Catholic Tradition vs. Antichristic Technocracy (Guest: Timothy Flanders)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Thanks for coming back. As always, I appreciate it. [00:00:16] Speaker A: Always a joy, my brother. Viva Cristo. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Ray. Amen. Where are you right now? [00:00:21] Speaker A: I am in Alabama at the Avila Institute. I'm broadcasting from the spiritual direct spiritualdirection.com studio. So I. My wife and I had the pleasure of coming down here with our kids for the. A recent wedding. So. Working with the Avila Institute. Yeah. Sign up for our homeschool courses. I should mention that while we're talking about Avila, we have the Mary Quinn of the Home Academy. I teach the Cradle Catechism course. So if you want your kids to go through the Credo Catechism with Bishop Snyder and me, sign up for the course, avila-institute.org MQHA Mary Corner, the Home Academy. [00:01:05] Speaker B: Did you see that Bishop Schneider just met with the Pope? [00:01:08] Speaker A: I did. [00:01:09] Speaker B: I did, yeah. Yeah. So that's obviously encouraging and hopefully much comes from that. I mean, there's no better bishop in my mind than Bishop Schneider. So. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I was very happy to see that. That. And that's one of the things I. I just. I don't really want to talk about the Pope today, but I. I do want to say that I have appreciated his obvious willingness to have conversations with. With all types of people. I mean, I know sometimes I don't like some of the people he talks with, but under Francis, I rarely like the people he did talk with. So now we're. At least we've got a. You know, he talks to Cardinal Burke, Bishop Schneider. So I think that's good. So. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:01:49] Speaker B: So today I just want to have a conversation about various things floating around my brain, I think, in your brain as well. Before we really get into it, though, I do want to mention that both 1 Peter 5 and Crisis are doing a fundraising campaign right now. Correct. You guys are doing one right now, right? Yep. Yeah. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Tis the season. Exactly. You know, neither of us like asking for money. I know that is true of me. I'm pretty sure it's true of you. But both of us, we work for organizations that are 100% dependent upon donations, and we both work. I'm going to talk about this a little bit more in a minute. We both work for organizations that give everything out for free. All our content that we give out is free, but obviously it's not free to produce. So go to crisismagazine.com and you'll get a pop up asking you to donate. Please do. So go to1peter5.com you'll get a pop up, I think, asking you to donate. So please do so. So we really appreciate it. It's our Twice, both of us. Both 1 Peter 5 and Crisis do fundraising campaigns twice a year. And so let's have a competition. Give more to Crisis. No, no, but seriously though, give to either. Give to both. We appreciate, but obviously we appreciate your prayers most of all. So I bring that up also not just as a pitch, but also as a segue. So you've gotten involved with Pelican plus and it's a completely different model. And some people might be like, why would you talk about or promote Pelican plus on your channel, Eric? Aren't they a competitor and I guess. And aren't they a competitor of 1P or 5? So how can Tim be working for both of them at the same time? So I want you to lay out your, your vision. You've talked to me about it in private and so I want you to lay out though your vision of like your work for One Pier five and your work for Pelican plus how they interrelate to each other. What are the differences as you see them and you know, somebody's paying Pelican plus, why should they donate to 1 Peter 5 or Crisis or anything like that? So just kind of lay out what your vision is there. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Eric. Well, basically one Peter five is offense, Pelican plus is defense. And we need both in order to fight against the Antichrist Technocracy and the algorithm beast in order to pass down the faith to our children in our time. So I have a five part series right now at 1 Peter 5 in which I tell it's called My Struggle as editor of Modern Peter 5. And it just kind of talks a little bit about. I open up about. I was inspired by Steve's Kojek. So shout out to Steve. Thank you, Steve. To kind of like talk about how has it been working with 15 working online. And it has been a great struggle, a difficulty, but a great blessing. And it's because 1 Peter 5 so Steve Skojak set up 1 Peter 5 as a nonprofit. And because he did that, he created an online institution, an online journal which is just free for everybody and it deals with all the SEO, algorithm, whatever stuff. So that when I, in 2019, when I googled Catholic stuff, Catholic tradition, like McCarrick stuff was happening and I just started googling stuff and I found one Pier 5 and I did that because it's free, so anybody could just find it. And it's laid out in a way that's. It's very. It's kind of going on the offense because it is sort of the front facing, one of the, one of the front facing faces, front porch of Catholic tradition so that people can search for it and find it and non trad Catholics can find it, non Catholics can find it. And so it's free. So it's out there. It's. It's swimming in this murky water of the algorithm, beast and etc. But because it's free, everybody can find it. So that's the, that's the key. It's, it's on the offense. So it's going out into those waves and trying to fish for people, as it were, and just presenting the beauty of, the beauty of Catholic tradition, the truth, goodness and beauty. Obviously, we are talking about Vatican drama and all that stuff. That's, that's something we talk about. I want to purify, obviously, but I would just want to highlight, for example, our, our musical columnist Massimo Scopin. He has two articles every every month just about music history. And it's so cool. It's like. And we can put the YouTube videos in there where he's talking about these different musical numbers and whatnot. So that's what's great about 1 Peter 5 and what's important that it's important that you donate to 1 Peter 5 that we can continue to go on offense and just present this to the world so anybody can find it. Now Pelican plus is defense because what it's doing is it's creating a Catholic digital institution which is totally alternative. It's a totally alternative, a Catholic alternative to all the Catholic big tech platforms. Because right now we, you know, we're recording a podcast and this podcast is going to be on YouTube or Spotify or whatever. And all these, all these systems have been designed to worship an idol called the dollar. That's the whole point. They don't care about truth, they don't care about goodness, they don't care about beauty. All they care about is their idol. So the entire system is rigged against Christ. This is what we'll talk about. It's an antichrist technocracy. And so as Catholics, we are going to swim in those waters because like I said, we're going on offense. But we also need something totally alternative where we can actually tell the world, like, hey, this is a totally different alternative where the entire system from top to bottom is based on Catholic principles. We don't sacrifice truth, goodness or beauty for the sake of the dollar. That's secondary. We got to have the dollar. So we can feed our families. That's necessary. But Pelican plus is this totally Catholic alternative. It's a Catholic alternative to YouTube. It's a Catholic alternative to Audible. It's a Catholic alternative to substack. It's a Catholic alternative to other things as well. And so we're trying to build something that would really benefit all Catholics so that we can have a Catholic platform. So that's why both are necessary. That's why you should donate to both. Sign up for Pelican Plus. You know, you can go to Pelican plus and you're not going to have any ads. There's zero ads. But there's. The only reason we could do that is because people pay, have a paid subscription. So we don't have any ads. We don't have AI robots reading prayers. So it is Catholic defense. It's the Catholic ghetto, the Catholic digital ghetto, in a good sense, the Catholic digital institution. So that's my. [00:08:47] Speaker B: It's really lifting up. So really, the audience for Pelican plus are already practicing traditional Catholics, you know, practicing Catholics. That's gonna be the most likely audience for pelican. Whereas. 1 Peter 5 obviously, that's your audience as well. Yet you're also putting it out there so that non Catholics, maybe progressive Catholics, Catholics of Novus Orda, who don't even know anything about, you know, the traditional Mass or tradition or anything like that, they can find it. And the funny thing is, is that I think you, both you and I know this, but like, sometimes you'll run an article and it, it doesn't do that great. You look at the numbers, you're like, ah, you know, that was kind of a. And it's especially true of articles like, I'm not trying to pick on the article you mentioned because I have no idea what numbers it does. But like an article on music. Like, I know when I run articles at Crisis, like we ran article earlier this week on the 250th birthday of Jane Austen. I liked it. Jane Austen is my, one of my wife's favorites. So I was like, okay, this, this is a nice article. I know it's not going to be a barn burner. I know it's not going to get as many clicks as one where I say Pope Leo or whatever. Yet what happens is over time, people find it, like you said, through the algorithm, through Google, things like that. And it does, it does touch souls in ways that we don't know. But sometimes they'll reach out to us and we find out that hey, you know that, that did work. So I think donating to like 1 Peter 5 or crisis in these situations, it is like that. Like you said that often. So. Yeah, I appreciate that. [00:10:17] Speaker A: Here's a fun fact about 1 Peter 5, our most popular article of all time. Every year it gets tens of thousands of hits. It's an article written by Jamie Skodjack and it's about the epiphany marking on the doors and which is great. It's great for me. I'm happy that that's our number one article. I'm glad. It's not like Pope Francis did xyz, Vatican drama. It's just this really wholesome family thing because clearly there's like a bunch of people out there who are talking about this. Right. And they're googling it and somehow the Google beast has thrown us a bone and it puts that up on, you know, on the search query or whatever. And every year it's just like this is. [00:11:01] Speaker B: That is a wonderful top article. Yeah, I know, right? It will. It continues to help people every year. That means there are people who are probably for the first time doing the epiphany, chalking tradition and they're learning about how to do it from 1 Peter 5. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:16] Speaker B: And so, you know, that's great. And before I kind of move on to some technology stuff like that, I do want to give also my own shout out to Steve Schocheck asked people to pray for him. He's been very public about his falling away from the faith after leaving 1 Peter 5. But now he does seem to be moving back towards the faith. He has a number of personal problems. I have no patience for the people online who, who attack him. I just, I just don't even want to hear from you. So if you want to put in the comments something against Steve, just don't. I'll probably delete it. But just that we pray for him, you know, that, that he's got a cross to bear and that we. That we won't know all the details and even though he shares a lot of them online. But yeah, at the same time I just want to ask everybody to pray for Steve. So. And for his whole family, obviously. Yeah. Now. But I just want to segue this into technology thing because you talked about something. I've been thinking about this more and more lately and reading about it and kind of. And seeing things about it. One of the things that's happened over the past few years, it's this phenomenon. Somebody wrote an article somewhere and I can't remember the details. But by the way, for those who are listening, if you hear background noises, that's because there is some construction going on at my house, and so you will hear some banging at times. It's literally happening right above me. [00:12:35] Speaker A: That's actually Skynet. Skynet is the Terminator coming out. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Exactly. They're trying to stop me. But that's also why I have these headphones on right now, so I can hear Tim actually speak in case they get really loud above me. So, but the point is, is that it was saying that Internet has become television. And what it means by that is, if you think about television, television, the medium is just. You basically just turn it on and you consume whatever they have there on the channels that you go to. It just kind of is a flow of content coming at you. The Internet, how it started off, in particular with the rise of social media in the early 2000s. And once smartphones came and made social media so big, that was a different methodology because the promise was. And at first it was like this. You choose whose stuff you see in your flow. So, like, you get a Facebook account, you see your friends from high school, what they're posting. You see what your. Your family is posting, things like that. That's not the same as television because it's all content that you decided, here's what I want to see in my feed. [00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:47] Speaker B: And now we all know, even from the beginning, there's problems with that. There's. There's dangers to that. There's this idea of, oh, look at how happy everybody is, how rich they are, how beautiful they are. And, you know, it gives you. It makes you feel like I have to keep up with them. And nobody's real on. On. On social media that they're not telling everything other than Steve maybe they're not telling everything about their life and stuff like that. So there's a real. There's problems. But that was kind of the promise. And the idea was you communicate with people. But what happened was, And I believe this was, you know, due to need to. To have profits and things like that. I started noticing this a couple years ago on Facebook. I never really was an Instagram guy, so I have an account there, but I never really used it. But on Facebook, I used, you know, a lot in years ago. I haven't used it much in recent years. I started to notice that, like, a lot of the stuff in my feed wasn't. Weren't. My friends weren't pages I followed. They were just stuff that. That. That Facebook was Suggesting to me. And literally one time I was on Facebook and I realized I counted the first like 28 or something like that post. I saw none of them, not one I followed. It was just stuff that Facebook was pushing. I think you'll like this. I think you'll like this. So what's happened that wasn't, that is a real thing. That wasn't just me. And what it is is that these pro, these social media companies, it's basically comes from TikTok, which is something I never got into. But TikTok, they didn't do the friend follow model. What they did was we're going to tell you what you want to see. We're going to guess, our algorithm is going to guess what we think you want to see and we're going to look and see what you look at the most and then get it better and better. Now of course people are more likely to see and watch longer. The negative, the crazy, all that stuff. And so that was just like they're just going to tell you. And so that was so successful that Instagram and Facebook I saw the other day, 7% of the content you see on your Instagram feed is people you follow, just 7%. The rest is stuff they're just feeding to you. And so it really is like these algorithms have gone amok. Like I, I've always like at the beginning of my podcast when I do them, I always say like, you know, like and subscribe. I'm almost like, do you really need to subscribe? I'm just hope. I'm just gotta pray that you YouTube will tell you to follow, you know, to watch my video. Because subscribing may not do much for you. I mean, yeah, go ahead and like, and subscribe, whatever. But the point is that like this is a real challenge to us who are Catholics who are trying to get our word out there because people could follow us. They could click the like button on Facebook to the 1 Peter 5 page of the Christ page and they may never see anything we post. Not one thing. Because Facebook just decides, no, we'd rather you see this, you know, scandal of this per, you know, usually, often I shouldn't say usually, but often a scantily clad female. I mean I had a, A X account, not my main personal account, but it was like a baseball related one just so I could follow like baseball and sports stuff like that. It was for an old podcast I did with my son. And so almost everything I followed was sports related on that. If I got into that account was to Follow baseball things. You know, I didn't really post any. I just would like follow baseball accounts, follow some other sports accounts. Well, all of a sudden it got to a point where it was just incessantly putting up on the, you know, short videos of scantily clad women. And I assume that's because, you know, a lot of sports related people, men who watch sports stuff also will watch those things. And I was just, I had to stop logging into it. I mean, I was just got to a point where I was like, oh my gosh, I can't even log into my own now. I realized that was because I was on the for you, not the following. I think if I did the following, that wouldn't happen. But the whole point is again, the algorithm is telling you how to think. And I think this is something we all have to struggle with, both as content creators, but also as consumers, because we both think there's a lot good about the Internet and technology. We're both, I mean, that's how we make our living and that's what we do with our day. But boy, there's so much that just kind of is working against us, you know, in our personal lives, but also professionally. And I, so I just, you know, I want you to talk a little bit more about, you know, you're calling antichristic, you know, technology. So you're probably even come more hardcore than me. But that was just some stuff I saw recently about how the social media isn't even social anymore. It's like television, it's just media. I mean, it just really is just like watching. And, and one good thing about that though, before I let you go, before I let you kind of talk about is there is a positive that it makes you less, it kind of makes you understand it a little bit more. Like, okay, it's like television, I can just turn this off. And also it's not that unique. Like I can get, if I want to just get a feed of crap, I can go anywhere. I can turn on television, go anywhere. I don't need. Like, the reason I got on Facebook was to follow, you know, friends and, you know, keep in contact with people, communicate with people, and then if that's not happening, why bother? And I, in fact, it's true, I almost never go on Facebook anymore because of this. I definitely never go and scroll my feed because I just know I'm not going to see anything I'm really interested in. So those are some of my thoughts about. What do you think? [00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that the advantage of Technology, modern technology is being connected with people who are like. I mean, Eric is a Cincinnati Reds fan, which I think is anathema, but we can still be friends because of the Internet. Can we, though? So Michigan. Oh, no. Iowans. [00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Yes. Right. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Yeah. People don't know. Michigan and Ohio have a huge football rivalry. Anyways, yeah. Um. So, yeah, I'm very grateful for the connections that I have made with real friendships on the Internet. I. And I. This is what I write about in my little story on 1 Peter 5. And it was actually a connection with an individual in another country that helped me become Catholic because of the particular apologetic struggle I was having. So I'm very grateful for. For the friendships that I have of friends in other countries through the Internet. I also want to shout out to the power of the Internet for the evangelization of Muslims, because in the Mohammedan countries, they don't allow them to have Bibles and churches and all the normal stuff, but they do allow them to have Internet, or not generally, but so that they can access all this great stuff about the Gospel. And we've had real conversions because people have accessed it. So there's lots of good with modern technology. Now, why do I call it an Antichrist democracy? Well, what you just said is. That's a great example, because this is all the algorithm I was trying to think of. Like, what is, you know, a Catholic content creator. You look on the Internet, you look on YouTube, whatever, a Catholic content creator starts his podcast and says, hey, like. And subscribe. What is. What is that really analogous to? That's like. That's like a peddler in ancient Rome. Look at the early church, and there's persecutions. They're killing Christians, and somebody's, like, selling shoes, and he says, hey, make sure you tell the nearby centurion that I'm cool and not to kill me, or something like that. Like, what is this even. Like, this is like, we're in this very, very hostile environment which is really worshiping Satan. It's worshiping. It has all these evil images, like pornography and all this stuff, which is doing all sorts of evil, and we're in this negative environment. It's. It's not really trying to sell you the truth. It's not trying to connect you with people. It's trying to worship the dollar. And I just want you to like and subscribe. Now, obviously, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, but maybe. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. It depends on what the algorithm beast in his great mercy will give to us. But I want to even go a step further, I want to step back. Something I noticed a couple years ago because I used to pray. I really like to pray the Benedictine lauds at sunrise. I just became very obsessed with just praying at sunrise. And there's all these imagery in the psalms for the Benedictine office that has to do with the sun. So like Psalm 66, God, be merciful unto us, bless us, show the light of thy face upon us. So that's the first psalm when the sun begins to rise. So the sun is this icon of God's mercy. You know, the rising sun will come to us from heaven. All this stuff with the sun and the moon and the stars and the natural light. But what do you notice? If I have my light bulbs on in my house, I cannot see the sun. Which is just weird because if I light a candle, if I light a candle, I can see the sun. It's kind of weird. It's like the fire doesn't really compete with the sun and the moon and stars, but the light bulb does. Now, I'm not saying light bulbs are evil. I am saying, however, that this is, I don't think that this is just a purely neutral tool that has nothing to do with any. It's just like, ah, it could be good or bad, whatever. I think it is intrinsically an antichrist thing because I think it's the false light of Lucifer, because Lucifer is a light bearer. And when he creates false light, which creates a false reality, which is virtual reality in the way that you just said, it's creating a disembodied community where we, we are interacting with each other as if we're disembodied angels, even though we're not angels. It's obscuring the true light, the, the real light that is most important is the light of the image of God and another person that we can have when we have a human interaction in real life. Because we're having an interaction that's in person, in the flesh. You're interacting with so and so at the grocery store counter. You're not going to trash that person like you trash this anonymous account on the Internet because you're interacting with the metaphysical light of the image of God in that person. It's just sort of a. Obviously you wouldn't do that unless you're just totally crazy, but tons of people do that on the Internet. That's just like normal. That's like bread and butter Internet stuff. It's just like how we treat Each other. And I think it's because we have this false light, which is false not only in the physical sense, but also in the metaphysical sense. I just. Eric, I was just talking with. I met somebody last night who was. He does tech for ewtn. And we were talking. I was like, how do you. How do you deal with tech? Like, how do you deal with all this technocracy stuff? And he's like, hey, I do the. He showed me a tip, which is where you change the colors on your screen to the grayscale. So, like, on your smartphone, everything's black and white. And so I think. And then there's like, light phones that do this too. But you can do this with a smartphone, which is nice. So I just started experience experimenting. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Let me just interrupt for a second on that one. So here is my light phone. Okay, I'm sorry. My smart. My not light phone, my iPhone. But people are listening, won't see it. But look, it just looks like a light phone. And so what I've done is I have an app on here that turns it into basically like a light phone. Also, everything is in grayscale. Like, it's all black and white. [00:25:44] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [00:25:44] Speaker B: Okay, so. And I even have a screen protector on it that's like a matte screen. So it really does like. It really has, like. It's funny without me doing anything other than all this. You know how you have the screen time app on your iPhone that tells you how much you've been. It's decreased how much I look at my phone. I don't know, probably 50%. Wow. I still have my iPhone because I had a light phone for a number of years, but in the end, there was just too many things I needed a smartphone for. I mean, just like parking downtown. You know, they require an app to pay for it, things like that. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:21] Speaker B: And so I. You know. But having a light phone for, like, I think for two or three years. I think three years was great because it got me out of the rhythms. But then with my iPhone, I just went to a straight iPhone first, like. Like just a normal. And I was already starting to fall back into bad habits, and then I changed it to this. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Okay. [00:26:38] Speaker B: Making it to a dumb phone, basically. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Cool. [00:26:41] Speaker B: And it's exactly right. And so it doesn't, like, stimulate the brain and all those things. Like, for me, what it does is it prevents. Now I'm in and out. When I need my phone for something, I go in, I do it, and I get out. Whereas before, we have all these nice, beautiful Colors and all this stuff, this infinite scroll. I don't have any social media on my phone either. Well, what happens though is once you're in there, then you're like, you see this other. Oh yeah, I want to click on that. I click. And so for me at least what I would do. I don't know if other. I know other people do this, but this is the case for me. My problem was I would go in for a legitimate reason and a half hour later I would come out. [00:27:18] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, yeah. [00:27:20] Speaker B: And it was literally if something could have been done in 30 seconds to a minute. [00:27:22] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:27:23] Speaker B: And a half hour later come out. [00:27:24] Speaker A: It's remarkable to me because the wake up call for me was like, how much like I am totally conscious of all the nefarious aspects of this, but somehow I find myself still getting sucked into it. Like, how do I get sucked into this? It's crazy. Like, I must be so dumb that this keeps on happening. But it's just like this is the false light of Lucifer. It's like this light is affecting your brain and giving you whatever touchy feely in your brain it's designed to do. Like Duolingo is a great example. Duolingo Lingo is an app that teaches languages, which is cool. And I, But I found that every time I, you know, did the little exercise and it gave me all these like, bonuses and stuff and I was like, oh, this is so nice. I love this. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Have you heard, have you heard the term gamification? [00:28:14] Speaker A: No, what's that? [00:28:15] Speaker B: Okay. So I used to, you know, I used to be a software developer. [00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:19] Speaker B: Right near the end of my years of being. I was software developed primarily from 95 to 2010. I did a little bit after that, but I would, I remember talking to somebody about an app that we were. That you know, he wanted to develop and stuff like that. And he talked about gamification and I looked it up and this was like. So this was probably 15 years ago when it wasn't like so prominent. It's the way you create apps to make them addictive and they think it's like, to make them like video games. Because a video game is particularly made particularly like a video game on a phone. It's made so that there's. It, it sets off like your dopamine centers your brain and stuff so that you keep on. You're there longer and longer and longer. Like it's. And it's a lot of. It's like, it's reward based. So in a video game, of course, you get points when you do. I've never been a video game guy, but like, I know enough to know that like you do something, you get points and you see the points go up and that like in. That gets your, your brain is just made to want to get more points. Yeah, well, what they started to do is they. Gamification is the idea. You put that in every. You put that in other apps. Duolingo, Facebook. That's where the, that's why there's a like button because it's like, oh, I'm like getting points. You know, I'm getting these social points. And so you continue. And so gamification was this idea. I don't even know if they call it that anymore, but it was like 10, I remember about 10 years ago I was talking to somebody about it, an app. We were thinking about development and at the time I was just like. My first thought was like, okay, that makes sense. You know, that would be great because that gets users to use it more and that's what you're trying to do and stuff like that. It wasn't until I thought about it, I was like, that's horrific. That's awful. Because you'll just end up. Because it's purposely addictive. And that's what these, that's what a lot of these apps are doing is they're purposely trying to get you addicted to it so that you're on it more and more. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah, the gamification. Oxford Dictionary says the application of typical elements of game playing, point scoring, et cetera, to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service. Yeah. [00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:26] Speaker A: So it's like, how many, the question is, how many hours a day do you spend scrolling versus praying and doing penance? Because that's. Praying and doing penance is where you enter into the, the true light of God. Or in your, in your. When you're existing in reality and you're doing your job or hanging out with your family, whatever, then you're existing in the, the, the light of, of individual people, which is illuminated by the natural light of whatever kind it is. And those are the true lights that God gives us. And then. Versus you're scrolling. I remember I was on a, I was on a flight. It was like a two hour flight. And the guy next to me, he just scrolled for two hours straight. I was like, wow. And it was so distracting. It's like I'm trying to read a book and I get like this. The light is in my peripheral vision. And it's so distracting. Now I want to, I want to plug something before I forget because we are planning at Pelican plus, we're planning to have a Lenten program. And the Lenten program is going to have all sorts of traditional penances and all that good stuff. But it's also going to be a step by step, wean yourself off of the Technocracy program and we're going to have this sort of a program put together so we can all do it together and we can work together and share with each other. And it's so like kind of what we're doing right now, it's because we're sharing different tips of trying to handle, utilize the technology without the technology utilizing us. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's the big thing is that technology. I mean, I know there's Catholics that I admire and I think very highly of who have, you know, they go almost full Amish, they're living on the homestead, they're almost completely detached. And like I admire them. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I respect that. [00:32:18] Speaker B: But the reality is that's not for most of us, that's not the world we live in. And so the question is, is like, so technology itself? I mean, the funny thing is I have a very love hate relationship with technology. I mean, I'm a nerd. We're both science fiction nerds as we, you know, so like, you know, watch Star Trek, stuff like that. I was a computer developer, like I said software developer for 15 years. That was my undergrad degree as well. So like I've always been like, I like technology. I admit when I see like when I see. I know, like it's funny when you see like a video of one of these new robots doing something fancy. It's funny because a lot of Catholics I know, especially trad Catholics, their first reaction is like whore. And like, oh my gosh, this is awful. My first reaction is like, oh, that's pretty cool. Now I admit when I have to. Sometimes when I look into stuff like, you know, like AI, like when the LLMs first got big and started really getting good, you know, the, the large language models, the chat bots, like chat GPT and stuff like that, I was like, wow, this is impressive. What it's doing it really because some of them thinking just from a technological point of view of understanding at least a little bit of what's going on behind the scenes to make it happen, I'm like, wow, this is really good. But I do see, but that doesn't mean I don't see the Real dangers. In fact, I'm literally writing a book on artificial intelligence right now, Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence. And I just finished a chapter on the practical dangers of AI. And let me just say, it was my longest chapter because there's just so many. There's just countless ones. But so I had this love hate with it. And like, another thing I want to bring up, like, you know, positive technology. I just had an radio interview this morning. We were talking about the. The weird phenomenon in the Catholic Church in America today, where we have tons and tons of people leaving the church, yet we also are seeing an increase in conversions to the faith. And, like, I'm convinced just from my own research, anecdotal evidence, you know, Pew studies, all that stuff, that the crux of the reason for that apparent dichotomy is on the one hand, you have credo. Catholics growing up in their parish. Their parish. I'll just say it is lame. Their parish is just your saint suburbia with terrible music, terrible architecture, bland masses, bland homilies. Be nice. You know, nothing really to engage a young person. They grow up in that, and they. They hit the doors the second they're allowed to. I mean, once they turn 18, high school, whatever, they're gone. And on the other hand, you have non Catholics growing up online, and they're seeing their presentation of Catholicism because this is the dominant face of Catholicism online is people who are unapologetic, they're bold, they're traditional leaning, they're, you know, they don't. They're not wishy washy, they're not ecumenical, all that stuff. And they're attracted to that, which is just because that's what's attractive. And that's always been the way the church has proclaimed the gospel. And so they end up converting. And so, like, there was this narrative for a number of years of like, oh, the toxic Catholicism online. And yeah, we both know there's a lot of toxic stuff on there, but I think some of that was just kind of knocking on unapologetic Catholicism that's bringing people in. So, like, we see this right now as we're talking, you know, as we're thinking about it, it's like, yeah, this has brought souls to Jesus Christ and they will be with him for all eternity if they, you know, remain faithful because of the Internet that might not have before. So I'm not going to knock it completely, but I think the big thing is our control. Who's in control. Are you controlling how you use technology or are the algorithms, the tech companies Are they controlling you and getting you to use it the way they want you to use it? And I think, and here's the big thing for me is we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. We all want to think we're self disciplined. We're able to do it. Like for a number of years, I told myself I, you know, I had like X or Twitter back then and Facebook on my phone. I told myself, I can control how much I use it. And then one day I just was flipping through Facebook and my daughter, who I think was like six or seven at the time, she came up with me, wanted to tell me something, trying to tell me something, and I was too distracted going through my phone and I was, I was literally just scrolling Facebook and it was like this moment of grace where God just was like, you are an idiot. You are just. You, you're terrible. And it just hit me that. And that wasn't the only time I knew what hit me so much was like, that was an isolated incident. And I'm like, what the. I would just say, what the hell am I doing? Because that's where it came from. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:09] Speaker B: And I was like, okay, it's controlling me. And I was like, okay, off. And that's actually when I first got the light phone was, Was that. And so like, you know, I thought I was strong enough, I was disciplined enough, and I'm a relatively disciplined person. But like, it just, it's. They know. You have to remember these tech companies, these big tech companies, they hire, they have literally psychologists and like, you know, scientists. Everybody on. They have them on staff. [00:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:39] Speaker B: Researching how can we get people to do what we want them to do. I mean, they don't say it like that, but they know, like the like button, the way the color scheme they use the infinite scroll. Did you know the guy who invented the infinite scroll deeply regrets it now? No, it used to be if you, if you're old enough, people are old enough to remember this. You might not even be old enough, Tim. I don't know. Used to be that, like on Google or wherever. Not in Google, but anywhere you went, if something was. You had to scroll through, it would stop. And you had to go to page two. Stop. [00:38:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:38:11] Speaker B: Page three. [00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:12] Speaker B: And you. And you had to do that. But then I think who was he working for? I think it was Facebook. Now I can't remember, but one of those. I think it was Facebook, maybe Instagram or something like that. And he invented, he designed the technology to scroll so that the scroll never stops. So you just keep scrolling. And it's become the number one reason why people are, are on their phones. Like you said, you're, you're, you're the guy who was sitting next to you on the plane for two hours. There's a good chance that if he could only scroll through 10, then he had to hit next. He would stop at some point, but because he could just keep going forever and never have to think about it. And so the guy actually invented that. And he said he invented, he's just like, I was just thinking of a better way, you know, how can I make this more efficient? You know, whatever. He's not thinking of the social consequences of it. But now he's like, that was awful what I created because it just made it, you know, it just traps people into it in so many ways. And, and the funny thing is if you go to like for example, the opinion page on crisismagazine.com to look at our articles, I think I'm pretty sure as an infinite scroll on there. So it's like I'm not claiming like you know, superiority or something like that, but I think when it's on social media, there's a difference between the social media infinite scroll and like just a website having it. Maybe I'm justifying, I don't know. But, but all these things work against us. And I mean I look at from a technology standpoint a lot like how, and like more of a natural way it like affects our brains and like the way it traps us. But I like the fact you take a different angle, a very spiritual angle of like seeing is as the way the devil really captures us. [00:39:50] Speaker A: So. [00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it just. Yeah. So what do you think about that? [00:39:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, I mean what I'm saying is coming from Marshall McLuhan, so I'm not. [00:40:01] Speaker B: He just talked about how I'm not familiar with him. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Oh, basically in my article I, I quote or I link to, I link to an article which is called the Eclipse of God. Let me look. It's from Church Life Journal over at Notre Dame, another online journal. And it just has some quotations from Marshall McLuhan where he actually predicted something like the Internet in the 1960s. He predicted that there would be something like the Internet and he said that Lucifer is the greatest electrical engineer because he by using screens and this man made light, he's able to create a man made image of man where it points back to man. So man is following the light and the light brings him to other, to himself so that he can worship Himself, which is the entire framework of Lucifer's whole goal. And so it's, it's, I think it's very telling that Lucifer, the word, the name Lucifer means light bearer, the bearer of light. And so Marshall McLuhan is making note of the fact that he's just saying that this is the moment for the Antichrist, because this is where we can actually have a real infrastructure, which is a digital, technological infrastructure, which is pumping out a man made light, which is creating a man centered image. Image of man, image of man in man, which is the. That's the Antichrist right there. That's the whole purpose of the Antichrist is for man to worship himself, worship an idol instead of Christ. So it does, I think, because even, even, just, even if we're not talking about like the real Antichrist coming at the end of time sort of situation, even the basic structure of what an Antichrist is, according to St. John's Epistle, an Antichrist is he who denies that Jesus is the son of God. And when we interact with these false lights, we are in a position where we deny that Jesus is the son of God because we're denying the image of God in our neighbor because of this false light. So I think there is a real danger here that, like you just said, I admit it too. Like, I definitely feel it. I feel the pull. I feel the pull in me to, you know, I pull up Twitter and I see I have these notifications and oh, I gotta check on those notifications because that's exciting to me, you know that. Ooh, I feel a little happiness there. Right? [00:42:50] Speaker B: And they're designed to do that. That's the notifications. [00:42:53] Speaker A: Yeah. When I switched to the grayscale just yesterday, I was like, oh, I pulled up Twitter and I was like, oh, well, the notifications are not that interesting anymore. It's just funny. I'm like, I'm realizing how weak I am. Really. I'm not really like super spiritual because if I was super spiritual, like, there would be zero attraction to all these lights and bells and whistles because they're okay. [00:43:18] Speaker B: I want to push back a little bit on that. Like, I know if you're a saint, you can overcome a lot of stuff easier, but you have to remember this stuff is like literally created based upon human psychology and how brains work, where it's like, I'm not saying that, like, you can't overcome it because obviously, you know, the spirit is stronger than the flesh if you're, if you're living with Christ. But I do, and I'M not making excuses either, but I'm just saying how deeply evil it is because it really is created. So like the way they do notification bells and buttons and all that stuff, it's really made your brain is doing certain things like firing certain ways so that you. It really is like crack cocaine practically. [00:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:02] Speaker B: Where it's like, you know, because somebody who's a crack addict, they. They really don't have free will anymore. I mean, they can, they can overcome it and you know, through. And obviously God could heal them instantaneously if that's his will and all that stuff. [00:44:17] Speaker A: But. [00:44:17] Speaker B: But the point is, is like, I don't want to say they don't have free will. What I'm saying is their free will is greatly, greatly lessened where. Because of addiction. And that's true, you know, something like that. Well, that's also true. Not on the exact same scale, but that's true of the way they've designed these things so that they are so addictive that. And yeah, so I'm pushing back. I'm not really pushing back, but I'm just kind of saying like, you know, we have to realize that. That's why I think we have to be relentless in doing everything we can to break those, the bonds that they're trying to create. And like the grayscale thing is one example of, you know, that's how you help you break it. You know, there's nothing weak in you doing that. In fact, that was a sign of self discipline, you doing that, recognizing, okay, what, what am I able, you know, what does my brain do without me? Even, you know, before I even consider something when, when I see that notification bell. [00:45:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think there is a certain, like what I, what I hear you saying a little bit is going towards the fact that the saints are. The saints live in, in their bodies, in super actual reality where they are living in the real world. Totally. And the real world is the Church Triumphant. That's the real world is where the saints are in heaven. That's like the reality of realities. And if we live in that reality, everything else illuminates everything else. So we look at everything in the world at its true value. [00:45:49] Speaker B: And there's like stories of saints, like monks, for example, who won't look at women. Now obviously if they looked at a woman, they probably would not have improper thoughts necessarily, if they're really a saint. But even somebody who's extremely holy recognizes, okay, I just will prevent. If I don't look at a woman. So it's the Same thing here where we're saying he recognizes I'm still a human being on this planet. I have a fallen nature, I have concupiscence. I'm not going to act like I'm just above. Like, you see some heretical sex, this idea of like, and you see some of this with like, okay, I don't want get side track, but there was a big controversy years ago when Christopher west was like promoting theology of the body. He still does, but he was saying something to the effect of like, he could, if he's really truly holy or something, he could look at a naked woman who's not his wife and he wouldn't be a sin or something. I, I, I, I, I, I apologize to, yeah, Mr. West if I'm saying it wrong, but it was definitely wrong what he said. It's like, no, that's not the way it works. Yeah, we're, until we're in the Church Triumphant, we're going to have these temptations that pull us no matter how holy we might be. So we need to do everything we can to accept these protections for our fallen nature. [00:47:10] Speaker A: I think that everybody should just, we could just do an examination of conscience and say, like I said, how many hours am I scrolling versus doing penance and praying, doing mental prayer, mental prayer in particular. And maybe you do need to go Amish regarding phone usage. That's in my opinion. I think that should be the default. You should be default on the homage side. That should just be default because that's the realest reality now. However, I think that like, you know, if I was still working my office job, for example, let me tell you, like my life as a, working at an office. My life working at an office. I worked at a large insurance company and very good office environment relative to offense environments, which is good. But I was, I was not really as aware of myself as I am now in the sense that I was not very affable with my co workers. I was not like making friends like, you know, smiling, how you doing? Like, let's talk about Detroit Lions game or whatever this. I was just like, came in, hello, just like go to work, do my thing. And as I look back on that, I think, you know, I could have been a lot more evangelistic in sort of the affable in the soft skills area, as they say in the office. Like just sort of emotional intelligence, like connecting with other people about ordinary things that people are into, people are talking about. And I think. So part of that, I think what could be using the phone, using the Phone just to be aware of what people are thinking and talking about so that you can connect with other people just. And they can see you as normal in a good sense, not like, in like a bad sense of that word. Just like, you know, this guy's just like a regular guy. But they're gonna notice something different about you because you're a Christian. You're gonna act like a Christian, you're not gonna cuss, you're gonna, you know, treat people fairly and kindly. But I think being pl. Being more plugged into the reality of what people are talking and dealing with, I think is a. Is a necessary thing to love others and if you can do it, you know, and not sin and not get sucked into it. So I think looking back, I think I would. I regret that I could have been more just aware of my co workers, more friendly, more affable. So I think that's a. That's. That's probably a common thing for many people who are, you know, just working, doing jobs at various secular institutions where, you know, your co workers are going to be talking about xyz and if you don't have a smartphone that just gave you the notification that such and such just happened or whatever, you're going to be like, oh, well, I have no idea. I'm totally out of touch with my coworkers. So I just thought of that as kind of like one thing because I don't want to go too extreme on either side here. But just a thought. [00:50:01] Speaker B: You know, one thing I've started doing more recently is I'm kind of going back to email. I know email is kind of like the old fuddy duddy technology because we have text, we have direct messages, we have all these different, you know, ways that we communicate immediately and directly. And I really, I really prefer email because it's kind of like. I know some people say, well, go back to writing letters if you're really gonna go old school. I get that. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:26] Speaker B: But like, email, it's nice because I get it and I can take some time to think about it. I can then answer the question. But I feel like there's a certain pull whenever I get a text message or a DM on X or something like that. I feel like I'm obligated to answer quickly. [00:50:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:41] Speaker B: And this is just for people. I want to highly recommend the writings and podcasts of Cal Newport. He is a. Not a Catholic. He's. I don't even think he's Christian. And he talks a lot about this stuff from a very Practical, a lot of it from work related, like how to be more efficient, productivity, stuff like that. But a lot of it just. It's not just work productivity, it's life productivity, like life skills. But one of the things that like I realized from him was like, it's a false narrative that you have to respond to somebody's text in some short amount of time. And what happens is I would get anxious. I realized I'd get anxious because somebody would text me and I'd see it and I get anxious. I got to answer them soon. And I finally just said to myself, no, I don't. If it's not an emergency, I don't have to. In fact, I've gotten my phone to the point now where during the workday I will get notifications or get a message outside of work, what I call my work hours. Basically only my family, when they text me, will it actually notify my phone. I can go in and look and see it if I want to. So like I might be at like 7 o' clock in the evening, be like, I want to see if I got any messages and I can do that, but I control it. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I got the same. Same. [00:51:48] Speaker B: If you, if you, if you message me at like 8 o' clock in the evening, unless you're one of my family, like one of my kids or my wife. I'm not like, I'm not, I'm not even. I'm not knowing it until I decide to open up. But going back to email, like I've gotten more into like, okay, you know, let's use email for communication. I know there's, there's reasons not, there's times not to use email. Like this home remodeling project we got going on and where it's like a. I'm texting with the, the builder because like, you know, it's just. He's like, oh, I need to know this new that. And so like, that's fine. I'm not saying I never. I use textsum, but I do like the idea that it's a little bit more thoughtful. And also I find that I get crazy emails at crisis, you know, from crazies saying that outlandish things and attacking me. But in general, when I get an email from somebody, like my crisis email, it's a rel. It's usually a more thought out thing. I'm talking about people who are criticizing things we write or say, which I welcome. It's usually much more well thought out and they're like, I really don't Inevitably, inevitably, when I respond to them and I just say thank you, I might explain my position. I will say, maybe I'll say, hey, you made a good point. Whatever the case may be, almost every single time, even if they were kind of hot in their initial message, they come back and say, thank you, I appreciate you responding. That's great. Whereas that does not happen on, On X or like when somebody gets. Because they immediately go to DEFCON 5 and they're, you know, you're an idiot, you're awful. And I immediately then respond in kind and it's like, then we're, you know, so I kind of feel like, you know, it's kind of the. Using technology, understanding, like email doesn't control me as much as. Because what I will do is I would just set aside a time and say, okay, you know, 2 o' clock this afternoon is going to be my email block 2 to 3. And I'll just go through my emails then. And I can kind of, and I'm focused on, I can actually listen to what they're saying. Whereas if you're just scrolling all the time and you get, you know, you get comments, you see the replies and you respond immediately. It's. It's a real degradation of the communication. So, okay, so I, I want to, though we've talked a lot about, in a way, kind of the negative aspects of technology, like, negative things to do, like, don't do this, don't do that, control this, control that. But I want to segue into something I think is important that is the role of tradition, Catholic tradition, in combating the antichristic technology. And what I'm thinking of, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is the idea that tradition is so holistic and we see it like for just the fact that we know technology is disembodied. It's very disembodied. And. But tradition Catholicism, when fully practiced, is so holistic. So just the Mass, for example, it's a complete immersion of body and spirit, which is what we are. We're body and spirit. The combination of these two things. You can't separate us. And that's what death is. And that's why it's an evil. And God will eventually put us back together one day. But the point is, is like when you go in there, if you go to a traditional Latin mass at some beautiful church with sacred music, you got the sacred. You're seeing things that are beautiful. You're hearing them, you're smelling them, you know, all these, all these different senses are being used and they're all lifting up the spirit. And I really think that does such a good job to. To get us out of the utilitarian, disembodied technocracy that we live in for, so that you could live in this society. You don't have to go Amish again. If you want to, fine. Because those. Those moments of going, like Sundays and maybe hopefully even daily, you can. You can experience those things. It really. And that's also true of, like, you know, just praying, the office, things like that. I really feel like that is a probably the best positive thing you can do to combat that antichristic technocracy. And I do think this is one of the reasons why the kind of St. Suburbia, bland Novus Ordo Mass, it just doesn't do a great job of that because it's very utilitarian. It's very minimalistic as far as what it's. You know, how it's feeding the senses. And so for a young person, you know, they're going to that Mass and it's like, it's not really helping them any to understand the. The crazy world they live in. Whereas when they go to traditional at Mass in a beautiful church, it's like, wow, this is really. This is an actual alternative to the technocracy. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on. On that relationship. [00:56:47] Speaker A: What you say makes me think of, in my opinion, one of the greatest truths about the liturgy, which was in a book called Liturgy and Personality by Dietrich von Hildebrand, written in 1933. Interesting fun fact. Bishop Barron wrote the preface to the English translation. So it's a book about the Latin Mass prefaced by Bishop Barron. And he says this. He says that the transformative power of the liturgy is in the fact that it is responding to the infinite value of God. And that's what transforms you. But as soon as the liturgy turns from God towards man to help man. So even if we've got a good intention here, because we want to help man, we want to use the liturgy to help man, use the liturgy to catechize man, to sanctify him or anything for him, it loses its transformative power. Because the whole transformative power is just man abandoning himself to this infinite glory of God. And I find that to be very powerful because it's quite remarkable how thinking about the liturgy as the liturgy is here to sanctify man, that's a good thing, right? That doesn't even seem like a problematic statement. In a sense, it's not. But in another sense, the ultimate goal of the liturgy is to worship God. And in worshiping God, that's how man is actually transformed. And so Dieter Brunhillebrand says that the essential virtue is reverence. Reverence is the very essence of all virtue, which is the whole essence of liturgy, where you are abandoning yourself to the worship of God. And I think in the reform of the liturgy, in many of the Novus Ordo Mise, many of the new Masses, not all, but many, there is a very much a focus on sanctifying man. And so then there is a consequent lackluster result in terms of the liturgical splendor. And yeah, I think that there is. In the traditional liturgy, obviously, there's. There is this focus of worshiping Almighty God. Traditionally, it was uncommon for Catholics even in traditional parishes. Nowadays, Catholics receive Holy Communion every single liturgy. That's not traditional right there. Not that you shouldn't. And I'm not making anybody into chanceness here. You can talk to your spiritual father about that. Go to Communion as much as you feel called to. But if we just think about that for a second. Let's think about we're having. Going to the liturgy, and most people don't receive Holy Communion. Like, we. Even. That almost doesn't even make sense to us. It's like, well, why? You know, what's. But if we think about the liturgy as like, we are worshiping God, that's the whole purpose. That's purpose number one. I think that that's. That it makes more sense. And one. One really big benefit is that a benefit of modern technology is that when you look at the Mass of the Ages documentary, you know, this is a mode of aesthetics which captures the splendor of the liturgy more than any other aesthetic mode. So we've got paintings of the liturgy, we've got sculptures or this or that, or various forms of art. But if you take film, film is the best art form to give this splendor to the audience, aside from actually going to the liturgy. So there's a great. An immense value to that. An immense value. And I. So I don't want what I say here to be denigrating the power of good cinema, good film, to really offer something that really moves you to something good, true, good and beautiful. But the technocratic part that we're talking about, that we're trying to criticize and warn ourselves and others about it, because we're trying to admit that we're also pawns in the game here. We don't want to be, is that there is no reverence. There's absolutely no reference on this technocratic algorithm beast. No reverence. If there was reverence, they wouldn't make any money. It's all about using and abusing truth, lies, and people using and abusing all those things for the sake of money. So, yeah, the liturgy is the. The essence and, and. And good liturgy, liturgical, this liturgical mindset. But it all comes down to. To me, it comes down to, here I am at the Avalanche Institute, so I have to plug the avalanche suit again. Our motto is the one thing necessary. The one thing necessary. And what is that? That is mental prayer. Encountering the Lord and mental prayer. Because even if you have a perfect Latin Mass, you've got a perfect everything perfect Gregorian chant. But if you go that. Go to that Mass with the pride of a Pharisee, you will be rejected. And so all that matters, the most important thing that matters, is that you have deep reverence and humility in your own heart, and you encounter the Lord in mental prayer, which really forms you into a saint. So then you can offer up the holy sacrifice worthily. [01:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen. And I want to say we love Air Crisis. We love Avila Institute, love Dan Burke, the work they're doing. Highly recommend spiritualdirection.com they're doing great work there, and I think it's very important work. Let's go ahead and wrap it up here. I just want to encourage people to be very thoughtful, very intentional about their use of technology. You know, here we are on a podcast, video over the Internet, streaming. We are both editors of online journals. We spend many of our hours of each day using technology. And so I think both of us would say, if your use of technology is harming you, get off it. Even if that means you're not going to our sites. You know, it's like, that's more important. But do find most of us are going to be used on the Internet, so like that. So do find these ways to control yourself, but also do the things go to the sites that do promote truth, beauty, and goodness. You know, Crisis magazine, 1peter5spiritual direction.com, pelican Plus. And, you know, really. And I really want to encourage people, you know, obviously, to donate to our sites. But, like, something like Pelican plus is different because people have often said, like, oh, there's no, you know, Catholic alternatives to, you know, Daily Wire and. Or whatever. I mean, I heard that when Matt Fradd joined Daily Wire, and it's like, well, Pelican plus is trying. So if you're not Willing to pay for it. Don't complain. Because, I mean, Daily Wire exists because it's got some serious money behind it, and most of these places do. And so there's. There's rarely serious money behind traditional Catholic things. And that was the beauty about Mass of the Ages. Speaking of that was. I remember that because I was. I was involved at the beginning. You know, I was the first guy interviewed and it was like, yeah, he just was trying to raise, I think it was $50,000 to make one movie and raising like almost 200,000. And he was even made three. That was. [01:04:25] Speaker A: It was all crowdfunded, too. [01:04:28] Speaker B: That was Catholics stepping up and saying, we're going to use technology to actually make a difference. And it really did make a difference, that movie. Those. Those three moves have done such a world of good. I hear all. I mean, still this day, people come up to me and like, they knew. They were like, weren't you in Mass of the Ages? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, you know, that's. It's like, that was a big deal to them. And so let's just, you know, control technology instead of letting it control us. So, again, if you can donate Crisis Magazine, donate to 1 Peter 5 support Pelican + again, spiritualdirection.com I mean, I get everybody's pulling at you right now. My personal thing is that, like I tell my kids is why I recommend to them, is why I do my adult kids, is like, you donate to your parish first. That's like, you know, your first obligation. And then you make the various organizations that you think are good. Like, I think you should donate to at least one organization that helps the poor directly in your community. Like, I'm not saying this is not like different rules, morals, just simply. I think that's very important that you find a good organization, help, support in your community and that you can help if you can volunteer with them, even better. But, like, you know, help them. But then, yes, journals like ours, I do think do good work. We get. I know you get. We get all the time, you know, people saying it really helped them, you know, for us, like, navigate the crisis in the church. So I. I think, I do think what we do is important. But don't let the technology control you. So. Any last words, Tim? [01:06:01] Speaker A: That's it. Vivo Cristo, Ray. [01:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And like. And subscribe. [01:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Make sure you, like, makes. Help us pinch incense to the algorithm beast. [01:06:10] Speaker B: That's right. Smash that, like, button. [01:06:12] Speaker A: Subscribe to the channel. [01:06:15] Speaker B: Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you. Sa.