The Catholic Man Show

Lady Haylee and the kids spent an evening at the Niles place without Adam, and the grown-ups landed on a cheerful question: if your spouse dies, do you remarry? Dave settled this with Lady Pamela a while ago. In writing, he claimed, before Adam held him to account. If Dave goes first, she'll be well provided for and should go find herself a good man. If she goes first, with a four-month-old in the house, she'd better pray like nobody has ever prayed, because he'll be drowning and liable to make some rash decisions. As Adam heard it secondhand, their buddy Mark Gabriel took the opposite line: absolutely not. Adam wouldn't rule it out. A good wife is a companion in the pursuit of holiness, and that pursuit isn't over until you are. Dave has since ordered Lady Pamela, under holy obedience, not to die before him, which raised an urgent canonical question. Does holy obedience work over text?

Sponsors:

Alto by Ascension Praying the Liturgy of the Hours next to guys who know the ribbons cold can scare you off. Alto takes the guesswork out with Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings, reflections and a short monthly study, printed and mailed to you every month. Advent starts November 29. Code TCMS10 takes 10% off.

OréMoose Most of what you own was made fast and cheap overseas, and it shows. OréMoose goes the other direction: leather goods made by real craftsmen, meant to be handed down to your kids and grandkids. Code TCMS takes 30% off everything. Made in America for the glory of God.

Select International Tours When Adam and Dave started planning their first pilgrimage, everyone they asked pointed them to the same company. Having traveled with Select, they'd point you there too. Browse what's on offer at selectinternationaltours.com.

Dave was up at 5:30 that morning to get cows to the processor. After work he dug up and fixed a leaking water main, mostly because he forgot to set one clock back after the time change and thought he'd run out of time before Adoration. One leak down, one getting worse by the day. If you've never had a water leak, know that two men in Oklahoma are carrying that cross for you.

In the glass: a 15-year-old Benrinnes from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, a Speyside from a distillery neither of them knew. They're fans now. Rated in Jim's absence by two men speaking in persona Jim, it scored a seven on the yummy scale. A new world record, again. Thank you to the patrons who've kept this show going for ten and a half years.

Adam had been reading St. Francis de Sales and Fr. Louis Lallemant for this week's topic, and nothing would come together. Praying at the hospital beside his daughter Mary while she slept, he kept returning to a list he'd written for himself that week. Between trips to Oklahoma City and a business barely a year old, with big kids and little ones both at home, he'd been living in triage. On paper he was showing up. Inside, he was checking boxes. Please keep Mary in your prayers. The hope is she comes home soon.

The list became ten. Keep pursuing your wife, because "children and work and responsibilities will consume whatever time you give them." Give your family your best attention, which for Adam meant confessing to typing emails under the table while his kids finished sentences he already knew the end of. Dave's version: his to-do list grows faster than he can work it, and his kids don't care about the water leak. If he's always too busy for the piano piece or the Lego fort, they hear that the project matters more than they do. Provide has to mean present, too.

Become a man who's easy to tell the truth to, since how you react to spilled milk teaches your kids what to expect when the stakes are higher. A test case arrived the night before, when one of Adam's kids squished one of Dave's chicks. It was the runt. Adam is very sorry.

The radio show ran out of time at five. The podcast extra finishes the list. Dave's daughter Mary finally gets her spicy honey pizza at Andolini's, and Adam lands on the item he never wrote down the first time: practice enjoying the life you're building. Dave wants a progress report in three months.

Raise your glass.

Estimated. The transcript has no timing data, so these are calculated from word count at an average speaking pace (about 11,800 words, roughly 72 minutes). Expect drift of a minute or two, more if intro music runs before the cold open. Spot-check a few against the audio before publishing. Sponsor reads are left out of the chapter list.

00:00 If your wife dies first, do you remarry?

05:40 Adam's take: a companion in the pursuit of holiness

07:27 Pray for our wives, and holy obedience by text

08:22 Harvest day: cows to the processor

09:02 Water leaks and the clock nobody set back

12:02 In the glass: a 15-year Benrinnes from the SMWS

12:37 The yummy scale, in persona Jim

13:41 Thank you, patrons

15:06 How this week's topic came about

19:53 Why a man needs a periodic reset

21:50 Survival mode and checking boxes

25:21 Ten things to get back to

26:26 1. Keep pursuing your wife

28:31 "I chose her. You guys just showed up later."

31:01 An hour a week on social media

32:12 2. Give your family your best attention

34:44 The project list that never ends

36:12 Ordinary conversations open the door to hard ones

37:38 3. Make faith a daily family practice

40:15 The family as an act of stewardship

41:26 4. Become a man who's easy to tell the truth to

44:15 The squished chick

44:53 It's not about the nail

45:41 5. Take care of your body while you still have choices

47:30 Genuflecting at 70

48:16 The podcast extra begins

48:40 6. Keep commitments manageable and agree on "enough"

50:45 7. Give each child a relationship of their own

52:57 First-Monday Adoration and a daddy-daughter date

55:47 8. Teach responsibility through shared work

58:11 Davey and the eggs

1:00:13 9. Invest in a few good friendships

1:03:34 "They're not as busy as I am"

1:05:17 10. Practice enjoying the life you're building

1:07:38 Would Warren Buffett trade it all back?

1:09:04 Orienting your mind to God, and getting outside

1:11:16 The three-month progress report

• Remarrying after your spouse dies: why young kids change the math, and why marriage is a vocation to discern rather than a choice you make
• Ordering your wife, under holy obedience, not to die first, and whether that works by text
• Harvest day on the farm, and why a water leak can be offered up for your sanctity
• The habit of stepping back to reassess your vocation the way you'd review anything else you care about
• How a father slides into survival mode, triaging his family and checking boxes
• Why your wife comes first when kids and work will eat every hour you hand them
• Logistics talk versus real conversation in a busy marriage
• Typing emails under the table, and giving your kids your full attention
• The home project list that never ends, and what kids hear when Dad is always too busy
• Faith as a daily family practice, not just a crucifix on the wall
• The family as an act of stewardship, and the parable of the talents
• Becoming a man your kids can tell the truth to, and not taking a broken rule personally
• Taking care of your body now so you can genuflect at 70
• One-on-one time with each child, and chores that don't rotate
• Friendships that prepare you for friendship with Christ, and learning to enjoy the life you're building

Spiritual reading:

• St. Francis de Sales
• Fr. Louis Lallemant, SJ, The Spiritual Doctrine of Fr. Louis Lallemant (Cor Jesu Press), the subject of several past TCMS episodes

Scripture:

• The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30; compare the parable of the minas, Luke 19:11-27)

People:

• Fr. Robert Williams, parochial vicar at the Church of St. Benedict, Broken Arrow, and the guest on the October 22 episode on ordinary mysticism ("My goal is to be able to genuflect when I'm 70")
• Mark Gabriel, friend of the show
• Jim, keeper of the yummy scale, scored in absentia
• Warren Buffett

Around the house and the culture:

• It's Not About the Nail, Jason Headley's short film
• Dire Straits, "Sultans of Swing"
• Andolini's Pizzeria, Tulsa, and the spicy honey pizza
• Daylight saving time, which ended Sunday, November 1, 2026

In the glass:

• Scotch Malt Whisky Society single cask, 15-year-old Benrinnes (Society distillery No. 36), Speyside. The guys say the label calls it the "Mic Drop Dram," one bottle in a tasting-panel series with no tasting notes printed. Proof and cask number weren't given on air

Support the show:

• patreon.com/thecatholicmanshow, which keeps the show and the annual Camp Out running

Sponsors:

• OréMoose, code TCMS for 30% off
• Select International Tours
• Alto by Ascension, code TCMS10 for 10% off

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)

Lady Pamela's birthday was the day before they recorded, and Adam wanted a full report. Did she have a good day? Dave was pretty sure she did. She got a nap. Did he actually ask her? He did, he says, and her brother, a priest, drove in for the family get-together, so we'll take his word for it. Happy birthday, Lady Pamela. Anyone who puts up with Dave full time is racking up serious sanctity.

Sponsors:

OréMoose Leather goods from real craftsmen, built to outlast you and end up in your grandson's hands. Use code TCMS for 30% off everything at oremoose.com. Made in America for the glory of God.

Alto by Ascension Praying the Liturgy of the Hours next to guys who know the ribbons cold can scare you off. Alto takes the guesswork out with Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings, reflections and a short monthly study, printed and mailed to you every month. Advent starts November 29. Code TCMS10 takes 10% off.

Select International Tours Before Adam and Dave led their first pilgrimage, everybody they asked gave them the same name. After traveling with Select, they get why. Wherever you're hoping to go, start at selectinternationaltours.com.

Then, out of nowhere: how do you feel about quantum computing? Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" came up, and so did Microsoft's Majorana chip, but nobody could say what entangled photons have to do with two plus two. Spanish blockchain remains the leading theory. Somehow that led to the Second Coming, and then to dying well. If a man's last moments are the enemy's last shot at his soul, expect a fight, and expect grace to abound even more. Keep St. Joseph, patron of a happy death, close.

Ten years in, that's officially a new segment. They toasted it with a Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottling of 16-year-old Caol Ila, all Islay peat and smoke at 112 proof. A sipper, not an everyday bottle.

Adam brought the main topic. The Catechism recalls the "sins that cry to heaven" in paragraph 1867, and the old catechisms count four. Wherever Scripture names one, you hear the same Latin root as Psalm 130's De profundis clamavi: a cry. What sets these sins apart is that the victim has almost no hope of justice in this life, so he cries out to the only Judge who can deliver it.

First, murder. "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground," God tells Cain, and a dead man can't take anyone to court. Abortion and euthanasia keep this one current. Asked what a man can do, Dave started with prayer: for years he and Adam kept a weekly Rosary outside an abortion clinic that has since closed. Then give. Pregnancy centers like GoLife Medical and Birthright of Tulsa are on the front lines.

Second, the sin of Sodom, which the guys call carnal sins against nature. The victim is the natural order itself, which is why human courts have never handled it well. Nobody would defend eating chips and salsa with your eyes. We only lose our nerve about what the body is for below the belt.

Third, oppression of the poor, the widow and the orphan. God's warning in Exodus 22 is about as blunt as Scripture gets. The guys see the modern version in the fatherlessness epidemic: a father's burdens were made for his shoulders, and when he drops them they land on a wife and kids who were never built to carry them.

Last, defrauding the laborer, which caught Adam off guard the first time he read the list. Dante makes sense of it. In the Inferno, lust sits near the top of hell and fraud sits below murder, because a murderer usually knows what he did was wrong. The fraudster has to convince himself that the evil he does is the good he seeks. "To deprive an employee of his wages is to shed blood," says Sirach.

Stick around for the podcast extra, where no political party is going to save you, and Dave gently reminds Adam that he does, in fact, have employees.

Raise your glass.

• Lady Pamela's birthday and the importance of actually asking your wife how her day went
• Quantum entanglement, Einstein's "spooky action at a distance," and Microsoft's Majorana 1 chip
• Whether the angel choirs at the Second Coming can top Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Spiritual warfare at the hour of death, and why you want St. Joseph at your side
• Catechism 1867 and the traditional list of four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance
• The Latin clamor behind "crying out," and why these victims have no earthly recourse but God
• Cain, Abel and why murder is an attack on the first condition of society
• Practical pro-life work for men, from clinic Rosaries to supporting pregnancy centers
• The sin of Sodom, the natural order and what the body is for
• The widow and the orphan in Ruth and Exodus 22, and the fatherlessness epidemic today
• Why a man's dropped burdens become his wife's and children's crosses
• Defrauding the laborer, and why Dante ranks fraud below violence in the Inferno
• Rerum Novarum, usury and the employer's moral debt to his people
• Why Catholic teaching on just wages makes conservatives nervous, and why the Church comes before the party
• What a Catholic employer owes the people who left other jobs to work for him

Church teaching:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church 1867: "The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are 'sins that cry to heaven': the blood of Abel, the sin of the Sodomites, the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner"
• The traditional peccata clamantia (sins crying to heaven for vengeance), counted as four in the older catechisms
• Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891), on capital, labor and the just wage
• St. Thomas Aquinas on sins against nature as an injury to God, the author of nature (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 154, a. 12; paraphrased on air)
• St. Joseph, patron of a happy death; "Terror of Demons" is from the Litany of St. Joseph
• The Liturgy of the Hours, including Compline (Night Prayer)
• Excommunication as a medicinal penalty

Scripture:

• Psalm 130 (129 in the Vulgate), the De profundis: "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord"
• Genesis 4:10: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground"
• Genesis 18:20-21, the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah
• Jude 7
• The Book of Ruth
• Exodus 22:22-24: "You shall not afflict any widow or orphan..."
• Exodus 22:20-26, the first reading for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 25, 2026), including the neighbor's cloak returned before sundown
• Deuteronomy 24:14-15, paying the hired servant before the sun goes down
• James 5:4: "Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out"
• Sirach 34:22 (RSV-CE): "To take away a neighbor's living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wages is to shed blood" (34:27 in the NABRE)
• The denarius as a day's wage (Matthew 20:2)
• "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29)

Literature:

• Dante Alighieri, Inferno, especially Canto XI, where Virgil explains why the fraudulent lie lower in hell than the violent

Pro-life work mentioned:

• The weekly Rosary Adam and Dave organized outside a Tulsa abortion clinic, now closed
• The Three Hearts Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, walked in defense of the family and the sanctity of life
• GoLife Medical, free ultrasounds and pregnancy resources, including a mobile clinic in Tulsa
• Birthright of Tulsa
• The March for Life

Science, for the cold open:

• Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum chip (announced February 2025), named for the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana
• Albert Einstein's "spooky action at a distance"

From the TCMS archive:

• The episode on the virtue of vengeance
• The episode on noblesse oblige
• Past episodes on Dante's Inferno

In the glass:

• Scotch Malt Whisky Society single cask, 16-year-old Caol Ila (Society distillery No. 53), Islay, 112 proof, cask strength. Cask number and bottle name weren't given on air

Sponsors:

• OréMoose, code TCMS for 30% off
• Alto by Ascension, code TCMS10 for 10% off
• Select International Tours

Lady Pamela's text was short: the pigs are out. Dave was somewhere on the road to Clear Creek Abbey, so Adam took the call, with Dave's son Davey riding along under orders to stay quiet while Adam phoned Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith for coaching. Don't chase them, Brandon said. Shake the feed bucket and let them follow you. It worked right up to the gate, where Adam's borrowed boot sank eight inches into the mud and a 300-pound hog, still chasing the bucket, ran straight through him. He'd braced like it was the Oklahoma drill. He lost. The pigs are back in, Dave is grateful, and the bill is coming.

Sponsors:

OréMoose Leather goods made by real craftsmen, built to be handed down to your kids and grandkids instead of tossed in a drawer. Code TCMS takes 30% off everything at oremoose.com. Made in America for the glory of God.

Alto by Ascension If the Liturgy of the Hours has ever felt intimidating, Alto is the easy way in. Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings and short reflections come in one printed book every month, so you can keep it on your desk and just open it. Code TCMS10 gets you 10% off.

Select International Tours When Adam and Dave planned their first pilgrimage, Select was the name everyone gave them, and having traveled with them, they'd say the same. Leading a group or joining one, start at selectinternationaltours.com.

Dave got to Clear Creek on foot. He and this week's guest walked the Three Hearts Pilgrimage, about 35 miles from Tahlequah to the abbey in two days, with something like 2,500 other pilgrims. Dave's three oldest girls walked every step, minus a ten-yard carry when Bernadette got rocks in her shoe. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone offered the Traditional Latin Mass outdoors at the finish. Adam plans to walk it next year.

The guest is Fr. Robert Williams, last on the show as a seminarian and now the associate pastor at St. Benedict in Broken Arrow, which puts him around Adam and Dave every week. He figures that was the Lord's fastest route to his holiness. Adam poured Blue Note's new Small Batch Wheated Bourbon, 101 proof and unfiltered, and Dave, who grows an heirloom wheat called Purple Straw, enjoyed seeing two of his hobbies meet. Jim gave it a 4.98.

Asked what's been hardest since ordination, Father said it's saying no, and protecting his prayer when the to-do list insists the parish will collapse without him. It won't.

Ordinary mysticism sounds like a contradiction. Adam opened with the Catechism, which teaches that God calls all of us to mystical union with Him, even if the extraordinary signs go only to some (CCC 2014). Fr. Williams, who borrowed the phrase from John Eldredge, laid out the map. The ascetical life is our work: rooting out sin and making space for prayer. The mystical life is God's work, giving Himself to us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And because God made everything, He can meet you anywhere, including the checkout line at Reasor's if you leave the phone in your pocket.

That union doesn't stay private. Grow like the God who is love and you start loving like Him, whether you're feeding pigs or disciplining a kid. Levitation and the stigmata are given for other people's sake, so wanting the sign more than God is like parking at the road sign that says Tulsa, this way. As for the young man praying for the heaviest cross he can find, Father's answer is that a mature man asks for the right one and lets Christ help him carry it. Life isn't about avoiding suffering, he said. It's about finding a love worth suffering for.

The podcast extra gets practical, starting with the 15 and 5 rule: fifteen minutes of silent prayer a day, plus five moments of telling the Lord this is for You. Read the day's Gospel twice and sit there. Bring Him whatever has moved your heart lately. And if something has you stuck, drag it into the light with your brothers, because good things don't grow in the dark.

Local? St. Benedict is building up its Adoration schedule. Sign up for an hour at saintben.com.

Raise your glass.

• The Three Hearts Pilgrimage: about 35 miles from Tahlequah to Clear Creek Abbey in two days
• How a few dads and sons offering something hard for the restoration of the family grew into a pilgrimage of thousands
• Walking it with kids, and why you can't stop to fix a shoe
• Escaped pigs, quick mud, and Brandon Sheard's advice on getting hogs back in the pen
• Blue Note Small Batch Wheated Bourbon and the soft winter wheat behind it
• Purple Straw, the heirloom Southern wheat brought back from near extinction
• Tulsa tied for the most fruitful diocese in America
• The hardest part of being a new priest: discerning when a request is really his to do
• Why "not yet" is underrated (in a parish, if not in a marriage)
• Guarding daily prayer when the enemy says everything will fall apart without you
• How a priest prepares a homily, and why people only remember one image
• Every Mass as a wedding feast between the soul and God
• Why a great line in a homily belongs to the Holy Spirit
• CCC 2014 and the call of every Christian to mystical union with God
• The ascetical and mystical stages of the spiritual life
• Vatican II and the universal call to holiness
• Meeting God in the checkout line instead of on your phone
• How mystical union overflows into charity toward your neighbor
• Why extraordinary graces like levitation and the stigmata are given for the sake of others
• A love you can't put in a formula, for God or for your wife
• The fear that if you say yes to God, He'll leave you miserable
• Saying yes to a game of catch when you're worn out
• How the mystical life differs from the contemplative vocation
• Why a mystic father can reach people a priest never will
• Whether it's disordered to want mystical experiences
• Praying for a heavy cross, pride, and real magnanimity
• Simon of Cyrene and refusing to carry your cross alone
• The 15 and 5 rule for building a prayer life
• Silence as a Marian disposition of open hands and a fiat
• Why devotions should feed the relationship, not replace it
• Encountering the Lord in silence for the first time during Exodus 90
• Less ESPN and doom-scrolling, more of what's true, good and beautiful
• Accountability with your brothers: good things don't grow in the dark
• Feasting on heaven now, so we get what we already have an appetite for

Guest:

• Fr. Robert Williams, parochial vicar at the Church of St. Benedict, Broken Arrow (Diocese of Tulsa)

Church teaching:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church 2014: "God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all"
• The Catechism's section on prayer (Part Four)
• Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, ch. 5, on the universal call to holiness
• The Baltimore Catechism's answer on why God made us: to know, love and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next (paraphrased on air)

Saints and spiritual writers:

• Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP ("the caribou"), on the stages of the spiritual life; The Three Ages of the Interior Life is his standard work on it
• Fr. Thomas Dubay, SM, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer (Ignatius Press), recommended as the more approachable starting point
• St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (Dave's current reading)
• St. Teresa of Avila
• St. Padre Pio
• John Eldredge, the Christian writer Fr. Williams credits with the phrase "ordinary mystic" (see his Experience Jesus. Really.)

Scripture:

• The parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14 (Father's homily on the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
• Simon of Cyrene, Mark 15:21
• The fruits of the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23

Programs and places:

• The Three Hearts Pilgrimage, Tahlequah to Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, October 15-17, 2026
• Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, celebrant of the closing Mass
• Exodus 90
• Adoration sign-ups at St. Benedict: saintben.com
• Catholic World Report's "America's most fruitful dioceses" (Nov. 2025), which tied Tulsa and Nashville for first

Farm and friends:

• Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith
• Purple Straw wheat, a colonial-era Southern variety revived by Clemson University researchers from about half a pound of seed

In the glass:

• Blue Note Small Batch Wheated Bourbon Blend, B.R. Distilling Co., Memphis. Distilled in Kentucky, aged in Memphis, 101 proof, unfiltered. Mash bill 70% corn, 21% wheat, 9% barley. Jim's score: 4.98

Community:

• Book clubs on Garrigou-Lagrange on the TCMS Patreon
• Jim, back in the studio

Sponsors:

• OréMoose, code TCMS for 30% off
• Alto by Ascension, code TCMS10 for 10% off
• Select International Tours

Dave asked for a family update, and Adam finally had the one he wasn't sure he'd get to give. Baby Mary has handled every step down on her oxygen, and after a conference room full of her doctors went through her case one specialty at a time, the plan is to bring her home, likely by the end of October. She'll keep growing there on low-flow oxygen until her open-heart surgery this winter. After a year when the hard way became the normal way, the kids have finally met their sister. Adam wants everyone who's been praying to hear his thanks. Keep praying for Mary. Praise God.

Sponsors:

OréMoose Most of what we buy is made fast and made cheap. OréMoose goes the other direction, with handmade Catholic leather goods you'll pass down instead of throw out. Code TCMS gets you 30% off everything at oremoose.com.

Alto by Ascension A monthly prayer companion you can actually hold: Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings, reflections and a monthly study, mailed to your door. With Advent coming, now's a good time to start. Code TCMS10 takes 10% off.

Select International Tours The name Adam and Dave heard over and over when they planned their first pilgrimage, and the one they'd recommend now. Take a look at selectinternationaltours.com.

Dave had a milestone too. Four years after setting the goal, he slaughtered a full-grown pig by himself and scraped it until his forearms cramped and the scraper fell out of his hand. He ate some pickles and persevered. The next day his oldest girls wrapped and labeled roasts in butcher paper like seasoned farm kids. Another night the family prayed the Rosary around the fire pit, one of the kids leading from up in a tree. That led to the car Rosary, which is every morning for Adam's family right now. No shade on it, but there's a hierarchy of goods.

In the glass: Friendly Territory, a Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottling of 13-year-old Dailuaine finished in first-fill European oak PX butts. Dark cherry on the nose, velvet on the palate. Given that the topic was admonishing the sinner, the name fits.

Adam came at fraternal correction from running a company. A manager who won't correct an employee isn't being kind. He's being unfair, because the man never gets the chance to improve. Dave put it in religious terms: if charity is willing the good of the other, keeping quiet while your brother eats poison isn't charity.

Dave brought the Catechism and the old list of nine ways to share in another man's sin, silence among them. Then St. Thomas, for whom correction is an affirmative precept: it always binds, but not on every occasion. You need a reasonable hope it'll help, certainty about the sin, and a method that won't cause a bigger scandal. Adam admitted he could hide behind that first condition: I'm only 45% sure this goes well, so I'm off the hook. Dave's answer: it's a reasonable hope, not reasonable knowledge. Cowardice doesn't get a vote.

The podcast tail earns its length. Adam lays out a method he took from a pagan, Cicero, that sounds a lot like the critique sandwich, and somebody gets admonished on air for saying "rhetoric device." Then Adam hands Dave two hard cases: friends who fight the same sin, and a dad who comes back to the Faith with teenagers at home. Dave's answer to the first is the line of the night. Sin doesn't equal hypocrisy. His answer to the second starts with an apology to the kids.

Pray before you say a word. Ask your guardian angel to talk to his. Then go, because friends don't let friends sin.

Raise your glass.

• Why neither host can do an accent, and the Oklahoma drawl that New Yorkers hear as Georgia
• Recording a 20-minute ad, which is short for TCMS
• A Catholic marketplace full of prayer products, and what that says about demand for a better prayer life
• Adam's update on baby Mary: a care conference, tapering oxygen, and plans to bring her home before heart surgery
• How easy it would be to fall into anxiety without community and a prayer life
• Dave's first solo hog slaughter, forearm cramps, and persevering with pickles
• Farm kids who know how to wrap a roast in butcher paper
• A family Rosary by the fire pit, led from a tree
• October as the month of the Rosary, and the car Rosary in a hierarchy of goods
• SMWS Friendly Territory, and why it's scotch season 14 months a year
• Why managers who won't correct employees are being unfair to them
• Charity as willing the good of the other, and why it obliges us to speak
• Fraternal correction as a matter of both charity and justice, and the sin of omission for fathers who don't correct
• Admonishing the sinner on the traditional list of spiritual works of mercy
• St. Thomas on why spiritual works of mercy are nobler than corporal ones
• How silence about a brother's sin turns into gossip and backbiting
• The Catechism on cooperating in the sins of others
• The nine ways of being an accessory to another's sin
• Affirmative versus negative precepts
• The conditions that oblige you to correct: reasonable hope of amendment, certainty of the sin, and a method that doesn't cause greater scandal
• Using "reasonable hope" as a shield for cowardice
• Whether you're the right person to say it, or whether it should come from a parent or a friend
• Christ's method in Matthew 18: privately, then with witnesses, then to the Church
• Preserving your brother's good name
• Public sins and public rebuke in Aquinas, and why it takes the right person
• Excommunication as medicine, not punishment for its own sake
• Becoming a "spiritual Karen," and the beam in your own eye
• Hyperfixating on one virtue and the disorder it creates
• Cicero's method and the critique sandwich
• Can you correct a friend who struggles with the same sin you do?
• A father who comes back to the Faith with teenagers, and why he starts with an apology
• Patience and good counsel when a man's wife isn't on board yet
• Why admonishing works best in true friendship
• Asking your guardian angel to talk to the other man's guardian angel first

St. Thomas Aquinas:

• Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 33, "Of Fraternal Correction", including a. 2 (correction as a matter of precept), a. 6 (forbearing when correction would make the sinner worse), and a. 7 (public sins reproved publicly, citing 1 Timothy 5:20)
• Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 32, a. 3, on spiritual almsdeeds being better than corporal ones because the soul is nobler than the body
• Charity as willing the good of another (see Catechism 1766, citing ST I-II, Q. 26, a. 4)

The Catechism and tradition:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church 1868, on our responsibility for the sins of others when we cooperate in them
• Catechism 2447, on the spiritual works of mercy
• The traditional seven spiritual works of mercy, which put "admonish the sinner" first
• The nine ways of being an accessory to another's sin: by counsel, by command, by consent, by provocation, by praise or flattery, by concealment, by partaking, by silence, and by defense of the ill done
• Excommunication and the Church's medicinal penalties

Scripture:

• Matthew 18:15-17, correcting a brother privately, then with witnesses, then before the Church
• Matthew 7:3-5, the beam and the splinter
• Ephesians 4:26, "Be angry, but do not sin" (the "very vague Bible reference" on air)
• Matthew 13:5-6, 20-21, the seed on rocky ground
• Revelation 21:27, nothing unclean shall enter heaven

Saints and other voices:

• St. John Chrysostom, paraphrased on air on the silent friend being worse than an enemy
• Cicero, the source Adam credits for his method of delivering hard news
• Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith

In the glass:

• The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Friendly Territory, a 13-year-old Dailuaine (Speyside), ex-bourbon hogsheads, finished in first-fill European oak PX butts

Community:

• The men at the TCMS Camp Out who've been praying for Mary
• Jim, absent and admonished anyway
• Last week's guardian angels episode

Sponsors:

• OréMoose, code TCMS for 30% off
• Alto by Ascension, code TCMS10 for 10% off
• Select International Tours

Adam opened with a cross-examination. Is perseverance a virtue? Dave pleaded the Fifth. When the breaks are beating the boys, do you keep them on the run until you cross the goal line? Counsel says yes. And did that heroic virtue just re-crown the rightful champions of the 11th annual Catholic Man Show Camp Out cornhole tournament? It did. Last year's title went to Jake and Justin out of Texas on what the guys still call a technicality, the technicality being that they lost. This year Jake and Justin had them down early, a "best of 11" got announced right after the first loss, and the final games were played in the dark with Mark holding the flashlights.

Sponsors:

OréMoose David Kruse and the craftsmen at OréMoose make Catholic leather goods by hand, built to last and built to be handed down to your kids and grandkids. Made in America for the glory of God. TCMS listeners get 30% off everything at oremoose.com with code TCMS.

Alto by Ascension If the Liturgy of the Hours has ever intimidated you, Alto makes it simple. It's a monthly print prayer companion with Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings, reflections, and a monthly mini study, and it shows up in your mailbox instead of on your phone. Use code TCMS10 for 10% off.

Select International Tours When Adam and Dave set out to lead their first pilgrimage, everybody they asked said the same thing: use Select. Now they can vouch for it themselves. Leading one or joining one, start at selectinternationaltours.com.

The Camp Out stories kept coming. Brother Joseph showed up with his sheepdog and a narrow hook for snagging a back leg, and Dave rode back to camp in the back of a truck holding a roped sheep that didn't stay very roped. That mutton was born, raised, harvested and eaten on monastery land. Juan buried a whole cow head and cooked it underground for his midnight meat snack. At home, Dave put eight roosters in the freezer with help from his best chicken pluckers, the Elizabeth, Mary and Bernadette models. In the glass: Redwood Empire's Colonel Armstrong wheated bourbon out of Northern California, 94 proof. It scored a 4.01 eleventy billion on the yummy scale.

Jim was back in the studio, and he's the reason for the topic. He walked out of Mass with questions about guardian angels, and with the feast just behind them, the guys took his questions to St. Thomas. Adam walked through the Summa, Part I, Question 113, with a tip for first-time readers: read the question, jump straight to "I answer that," then go back to the objections so you don't mistake Thomas steelmanning the other side for his own view.

Some of the answers are pure comfort. Each man gets his own guardian because God's providence deals with each immortal soul one by one. As Adam put it, you're not a number on heaven's spreadsheet. Others start arguments. Thomas says Christ had no guardian angel, since as man He was guided immediately by the Word, though angels ministered to Him. Dave held his ground anyway: "I'm not willing to be wrong yet." Thomas puts the angel's arrival at birth. Knowing what we now know about conception, both hosts put it at conception instead.

Stay for the podcast tail. Thomas says angels don't grieve over our sins, and Dave made a distinction that let him disagree: no sorrow, but they'd rather we hadn't done it, and he's calling that disappointment. From there it's good angels resisting one another over the prince of Persia, and whether a demon gets assigned to every man.

They land on prayer. The one you learned as a kid still works. So does this one: before a hard conversation, send your guardian angel ahead to talk to the other man's.

Raise your glass.

• Adam's cross-examination of Dave on the virtue of perseverance, and Dave's Fifth Amendment defense
• Re-crowning the champions of the 11th annual Camp Out cornhole tournament, played in the dark by flashlight
• Three days at the Camp Out without touching a phone
• Camp Out conversations on fatherhood, marriage and NFP, with men from their early twenties to their seventies
• Brother Joseph's sheepdog, a shepherd's leg hook, and restraining a sheep in the back of a truck
• Why mutton's bad reputation is totally unjustified
• Juan's buried cow head and the midnight meat snack tradition
• "Harvested" versus "slaughtered," per Brandon Sheard
• Dave's eight roosters and the Elizabeth, Mary and Bernadette model chicken pluckers
• Redwood Empire's wheated bourbon and the case for cube roots
• Feast days of St. Faustina and St. Bartolo Longo, the satanic priest who became the Apostle of the Rosary
• Fr. Bonaventure Chapman's case for St. Faustina as a Doctor of the Church
• Why it isn't quite right to count how many angels are in a room
• How to read the Summa without getting lost in the objections
• Peter's angel breaking him out of prison in Acts 12, and Rhoda leaving him knocking at the door
• "Their angels always behold the face of my Father": the Lord's own words in Matthew 18
• Do men even need guarding if they have free will?
• One angel per man, and why God deals with each soul one by one
• Whether you can ask for a second guardian angel, or a legion
• Why guardian angels don't get "recycled"
• The nine choirs of angels and why St. Michael, an archangel, still commands them
• Angels over nations: the prince of Persia in Daniel and the Angel of Portugal at Fatima
• Public versus private revelation
• Did Christ have a guardian angel? Thomas says no
• Birth, baptism or conception: when your guardian angel's charge begins
• Can a baby be spiritually attacked before the age of reason?
• Is your guardian angel ever disappointed in you?
• Can good angels be in discord, and can that discord persist?
• Is a demon assigned to every man in mockery of the heavenly order?
• The "Angel of God" prayer and its partial indulgence
• Sending your guardian angel to talk to the other person's before a tense meeting
• Your guardian angel as the saint who has a devotion to you

The main text:

• St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 113, "Of the Guardianship of the Good Angels". Its eight articles ask whether men are guarded by angels; whether each man is guarded by an angel; whether guarding men belongs only to the lowest order; whether angels guard all men; whether the guardian is appointed from birth; whether he ever forsakes a man; whether angels grieve for the ills of those they guard; and whether there can be strife among the angels

Scripture:

• Acts 12:1-17, Peter freed from prison, Rhoda at the door, and "It is his angel" (12:15)
• Matthew 18:10, "their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven"
• Daniel 10:13, the prince of the kingdom of Persia and the help of Michael
• Matthew 4:11, angels ministering to Christ
• Luke 1:26-38, the Archangel Gabriel sent to Mary

Saints, theologians and teaching:

• Pseudo-Dionysius and the nine choirs of angels, along with St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure
• St. Gregory the Great, Moralia, cited by Thomas on the prince of Persia as a good angel
• St. Augustine, Confessions I, on the jealousy of a nursing infant
• Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, on the theological opinions about when the guardian is assigned
• St. John Paul II on the human person from conception (see Evangelium Vitae 60)
• Catholic Answers (catholic.com), on the claim that ordination brings an additional guardian angel
• St. Michael the Archangel, and the meaning of his name, "Who is like God?"
• The "Angel of God" prayer (Angele Dei), which carries a partial indulgence in the Enchiridion of Indulgences

Feast days and shout-outs:

• St. Faustina Kowalska, feast October 5
• St. Bartolo Longo, feast October 5, canonized by Pope Leo XIV on October 19, 2025, a Dominican tertiary and the "Apostle of the Rosary"
• Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, OP, and his recent TCMS episode making the case for St. Faustina as a Doctor of the Church
• The Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph
• Joey Spencer and his earlier TCMS episode on angels (on YouTube)
• Our Lady of Fatima and the 1916 apparitions of the angel

Camp Out and the farm:

• The 11th annual Catholic Man Show Camp Out at Clear Creek Abbey
• Brother Joseph of Clear Creek and his sheepdog
• Jake and Justin (Texas), Mark on flashlight duty, Keith Lee and Sean at the chess board, and Juan's cow head
• Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith
• chess.com and bullet chess

In the glass:

• Redwood Empire Whiskey, The Colonel Armstrong Wheated Bourbon, 47% ABV (94 proof), a blend of sourced high-wheat bourbons and Redwood Empire's own distillate, aged in Northern California. John Muir's "going to the woods is going home," as read from the label on air

Pop culture:

• The Beach Boys, "Help Me, Rhonda"
• The Beatles, "Let It Be"
• 300 and its version of Xerxes

Sponsors:

• OréMoose, code TCMS for 30% off
• Alto by Ascension, code TCMS10 for 10% off
• Select International Tours

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)
• Jim (in studio)

Eleven years now the monks of Clear Creek have let a field full of Catholic men camp on their land, and Adam opened the show by thanking Fr. Francis Bethel for the charity it takes to put up with them. Father said they don't bother the monks at all. They do their best to keep it that way. Adam admitted he feels something every time he drives onto the property, and Father said that's what people tell him all the time: they come through the front gate and feel peace. For the monks, that's not an experience. That's just Tuesday. This one was recorded live at Eagle's Landing in front of a camp audience, with a chess game going a few feet away and a sudden downpour hammering the tent halfway through. Father didn't flinch.

Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave decided to lead their first pilgrimage, they asked around about who to work with, and the same name came back every time. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they've got ready for you.

Father's new book is From Silence to Silence: A Benedictine Pilgrimage to God's Sanctuary (TAN Books), and he built it like a journey. He wishes it had drawings. The first one would be a man whittling a staff, which is the equipment chapter: faith, hope, charity, the faculties God already put in you. Then the man walks into a rough, dark woods with no path. That's where the ascetical work happens: exterior silence, ordering the passions and the imagination, learning to use words for God. Then a path appears and you can see a church glimmering in the distance, and the meditation begins on God's transcendence, his beauty, his love. Then you find the sanctuary sits on top of a cliff you can't climb, and God has to lift you the rest of the way. The last part is a man at the window, looking in. Father ends the book with St. Augustine, who finished On the Trinity as an old man after starting it young, longing to enter the silence where we'll all say one word together.

The distinction that runs through the whole conversation is that silence isn't the same thing as the absence of noise. The absence of noise is neutral. The silence Father is after is rich, full, ordered. It's St. Francis up all night repeating "My God and my all," a handful of words carrying his whole life. It's Aquinas laying down his pen and calling the Summa straw. You only get there after a lot of meditating on God, and then all of it gathers into one loving gaze.

Why does it matter? Because without it you get torn in every direction by your emotions and the images coming at you all day. Father quoted a priest friend who preached a retreat at Clear Creek: God wants you to do what you're doing, and the devil wants you to do everything but what you're doing. He quoted St. Bernard too. If you want to clean the inside, shut the windows and keep the dust out.

Then the practical part. Father walked through the monastic day, from the Great Silence after Compline to the only real social time, which is recreation after lunch. One of the guys described the version he runs at home: quiet until eight every morning, a minute of silent prayer for every year of your age, then chores in silence. Father's advice on how much time to give: John Senior used to say tithe it, a tenth of your day, plus a day of retreat a month and a few days a year. And his favorite line of the night came from the old monks at Fontgombault who'd lived through World War II. It's very hard to pray during a bombardment, they were told. They answered that it's quite easy to pray during a bombardment if you're actually being bombed.

Stick around for the podcast tail, where Father tells the story of John Senior telling an EWTN audience to smash their televisions, and the old man who never stopped wishing he'd been a cowboy.

Raise your glass.

• Eleven years of the TCMS Camp Out on the grounds of Clear Creek Abbey
• Why people say they feel peace the moment they come through the front gate
• Pax and Ora et Labora as the "unofficial" Benedictine mottos
• How TAN Books came to Fr. Bethel asking for a Benedictine voice, and his one-word answer when they proposed silence
• His first visit to Fontgombault, arriving just in time for Vespers, and the presence he felt as the monks came in to a single bell
• The book's four-part pilgrimage: the staff, the dark woods, the cliff, and the window into the sanctuary
• Why the spiritual life starts with looking at God, not with self-purification
• Exterior silence, ordered passions, and the silence of words
• Meditating on God's transcendence and beauty as a path toward his silence
• Why there's always a silence beyond our true ideas about God
• Aquinas calling the Summa straw, and St. Francis repeating "My God and my all" through the night
• How a monk writes a book an hour at a time, and why gluing old talks together didn't work
• Whether a man can grow spiritually without silence at all
• Spiritual conversion and moral conversion as the two sides of the interior life
• "God wants you to do what you're doing, the devil wants you to do everything but what you're doing"
• Photography, images, and how recent the problem of pornography really is
• Why so many people are afraid of silence and fill their lives with noise
• Silence versus the absence of noise, and why the second one is neutral
• St. Bernard on shutting the windows to keep out the dust
• Teaching that flows from interior silence, and why John Senior is the example that comes to mind
• Why God's language is silence: the one Word the Father speaks, in St. John of the Cross
• Why God doesn't just send you an email with his will for your life
• Custody of the senses at work, and St. John of the Cross on the images you weren't looking for
• The vice of curiosity, the internet, the news cycle, and a phone that distracts you even when it's off
• Whether the monks order from Amazon
• The monastic Great Silence, from Compline to Prime, and the rhythm of a monk's day
• Why monks don't talk in the church or in the halls outside the cells
• Bringing the Great Silence home: quiet until eight, a minute of prayer per year of age, chores in silence
• How much time a husband and father owes God: John Senior's tithe of the day
• A day of retreat a month, a few days a year, and Ember Days at Clear Creek
• Praying during a bombardment, according to the monks who survived one
• Whether silence can become utilitarian, and why it's about a relationship, not nirvana
• Silence, patience, and how growing in one virtue grows the others
• Ejaculatory prayers, and nourishing silence with a few words from time to time
• Will heaven be silent or full of singing? Both at once
• John Senior, Fr. Fessio, EWTN, and "smash your TVs"
• John Senior running away at 13 to be a cowboy, and still wishing it at 75
• Wonder and silence in John Senior and Dennis Quinn
• Who the book was written for: lay beginners, with a hope that a lot of nuns read it too

Guest:

• Fr. Francis Bethel, OSB, monk and subprior of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, professed in 1977 and ordained in 1983, one of the founding monks who came from Fontgombault, and a teacher of dogmatic theology at the abbey

Fr. Bethel's books:

• From Silence to Silence: A Benedictine Pilgrimage to God's Sanctuary (TAN Books, 2025). Available from the Clear Creek gift shop
• John Senior and the Restoration of Realism, his earlier book, which he said took about ten years

Places:

• Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, Hulbert, Oklahoma
• Abbey of Notre-Dame de Fontgombault, France, the motherhouse of Clear Creek
• Eagle's Landing, the Camp Out site at Clear Creek

Saints and spiritual writers:

• St. Augustine, On the Trinity (De Trinitate), and its closing prayer about saying "one thing" together in God. Augustine's own line about the work, that he began it as a young man and published it as an old man, comes from his prefatory letter to Bishop Aurelius
• St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologiae, and calling his work straw near the end of his life
• St. Francis of Assisi, "My God and my all"
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on shutting the windows to keep out the dust (paraphrased on air)
• St. John of the Cross, on the one Word the Father speaks in eternal silence
• St. Ephrem the Syrian, quoted on air on speech as silver and silence as gold (attribution as given on air; the saying is best known as a proverb)
• St. Paul, praying that we have a sense of God's will
• St. Teresa, on her calm and getting things done quickly (the saint was not clearly named on air)
• Dom Paul Delatte, Benedictine abbot of Solesmes, and his Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, read in the monastery
• The old monks of Fontgombault who lived through World War II

Teachers and authors:

• John Senior, the Integrated Humanities Program, and his influence on the founding of Clear Creek
• Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, and the Ignatius Institute
• Mother Angelica and EWTN, "the Queen"
• Dennis Quinn, Fr. Bethel's godfather, and Iris Exiled: A Synoptic History of Wonder
• Will James, Smoky the Cowhorse, John Senior's favorite cowboy author
• Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, and the guys' smashed televisions after reading John Senior

Practices:

• The monastic Great Silence, Compline to Prime
• Ember Days retreats at Clear Creek
• Ejaculatory prayers
• Silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)

Community:

• The 11th annual Catholic Man Show Camp Out and the live audience at Eagle's Landing

Fr. Bonaventure Chapman came back to Tulsa, and the night before this recording he stood in front of a room of men and talked about prayer. Adam woke up the next morning, remembered what Father said, actually did it, and reported back that it helped. At least on that one day. Father took the win: one day works, that's great. The line that stuck was the smallest one in the whole talk. Do a little, habitually. When his spiritual directees hand him a Lenten list, he almost never crosses anything off, because each thing on the list is usually good. He just ratchets the quantity down so they don't run straight into failure. Thirty minutes of silent prayer a day sounds holy when you're writing it down. Lent is long. Start with five, and know that five minutes a day for a year is a lot of time.

Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, everybody they asked gave them the same name. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether you're leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they already have ready for you.

The full talk on the prayer life is going to patrons, so if you want it, patreon.com/thecatholicmanshow. Everything that comes in goes back into the show. It is not yet feeding anybody's children. They haven't reached those levels of despair.

Father's definition of prayer is the setup for the whole episode. Prayer is wasting time with God, because he's worth wasting time with. He learned to say it that way as a chaplain at Providence College, where the Dominicans each took a Division I team and he got women's basketball. He told them up front he wasn't their coach and wasn't there to fix anything. He was there to waste time on them, which is how you tell somebody they're worth something valuable to you. That's what he takes prayer to be. You're not the producing agent. You showed up, you set the time apart, and even if you never touch contemplation that morning, you did the thing you were there to do.

Same logic runs through beauty. Adam still remembers standing in front of Michelangelo's David in Italy and getting hit by it harder than he expected, and he doesn't consider himself an art guy. Father used to teach philosophy of art out of Richard Wollheim's Painting as an Art, where Wollheim describes needing roughly 45 minutes in front of a single painting just to clear his head enough to see it. So Father assigned it. Thirty to forty minutes, one painting, write down what happens. He did it himself in front of a Twachtman winter scene at the National Gallery, wearing the habit, people staring. Thirty minutes in, the painting changed. The cold went warm and a house appeared that he had not been able to see. Art works on you the way truth and goodness work on you. You don't take it apart, you let it tell you something.

Then the topic: ethics as praxis, not poesis. Why doing good is not like making a cake.

Aristotle splits practical reason in two. Praxis is doing, and its target is the doer. Poesis is making, and its target is the thing made, the finished product sitting on the counter. We almost always think about the moral life in the second category, which is why we judge ourselves by outcomes. But nobody talks like that about actual making. If a man says he's a great cake maker and every cake he produces is garbage, that doesn't compute. The goodness of a maker is settled by the product. You're not allowed to say "I'm a good carpenter, the house just always falls down." Father's point is that a man can be a lousy cake maker, a lousy air traffic controller, a lousy software developer, and still be a good man. Mother Teresa was not, as far as anybody knows, a baker.

So what makes a man good is what he does, not what he produces. Ethics comes from character, and character is habit. Virtue is the power to do the thing you're for. The knife is a good knife because it's sharp and heavy, and it's a good knife sitting in the drawer, not only while it's cutting. Honesty works the same way. You build the habit so that when somebody asks you a question you don't have to run the math. You just tell the truth and then deal with whatever comes.

Dave pushed back on the ends and the means, and Father's answer is the hinge of the episode. Of course the ends don't justify the means, if by "end" you mean the external result. But the real end of the moral life is you. The good man is the end. Which means the end does justify the means, because the means are you, acting. There's almost no space between them in a person. A bad act always produces a bad result inside the man who does it, no matter how well the situation turns out.

Adam raised the obvious objection: doesn't that collapse into egotism, where I'm just farming my own soul and calling it virtue? Father's answer is that acting is outward by nature. You don't tell the truth in a vacuum, you tell it to a person in a situation. You don't forgive in the abstract, you forgive somebody who may well take advantage of you afterward. The act reaches out even though the character it forms is yours. And for Aristotle the common good sits above the individual anyway. For us it's better still, because the highest good is a person you can actually be friends with, which Aristotle had no room for. He couldn't make sense of relating ethically to a god at all. Show him the Annunciation and he'd say Mary owes that being nothing, because you don't share a nature with it.

Then the hard question. Where does the standard come from? Aristotle says virtue is a mean determined by reason as the prudent man would determine it, which sounds like a circle, and Father grants that it is one. Aristotle was an empiricist. He found out what a good knife was by handling knives, and he found out what a good man was by watching good men. The trouble is we might pick wrong and end up admiring power. St. Francis of Assisi would not have impressed Aristotle for one minute. Too humble, not magnanimous enough, not getting anything done. But we were handed the answer key. The saints are our moral exemplars, which is why Benedict XVI treated them as the living interpretation of the Gospel, and why Paul could say imitate me as I imitate Christ.

The takeaway is practical, in the real sense of that word. When you're stuck, don't ask what result you can engineer. Ask what a good man does here. Socrates settled it in the Crito: we would rather suffer injustice than do it, because suffering is something that happens to you and doing is something that is you. Father uses the same test in the confessional. Was this a happening or a doing? Were you engaged in it, or did it land on you? Most of us don't sin out of malice. We sin out of weakness, backed into a corner where one small wrong thing looks like it solves the bigger problem. That's making, not doing. Your job was never to manufacture the good outcome. Your job was to be good.

Raise your glass.

• Fr. Bonaventure's talk to Tulsa men on the prayer life, and the full recording going to patrons
• Why he cuts the quantity, not the items, when spiritual directees hand him a Lenten list
• Starting at five minutes of mental prayer instead of thirty, and why "Jesus did it, I can do it" is not a plan
• Setting the time apart as the thing you actually owe, whether or not the prayer "produced" anything
• Prayer as wasting time with God, because he's worth wasting time with
• Chaplain to Providence College women's basketball, and telling a team you're there to waste time on them
• Standing in front of Michelangelo's David and getting hit harder than you expected
• Richard Wollheim's 45 minutes in front of one painting, and the assignment Father gave his students
• The Twachtman winter scene that changed at the 30 minute mark, and the house that appeared in it
• Why art has to work on you, the way truth and goodness do, instead of being taken apart
• Ethics as character, not as a list of oughts handed down from outside
• Aristotle in the lagoon: the naturalist who studied octopuses and asked what makes a thing a good one
• What makes a knife a good knife, and why virtue means power
• Praxis and poesis: doing aims at the doer, making aims at the thing made
• "I'm a good cake maker, I just can't make good cakes," and why that doesn't compute
• Mother Teresa was probably not a baker, an air traffic controller, or a software developer
• Why judging the moral life by results quietly turns you into a product manager of your own soul
• The ends don't justify the means, except that the end is you, so in a sense they do
• Why a bad act always produces a bad result inside the man doing it
• Habits as the content of character, and telling the truth without running the math first
• Is this egotism? Why acting is outward facing even when the character formed is yours
• Aristotle's problem with the Annunciation, and why he couldn't be friends with a god
• Kant versus Aristotle on what you owe a rational being that shows up in your room
• Virtue as a mean determined as the prudent man determines it, and whether that's a circle
• Aristotle the empiricist: finding the standard by watching people who actually live well
• Why St. Francis of Assisi would not have impressed Aristotle
• The saints as the answer key, and Paul saying imitate me as I imitate Christ
• Plato is great on triangles and terrible on toads
• Why you've never seen a real triangle, and why that toad is a real toad
• Eudaimonia, and a criterion for the good life that stops at the natural
• How the Catechism structures the moral life around the commandments but fills it with the virtues
• Students, AI, and a professor who says just turn in the garbage, I care about you
• Socrates in the Crito: we would rather suffer injustice than do it
• The confessional question: was this a happening or a doing?
• Why we sin through weakness far more than through malice
• Being engineers and economists in America, and treating every moral question like a scale

Guest:

• Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, OP, Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph, assistant professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, formerly professor of philosophy and chaplain at Providence College, and a host of the Godsplaining podcast. He mentioned a recent Godsplaining episode on Descartes, "the greatest Catholic philosopher," which you are free to go argue with.

Philosophers and thinkers:

• Aristotle (384 to 322 BC), on virtue, character, praxis and poesis. The praxis/poesis distinction and the definition of prudence are in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4 to VI.5; the definition of virtue as a mean "determined by reason, as the man of practical wisdom would determine it" is Nicomachean Ethics II.6
• Plato, the theory of forms, and the Crito
• Socrates on preferring to suffer injustice rather than do it. In the Crito (49b to 49c) Socrates gets Crito to agree that one must never do wrong, not even in return for wrong. The sharpest "better to suffer injustice than to commit it" formulation is in the Gorgias (469b to 469c)
• René Descartes, the a priori method, and the man thinking in the heated room
• Immanuel Kant, duty, and what you owe any rational being
• St. Thomas Aquinas and the medievals, and how Aristotle came into the Church through them
• Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, delivered at the National Gallery of Art in 1984, published 1987). Father said "94 or something" on air; the lectures were 1984

Saints and Church sources:

• St. Francis of Assisi, as the exemplar Aristotle would have walked right past
• Pope Benedict XVI on the saints as interpreters of the Gospel. See Verbum Domini 48 to 49, on the saints and the interpretation of Sacred Scripture
• St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ"
• The Annunciation, Luke 1
• The Catechism of the Catholic Church, moral life section, structured on the Ten Commandments with the content carried by the virtues (for example, temperance regarding the sexual appetite treated under the Sixth Commandment)

Art:

• Michelangelo's David, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence
• John Henry Twachtman, American impressionist. The National Gallery of Art holds several of his snow scenes, including Winter Harmony (c. 1890 to 1900). Father did not name the painting on air beyond "winter something or other"

Notes for accuracy:

• Father said ethics comes from "ethnos." The Greek root is ēthos (ἦθος), meaning character or habit, which gives ēthikos. Ethnos is a different word meaning nation or people
• Virtue does come from virtus, which is rooted in vir, man. The word "virus" in the same breath was a slip of the tongue, not an etymology
• The transcript renders the Annunciation as "enunciation" and Godsplaining as "God's Blaining." Both are transcription artifacts

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)

Community:

• Patreon, where the full talk on the prayer life is going

Adam opened by asking Fr. Bonaventure Chapman to explain his love of toads, and Father asked back whether this was going to be the essay version. It was. It started with Hopper, a good-looking male toad caught on Mother's Day when Father was a kid, the first real pet in the house. You can tell a male toad by the forearms, which he needs for holding on. But a pet is a deposit, and theology is what you do with a deposit. Every animal exists because it is supposed to, and each one reflects some attribute of God, because God is infinite and nothing finite can carry all of Him at once. So the attributes get spread out. Power goes to the lion. Strength to the ox. Purity to the swan, penetrating sight to the eagle. Mosquitoes remain an open question Father intends to raise personally when he gets up there. Toads carry the hard one: aseity. They look like rocks, but they are alive. You nudge one and it does not flee, does not panic, does not perform. It looks back at you with a plain so what. It is not depending on you. It is fine without you. That is what God is like.

Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, every person they asked gave them the same name. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether you are leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and look at what they have ready for you.

David countered with the platypus, which he and his buddy Thomas Lackey have decided is the noblest of animals and has to be either the first thing God made or the last. First, because He had been looking forward to creation for all eternity, led with His best material, then realized He had better slow down and give everything after that one good idea apiece. Or last, because He had already made everything else and thought, what if mammal, but with venom in the heels, and it lays eggs, and it has a bill. Then He stopped out of mercy. Michael filed a friendly amendment on behalf of the finite intelligences. Australia went on record as the test lab.

Then the topic, and it is a big one. Father's case is that St. Faustina Kowalska should be named a Doctor of the Church, and that the Year of Mercy was the obvious moment to do it. A doctor is not honored for her own sake any more than a saint is canonized for his. Both are given to us, pro nobis. A doctor is someone whose vantage point lights up an aspect of the faith the rest of us were walking past. Augustine gets grace. Bernard of Clairvaux gets the mellifluous tongue. Bonaventure gets the seraphic love. It is not competition, it is refraction, one pure white light through a prism, and the doctors are how we see the colors.

Faustina has a doctrine, and the doctrine is mercy. Her work is the Diary, which is not a treatise but a record of a woman talking to Jesus and writing down both halves of it. That is the part Father loves. You are not reading a transcript of revelation, you are in the church balcony listening to a saint pray, and she tells you what she thought about what He said, how the sisters reacted, what she wanted to do next. Bible and the Diary is his desert island list.

Here is the objection, and Father takes it seriously because Thomas takes it seriously. Mercy cannot be the greatest attribute of God simply speaking. Mercy is pity toward a sufferer and a desire to heal it, which means it depends on somebody suffering. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not need mercy from one another. God's greatest attributes have to be the ones He has with nothing else but Himself: intellect, will, love. Deus caritas est. Thomas allows that mercy is greatest secundum quid, for us, because our condition means mercy is the shape His love takes when it reaches us. So when Jesus tells Faustina to proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God, you can start to wonder whether the Diary is reliable.

It is a translation problem, and it is the best thing in this episode. Jesus is speaking Polish to a poor, uneducated Polish girl, and Polish does something no other language does here. In Latin, mercy is misericordia, from miser, wretchedness, plus cor, heart. Pity of the heart. English, German, and the rest all run mercy and love back to separate roots. Polish does not. Miłosierdzie sounds exactly like misericordia, but its root is not misery. It is miłość. Love. So the word is not pity of the heart, it is love of the heart. The deeper love. When Christ tells her to proclaim mercy as His greatest attribute, He is telling her to proclaim the deepest love.

And she already showed you this, back at Diary 180, where she writes that the third attribute is love and mercy, miłość i miłosierdzie, and the verb is singular. Not two things. One. By the time you get to 301 the shorthand is already established.

Which is why it matters. We treat mercy as a second act of the will. I am supposed to love you, and then if you wrong me I have a separate question to answer about whether to be merciful. Two decisions. For God there is only one. He does not love us into being, watch us sin, and then convene a divine moment to decide whether to bother. Mercy is His steadfast love refusing to stop. You love someone, they walk away from you, and you keep going toward them. You just have to go farther. That is not a different love, it is the same love gone deeper, which is what the sierdzie is doing in the word. It is not a lifeguard deciding whether to blow the whistle or go in the water. Going in is who He is.

Run that lens over everything else and it starts opening doors, which is Father's actual pitch for what he calls Faustinianism, a school of thought alongside Augustinianism and Thomism. It makes sense of the hard line in the Diary about the greater sinner having the greater right to His mercy. More love for the ones who need more love. That is not scandalous, it is arithmetic.

On the podcast, which you should go subscribe to, the guys keep Father for the harder questions. Whether God loves anyone without mercy. Whether Mary is the exception, and why the Immaculate Conception turns out to be an act of mercy too. Whether God loves some people more than others, and what a glass with holes in it is doing under a waterfall. Plus how to actually read the Diary, which is one page a day for about two years, and why Father carries a holy card with her relic in it that Fr. Gregory Pine handed him right when he needed it.

Raise your glass.

• Why Fr. Bonaventure loves toads, starting with Hopper, caught on Mother's Day
• How to tell a male toad from a female toad, and why the forearms matter
• Theological biology: every animal reflects some attribute of God because nothing finite can carry all of Him
• Lions for power, oxen for strength, swans for purity, eagles for penetrating sight
• The outstanding question of mosquitoes, to be raised in person
• Why the toad is the best living image of God's aseity and impassibility
• The toad's "so what," and a God who is perfectly happy whether or not you show up
• The platypus as the noblest of animals, and whether it was God's first idea or His last
• Australia as the containment lab, and Michael's friendly amendment on behalf of the angels
• Crusius on why there can be no loveless world, and why God could not have made a universe of only toads
• Why non-loving things have no interesting relation to God, and loving things do
• The case that St. Faustina Kowalska should be named a Doctor of the Church
• Why the Year of Mercy was the obvious moment and it did not happen
• What a Doctor of the Church actually is, and why doctors and saints are both given pro nobis
• The prism image: one pure white light, and the doctors are how we see the colors
• Why the Diary is unlike other spiritual classics, and what it means to eavesdrop on a saint at prayer
• Bible and the Diary as the desert island list
• The early pushback on Faustina, the mistranslations, and why the Church is rightly slow with private revelation
• Aquinas condemned in 1270 and 1277, and why being disliked is not a mark against you
• Lord Falkland's rule: where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change
• Thomas's objection: mercy depends on a sufferer, so it cannot be God's greatest attribute simply speaking
• Why the Trinity has no need of mercy, and why intellect, will, and love are the attributes up for grabs
• Mercy as greatest secundum quid, the shape God's love takes when it reaches sinners
• The Incarnation as an act of mercy, which is love for the sinner
• Why misericordia means pity of the heart and miłosierdzie does not
• The Polish root: miłość is love, so mercy is love of the heart, not pity of the heart
• Diary 180 and the singular verb, and why 301 is shorthand for something already said
• Why we treat mercy as a second act of the will and God does not
• Love that keeps going farther when the person walks away
• Why this is not the lifeguard deciding whether to blow the whistle
• Faustinianism as a school of thought alongside Augustinianism and Thomism
• "The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy," and why that stops being scandalous
• The Balthasar translation problem: dürfen is "may we hope," not "dare we hope"
• Polish as a vowel desert, and the despair of a 7 a.m. Mass in Polish
• What English is good at, what German is good at, and why English is bad at both knowing and loving
• MapQuest, GeoCities, AAA TripTiks, and when riding shotgun was a real job
• Whether God shows any love that does not involve mercy
• Why even the Immaculate Conception is an act of mercy, and the Dominican line written into the definition
• Whether God loves some people more than others, and what capacity has to do with it
• Why grace is not foam on top of a milkshake, and why God coats the glass before He fills it
• How many holes you have put in your own glass, while standing under a waterfall
• How to actually read the Diary: one page a day for about two years
• Why 301 without 180 will lead you wrong
• The Dominican novices and their "spiritual girlfriends," and how Faustina found Father in Buffalo
• Why men should read female mystics, and what a bride hears that a servant does not

Guest:

• Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, OP — Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and co-host of Godsplaining. Raised in Buffalo, converted from Protestantism, entered the Order of Preachers in 2011, ordained 2017. His research is in eighteenth-century German philosophy, especially Christian August Crusius and Pietism; his dissertation was on the Crusian core of Kant's critical project. This is his third appearance on TCMS, after episodes on SCOTUS and on modern art.

Books and works:

• Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska — Diary 301 ("Proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God. All the works of My hands are crowned with mercy") and Diary 180 ("The third attribute is love and mercy")
• Dilexit Nos (2024), Pope Francis's encyclical on the Sacred Heart
• Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm, on the fittingness of the Incarnation
• Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved?" by Hans Urs von Balthasar — German title Was dürfen wir hoffen?, which is closer to "what may we hope" than "dare we hope"
• Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas, on mercy and God's attributes
• Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
• The City of God by St. Augustine

People and saints:

• St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), Polish religious of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy
• St. Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor, condemned in 1270 and 1277
• St. Augustine, the Doctor of Grace
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Mellifluous Doctor
• St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor
• St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the Little Way
• St. Catherine of Siena
• Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity
• St. Louis de Montfort
• Bl. John Duns Scotus, on the Immaculate Conception
• Christian August Crusius (1715–1775), Lutheran Pietist philosopher, on why a created world must contain free creatures
• Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland: "Where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change"
• Fr. Gregory Pine, OP, who gave Fr. Bonaventure the Faustina relic card
• Thomas Lackey, Adam's partner in platypus theology

Latin and Polish in this episode:

• Deus caritas est — God is love
• Misericordia — from miser (wretchedness) + cor (heart), pity of the heart
• Miłość — Polish for love
• Miłosierdzie — Polish for mercy, built on miłość rather than on misery, so love of the heart
• Simpliciter and secundum quid — absolutely speaking, and in a qualified respect
• Pro nobis — for us

Podcasts and past episodes:

• Godsplaining, Fr. Bonaventure's podcast
• The TCMS winged hussars episode with Fr. Donovan, for the croissant and coffee tradition and the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary
• One more episode with Fr. Bonaventure is already recorded and coming

Community:

• TCMS Winged Hussar wine, made for the show at Water's Edge Winery in Broken Arrow. It does not ship and the winery does not stock it, so you have to get it from Adam or Dave.

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)

Dave came to Adam's house to record and brought a host, a co-host, a topic, and a bottle of whiskey. No laptop. No microphones. No headphones. No headphone amp. Second time he has pulled that off. In his defense, he already hauled a computer over there for a permanent setup so he would not have to schlep gear across town every week, and in Adam's defense, that computer is still sitting there unplugged. So they went home, came back the next night, and recorded anyway. Second night in a row. For such a time as this.

Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, every person they asked gave them the same name. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether you are leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and look at what they have ready for you.

First, the Wiffle Ball tournament. There is a tradition in the Catholic Tulsa community on Labor Day, admittedly a niche corner of it, where the Hanisch family turns their entire backyard into a real Wiffle Ball field. Scoreboard. Foul poles. Pitching mound. Dirt. Bases. Bleachers. Concession stand. Instant replay. A bubble machine that fires when somebody goes deep. Eight teams, double elimination. Adam and Dave play with Adam's brother-in-law Holden, Mark Gabriel, and Brandon Bargus under the name Wiffle While You Work. Roughly ten years of this, and they had never won it. This year they made the championship game and lost by a run, 6 to 5. Ten years ago the wives played and it was a hang. Now teams recruit former ballplayers, one of whom had a family thing come up, which Adam called lucky out loud. Shout out to Chris and Carrie Hanisch, who carry the whole ordeal, and to Mark Gabriel, who sponsored it this year. This is what it looks like when a family says we have something to offer and then offers it, every year, on purpose.

Which got Dave onto something he has been chewing on since they were all at Brandon Sheard's place for a rock put. Heaviest rock, longest throw, get the men in a line. Everybody looked at the guy who was obviously going to win, and he won, and it did not matter. The women and kids watched the men compete, and Dave watched what it did to the community. So here is the idea: whenever your friends gather, have a men's competition. Every time. Croquet, a heavy rock, flipping a quarter closest to a line, it does not matter what it is. What matters is that it is only for men, because the boys need to see it. A boy needs to look at that line and understand that he is a boy and those are men, and then he needs to be summoned across. Not by his own father. By another man in the community who calls him up and gives him the right to stand and compete. That is a rite of passage, and American culture has almost none left. It is also cheap, easy, and a lot more fun than standing around. There were zero women in the Wiffle Ball tournament this year, and there were young boys playing next to the men, faster than the men, and considerably less sore the next day.

The campout is in a couple of weeks, last weekend of September like always, and it is more than full. Brandon Sheard will be there. Tomas from Ultimo Cigar will be there. Get away, pray with the monks, see all the men. If you missed it, put next year on the calendar now.

The pour is Octomore 16.2 from Bruichladdich, a super peated Islay scotch aged five years in wine and sherry casks at 58.1 percent. A 2025 limited release. If you like peat, start with Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg, then understand that Octomore was the first distillery to put out something genuinely insane on the peat scale. Others have since gone higher in parts per million, and most of those were gimmicks that came and went. Dave's honest rule on expensive bottles is that a $200 bottle is almost never $100 better than a $100 bottle. Octomore was the first time he thought it actually was. A whiskey after his own heart.

Then the topic: the universal destination of goods, Catechism 2402, which sits under the Seventh Commandment. Thou shalt not steal. That placement tells you something. God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind, to care for it, master it by labor, and enjoy its fruits, and the goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. Not for you specifically. All of it, the oceans on planets nobody has found yet down to the bacteria underfoot, aimed at the good of mankind.

Adam gave the line the whole episode hangs on. The five acres you own are truly yours. But not merely yours.

So why private property at all? Aquinas gives three reasons, and they hold up. Industriousness, because a man tends his own garden harder than he tends the community garden, not from selfishness but because shared duty spreads thin and nobody owns the outcome. Order, because affairs run more smoothly when each man is responsible for a specific thing. And peace, because quarrels multiply when property is held in common without distinction. Buy a boat with four families and find out. Somebody leaves trash in it, somebody scrapes the hull, somebody drives it hard and it breaks down, and now you are all negotiating who pays. Adam gave the other side its due: shared ownership lowers the cost of entry, and if every man is limited to a suburban backyard there is simply no beef, because a cow needs more land than that. Four families together can afford ground that feeds all four. There is a place for each. Every community has to find the order.

The two ditches are individualism and collectivism, and this is the road between them. Private property is not a concession to greed. It flows out of what a family is. Sacred means set apart, and a family is set apart from the community by its nature, so it makes sense that a piece of creation gets set apart to match. A man needs somewhere he can say what is inside here is exclusive to my family, because the family itself is exclusive by nature. Raising your children on your own ground is not a detour from the good of mankind. It is how you serve it. Dave put it plainly: he is raising four daughters and three boys, and he needs the Minihan family raising strong holy young men, and Adam needs the same from him. Families are not sufficient to themselves. That is the debt.

All of which is stewardship. This is God's house and you are managing it, and the King is coming back to see how it was kept, and eventually He wants all of it back. Your children most of all. Their souls were handed to you to tend so that they flourish into who they were made to be, and the fruit of that gets shared with everybody.

St. John Chrysostom says surplus has to be counted as stolen goods when the wealthy ignore the destitute in front of them. Dave admitted the part that is actually hard. When he has extra eggs, he knows it instantly and gives them away gladly, no friction. Natural goods are easy to read. Man made goods are not. He cannot tell when he has a surplus of the things he bought, and he is worse at parting with them, even though they are of a lower order than food. He has too many T-shirts. He knows he has too many T-shirts. He pulls one out that has not been worn in fifteen years and hears himself say but what if. He is also fair about the old quotes on the unworn shoes in your closet belonging to the barefoot, which come from a world where a man owned one pair of shoes, not work boots and dress shoes and tennis shoes. Owning a few pairs is not theft. But if you can afford the next pair and cannot afford to give in proportion to your station, that is worth an honest look, because self love is pernicious and easy to feed.

Adam brought it back to the ground. Haylee was in Oklahoma City, he finally got the kids down, he was not feeling well, and he was in bed when he remembered the chickens were not up and the pigs had no water. He laid there a long time talking himself out of it. What he learned about himself is how easily he can do that, and how good the excuses sound. Six months ago these were the responsibilities he was praying for. Everybody does this. You want the promotion, you get the promotion, and then you resent the people and problems that came with it, when the problems were the thing you asked for. That is where virtue lives: doing the thing when nobody is watching and your appetites are voting against it. Protect what you were given. Provide for it. Establish your children so they can stand without you, because you do not want to be a helicopter dad when they are 28. And the man who buries his talent in the yard was not evil. He was just tired.

Francis de Sales, in Introduction to the Devout Life, lands it. A man may possess wealth. He must not let wealth possess his heart. Detachment is what keeps money a servant to the family first and then to the poor, in that order, because subsidiarity is real and you do not take food off your children's plates to be generous elsewhere. God does call men to wealth. The virtue of magnificence needs them. St. Peter's does not get built without them, and neither does your parish church. The question to keep asking is whether a thing gives you comfort or gives you happiness, because those are not the same and one of them will quietly own you.

Truly yours. Not merely yours. Raise your glass.

• Showing up to record a podcast with a topic, a bottle of whiskey, and none of the recording equipment
• The permanently installed computer that nobody has plugged in
• The Labor Day Wiffle Ball tournament in the Catholic Tulsa community, and the Hanisch backyard field with foul poles, instant replay, and a bubble machine
• Ten years of Wiffle While You Work, a first trip to the championship, and losing 6 to 5
• How a backyard tournament escalated from wives playing to teams recruiting former big leaguers
• A family that decides it has something to offer the community and then offers it every year
• The rock put at Brandon Sheard's house and what competition does to a gathering of men
• Why every community gathering should include a men's competition, and why it should be men only
• Rites of passage, and being summoned into manhood by a man who is not your father
• The campout, last weekend of September, full, with Brandon Sheard and Tomas from Ultimo Cigar
• Whiskey of the week: Octomore 16.2, super peated Islay scotch, five years, 58.1 percent
• Whether a $200 bottle is ever actually $100 better than a $100 bottle
• The universal destination of goods, Catechism 2402, and why it sits under Thou shalt not steal
• All of creation ordered to the good of mankind, not the good of one man
• "The five acres you own are truly yours, but not merely yours"
• Aquinas on private property: industriousness, order, and peace
• Why a man works his own garden harder than the community garden, and it is not selfishness
• The shared boat problem, and who pays when it breaks on somebody else's weekend
• The real advantages of common property, and why a backyard cannot hold a cow
• Individualism and collectivism as the two ditches, and the Catholic road between them
• Why the family being sacred, meaning set apart, requires property that is set apart
• Raising your own children on your own ground as service to all mankind, not a retreat from it
• Why no family is sufficient to itself, and the debt each family owes the next
• Stewardship, the King who comes back to inspect the house, and wanting all of it returned
• St. John Chrysostom on surplus as stolen goods when the destitute are ignored
• Why extra eggs are easy to give away and extra T-shirts are not
• Reading the old quotes about unworn shoes honestly, in a world with work boots and dress shoes
• Buying the next thing while telling yourself you cannot afford to give
• The night the chickens did not get put up, and how easily a man talks himself out of duty
• Praying for a responsibility and then resenting it once you have it
• Protect, provide, establish, and not being a helicopter dad to a 28 year old
• St. Francis de Sales: a man may possess wealth, but wealth must not possess his heart
• Wealth as a servant to the family first and then to the poor, and why that order is right
• The virtue of magnificence, and why St. Peter's needed wealthy men
• Comfort versus happiness, and knowing which one you are actually buying

Church documents:

• Catechism of the Catholic Church 2402, the universal destination of goods and the right to private property, under the Seventh Commandment
• CCC 2403, the right to private property acquired in a just way does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind
• CCC 2404, on regarding the goods you legitimately own not merely as exclusive to yourself but as common to others also
• CCC 2446 quotes the St. John Chrysostom line the guys were working from: "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them"

People and saints:

• St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q.66 a.2, the three reasons for private property
• St. John Chrysostom, on surplus and the destitute
• St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
• Wendell Berry, carried over from the previous episode on land held in trust
• Note for accuracy: the "bread you hold back belongs to the hungry, the coat in your closet belongs to the naked, the shoes rotting belong to the barefoot" passage the guys paraphrased is St. Basil the Great, from his homily on "I Will Tear Down My Barns," not Chrysostom

Scripture:

• Luke 6, the blessings and the woes: "Blessed are you who are poor" and "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation"
• The parable of the talents, and the servant who buried his

Books:

• Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales
• Living Beyond Sunday: Making Your Home a Holy Place by Adam Minihan and David Niles (Ascension Press)
• Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (free on the Amen app)
• True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort (free on the Amen app)

Whiskey:

• Octomore 16.2 (Bruichladdich), super peated Islay single malt, aged five years in wine and sherry casks, 58.1 percent ABV, 2025 limited release
• Also mentioned: Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg

Community:

• Chris and Carrie Hanisch, hosts of the Labor Day Wiffle Ball tournament
• Mark Gabriel, teammate and tournament sponsor
• Holden and Brandon Bargus, teammates on Wiffle While You Work
• Brandon Sheard, host of the rock put, and attending the campout
• Tomas of Ultimo Cigar, attending the campout
• The TCMS campout, last weekend of September, currently full

Hosts:

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)

Dave turned 40 this week, one day before they hit record, and he wants it understood that he has been looking forward to this. Thirty was a bummer. Forty is different. He expects his forties to be a decade of proficiency instead of a decade of learning how to do everything for the first time: better father, better disciplinarian, better coach, better husband, better at the farm. A decade of potency, he called it, which Adam immediately took in the least charitable direction available and turned into a bit about donating blood and testosterone at the same time. Before that, though, there was a real moment. Adam asked how his spiritual life was and Dave told the truth. He has been in a down recently, the kind where things you have always known to be sinful start to look not that bad, and the only thing that held the line was habit. Intellectual habit, built over years, doing exactly what habit is supposed to do when feeling has gone quiet. Then the piglets. Adam has been building a pig pen since last fall, thinking it through all winter, and Dave finally called to say his sow's litter was ready. Adam ran hot wire that morning, got everything set, and had the sense to put just one pig in first to see what would happen. The pig touched the hot wire, did not get shocked, backed up four steps, ran, and cleared the boards. Twenty seconds. It landed close enough that Adam caught it by a back leg. Welcome to the swine herd community.

Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Free, no paywall, no subscription. It is how Adam and Dave get their kids ready to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. Download the Amen app.

Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, everyone they asked pointed to the same name: Select International Tours. Having used them, the guys can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether leading a pilgrimage or joining one, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they have ready for you.

The pour is Pabst Blue Ribbon, which won a blue ribbon at some point a long time ago and has been telling everyone about it ever since. Adam will defend it. Not as a great beer, but as a beer that belongs in the category of things you can hand a man who walks into your house without apologizing. Oklahoma has been over 100 degrees for something like seventy straight days, all of July and all of August, and on a day like that PBR is exactly right.

Then the main topic. Wendell Berry died August 31 at home in Port Royal, Kentucky, at 92. Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, essayist, five generations on the same ground his family had worked since the early 1800s. He took degrees from the University of Kentucky, went off to the city to be a writer, got everything a young writer is supposed to want, and decided quickly that it was not what he wanted. So he went home. He farmed with horses long after he could afford a tractor. His writing cabin, 16 by 20 feet on stilts over the Kentucky River, had no electric light. He never owned a television or a computer and never sent an email in his life. He answered his mail by hand, including letters from strangers, at length, signing every one "your friend, Wendell Berry."

Dave once told Adam that Berry is his favorite person to read with whom he disagrees, and that line has stuck. Dave is not a pacifist. There are foundational places where he and Berry part ways. But reading Berry sharpened his own thinking precisely because the case on the other side was so well made, so obviously pondered and re-pondered over decades. Not rookie opinions. Not virgin thoughts. Which raises a question worth sitting with: who do you read that you disagree with? Most men cannot answer it, and that is the problem.

Berry's own account of what the land taught him: patience, because the crop keeps its own schedule and will not wait for you. Consequence, because there is no control-Z on a hillside. He plowed and dug a pond on sloping Kentucky ground and then watched it wash out, taking with it topsoil that had taken a thousand years to accumulate a millimeter at a time. Scale, because the land you keep is known intimately by you and nobody else, which spots bloom first, which die first, and holding that in your head is closer to a virtue than a skill. The body as a means of knowing, because the health of the mind proves itself in physical work. And fidelity to one place over time. Asked by NPR in 1998 what he would tell young people, he said stop some place and stay there, and learn the history of it, the names of the plants and the animals and your neighbors.

Adam brought in Josef Pieper to name what that is. Working hard is not the opposite of sloth. The opposite of sloth is the glad acceptance of your own life. A man can be busy at every hour of the day and still be a slothful man, because the busyness is a way of refusing the life he actually has.

Dave read The World-Ending Fire on Adam's recommendation and could not get past a passage early on about the difference between a path and a road. A path is submissive to the terrain. It yields to creation, goes through the trees, puts you in nature instead of over it. A path is almost a virtue, a habit of travel, a memory you relive, an inheritance you walk because others walked it first. A road does violence to it. You level the ground and go through instead of being part of it.

Which sets up the essay. In 1987 Berry published "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," and it went on to become the most reprinted thing he ever wrote, which is its own joke. He gave nine standards a new tool ought to meet: cheaper than what it replaces, no bigger in scale, demonstrably better at the work, less energy, ideally powered by something like the body, repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with ordinary tools, purchasable and repairable near home, sold by a small shop that will take it back, and the hard one, number nine: it should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, including family and community relationships. We have almost entirely stopped asking that one. We look at output and never at cost, and technology almost always charges its cost in person-to-person contact.

His three reasons were dependence, household, and self-deception. Dependence on strip-mined Kentucky coal to run the thing. Household, because the model being discarded was his wife, Tanya, his editor, his critic, his closest reader and fellow worker, and going up to date as a writer would have meant sacrificing an association he treasured and depended on. That reason is what critics went after hardest, feminism being what it was in 1987, and he answered them in print. Self-deception last, and best: he simply did not believe anyone writes better with a computer than with a pencil. Show him work demonstrably better than Dante's, demonstrably attributable to the machine, and he would speak of computers in a more respectful tone of voice, though he still would not buy one.

The guys are fair to it and to themselves. Dante is not a fair standard, since nobody in the 300 years before the computer wrote as well as Dante either. But the point underneath it holds. Berry wrote in pencil because when you cross out a word and write another above it, the path you traveled is still visible in front of you, the way a footpath is. And there is something sacramental about it. The pencil hitting the paper is the incarnation of a thought. The labor is not an obstacle to the writing. The labor is the writing, and the satisfaction of finally getting a sentence to say what you actually meant is only available to the man who did the wrestling.

Which is where AI comes in, one week after the guys spent a whole episode on it. You do not appreciate a well-kept lawn until you have kept one. You do not appreciate a tomato until you have grown one. You do not appreciate writing until you have done it. Hand the wrestling to a word-guessing machine and the sentence still arrives, but it is sterile, generic, recognizable on sight to anyone who has ever fought for a line. AI is contraceptive language. There is no fecundity in it. The guys expect a backlash, the same pullback that is already happening with social media among the young, once enough people notice what got traded away. Berry's whole vocation was to turn our minds back toward the ground. Which, as Dave pointed out, is where the first man got both his name and his job: adam from adamah, formed out of the earth and made for the earth, a husband to the soil before there was ever any sin to explain it. That is not nostalgia. That is the job. Go read him. You will not agree with everything. Neither do they. Protect the labor. Provide something you actually made. Establish a place and stay in it. May the mad farmer rest with the eternal farmer. Raise your glass.

• Whether a man actually gets wiser as he gets older, and why a sinful life makes him dumber instead
• Dave turning 40 and why he was looking forward to it in a way he never looked forward to 30
• The forties as a decade of proficiency and self-mastery instead of learning everything for the first time
• A spiritual down, and relying on intellectual habit when things you know to be sinful start looking not that bad
• Adam's two piglets from Dave's sow, and a pig pen contemplated since last fall
• A piglet clearing the boards twenty seconds after being let in, and getting caught by a back leg
• Beer of the week: Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the case for beer that is acceptable to serve a guest
• Seventy straight days over 100 degrees in Oklahoma
• Wendell Berry, dead August 31 at 92 in Port Royal, Kentucky
• Five generations on the same Kentucky ground, and leaving a city writing career to go home
• Farming with horses long after he could afford a tractor, and a writing cabin with no electric light
• Never owning a computer or a television, never sending an email, and answering strangers' letters by hand
• "Your favorite person to read with whom you disagree," and why every man should be able to name one
• What the land taught him: patience, consequence, scale, the body as a means of knowing, fidelity to one place
• The pond that washed out and took a thousand years of topsoil with it
• His 1998 NPR advice: stop some place and stay there, and learn the names of the plants, the animals, and your neighbors
• Josef Pieper on sloth as the refusal to gladly accept your own life, and the busy man who is still slothful
• The difference between a path and a road, and why a path is closer to a virtue
• "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" (1987) and the irony of it becoming his most reprinted work
• The nine standards for technological innovation, including the one nobody applies
• Standard nine: it should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, family and community included
• Counting output while never counting cost, and technology charging its cost in person-to-person contact
• His three reasons: dependence on strip-mined coal, the household, and self-deception
• Tanya Berry as his editor and closest reader, and the criticism that came for saying so in 1987
• The Dante challenge, and why it is both his weakest argument and his strongest point
• Writing in pencil so the path you traveled stays visible, and the sacramental weight of pencil on paper
• Why AI writing is recognizable to anyone who has ever fought for a sentence
• AI as contraceptive language, with no fecundity in it
• Why a backlash is coming, the way social media is already getting one
• Adam and adamah: the first man's name, the first man's job, and a vocation toward the ground

People:

• Wendell Berry (1934 to August 31, 2026), Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, and essayist
• Tanya Berry, his wife and lifelong editor
• Josef Pieper, on sloth and the glad acceptance of one's own life
• Dante, Shakespeare, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, invoked as the standard
• St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, on differing spiritualities that are not therefore wrong
• Frank Sheed and Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, recommended reading
• Nick Offerman, narrator of The World-Ending Fire audiobook

Books & Writings:

• The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, the recommended starting point, essays selected from across his career
• "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer" (1987), Berry's nine standards and three reasons, along with his published replies to his critics
• "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," his answer to the critics of that essay
• Jayber Crow and the Port William novels
• The Mad Farmer Poems
• Living Beyond Sunday: Making Your Home a Holy Place by Adam Minihan and David Niles (Ascension Press)
• Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (free on the Amen app)
• True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort (free on the Amen app)

Beer:

• Pabst Blue Ribbon

People (hosts):

• Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)
• Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)