Recording of an interview with Matt Fradd – from Gandalf and poetry to AI and marriage

To listen to the interview, press the play button on the player above. Also, you can read the transcipt of the interview below.
[Spausti čia, jei norite skaityti LT – press here to read in LT]

The following is an interview with Matt Fradd, the host of a well-known Catholic podcast “Pints with Aquinas”. The interview was recorded by Simonas Bansevičius during the “World Apostolic Congress on Mercy” in Vilnius. During the interview, Matt talks about the vocation of marriage, social distancing caused by and increasing digitalization of social sphere, as well as some poetry and of course – St. Thomas Aquinas. The recording takes place as Simonas and Matt are walking in the street – thus the sound of cars, footsteps and occasional fans greeting Matt in the street.

Simonas: The first question I wanted to ask was about marriage. [As Matt makes the sign of the Cross and reminds the interviewer to pray before the discussion] Come, Holy Spirit.

Matt: What do you want to know about marriage? I know everything. What do you want to know?

Simonas: So it seems that at least there’s this feeling that there’s a lack of faith and hope in marriage as half of the marriages are now divorced. And when you’re young, when you’re thinking about it, you’re faced with fear. Will I make it? Even in even in Catholic couples, like half of the time, it’s at least someone is from a divorced family. And you’re afraid of that. So the question would be, could you remind us of the glory of married vocation?

Matt: Yes. I would say, first of all, that to allow fear to prevent you from following your vocation would be a very effeminate thing to do. If everyone were to do this, then we would either not produce or more likely we would fornicate, and then we would either have children outside of marriage or children aborted in the womb. This is a godless option. So we have to figure out a way to seriously discern marriage and then give our yes. Now I am an old man. I think we live in… [laughs] The technology has advanced so much, and it seems to me that as modern technology advances, it’s becoming increasingly unnecessary just to interact with people. Like when I was 20, you had to pull over and ask someone for directions. You know, you would have to talk to a librarian, your next door neighbor, you know. Whereas now, because of modern technology, you can get through a whole day. You can go shopping, you can do everything and never have to speak to anybody. And so I feel like modern technology, for all the good it has brought us, has also disintegrated communities. And it’s affected not just our romantic relationships, but how we can even have friends. So I think to recognize that we’re in a this difficult situation today where I think people want to engage with others, but it’s increasingly difficult because of that. Yeah. But okay, so I think my advice would be I don’t know, what do you want me to tell you?

Simonas: So how would you encourage some young fella, to go out on a date in real time? Not on Tinder for example?

Matt: Yes. Well, I have decided that I have no good advice for people because I’m so old. Whenever I talk to young men [laughs], whenever I talk to young men about dating, they look at me like I have no idea. And maybe I have no idea. So I don’t think I have any good advice. But I would say that I have been married this year for 20 years and I promise – my wife is terrific and I love her. We’re good friends still. And And I’m so glad I married her. And Like any vocation, you know, when you become married or become a priest, you have ideas about how it might be. And then reality can set in, and suffering can set in through a myriad of ways. And it can be difficult, but it’s the best one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. [As Simonas stops] You don’t know where we are?

Simonas: Left my bag there.

Matt: [Laughs] Okay, let’s go back! Yes, I mean, look, the modern world has no understanding of what marriage is, because the modern man doesn’t even know what man is. We don’t know what men are. Apparently, they might be women. They might be cats. It depends. So we certainly don’t know what marriage is. And we don’t even know what sex is. People don’t even know what that word means. So we’re very confused. So I think we have to go back to what the church teaches and what the saints taught. And then, you know, find a good looking woman and ask her on a date, ask her for a drink and have fun together. And it can be tempting, I would imagine, to be overly serious and nervous and uptight because things can be so difficult. But for me, it was beautiful because our romantic relationship came out of our already friendship. We were doing ministry together. So see, I told you I have no good advice for men.

Simonas: Then to ask and advice from your marriage life. How do you cling to God when you face difficulties in marriage?

Matt: I think yeah, I think you cling to God in marriage when there are difficulties the same way you cling to God outside of marriage. In other words, you have two options. You can turn to him to be your refuge, or you can turn to the things of the world that promise relief. In Jeremiah chapter two, God says, „My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me,     the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). And to me, this is this is just so illustrative of the spiritual life we turn away from the only one who is our true refuge, and we turn towards things which may not be evil in and of themselves, but cannot be God, and they never fully deliver. You know, so in tough times in my marriage, I know what that’s like, you know, to turn to things, to distract myself from the pain, to not fully embrace in my own suffering, my own poverty and sinfulness. And then the times to surrender to God. So it’s a much better idea to surrender to God because the other, other way doesn’t work for long.

Simonas: Should you surrender to your wife?

Matt: It depends what you mean?

Simonas: Well, you have to give yourself when you make the vow. You you make a self-gift. And in a way, it’s surrendering yourself.

Matt: Yeah, I’d have to think about that. I’m sure that’s probably right in some sense of the word. Yeah. Well, you’re revealing yourself to another in a way that you don’t do anybody else. And in that sense, it can be quite intimidating, especially when we often don’t like ourselves, you know? And so to have somebody else come into our inner sanctum, as it were, and know us more intimately than anybody else knows us is, is a scary thing. But I suppose in that sense, there’s a… I need to sort of surrender who I am to her and trust that she will love me in return.

Simonas: But which parts of yourself you still have to keep to yourself? Are there any?

Matt: Again, I think it depends on what you mean. Because obviously I can’t surrender certain things to her. Like my interior life, or my will, or my conscience. And these sorts of things. But… I’d have to think more about what it would mean to surrender to my wife before I could say yes or no.

Simonas: Have you read the new encyclical? If we speak about distancing ourselves through technology.

Matt: I have perused the new encyclical. I haven’t read it because it’s over 40,000 words! but yes, what I read I thought was good. It wasn’t really an encyclical about AI or technology necessarily, but about how we can maintain our humanity and treat people with dignity in the new Industrial Revolution, as it were. Yeah. And I think all I would have to say is sort of what I said earlier about the way in which it seems to me that modern technology disintegrates communities and sort of isolates us. Yeah. It’s crazy to think that you could stay at home and just watch Netflix and order Uber Eats. Do you have this? And never never leave your house. You know, like not even look at the Uber Eats driver. You just make him drop it off. You don’t have to look at him, you know.

Simonas: I saw it once. It’s just so daunting to see it. But once again – hope. When you think about the current state of digitalized society, there’s the risk of falling into despair. But I think that the Catholic answer is joy. And just to give a context for the question. I like this poem, a quick four lines of it, that I heard last week. And it goes like this:

„Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
[Matt joins as well] There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!”
– Hilaire Belloc.

Matt: Amen.

Simonas: So how can one live a life like that? Current day and age, wherever you are. Despite if it’s USA with cultural wars, if it’s Africa or Europe with unstable political situations. Live every single day of your life like that?

Matt: Well, red wine helps, you know. No, I think that if  God exists and Christianity is true – and it is – then we have no good reason. Not only do we have no good reason for despair, we have no good reason to lose our peace. And so we are an Easter people, alleluia is our song – god exists. He’s revealed himself in the person of Christ, shown his heart to us, which is a heart that’s merciful and which loves mankind. And which doesn’t love mankind collectively – like a blob of humanity, the way a beekeeper loves his hive of bees – but loves us somehow individually and is attentive to us and is aware of our sufferings and anxieties. Who even tells us in 1 Peter 5:7 to cast our anxieties upon him because he cares for us. And so once you realize, that to any degree at all, it almost makes despair impossible. And then also, I’m thinking of Gandalf to… [laughs] Since Pope Leo quoted him, I can as well. That what does he say to to Frodo that we live to what does he say?

Simonas: Those who come to see such days, right?

Matt: Something to this effect.

Simonas: Yes, I’ll add it later on.

Matt: Yes. [Laughs] Yeah, it’ll make us look really smart.

[The text is:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. „So do I,” said Gandalf, „and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”]

Yeah, yeah, the times are tough, but God is tougher. And, you know, we’re suffering not from like under the boot of communism, but under a sort of maybe, maybe more insidious form of tyranny that plays on our passions and makes us slaves to yeah, to our passions. And so we need to find freedom from those slave drivers like the Israelites found freedom from the Egyptian slave drivers.

Simonas: And so do you yourself manage to live like this?

Matt: Like what?

Simonas: Like such an, alleluia?

Matt: Well, yeah, I think so. Yeah. You don’t need a lot of people. You just need a few. I think it’s in Mark 2:3. It’s when the men bring the the paralytic to Jesus. they can’t find any way in. So they get on this bloke’s [meaning a man] roof and tear a hole in the roof and let him down. I just think it’s a good question to ask, like, do you have do, I have two friends in my life who will bring me to Jesus? You know, who will speak truth to me? Who will be the joy of Christ to me if I become paralyzed with despair or something, you know? We don’t need a lot of friends, but we do need to journey through this vale of tears with a few of them and with joy. That’s why I’m a big fan of whatever gets people together, you know, within reason. So like a glass of wine, or a cigar on the porch, or pilgrimage.

Simonas: I wanted to ask about cigars. Because it’s in your aesthetics of the content that you produce. How did Cigars and pines come to your life and how do you find some spirituality in it? I guess you do?

Matt: Yeah, well, I really enjoy whiskey more than pints of beer, but pints is like an English or Australian saying, you know, „go have a pint at the pub”. Yeah. And that would signify that we’re going to have a relaxed, kind of friendly conversation with a friend. Cigars… My father in law got me into them, like, 21 years ago. I just wanted him to like me, so I had one with him, and I don’t know if I liked it very much at the time, but I eventually grew to love them. And to me, it’s a great way to… When you light up a cigar, a good quality cigar. It’s a commitment to about an hour. You know, so when you light that match. You can’t do anything for an hour. You just sit there. And hopefully with a good friend or a good book. And so in that sense, I think in this very busy day and age, having a cigar or a pint can help us, help us slow down. Of course, you don’t have to do it. You might not want to or you might not like it, but I do. So there.

Simonas: I remember hearing you once say that sometimes you feel as if it would be better for people to just read some poetry instead of listening to your podcasts.

Matt: Yes, I said this quite a bit. I keep saying it. I say things like… Yeah, it’d be better if you stop listening to my podcast and just read a book, you know? But then people pushed back on that and they said, „I understand where you’re coming from, but like, I came to faith through your podcast, or I heard Scott Hahn explain this in a way that led me to deeper faith. So please stop saying that”. Okay, so, so while I think it is probably a good idea that it’d be great if pints was a catalyst to bring people into real life communion and conversation and education. I guess I’d try not to say that as much as I used to.

Simonas: But If someone were to exchange you for a book? What book would you recommend?

Matt: Well, it’s got to be „The Brothers Karamazov”. It’s got to be „The Lord of the Rings” or „Crime and Punishment”. It’s got to be a good book. And then and of course, any section of the „Summa theologiae” [St. Thomas Aquinas’s main work].

Simonas: Okay, I like that. And about poetry, what kind of poetry?

Matt: I’m not an expert at poetry. I know a few poems. Let’s see.

Simonas: You don’t have to push yourself.

Matt: Well, I want to, anyway. What is it? I forget the author. He’s a. He was a Jesuit priest. He says:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
– Gerard Manley Hopkins

Isn’t that beautiful?

Simonas: That’s beautiful. [Matt greets a few seminarians passing by].

Now, more of a philosophical question. At least some philosophers say that the root of philosophy for Greeks was the wonder of life. And for Aquinas, something like this as well. The main principle for him eventually was looking for truth. And the truth leads to God. But now, after Rene Descartes, the main principle of philosophy is just doubt. We’re doubting everything. And if you don’t find anything that goes against our ideas, then okay, it may be plausible. John Paul II, it seems, had a different principle, which was the person as irreducible, never as a means to an end, always a goal. Do you think it’s enough, this personal principle for today, or do we need something new? As the digital isolation is creeping in?

Matt: Yeah, I like to think of phenomenology [one of the philosophies behind St. John Paul II‘s thinking] and sort of Aquinas teleology as hand in glove. Right? So we have teleological principles that can show us what something or some action is for, and that if something were to act contrary to its nature, it would be disordered. But then we also have the subjective interpretation or response of the disordered thing, which can be a prophet showing us that things aren’t the way they ought to be.

Regarding Descartes, who I actually like a lot. I think Descartes was not a skeptic in the way a lot of us say he was. I think he was using methodological skepticism to arrive at truth. But I think his project failed, and I think his. I think Cartesian certainty is not something we can have. And by Cartesian certainty, I mean a sort of indubitable, incorrigible belief. What’s interesting is that he came up with the cogito [an idea „I think, therefore I am“, saying that it is impossible do deny your personal existence, because of the fact, that you are able to think]. Yeah. As if this was going to be bulletproof. And then not long after, you’ve got Nietzsche and Kant denying that the self can… You can’t even know if you exist. And then Hume talks about the bundle theory. So there is no self behind the perceptions.

So I like to contrast Cartesian certainty with what’s being called phenomenal conservatism. All right. So if Cartesian certainty says, I will not accept something as true unless I can be certain. Phenomenal conservatism says – I will accept something as true if there is reason to think it true. If I don’t have any good reason to not think this thing that seems to be true, then I’m within my epistemic [related to thinking] rights to go on believing it and will go on believing it unless or until I have evidence to the contrary.

And I think that this is just how all human beings at all times have always said they know anything. Like if you were to question me about whether or not my wife was a Russian spy, I could say, yeah, no, I’m really certain. But, you know, like, if you pressed me about it and said, well, isn’t that what you would think? And a couple of questions deep, I’d probably say, okay, look, I don’t know. Okay. I mean, sure, it’s possible, but that doesn’t make it probable and without any good reason to think it the case, I don’t have to go on believing it. And I think for most people who believe in God, belief in God is what’s being called properly basic. A lot of our beliefs are based on other beliefs. Yeah? Like I believe I’m in Lithuania because I see the flag everywhere and that’s what my flight ticket said. But then there are other beliefs that aren’t based on any belief. And in fact, this has to be the case. Because think of it this way – if every belief we hold has to be based on another belief, then we could never know anything because we would be in this infinite regress, you see? So I just think there are things that we accept because of our immediate experience. And I think that God is is like that for many people. And without evidence to the contrary, I think we’re okay maintaining our belief in God. Yeah. Not to mention the many philosophical arguments we have for his existence.

Simonas: So to lead to the conclusion. As we are in the „World Apostolic Congress on Mercy” and Jesus in the image of Divine Mercy – he’s pointing to the heart. And the last encyclical [named „Dilexit nos“] of Pope Francis was about the heart. Do you think this is quite of a prophetic thing in the sense that as the encyclical encourages people to come back to their heart as a thing that is the innermost part of you but also something indescribable. And we are so used to being able to describe everything that’s around us, even our choices of music, with artificially enhanced recommendation algorithms.

Matt: Yeah, wasn’t it rené Pascal, who was a contemporary of René Descartes, who said the heart has reasons that that…

Simonas: Only the heart knows of?

Matt: Yeah, yeah. I think the last thing we want to do is reduce Christianity to a moral code or a philosophy of life. And sometimes you see people emphasize Christianity as if this is what it was. Like we think, well, if people would just stop committing evil, they would be happier. Their families would be happier. Society would flourish.

Well, we talk about Christianity like it were a syllogism [a philosophical argument] and that people just need to get on board with the premises. Yeah. And I think that Christianity is the truest of philosophies and the most beautiful of, of moralities. And yet, first and foremost, Christianity is a person whom we are meant to encounter. So this is so essential to the Christian life. If you were to ask Padre Pioif you were around in the 60s, „Am I meant to receive the stigmata like you are?” He probably would have said, I mean, I don’t know, probably not. Or think of any of these other supernatural things like Catherine of Siena. Am I meant to hear? Probably not. But if you were to ask any saint in heaven or on earth, am I meant to experience dynamic, ever intensifying intimacy with the Holy Trinity? The answer is obviously yes! This is the entire point of the Christian faith.