The Catholic Man Show

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:
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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.
TOPICS COVERED
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

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
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...

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:
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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.
TOPICS COVERED
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

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
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

SHOW NOTES
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:
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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.
TOPICS COVERED
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

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
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...

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.
TOPICS COVERED
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

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
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...

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.
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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 COVERED
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,...