nor is it a mirror matter of affecting a change in the other, producing results because that’s not what human agency is about. It’s about love. It’s just like, Lord, you’re inviting me to a greater intimacy. Lord, you’re inviting me to a deeper relationship. And for whatever reason you’ve thrown me in with these human beings as a way by which to draw me close and to draw them close so that we might be close. Because you want to be closer to us than our sadness, than our anger, than whatever it is that keeps us from the fullness of relationship. And so like, this is not insignificant, but I don’t know how to address it because I might say it too harshly and alienate, or I might say it too gently and actually retreat from my responsibility and be like a little bit of a coward, a little bit of a, I don’t know, pusillanimous punk. So it’s just like, how do I love? I think like that’s ultimately the question. And what I worry about with tolerance is that it doesn’t actually ask the question, how do I love it? It says, how do I manage this? How do I keep my hands clean? How do I distance myself from this? How do I make sure that whatever it is that we’re doing together is like disrupted by the fact that there’s this interpersonal blah blah blah. It’s just, it’s just, it’s a different set of considerations. Whereas mercy says like, this, this wounds me, you know, like to, to pity someone is to be wounded, right? It’s to be miserable in heart and then to recognize the Lord has, he’s given me some modicum of strength so that I can alleviate, so that I can exercise power so that I can be of service. But then the question is, yeah, again, like which are mine? And that’s hard. That’s, that’s hard. It’s easier to tolerate because it’s clean. You know, there’s a set of rules. Do nothing. Say nice things. nice things, show yourself in keeping with the community standards, and then just move on. And then just try to manage the anxiety, which constantly creeps up because you know that there’s something more. And you can’t chase that from your heart of hearts. So yeah, it’s hard. It’s just real hard. Further thoughts about mercy, about visiting mercy or about bringing about the transformation of mercy in life.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, I think, I think I think. I think that I need to stop starting sentences with, I think.
Fr. Gregory: That’s what it is. As long as you don’t say in conclusion, bad style, five paragraph essay, fourth grade.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, I don’t say that. I don’t think I’ve said that on this podcast ever.
Fr. Gregory: That’s great. Well, you’re golden.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Almost five years.
Fr. Gregory: You are a master-reterition.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, exactly. Master-reterition.
Fr. Gregory: Low standard.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Great. There may be a temptation or… I’ll say this. The immediate kind of criticism of what we’ve been describing as mercy might be well, like who are you to kind of impose your beliefs or that sort of thing on somebody else, which is, I don’t think it’s a fair criticism, but fine. It’s probably one that will be levied or would be levied pretty quickly. So I don’t want to address that, but then the question is like, well, how do I navigate that well? Like, how do I actually engage in a merciful way with people who probably disagree with a lot of what I understand to be true and right? And I think that they’re like the virtue of prudence comes in very quickly because we don’t want to be like everyone we encounter. It’s not a moment to be like finger waggy and preachy. But I think the way that we draw people into this is not always, and oftentimes less by what we say and more by how we live and how we treat others. Like do we, which is always the difficult thing to do this well, right? It’s the sort of like narrow path of like, yeah, I’m going to treat you with respect, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to like endorse all of your life choices and this sort of thing. I think people will read that as you like hating people very quickly but like so be it, you know I think we have to be okay with that and I think that that’s part of like the cross that we carry as as Christians, as Catholics in the 27th century whatever century, whatever century we’re in.
Fr. Gregory: Nice.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, and I think we just have to be okay with the fact that like we’re probably not going to be liked for being merciful but like neither was our Lord. So, okay.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. The last thing and I’m thinking about this recently is like what ultimately does God want? God wants us to be like Him not because he’s creepy and wants to have, you know, seven billion representations of Himself here on the surface of the earth, but because it’s in becoming like Him that we get Him, right, because He wants to transform us, He wants to so suffuse our humanity with this gift of Divine Grace and virtue as to draw us deeply into relationship, because it’s only in being like Him that we’re capable of this mutual love or this mutual benevolence with a shared life that is to say friendship, charity. And in our experiences of interpersonal conflict or in our experiences of difficulty with other human beings, we can become like Him. Like the Lord permits it too precisely that end. It’s not like, hey, this thing, whatever here is going on on earth, it’s really complicated. And I’d busy myself with it, except that I find it, kind of overwhelming personally. So I’m just gonna delegate it to you, my servant/slaves and report back on a monthly basis and just give me a nice summary. No, it’s like the Lord is intimately involved in all of it. And He permits this so that we can have a kind of share in His tolerance, quote unquote, or His mercy more properly so-called. Because the Lord, you know, He hasn’t, He hasn’t righted. Oh, yeah. The, the, the “best is still unwritten”. So the Lord hasn’t righted every long.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Is that Natasha Bedingfield?
Fr. Gregory: Exactly. He hasn’t righted every wrong, at least not instantaneously or at least not presently. And so it seems like it’s part of His plan, the tolerance or the kind of prolonged mercy with respect to humanity. And so He wants us to be agents in that or participants in that drama because then we can feel something of His divine anguish, like His divine desire, His divine, I don’t know exactly, you know, like I don’t want to make it sound anthropological and creepy, but like the Lord wants us with Him and we’re not with Him. So how does that register in the, I don’t know exactly, but He wants us and He’s gonna give us a share in it. So it’s not like, okay, let’s just get done with this interpersonal conflict so that way I can manage my mental bandwidth. It’s like, Lord, where are You? Like, what are You doing in and through me until you’re praising glory? And for my salvation, the salvation of this other person whom I might be involved, we know whatever. I just don’t know. But like we have to be asking those questions, you know, we can’t let them kind of grind us down or chew us up to the point where we’re just like, prostrate under the weight of our emotional and psychological burdens, but nevertheless, there’s something to it. Final thoughts.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah. Let’s say that I think in practicing mercy, we’re probably going to be disliked and like it’s going to be misunderstood, but I think that’s okay. I think it’s okay to be disliked for the sake of love. That’s what I’ll say.
Fr. Gregory: Boom. There you go. As Father Bonaventure would conclude an episode since I began with him, I’ll end with him. Boom the earth is round, [speaking German], which is a summary of two things that like 19th century philosophers said at some point that we latched on to in the student date. So I feel like…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: You latched on to.
Fr. Gregory: Who’s to say? I just tried like spreading the blame so that way I don’t appear too terribly creepy. So turning to you then, the listener, thanks for listening to this episode of Godsplaining. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, maybe TikTok. Like, subscribe, leave a five star review. Why? Well, I don’t know exactly how the internet works, but it seems like there’s an algorithm and the algorithm is run by a mastermind advertiser who is trying to lay people prostrate before his manipulative feet. But we can get into the internet and then use it for evangelical designs. I think liking subscribing, leaving a five star view is part of that story. I don’t know how it works, but you’ll figure it out. You can also follow links in description and/or show notes. If you would like to support us via Patreon, check out Godsplaining merchandise and/or join us for upcoming events of which there are some, the names of which remain hidden. So you’re going to have to go to Godsplaining.org for all that. All right, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.