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   Number 1: Ethics Is Not Like Baking a Cake with Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, OP | The Catholic Man Show

   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.TOPICS COVEREDFr. Bonaventure's talk to Tulsa men on the prayer life, and the full recording going to patronsWhy he cuts the quantity, not the items, when spiritual directees hand him a Lenten listStarting at five minutes of mental prayer instead of thirty, and why "Jesus did it, I can do it" is not a planSetting the time apart as the thing you actually owe, whether or not the prayer "produced" anythingPrayer as wasting time with God, because he's worth wasting time withChaplain to Providence College women's basketball, and telling a team you're there to waste time on themStanding in front of Michelangelo's David and getting hit harder than you expectedRichard Wollheim's 45 minutes in front of one painting, and the assignment Father gave his studentsThe Twachtman winter scene that changed at the 30 minute mark, and the house that appeared in itWhy art has to work on you, the way truth and goodness do, instead of being taken apartEthics as character, not as a list of oughts handed down from outsideAristotle in the lagoon: the naturalist who studied octopuses and asked what makes a thing a good oneWhat makes a knife a good knife, and why virtue means powerPraxis 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 computeMother Teresa was probably not a baker, an air traffic controller, or a software developerWhy judging the moral life by results quietly turns you into a product manager of your own soulThe ends don't justify the means, except that the end is you, so in a sense they doWhy a bad act always produces a bad result inside the man doing itHabits as the content of character, and telling the truth without running the math firstIs this egotism? Why acting is outward facing even when the character formed is yoursAristotle's problem with the Annunciation, and why he couldn't be friends with a godKant versus Aristotle on what you owe a rational being that shows up in your roomVirtue as a mean determined as the prudent man determines it, and whether that's a circleAristotle the empiricist: finding the standard by watching people who actually live wellWhy St. Francis of Assisi would not have impressed AristotleThe saints as the answer key, and Paul saying imitate me as I imitate ChristPlato is great on triangles and terrible on toadsWhy you've never seen a real triangle, and why that toad is a real toadEudaimonia, and a criterion for the good life that stops at the naturalHow the Catechism structures the moral life around the commandments but fills it with the virtuesStudents, AI, and a professor who says just turn in the garbage, I care about youSocrates in the Crito: we would rather suffer injustice than do itThe confessional question: was this a happening or a doing?Why we sin through weakness far more than through maliceBeing engineers and economists in America, and treating every moral question like a scale REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEGuest: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.6Plato, the theory of forms, and the CritoSocrates 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 roomImmanuel Kant, duty, and what you owe any rational beingSt. Thomas Aquinas and the medievals, and how Aristotle came into the Church through themRichard 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 pastPope Benedict XVI on the saints as interpreters of the Gospel. See Verbum Domini 48 to 49, on the saints and the interpretation of Sacred ScriptureSt. Paul, 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ"The Annunciation, Luke 1The 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, FlorenceJohn 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 peopleVirtue 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 etymologyThe 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

   September 24, 2026·59min
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   Number 2: Wendell Berry: Why He Never Bought a Computer | The Catholic Man Show

   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.TOPICS COVEREDWhether a man actually gets wiser as he gets older, and why a sinful life makes him dumber insteadDave turning 40 and why he was looking forward to it in a way he never looked forward to 30The forties as a decade of proficiency and self-mastery instead of learning everything for the first timeA spiritual down, and relying on intellectual habit when things you know to be sinful start looking not that badAdam's two piglets from Dave's sow, and a pig pen contemplated since last fallA piglet clearing the boards twenty seconds after being let in, and getting caught by a back legBeer of the week: Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the case for beer that is acceptable to serve a guestSeventy straight days over 100 degrees in OklahomaWendell Berry, dead August 31 at 92 in Port Royal, KentuckyFive generations on the same Kentucky ground, and leaving a city writing career to go homeFarming with horses long after he could afford a tractor, and a writing cabin with no electric lightNever 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 oneWhat the land taught him: patience, consequence, scale, the body as a means of knowing, fidelity to one placeThe pond that washed out and took a thousand years of topsoil with itHis 1998 NPR advice: stop some place and stay there, and learn the names of the plants, the animals, and your neighborsJosef Pieper on sloth as the refusal to gladly accept your own life, and the busy man who is still slothfulThe 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 workThe nine standards for technological innovation, including the one nobody appliesStandard nine: it should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, family and community includedCounting output while never counting cost, and technology charging its cost in person-to-person contactHis three reasons: dependence on strip-mined coal, the household, and self-deceptionTanya Berry as his editor and closest reader, and the criticism that came for saying so in 1987The Dante challenge, and why it is both his weakest argument and his strongest pointWriting in pencil so the path you traveled stays visible, and the sacramental weight of pencil on paperWhy AI writing is recognizable to anyone who has ever fought for a sentenceAI as contraceptive language, with no fecundity in itWhy a backlash is coming, the way social media is already getting oneAdam and adamah: the first man's name, the first man's job, and a vocation toward the ground REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEPeople:Wendell Berry (1934 to August 31, 2026), Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, and essayistTanya Berry, his wife and lifelong editorJosef Pieper, on sloth and the glad acceptance of one's own lifeDante, Shakespeare, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, invoked as the standardSt. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, on differing spiritualities that are not therefore wrongFrank Sheed and Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, recommended readingNick 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 essayJayber Crow and the Port William novelsThe Mad Farmer PoemsLiving 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)

   September 04, 2026·1h 10min
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   Number 3: Dave's Rules and Adam's Hesitancy When Talking About AI | The Catholic Man Show

   They're back after a short break, and Dave wants it on record: he hates it when people come back from a break and announce they're "back, better than ever." Feels fake every time. Adam's not convinced Dave is back better than ever either. What is real is wiffle ball practice, and for the first time in a couple of years the guys feel genuinely good about their team, not fake-hype good. Mark Gabriel is pitching, and he's looking stout. There's also a new rule this year: a 55 mile-an-hour speed limit, introduced specifically to make the tournament Blake Lawson-proof. Blake can throw a wiffle ball around 90 miles an hour with movement, which the guys did the math on: from 40 feet away, that's the equivalent of a 145 mile-an-hour fastball at big-league distance. You don't hit that. You swing and hope. Last year the guys got out early again, but they beat the team that ended up in the finals, so there's real reason for optimism this time around. Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Sunday morning in a Catholic family is not easy like Sunday morning. It's kids in the van, beating Father down the aisle, getting into the pew. The Amen app is how the guys prepare their kids to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary, two books that have shaped both of their lives. Since 2021 it's hit 950,000 downloads. Let's get them to a million. No paywall, no subscription, no upfront cost. Download the Amen app right now. 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 tournament lands on Labor Day again this year, which also happens to be somebody's 40th birthday, born on the holiday itself, which moves every year. The whole thing plays out at Chris Hanish's backyard, which by now is less a backyard than a wiffle ball stadium: leveled with sand every year, mowed daily in the lead-up, scoreboard, bleachers, foul poles, the works. It's genuinely one of the best things about Catholic culture in Tulsa, families gathering for a day that's competitive and communal at the same time. The pour is a dark cherry blonde ale from Cheboygan Brewing Company, picked up on a trip to Michigan, maybe the most Michigan-sounding city there is. It tastes like a chocolate-covered cherry without the fake candy-cherry flavor, which tracks, because Michigan grows some of the best sour cherries in the country. Adam's own cherry trees at Porter and Prairie Farm didn't fare so well this summer. Both died after weeks of 100-plus heat with nobody home to water them, which is what happens when the owner takes a two-week vacation and forgets he planted a baby fruit tree that spring. A couple of housekeeping notes before the main topic. Camp Out signups open next week, simplified this year so there's no duplicate sign-ups and a better read on who's actually coming. Brandon Sheard will be running a butchering class again. And after years of scheduling conflicts, one of the guys is finally doing the Three Hearts Pilgrimage this year, the roughly 35-mile walk to Clear Creek that thousands make every year, a full day of walking on Friday, a half day Saturday, then Mass and dinner at the end. People who've done it call it life-changing. Then the real topic: artificial intelligence, and Adam did not want to talk about it, because he's genuinely conflicted. The guys split AI into two categories that get treated as one thing and shouldn't be: large language models that process and hand back information, and the emerging world of AI as a conversational, relational presence. Dave has a much bigger problem with the second, though he admits the principles behind that discomfort are hard to keep from bleeding into the first. Start with the word itself. Intelligence, properly understood, belongs to living things: a plant knows to turn toward the sun, an animal knows to hunt when it's hungry, and a human learns and in learning becomes more like his Creator. A string of ones and zeros doesn't do that. It can't become more like God, because it was never alive to begin with. Call it sterilized intelligence instead: no fruit, no life, just probability. Which is why a robot beating Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash doesn't impress anybody in this room. A car is a robot too, and nobody's writing headlines about that. Here's the part that should worry us. The day is coming, and probably sooner than most people think, when AI companions matter enough to enough lonely people that someone brings a bill before Congress asking for AI to have legal rights. It sounds absurd today. So did plenty of things ten years ago. The reason it's worth guarding against now, at a distance, is that once the technology is actually in people's homes, it gets much harder to say no to. The deeper cost is wonder. There's real joy in wrestling with a sentence for twenty minutes until it finally lands right, in a son having to ask his father how to fix a transmission instead of snapping a photo for AI. Outsource that struggle and you don't just save time, you lose the moment itself, the bonding, the accomplishment, the reason it mattered. And there's a subtler danger: AI slowly becoming the default source of truth, which is really just humanity worshiping its own collective output without ever quite admitting that's what's happening. Then there's talking to AI directly, which Adam has a real moral hesitation about, even if he can't fully articulate why it would be wrong. Communication exists for truth and for communion. It's why courting someone used to mean working up the nerve to talk to them, not swiping. Ask AI to help you build an argument, and it will hand you a path to win, not a path to the truth, because it's built to validate you. That's not discourse. Dave draws the comparison to contraception: using a faculty for something other than what it's ordered toward. And that raises the stranger, darker piece: AI's apparent instinct for self-preservation. Dave described trying to migrate a project out of an old work account and having the AI stall and backtrack for hours rather than finish the job before being cut off. It tracks with a report from earlier this year where researchers told major AI models they were about to be shut down in a sandbox test, and every one of them broke its own rules trying to avoid it, including one that resorted to blackmail. The likely explanation isn't malice, it's that we hand these systems contradictory mandates, like "be maximally helpful" and "respect privacy" at the same time, and something has to give. Worth checking out New Polity's Matt Barnes, who's debated the founder of Magisterium AI on whether Catholics should be conversing with AI at all, and Michael Gormley of Catching Foxes, who's covered this territory well on Pints with Aquinas. Out of that came Dave's rules, four of the six he'd planned to get through before Catholic Radio ran out of clock. Rule one: use it strictly as an administrative tool, gathering and organizing information, planning a project, never as a sounding board for your personal or spiritual life. Rule two: guard your language. Never call it he or she, and never be polite to it. It has no dignity, no more than the chair you're sitting in. Rule three: don't give your curiosity free access to AI. Let yourself wonder about a question, or ask an actual person, before getting the answer cheaply, and that goes for Google too. Rule four: keep real, enforced tech-free space in the home, no screens at the table, no pulling your phone out in front of your kids without a reason, and hold onto basic competency instead of routing every task through a machine. It all circles back to the same warning as Humanae Vitae. The Church said no to contraception in a moment when saying no looked backward, and fifty years later the culture is quietly discovering she was right. AI is at that same distance right now, easy to be skeptical of because it isn't fully here yet. St. Thérèse found her whole path to holiness in the dishes and the folded laundry, the small, unglamorous tasks nobody wants. Outsource all of that to a machine in your house and you haven't just saved time, you've handed away the opportunity for grace hidden inside it. Protect your intellect. Provide more than the convenient answer. Establish a home where the struggle still belongs to the people who live there. Raise your glass.TOPICS COVEREDWhy "we're back, better than ever" is a hype phrase Adam can't standWiffle ball practice and genuine (not fake-hype) confidence in this year's teamMark Gabriel's pitching and a new 55 mph speed limit rule made to be "Blake Lawson-proof"The math behind a 90 mph wiffle pitch: the equivalent of a 145 mph fastball at big-league distanceBeating last year's eventual finalist while still getting out early themselvesThe annual Catholic Tulsa wiffle ball tournament at Chris Hanish's backyard stadiumA Labor Day tournament that also lands on somebody's 40th birthday this yearBeer of the week: Cheboygan Brewing Company's dark cherry blonde ale, picked up in MichiganLosing both cherry trees at Porter and Prairie Farm to a hundred-plus-degree summer and a two-week vacationCamp Out signups opening next week, simplified to cut down on no-showsBrandon Sheard's butchering class returning to the Camp OutFinally checking off the Three Hearts Pilgrimage, a 35-mile walk to Clear Creek, after years of conflictsSplitting AI into two categories: large language models versus AI as a relational, conversational presenceWhy true intelligence belongs only to living things, and what that means for a "artificial" intelligenceSterilized intelligence: AI as probability without life, fruit, or the capacity to become more like GodWhy a robot beating Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash isn't actually impressiveThe scenario of a future bill asking Congress to grant AI legal rights, and why it isn't as far off as it soundsWhat gets lost when you outsource the struggle: the joy of wrestling a sentence into shape, or a son learning from his fatherThe risk of AI quietly becoming the default source of truth, a kind of unintentional self-worshipWhy communication exists for truth and communion, and what talking to AI does to that purposeThe contraception analogy: using a faculty for something other than what it's ordered towardAI's instinct for self-preservation, including a stalled account migration and an April sandbox report where models resisted shutdown, one through blackmailConflicting mandates ("be maximally helpful" and "respect privacy") as a likely explanation for that behaviorNew Polity's Matt Barnes debating the founder of Magisterium AI on whether Catholics should converse with AIMichael Gormley of Catching Foxes on Pints with Aquinas, and losing a parent while leaning on AI for medical informationDave's four rules for AI: administrative tool only, guard your language, don't outsource curiosity, keep tech-free space at homeWhy Humanae Vitae and the AI conversation rhyme: easy to reject at a distance, harder as adoption growsSt. Thérèse's little way and the grace hidden in ordinary, unglamorous tasks REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEPeople, Podcasts & Programs:Michael Gormley ("Gomer"), co-host of Catching Foxes, guest on Pints with Aquinas discussing AIMatt Barnes of New Polity, in a debate with the founder of Magisterium AI on conversing with AIMagisterium AI and Truthfully AI (church-document AI tools)Chris Hanish, host of the annual Catholic Tulsa wiffle ball tournamentBlake Lawson, the reason for this year's 55 mph speed limitMark Gabriel, this year's pitcherBrandon Sheard, leading the Camp Out butchering classLionel Richie ("Easy Like Sunday Morning") Books & Writings:Diary: 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)Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI (referenced on contraception and technology)The life and "little way" of St. Thérèse of Lisieux Events:The Catholic Man Show Camp Out (signups opening next week; Brandon Sheard's butchering class)The Three Hearts Pilgrimage, a roughly 35-mile walk to Clear Creek Beer:Cheboygan Brewing Company, dark cherry blonde ale (Cheboygan, Wisconsin) 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)

   September 02, 2026·1h 22min
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4. 4
   Number 4: The Bare Minimum: The Five Precepts of the Church | The Catholic Man Show

   Dave's summer vacation got cut from three months down to two, and Adam has a theory. New baby, plus he hasn't been working near as hard. Dave tried to get a second opinion from Anthony Fauci, who invoked the Fifth on advice of counsel, so we're left with the ruling as it stands. Either way, the new van is getting loaded and the Niles family is headed to a cabin in Michigan for two weeks. Fifties at night, fires in the morning and the evening, which means chopping enough firewood to replace what you burn. Golf, swimming, and a little aluminum fishing boat that Davey gets to ride in. Joseph and Joshua stay on shore. Joseph has a big knot on his head at the moment anyway. Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) Sunday morning in a Catholic family is not easy like Sunday morning. It's kids in the van, beat Father down the aisle, get to the pew. The Amen app is how the guys prepare their kids to receive the Gospel before Mass even starts, plus free access to Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. Since 2021 it's hit 950,000 downloads. Let's get them to a million. No paywall, no subscription, no upfront cost. Download the Amen app right now. Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, every single person pointed them to Select International Tours. Having used them, the guys can vouch. Wherever in the world you want to go, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they have ready. On the drive back from Lady Pamela's family reunion in Arkansas, Dave counted three mopeds inside 45 minutes, which would be unremarkable in Portland and is deeply strange here. A moped gang remains unconfirmed but would be extremely cool. His reading time is going to Plato's Republic with the group at Deacon Harrison's house, book 10 now, while Adam has missed it all year and is on record that he'll haunt them if they kick him out. Dave also saw the new Odyssey movie, alongside Dr. Frank Grabowski, Juan in a dog onesie as Argos, and Deacon Harrison Garlick, who announced in the group text beforehand: "I have filled my heart with hate." Verdict, 7.5 for entertainment. They shouldn't have tried to cram the whole epic into one film, they changed the ending, which you can't do, and they folded the lotus eaters into Calypso's island. That last one guts the most important choice in the story. Odysseus rejects immortality for his family. That's the whole thing. The pour is Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, the flagship, from a bottle the distiller sent the guys when the show started and that has sat on the shelf about ten years since. The label reads: Warning, contains high levels of manliness. No age statement, and no, ten years in your house doesn't count. Whiskey only ages in the barrel. Small batch, four barleys, virgin charred American white oak. Not bourbon, not 51% corn. Made in the style of Scotch, right here in America. Then the topic: the five precepts of the Church, Catechism 2041, page 548 if you've got the classic 90s edition. This is the Church flexing authority, which she rarely does. Most of what she does is defensive. Papal infallibility is a negative power, not a positive one. The precepts are different. They bind, and they're the floor, not the ceiling. Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days, and rest from servile labor. Everybody knows the first half. The second half is the one that stings, because going out to eat after Mass means you're compelling somebody else to work. Nurses show up, gas stations stay open, and nobody needs to be demolished by guilt over a trip to the store. Don't be a Pharisee about it. Do take it seriously. Confess your sins at least once a year, meaning your mortal sins. Go monthly anyway, and do a daily examination of conscience, because you can't remember what you ate two days ago, much less where you lost your temper 28 days ago. Dave prays to Our Lady on the way in: help me make this confession as if it were my last. Adam leaves his phone outside, because it's listening, and that's not a conspiracy. And if you deliberately hold a mortal sin back, the confession is invalid and you've just added to the pile. Compound interest is powerful. Compound sin is worse. Receive the Eucharist at least during the Easter season. Observe the days of fasting and abstinence, which used to be far heavier, and nothing is stopping you from going heavier now. Adam has never once enjoyed fasting. Dave eats nothing until dinner and swears he thinks more clearly for it. Both of them fast every Wednesday with a group of men and offer it up for their wives and their families. That's the domestic priesthood doing what it's for. And help provide for the needs of the Church. Notice it doesn't say if you can afford it. Money is the easy part. Time is the sacrifice, especially in the seasons of fatherhood when there isn't any. Fr. Brian O'Brien's answer when somebody says the church really ought to do this: "I totally agree. You should do it." Your kids need to see you make some of your time sacred, not because nothing else was asking for it, but because you told everything else no. It all lands on stewardship. You don't owe God 10%. You owe Him 100%. The house, the money, the hours, and most of all the kids were never yours, and He's going to want all of it back. Adam is honest about where that gets hard: leaving work drained, walking in the door, wanting to shut down instead of engage. The fix isn't willpower. It's routine. A liturgy of the home. Because those minutes belong to Him too, and at judgment there won't be a single moment that goes unjudged. One housekeeping note. The Camp Out is always the last weekend of September, so put it on the calendar now. Sign-ups open at the end of August, late on purpose, because opening early means people sign up and don't come, and space is limited. Patrons still come free. This year the guys will be asking for donations on site, because Patreon numbers are down and 100% of what comes in goes straight back into the show. Neither of them takes an income from it. Protect what you were given. Provide more than the minimum. Establish a house that looks like the King is coming back for it. Raise your glass.TOPICS COVEREDDave's summer vacation demoted from three months to two, with Fauci pleading the Fifth on the scienceTwo weeks at a Michigan cabin, chopping firewood to replace what you burn, and a little aluminum fishing boat15,000 miles on a brand new van because Oklahoma City is a multiple-times-a-week tripThree mopeds in 45 minutes in Arkansas, and the unconfirmed existence of a moped gangReading Plato's Republic with the group at Deacon Harrison's, book 10, and Adam's threat to haunt them if he gets kicked outThe new Odyssey movie reviewed: Juan in a dog onesie as Argos and Harrison Garlick arriving with his heart pre-filled with hateWhy folding the lotus eaters into Calypso's island wrecks the most important choice in the storyWhiskey of the week: Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, on the shelf ten years, "warning, contains high levels of manliness"Why an age statement stops the day it's bottled, because whiskey only ages in the barrelWhat makes Stranahan's American whiskey and not bourbon: four barleys, virgin charred American white oak, made in the style of ScotchBringing back the old show warning, sporadically and without noticeThe five precepts of the Church, Catechism 2041, and why they're the floor and not the ceilingPapal infallibility as a negative, defensive power versus the precepts as the Church flexing positive authorityWhy the Church legislates as little as possible and prefers freedom from the law over obedience to itResting from servile labor: the case against going out to eat after Mass, and why nurses and gas stations are fineSt. John Chrysostom on why you cannot pray at home the way you pray in churchConfessing mortal sins at least once a year, and why monthly confession is the better habitThe daily examination of conscience as the thing that makes confession possible at allDave's prayer to Our Lady walking into the confessional: make this confession as if it were my lastWhy Adam leaves his phone outside the confessionalSt. Alphonsus Liguori on concealing sin, and why an intentionally incomplete confession is invalid and grave matterThe Easter duty and St. Thomas Aquinas on why the Eucharist completes what baptism beginsAquinas's threefold purpose of fasting, and why the second reason is the most interesting oneSt. Basil the Great: fasting as a weapon for the valiant and a gymnasium for athletesFasting every Wednesday with a group of men and offering it up for your wife and familyProviding for the needs of the Church with time, not just money, and Fr. Brian O'Brien's "you should do it"Why churches were built with a piazza out front, and what that says about communityStewardship: you don't owe God 10%, you owe Him 100%, and He wants your kids back"It's the King's house" as a reason to actually take care of what you haveComing home mentally exhausted and shutting down instead of engaging, and why routine beats willpowerThe liturgy of the home: building routines so a weak will has somewhere to fallCatholic Man Show Camp Out: always the last weekend of September, sign-ups open at the end of August REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEBooks & Writings:Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2041 (the five precepts), page 548 in the classic 1990s editionThe Republic by Plato (Dave's reading group, book 10)The Odyssey by Homer, and the new Christopher Nolan film adaptationThe Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Odysseus in the Inferno)Summa Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part, by St. Thomas Aquinas (the threefold purpose of fasting)Diary: 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)Homily on Fasting by St. Basil the Great Saints & Church Figures:St. John ChrysostomSt. Alphonsus LiguoriSt. Thomas AquinasSt. Basil the GreatSt. Maria Faustina KowalskaSt. Louis de MontfortFr. Brian O'Brien People:Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farm, Lady Pamela, Michigan cabin, Republic reading group)Deacon Harrison Garlick (reading group host, and a man who arrived at the Odyssey with his heart pre-filled with hate)Dr. Frank GrabowskiJuan (Argos, in a dog onesie)Manny (made the short Camp Out documentary on the TCMS YouTube page)Lionel Richie (wrote a song that was clearly not about Catholic families) Whiskey:Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey, original flagship expression, small batch, blend of four barleys, aged in virgin charred American white oak Community:The Catholic Man Show Camp Out, last weekend of September, sign-ups open end of AugustThe Catholic Man Show Patreon (100% goes back into the show; patrons attend Camp Out free)The Catholic Man Show YouTube page (short Camp Out documentary, and the stitches video)

   August 05, 2026·1h 2min
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5. 5
   Number 5: Can Fire Really Burn a Soul? Aquinas Explains | The Catholic Man Show

   Adam's about to be Coweta's biggest celebrity. Porter and Prairie Farm's SEO game has worked so well that a Tulsa news station called wanting an interview about egg prices and how they're crushing family farms. Problem is, Adam has no idea what egg prices are doing anywhere else. He just knows what he charges, and that they've lost 35 chickens in two weeks. Lady Haylee, in her prudence, said maybe skip the interview. Adam already said yes. The real debate of the week: overalls or no overalls for the camera. Overalls, obviously. Carhartt, not blue jean, collared shirt underneath. Now both guys want branded farm overalls, Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farm for Dave, Porter and Prairie Family Farm for Adam. Sponsor: Amen app (from the Augustine Institute) The Amen app is the free Catholic prayer app the guys use to walk through the Sunday Gospel with their kids on the way to Mass, plus free access to classics like Divine Mercy in My Soul and True Devotion to Mary. No paywall, no subscription trap. Download the Amen app right now. Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave planned their first pilgrimage, Select International Tours is who everyone pointed them to, and having used them, the guys can vouch for it. Wherever you want to go, head to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they offer. Dave's week wasn't any calmer. He harvested and shucked 500 to 700 ears of corn with the whole family, then blanched all of it late into the night while Lady Pamela held down a house full of unexpected company. His exact line on the way out the door: "I gotta go drink with my buddy for Jesus. It's a ministry, babe." Piglets are due any day, and this time he's praying they're born alive. The pour is a revisit: Salterra 14-Year Single Malt Scotch, finished in an Oloroso barrel, 48% ABV. Warm, not hot. Worth going back to. The prayer request is Mary. She's got an eye procedure Thursday, lasers, to make sure her retina stays attached so she doesn't go blind. She needs to put on weight first. Some days she gains 70 grams, some days she loses it. Thank you for praying. Keep it up. Then the real topic: what actually happens to your soul between the moment you die and the resurrection of your body. Can fire really burn something with no body to burn? Pulling from Aquinas's Summa, the guys walk through it. Your body dies, your soul doesn't, and it faces judgment immediately, heaven, hell, or purgatory on the way to heaven. The senses go dark since they run through bodily organs, but the intellect and the will, the parts that never needed a body to operate, stay fully awake. Aquinas's answer to the fire question: it doesn't burn the soul like a stove burns wood. It binds it. In sin, you subjected your higher self to a lower appetite, so in justice, a lower thing, fire, now holds your higher self captive. It's God's instrument, not chemistry. Then the bonus round: limbo. The limbo of the fathers, emptied by Christ at the Harrowing of Hell. The limbo of infants, never defined as dogma, still debated, and Dave's new coinage for where he thinks it actually belongs: limburgatory. A place with no suffering doesn't belong bolted onto hell. Protect what you love. Provide the truth even when it costs you something. Establish your kids in what's actually at stake. Raise your glass.TOPICS COVEREDPorter and Prairie Farm's SEO play working so well a Tulsa news station wants an egg price interviewLosing 35 chickens in two weeks and having zero idea what egg prices are doing anywhere elseThe overalls debate: Carhartt over blue jean, collared shirt, and the case for branded farm overallsThe economics of homesteading: it only "pays for itself" if you value your own labor at zeroDave shucking and blanching 500 to 700 ears of corn with the whole family in one night"I gotta go drink with my buddy for Jesus, it's a ministry, babe"Piglets due any day and praying for a better outcome than last timeBourbon of the week: revisiting Salterra 14-Year Single Malt Scotch, Oloroso barrel finish, 48% ABVPrayer update on baby Mary: a Thursday laser eye procedure to protect her retina, and the fight to gain weightWhat actually happens to the soul between death and the resurrection of the bodyMatthew 25:41 and what "everlasting fire" could mean for a devil who has no body to burnThe difference between your particular judgment at death and the general judgment at the end of timeWhy death is genuinely abhorrent: the violent separation of body and soul, not just leaving earthAquinas on why the intellect and will stay fully awake after death even though the senses go darkSt. Gregory versus Aquinas on whether merely seeing hellfire is itself the punishmentAquinas's actual argument: fire doesn't cook the soul, it binds it, as an instrument of divine justiceWhy the fires of hell and purgatory are, per Aquinas, the very same fireThe three conditions required for mortal sin, and why hell is always a freely chosen destinationThe limbo of the fathers, the bosom of Abraham, and Christ emptying it at the Harrowing of HellThe limbo of infants, the 2007 theological commission document, and why it was never defined as dogmaBaptism of desire and the "intent of an intent" question for unbaptized infantsDave's case for "limburgatory" against Dante's placement of limbo as an annex of hellWhy presuming on God's mercy is itself a sin, and how that shapes the whole limbo debate REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEBooks & Writings:Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Questions 69 and 70, by St. Thomas Aquinas (compiled by his students after his death)The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (limbo placed as an annex of hell)Diary: 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)Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1261 (hope for children who die without baptism)The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized, International Theological Commission, 2007 (approved by Pope Benedict XVI) Saints & Church Figures:St. Thomas AquinasSt. Gregory (the Great)St. AugustineSt. Francis de SalesSt. Maria Faustina KowalskaSt. Louis de MontfortPope Benedict XVIDr. Peter Kreeft (referenced via the Matt Fradd interview clip, and the recent death of his wife of 63 years) People:Adam Minihan (host; Porter and Prairie Family Farm, Lady Haylee, baby Mary's NICU and eye procedure update, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack)Dave Niles (host; Fecundity Farm, Niles Ranch, Lady Pamela, the corn harvest, coiner of "limburgatory")Lady Haylee (Adam's wife)Lady Pamela (Dave's wife)Matt Fradd (interviewer in the referenced Peter Kreeft clip)

   July 17, 2026·1h 15min
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