For the record, this is probably the most unsettling episode picture I’ve designed for They That Hope. Apparently, it was created by AI, which is a nice nod to our previous episode. I just searched for “screaming children” and this was one of the things that came up. I’m sure I’ll have some kind of nightmare about it.

I begin this episode by reading a stanza of a poem titled “Sorrow” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. This reflects how my sports week went. First, the Cavs were knocked out of the first round of NBA playoffs in Game 6. Then, the Tampa Bay Lightning lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime of game 7. The series had three overtime games… Tampa lost all three of them.

But the Pirates are doing well. Yes, I mentioned a baseball team in a positive light. That is how low I am right now. Though I am taking Aidan to a game this Sunday, and I “think” Father Dave will be there. He was going to be, until he found out it is “Kids Day”. He said he wasn’t looking forward to 10,000 screaming 7-year-olds. I thought the episode picture was a good representative of his darkest fears. I’m sure he’ll have some kind of nightmare about it.

We have a great conversation about the many apostolates in the Church today and how important they are in the mission of evangelization. We included our Steubenville Conferences in that group. Though some people discount “event ministry,” both Fr. Dave and I have been blessed by them, and have seen people’s lives change through them. No, our faith can’t be sustained by just one “event,” but often God can use those moments as a spark for lifelong conversion. A ministry need not be all things to all people. It can do one thing well, and hope other ministries can fill in the other needs that are out there.

Fr. Dave is celebrating his 27th year as a priest on Thursday! He talked about how being a priest now is very different than when it was when he was ordained, especially because of the sexual scandals that have devastated so many people. To state the obvious, the greatest victims of this were the people who were abused by those whom they trusted to lead them to God. However, there is a secondary effect on those holy men who have been faithful to their call but now have to be constantly vigilant to avoid even the slightest inference of anything that might be seen as inappropriate with young people. This isn’t said out loud too often, but one of the reasons the Church doesn’t invest more in youth ministry is because many priests are afraid of doing anything with teenagers. One accusation of impropriety, no matter how unfounded, can ruin their life. Let us all keep praying for our Church and our young.

Well, the Abiding Together ladies took a next step in their podcast warfare with us. Fr. Dave and I walked into a “feminized” studio: a soy candle, glitter on the table, pink covers on the microphones, and a huge “Abiding Together” banner that said, “to our #1 fans, Fr. Dave and Deacon Bob.”

Actually, it was quite sweet 🙂 Apparently, there are some people who don’t know that we are actually great friends with each other, and it is all in jest. So if you weren’t sure, don’t worry! We really love and admire each other. This is more like sibling rivalry than anything else.

My own daughters (15 and 18) got into the game by getting a wig that looks amazingly similar to Heather’s hair! You can see it in the episode.

Sometimes people ask how much preparation we put into an episode. The answer is, “not much,” but there is some. We take about 5-10 minutes talking about the topics we want to talk about. For this episode, we had discussed talking about the abortion pill and other pro-life issues, and the push back against transgender athletes in sports.

Did we talk about such things? No. “Have you seen ‘I, Robot’?” Fr. Dave asked. Well, that was out of the blue, and took us down a completely different direction.

I was also glad we got to talk about Denis Prager’s visit to Franciscan last week. There were a number of people on campus who were upset about his comments regarding pornography (essentially, that it could be watched without sinning), and ironically he said he wanted to talk about it to “give it some nuance.” According to Fr. Dave, that “nuance” was to dig a deeper hole!

That lead us to a broader topic of how we might deal with people with whom we may strongly agree on some issues but disagree on others. In a divisive world, it is easy to jump to what we are most opposed about. Personally, I’m glad for the kind of dialogue we are having with people like Prager (and Jordan Peterson, for another example). I hope it is a good example of Christian charity, and I pray those who come to our campus experience something special.

We didn’t even do a Franciscan promo! Hope you are blessed by this episode.

For the record, we are good friends with Sr. Miriam, Heather Khym, and Michelle Benzinger—the wonderful women who do the “Abiding Together” podcast. When I first titled the episode (yes, that is my job) I thought I’d photoshop my face over a picture of Jesus, because one of the friars told Fr. Dave that he had a dream that Jesus appeared to him, but then he realized it was me instead. Though I don’t have much of a filter, even I recognized that maybe that wouldn’t be the best look for the podcast.

So then I thought, “What if I put my face over Freddy Krueger?” Again, not the best look.

But what I ended up doing for the thumbnail was easily far more horrific than the previous ideas, but I did it anyway. I’m sorry you won’t be able to unsee it. Though I think Fr. Dave actually looks pretty good with Heather’s hair. My apologies to Michelle.

Lots of other stuff goes on in the podcast. You should listen. I’m really tired because it is 6 AM and I realized I had forgotten to make this post! But in really good news… CAVS won last night! So my prophecy was correct (though it didn’t go to overtime, they crushed them by twenty points).