From Protestant Pastor to Catholic Convert - A Conversation with Frank Ritchie

[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's one thing to do this stuff intellectually, have the arguments, but nobody. If you're in a position like I was an ordained minister in a church with a public profile. You don't convert just for intellectual reasons. All that I'd read about Mary in theology. She's just done her job. Her whole job is to point us towards her. So I just felt like I could turn back to Jesus in prayer again and open my Bible if it was a demon. They've just done a really bad job. Yeah, they are. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Can I say sorry too, on camera, actually, for that? Because I'd totally forgotten about that. But I remember it now. It was a bit calculated on my part because I thought, well, this will play well to the bass. [00:00:35] Speaker A: But there was a church where their whole eldership met together. About what I'd said, they wrote a complaint. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Wow. [00:00:42] Speaker A: They all signed it, asking that I would be fired. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Very much part of your public presence has been the political angle. Has alignment shifted? Has political views or shifted along this journey as well or not? [00:00:54] Speaker A: It's a good question. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Ah, Frank, I'm in the company of esteemed broadcasting royalty. [00:01:04] Speaker A: I feel that's probably going a bit far. [00:01:07] Speaker B: The amateur podcast guy meets the, you know, the seasoned veteran. That's what this feels like. So how do we start then? [00:01:15] Speaker A: That's a good question. Let me start by saying thank you to you. I said thank you to you about this when we finally got to catch up in person for the first time a little while ago after having kind of circled each other's orbit a little for many, many. And I thanked you, and I wanna do this here because I think this is worth noting publicly in today's day and age. I thanked you because some of our interaction over the years has been disagreement. Yeah, yeah. Usually because I've said something publicly, you've had a slightly different perspective, and then you've laid out your differing perspective. But in doing so, you've always been respectful. You've never played the man, you've always played the ball. That's very cool and I've always appreciated that. I've never come away from reading your disagreements with me and feeling like I had been diminished. And I think in today's day and age and the way discourse often happens, that's really important. So on the camera. Thank you. [00:02:13] Speaker B: That's very kind. Frank. All glory goes to God. Cause I'm a mad Irishman at heart. I can get real feisty. I often think, oh, no, that was terrible. I shouldn't have said it that way. I was too uncharitable. So it's good to know that, you know, there is good in the world that's coming out of this mouth that I was actually thinking the other day, when was the first time we probably first officially sparred? And it would have been probably about 15 years ago. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it would have been. [00:02:35] Speaker B: We don't need to go into the gory details, but it was a political issue, and you're on one side and I was on the other. We were both being interviewed on the same radio show, one after the other. I can't remember who went first, but here we are now, sitting in a room together, Ecclesial brothers. It's. What a journey. I want to take you up on that point that you've just raised. Why do you think that disagreement is so. I mean, sometimes it's intolerable today, but it's so difficult for people today to actually disagree. Well, what do you think's going on? [00:03:03] Speaker A: I think we've been shaped into that space over many years, and I think it's the anonymity of it now, because you can argue online, and I think the algorithms of the likes of Facebook, et cetera, which I use, have driven people in that direction. Because if the algorithms are bent on keeping people engaged, then they're going to engage our base instincts and our emotional highs in order to keep us coming back. And the stuff that we gravitate towards when that happens is disagreement. But if your disagreement is behind a keyboard and with someone you're never, ever going to meet and never have met, then it just descends into chaos. It's a very different thing when you're sitting in a room with someone or even talking on air, say, talk back. That can get feisty, but it's still a level above in terms of how human it is. It's a level above a keyboard in a place where you're never gonna meet somebody. And the further you get away from human to human interaction, the less human the discourse becomes. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty. The empathy mechanisms don't kick in like they should. Right. You don't see faces, you don't hear voices. [00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:13] Speaker B: And I think too, I was saying to someone earlier, so many people now are mainlining conspiracy theories like it's a drug. And I think that makes it worse because it's not just a disagreement then. It's like this person is like a moral and even mortal enemy who's part of some. Potentially part of some conspiracy to undermine me and my nation and my people. And that's. So it's so tribal now. Right. Everything that it's just. [00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And the association of the word evil with others and the demonizing of others. So then the fight becomes not against principalities and powers, it becomes against flesh and blood. And the flesh and blood is dehumanised. And if the other is evil, then I can act in any way that I like to protect the good. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny that, isn't it? That's the fundamental. I think one of the great tragedies of the loss of the Christian vision of reality in Western culture is the loss of the imago DEI and that anthropology of the person made in the image of God. Because that means I have an obligation to respect the imago DEI and the other, even in the way I dialogue with them. And when that breaks down, it's a Nietzschean sort of power game. I must win. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And it would be easy to look at non Christian world and see it over there. But the saddest thing is when Christians lose sight of the other as created in the image of God and are then justifying that the other is in some way evil. So I get to dehumanise. I think it's one thing to encounter someone who doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in the Christian ethic acting in that way. It's a completely sadder thing when it's a Christian engaging like that. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Have you had. I mean, I know I have, but have you had moments where you just. You feel the weight of that, where the tide comes at you and you feel the dehumanisation and what's being said at you? Not even to you? [00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I've been doing what I do for be about 25 years now. Public being in the public eye in some way as a person of faith. Started on Life FM, would have been 2000, 2001. So I've been doing it since then. So through the 2000s, I was hosting Christian talkback on Sunday evenings for a couple of hours. Did that for about eight years. My position on ZB, I think I started with CBA, Christian Broadcasting association and their relationship with ZB. I started doing broadcasting on ZB in about 2010 with Christmas and Easter. Interestingly, it was the Christian broadcasting that was way harder than the. Than the. Pulled back on ZB because of that wave that would come at me if people disagreed. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Like the stakes were almost a lot more personal and higher sort of thing. [00:06:53] Speaker A: Stakes were way higher because in the Christian world we attach our opinions to God. Yeah, cool. And so therefore so much more is at stake. So I remember times on talkback where I remember one time, I won't say what the topic was, but I said something on the air that I didn't think was very controversial. But there was a church where their whole eldership met together about what I'd said. No, they all. They wrote a complaint. [00:07:21] Speaker B: Wow. [00:07:22] Speaker A: They all signed it, asking that I would be fired and sent it in. I've never had anything like that at zb. [00:07:30] Speaker B: Gosh. [00:07:31] Speaker A: And so there were times where the waves would come and I had to work out very quickly, as someone who was in his early 20s with a nationwide microphone to a Christian audience, why I was there. Because when I was initially given the microphone, I thought, oh, I'm just gonna have really interesting conversations with really interesting people. Some of that might be disagreement, but it's gonna be interesting. I did not see coming the personal attacks, and they bit. I remember. I remember not long after I started, a couple of years after I started, I got married and I. I remember living in Hamilton. And my wife will attest to this. I would do the show in Auckland on a Sunday evening from 9 till 11. 11 o' clock would end. I would debrief with the guy who was doing the phones for me. Skip. Very, very good, man. I would drive home and there'd be stuff stewing and I'd get home and usually it was because someone had attacked me. I'd get home, I would walk into the bedroom and to my wife, are you awake? Are you awake? Eventually she would wake up. Yeah. [00:08:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:41] Speaker A: Then I'd tell her what had happened and why I was so annoyed. And then. Cause I'd offloaded it. I was then able to relax, go off to sleep, and then. [00:08:50] Speaker B: Cheeky. [00:08:50] Speaker A: Awake. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Stewie. Oh, no. Oh, man, that is. Oh, gosh. And that would have been a decent drive, too. So the whole time it's cooking away. [00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's cooking away. And of course, someone in your early 20s, in your 20s, even into my early 30s still, I didn't really have the ability to process that well, necessarily. So I got to the point where I felt quite resentful towards the end, [00:09:16] Speaker B: I was gonna say, did you get cynical about it? [00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. And so I ended up leaving. And in the years reflecting on it, the issue wasn't the audience. The issue was me and my ability to ground myself in something deeper than the opinions of other people. And that's an ongoing discipline when you're in the public eye as a broadcaster. And I only have that in a very minuscule level. Compared to people that I sit down with in my chaplaincy work, it's very easy for your sense of wellbeing and who you are to rise and fall on what people are saying about you. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Well, even in the ministry work that I do, it's public communication and it's the same. All it will take is just one comment, one post, one bit of feedback that's just not well worded. And that can really be. I've had to learn over the years to, yeah, to just lean more into God than the opinions of others, but then also hold that tension of I do need to listen to others, so I'm not a renegade who's not listening to sound feedback. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah. But then it's a matter of picking which voices you do listen to, what opinions you do listen to, because. And it's still true for me, it's very easy for your head to get caught in a rabbit hole. So you see a disagreement come up, you feel like you've been misunderstood, and so then you feel the need to justify yourself and explain yourself and it can just. And I have so many imaginary conversations in my head that aren't real, concocting responses to multiple disagreements. [00:10:47] Speaker B: I'm the same. And I'm like, right. Oh, how would I play tennis against this particular line? Yeah, it's crazy. My wife, when I was doing media spokesperson work, my wife knew when I had like, probably a bit more bigger or concerning interviews coming up because I'd be talking away to myself out loud in the bathroom or I'd be interviewing myself in the mirror trying to do combat with myself, which I knew. Oh, yeah, he's got something coming up. Yeah, yeah, that's so funny. Yeah. How do we recover dialogue then? Like, because that's. I'm increasingly convinced that's the answer. I mean, I see even a lot of people today, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. The whole new media, independent media trend, it's sort of now starting to repeat what mainstream media was. It's not taking advantage of the potential social aspect of it to actually form and have good dialogue. But how do we get there? How do we recover something? [00:11:36] Speaker A: Man, that's a good question. I think if anybody can solve that one, they should be sponsored up the inn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good question. It fascinates me that as new media develops, there are two forms that have taken off, especially when it comes to video. There's the short form content, so the reels that are rotting everybody's brain, including my own. But the other is not kind of some medium. It's a long form. People sitting down and tuning into stuff that is really long. The number of podcasts now that are two to three hours is phenomenal and people are consuming that content. That long form stuff I think is where the opportunity is. I agree the ability to really unpack conversation. But I think it's then beholden on those who do the long form stuff to not only have people on that they agree with, that they like, but to model respectful dialogue as well. I can't see too many other forums where that can happen. [00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And that's funny enough. I've been thinking about this with the dispatchers actually is moving forward. How do I like. I wouldn't mind actually sitting down, believe it or not, with someone like Chloe Swarbrick now her and I would. There'd be big disagreements on certain moral questions. But I think there's a dialogue that should happen. It's very easy to say, oh, ha ha, funny, look at that, or I demonise that or disagree with that. And then you have a bunch of guests on who all agree with you, say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're right, aren't we? But how do you. And I think Christians should be really world leaders at this. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Oh, should be totally modelling it. I'm sure we'll. Because you're Catholic and because I'm now Catholic, I'm sure we'll go into my conversion story at some point maybe. Yeah, we are gonna get that. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Definitely get that. [00:13:21] Speaker A: One of the things that I've really appreciated in that journey is online spaces where I've watched Catholic apologists that I really like and respect sit down with Protestant apologists that I really like and respect and just see them dialogue. Able to acknowledge where they really disagree, but not see that as a personal thing. Just then able to wrestle with the issues but also find the common ground. This is where we stand together. And again, I can't see anything other than when it comes to the media space and digital, I don't see anything other than long form where that can happen. But I think you're right. I think the onus is on us as Christians who hold to the imago dei to be able to do that with people that we disagree with. [00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah, And I think you're right. The potential to. I think for the longer form it gives it things room to breathe. Right. And I think also the people can actually then like, it can sit there and people can tune in. You could access a much wider audience too. So There's a much group of witnesses watching that unfold, a bigger group of witnesses watching that. You know, it's not just a narrow audience. Potentially you could get a very broad group who could actually be exposed to that model of dialogue and hopefully adopt it themselves. [00:14:36] Speaker A: I think that's how we model it in a digital space. And then I think there is just the recovery of real relationships with people. Like I look at the stats around men and loneliness and that speaks to people who have lost close connection and relationship. So again, I think it's beholden on Christians to walk out your door and connect with real people and get to know them over time at a deeper level, get to know your, our actual neighbours. So get past the six foot fences and get to know your real neighbours when you're in a supermarket. And I use this example a lot. I use the self checkout stuff all the time. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:15:18] Speaker A: But it's very easy to walk past the person who's monitoring the self checkout the staff member and not make eye contact and to not even acknowledge that they're there. So it may seem like a dumb thing, but I'll always say thank you to that person as I, as I walk past them. It's just a small way to acknowledge their humanity. So I think us Christians being conscious of all spaces that they're in where there are human beings and seeking, even if it's just in a small thing to treat the other as a human being is really important. Went into a record shop recently and I was with my. [00:15:53] Speaker B: You're a vinyl man. [00:15:55] Speaker A: No, it had CDs. [00:15:56] Speaker B: Oh, I was gonna say I'm a vinyl man. I was gonna. [00:15:58] Speaker A: I'd like to be a vinyl man. [00:15:59] Speaker B: Meeting of the minds that are made. [00:16:00] Speaker A: I'd like to be a vinyl man but it cost me too much to do. Yeah, yeah. Well it does now that I'd just be buying it for the. But went into the record shop and the guy who was in there was lovely. My daughter was with me and he had the American flag up the back with the MAGA hat. And neither her or I sit in the MAGA camp. I'm very much not a Trump guy. And so we're coming up and she looked at the cap and then she gave me the glance like, do you see that? But he was lovely. So when we got out I said to her, you noticed the cap. So you've got some thoughts about his politics. But what did you think about him and the way that he treated us? And he was lovely, like that's the takeaway, is that he was lovely. So we like him, we respect him because he treated us, he treated us well. It doesn't matter what his politics are. We'll probably have some disagreement there. But first and foremost, he's a human being who engaged in relationship. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Well, behold the man. Yeah, you know, that's profound. Like it's funny you should talk about check ins. I was wrestling with my kids, trying to model that for them as well. They're like, oh, why don't we just go to the self checking? I was like, well, cause there's a person there. Yeah, why wouldn't we? In a culture of utility too, those small interactions are really quite fundamental. Cause it's a recognition that I am in the presence of the image of God. And that's profound. That reshapes your whole world, your whole view of things, your whole interaction with the world around you. Like you say, we are the, the most connected but least communal generation ever. And we've got to recover that and not just treat people as utility. [00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah, but it takes effort to recover that. Because everything is built towards convenience now. You don't have to go. And for most things now, you don't have to walk into a shop, for instance, if you want to buy something, you just click it, have it sent to your door. You don't even have to engage with the courier on most things these days. Covid broke that. The need to have to sign for stuff. So you don't even have to engage with that person. You can order stuff, have it sent to your door, wait till they're gone, open the door, get that thing in. So the choice to engage has to be an intentional choice now. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's one of the things I think with AI and automation and everything, I can imagine a truly dystopian world where we've got everything we ever wanted, but nothing we ever needed. And you just could go throughout potentially a full day without ever communicating face to face with a person. [00:18:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's scary, eh? When you think about how we're built and we're fundamentally relational, so there is a dehumanising that goes on there and we're the ones who lose out. So loneliness ramps up and then everything that goes with loneliness. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Well, and also there's a disconnection from reality and the world as it exists. Because imagine you get into a car and it's driving you. You're not even doing the basic thing of interacting with the machine that you're in. And the World around you as you move through it. It's just. Yeah, I mean, it's truly. It's nightmarish stuff. [00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. [00:18:51] Speaker B: But something's not nightmarish. That's a good segue, isn't it? Something that's not nightmarish is your entry into the Catholic Church y this Easter. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Well, some people would think it's nightmarish. [00:19:01] Speaker B: I was gonna say. Yeah, send your comments, dude. Yeah, that's a big shift. That's a big change. [00:19:08] Speaker A: It has been. [00:19:09] Speaker B: It was funny. Often from time to time I'd go places. I'd be speaking at public events over the years and people would say, do you know Frank Ritchie? I'd say, yeah, yeah, Frank, yeah. They're like, you know, I know Frank. I think he should. He'd be a great Catholic, really. I just didn't quite. In fact, one guy I remember, I can't. I think. I think he was a teacher in Gisborne and he knew you. He actually knows you. I can't remember his name for the life of me. And he said, oh, you know, he's been. He's getting into, you know, the liturgical prayer, you know, and I think he's close. And I was like, really? And I was like. And sure enough, here we are now. And you're, you know, you've crossed the Tiber, as they say. [00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah. As you say it. I feel a little emotional. Yeah. It's been a big journey. [00:19:48] Speaker B: What was Easter life, man, Start of the year. It was. [00:19:51] Speaker A: Let's talk about what Holy Week was like. Yeah, okay. [00:19:53] Speaker B: You do. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Because the actual vigil service, I'm looking forward to experiencing that next year. But I'll get into why in a sec. So Holy Week for me was a really. Was really big first, the Palm Sunday service at the cathedral. I attend the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Hamilton. Partly just for practical reasons. It means I can go to 7:30 mass on a Sunday and then I can go to church with my wife at the church that we started together. Cause that's her community. My community as well, but in a different way. But the Palm Sunday service, so you're outside, the reading of the palms happens and then the palms are blessed. Then everybody processes inside. You'll take your seat. And then some more readings happen. We got to the gospel reading and the gospel reading is the whole passion reading from Last Supper through to the moment. [00:20:47] Speaker B: That's just warm up for dress rehearsal for Good Friday. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah. But we're all standing and the cathedral was packed. We're all standing for the gospel reading. And then the woman who was reading the gospel passage and there were different voices doing different parts and the priest was doing the voice of Jesus. She had led the RCIA course that I did. We get to the moment where Jesus dies and she just quietly on the microphone says, we kneel. And then the sound, it was the sound of the whole congregation getting on their knees. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Catholic shuffle. [00:21:25] Speaker A: Oh, it was phenomenal. Just this. And I'm like, complete reverence. No emotional hype, no trying to make everybody kind of feel something big. Just this sense of reverence is. Everybody knelt and it got me. So there was that. Then I went to the Chrism service on Tuesday, which is where all the priests from the diocese come to the cathedral. They all renew their vows with the bishop. All the oils for the sacraments throughout the year are blessed and then taken back to the local parishes. But I had a moment where I was sitting there and I watched the priests renewing their vows. And I thought to myself, if the denomination that I'd been a part of, which I still deeply love, had had a service like this, I would have been up there as an ordained minister. And that's not me now. And I had to work on my breathing so that it wouldn't turn into ugly tears. Yeah, yeah, it was a good holy grief is probably the best way to describe it. And then at the end, the song was Be Still My Soul. And the lyrics were just phenomenal for where I was. So that Chrism service was actually my big moment. And then the adolescent on that point, [00:22:42] Speaker B: by the way, tears, the desert fathers would say, those tears are good. They're actually a recognition that God, I need you in that moment. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Very much so. And I think too, this sort of stuff can very easily descend into who's right, who's wrong. Protestant versus Catholic. That's not where I'm at. It's not who I am. I still deeply love where I came from and the faith that I came from. It's still very much a part of who I am. Yeah, we can get into the journey of why I've landed where I've landed. But yeah, it's not a fight for me. So that. [00:23:16] Speaker B: No, well, we don't. I think this is the thing. Cause I had, I was away for 10 years the Catholic Church. I became a very anti Catholic Protestant. And what I've realized more and more is that as a Catholic, I don't define myself by what I'm in opposition to. I just strive to be that disciple. And when I was this Very anti Catholic, Protestant I was a lot of the time. And this is not true of all Protestants, but I was defining myself by what I wasn't, you know, and what I was in opposition to. And it was a very different. Subtle but powerful. [00:23:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:47] Speaker B: You know. [00:23:48] Speaker A: Yeah. For me, it feels like, if I was gonna use theological language, it feels like a transfiguration. Yeah. Where Paul's image of the resurrection is the sense that the flesh and the blood is the seed for the transfiguration. And so I very much feel like the faith that I've had for so long is still there. It's still beautiful, but it's been transfigured. There's been flourishing a whole other layer added to it. And the people of the denomination that I came, I still consider them friends, family, and I know some of them are disappointed, and hopefully we can work that out together over time, but there's certainly no sense of opposition. So it was definitely a holy grief. And those tears were very good. Those tears said to me that you still love the thing that you came from. Yeah. Which is good. And being an ordained minister was a deep part of my identity since I was ordained in 2012. So to sit there and let that go was the biggest moment. And then the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, just watching everybody at the end of that service line up, make their way up to the cross, kneel and touch it or kiss it, and I joined that. That felt emotional. And then we get to Easter Saturday and the vigil service, and it was big. That service is magnificent. I had Protestant friends there who were experiencing a Catholic service for the first time. [00:25:19] Speaker B: And that was the mother of all vigils was the first time. [00:25:21] Speaker A: This was the introduct. I had Catholic friends who were there with me. I knew the part that I had to play to go through the process. So I was more focused on the moving parts and hoping my Protestant friends were. Felt like they were part of it than I was really on the feel of the service. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really interesting. I had my Catholic friends asking what was it like to take the Eucharist for the first time? And I'd had a moment months prior where I really came to terms with transcendence, substantiation in a Mass and had quite an emotional moment where I was sitting there, not able to take it, just feeling really struck that I was sitting in the room with Jesus, and that was enough. And so when we got to taking the Eucharist, I just had to be really honest. They asked Me and I said, felt decidedly ordinary. And that's a really good thing. [00:26:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not a bad thing. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And then I went to the other big moment was the Tuesday after, where I went along to the midday Mass and someone got up, rattled through everything way too quickly before I could find on the paper where I was. The priest who I really liked got up, felt like he wanted to be somewhere else, just went through the motions. I walked away from that, going, okay, this is good. It's not all gonna be emotional high. Yeah, he looks like I felt quite often when I was leading services. So we're good. Yeah. [00:26:48] Speaker B: And I think that's one of the beautiful things about the liturgical structure of the church, right. Is that it actually isn't personality dependent. Now, sure, personalities and people can really do deleterious things that have a very negative impact for people. But it's also, at the same time, they don't have to be at the top of their game. It's not a performance by the priest. You know, you're not going there to, you know, it's not utilitarian. You come to worship, you know, and to participate in a very structured form. And ironically. Cause I used to think, oh, that's religious claptrap, you know. But then I realised there's actually great freedom in that structure that actually frees you to just say, okay, I'm gonna sit in this space with God, you know, and see what he wants to say to me. [00:27:31] Speaker A: And importantly, do things with my body that just have to happen, because that's how we do this. So one of the most profound things of folding into the liturgy for me was just kneeling with the rest of congregation. Just that act of kneeling my body telling me, this is what we do out of reverence for what's going on up there. Because what's going on up there is holy and important. So we get on our knees again, doesn't matter how the priest feels. I'd hope he's into it, but it doesn't matter because I'm getting on my knees anyway. [00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's beautiful. That a. Cause I used to think, oh, look, if you just do this stuff, you're going through the motions. That doesn't really. It's just religious, I used to say. But in actual fact, what's happening there is your body is saying, I love God enough to actually just conform myself bodily to this moment. And then often what would happen is everything else would follow that. Do you know what I mean? It may not have started out as intentional, but because of the intentionality of my embodied self doing it. It became an intentional moment of prayer, [00:28:30] Speaker A: which, interestingly, has helped over the years. That understanding has helped me get to the point where Pentecostals as well, who I used to struggle with for a time, I've had. It's helped me understand and appreciate them more, too. So the encouragement to raise your hands, for instance, which I used to bristle against, yeah, sure, you're telling me to do it. There's no way I'm gonna raise my hands. But now I hear, and I look at that and go, okay, there's something similar going on there to what I do when I kneel. [00:28:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's embodied, right? It's embodied liturgical action. There's a sign of openness. There's a sign of reaching out to God. I think probably in my parish there might be a bit of. I sensed a bit of frustration. Cause I had to cantor the introductions to all of the Good Friday intercessions. So I'm leading the liturgical music. And we did the. You know, I intoned, let us kneel, let us stand. And so that just kept happening up and down, up and down. And by the end, even my wife was like, there's quite a bit up and down going. People around me, I could sense the. Okay, mate, we're Catholics, but we're just [00:29:37] Speaker A: in an age where most of our jobs are sitting. Just be blessed that you're getting some aerobics done. [00:29:41] Speaker B: You get that? So that's your Easter experience. Your. How did you. Let's go back. Let's go back to how you end up in the Catholic Church. Cause what a journey. Like it has been a journey. Right. And it starts for you in your childhood, right? Is that. [00:30:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say it starts in my childhood. Not obviously, but looking back. So growing up in my childhood and my teen years, my mother was introduced to faith. When I was about five years. She got introduced to faith in quite a solid Pentecostal environment. It was the early 80s. I won't bother explaining this, but what had gone on in the cities of Toronto and Pensacola and the Holy Spirit Movement, it kind of swept its way through New Zealand. And the church we got introduced to was very much in that frame. She had various mental illnesses that were undiagnosed. It was the early 80s. Mental health wasn't really understood. And the stuff that she would suffer from, things like hearing voices in her head sometimes, sometimes not really knowing what was real, what wasn't. What we would popularly call split personality disorder. So for her, that Exhibits in that she will fly into a rage, but she won't feel that rage, she will just observe it happening. But you throw those things into a hyper Pentecostal environment that doesn't understand mental health and it was all seen as demonic. She ended up interpreting it like that. So there was a lot of stuff that went on in that very early church environment that caused a lot of anger and resentment in me. And because of her mental health, she didn't handle social situations very well. So it wouldn't take long for her to feel like she had offended someone or someone else had offended her. And she didn't have the tools to work that through or even with analyse whether that was very real or not. So we would move to another church. So growing up, church to church to church. So growing up, I experienced the breadth of Christendom and one of the services that most stood out to me, I don't remember anything of the service because I was so little, but we walked all the way across town once and went to the Catholic Church in the town that we were in. And the crucifixion just got my attention, really. And I can still picture that crucifix. There was something about Jesus on that cross that caught my imagination. It really caught my attention. That image has never left me. So when I was in environments where we would talk about the Catholic Church kind of having the crucifix as an idol, Jesus has risen, so if you're gonna have a cross, it should be empty. I sometimes went along with those arguments, but internally that picture stuck with me. So it probably started there and then arcing into theological studies. I remember in my early dipping my toes into theological study. With a diploma, I had to do an assignment where I had to put two Reformation era theologians in dialogue with each other, which meant studying, not just catching their theology, but catching their personality. [00:32:57] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. [00:32:58] Speaker A: So I stuck Martin Luther in dialogue with Mike, which. [00:33:02] Speaker B: Easy choice for you. [00:33:03] Speaker A: Yeah, totally in dialogue with Michael Sattler, Anabaptist. Yeah, yeah, And Michael Sattler. I really liked his tone, the way that he spoke, even theologically at the time. I had sympathies in that direction. Martin Luther, the champion of the Reformation. I didn't like him. [00:33:24] Speaker B: He was nothing if not brash. [00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I just didn't like him. Would have agreed with some of his theology, but I just didn't like him. So we've got another part of the seed just kind of nudging away there. [00:33:38] Speaker B: Do you see that? In a sense, like there's a fruit there that you're not, you know, by their fruits, you shall know them. Is it that kind of a thing for you? Is it just. I don't connect. I don't find that. [00:33:46] Speaker A: I just don't connect. He's supposed to be the champion, and I just don't. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Don't find him appealing. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I might agree with some of his stuff, but I just don't connect. Now, I hadn't looked at a whole lot of Catholic theologians to find out who I really wouldn't like as well. And I've since discovered the Borgia popes. [00:34:03] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We could name a few. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. There's loads. But at the time, of course, there's something that just starts niggling away there. I get ordained, fall in love with the Wesleyan Church and Methodist history and John Wesley. And John Wesley was big on the early church fathers. Yeah. [00:34:22] Speaker B: Okay. [00:34:23] Speaker A: And so that opened me up to the world of the early church fathers. So then you dive into their thinking and their writing. And so it's just part of the mix. And I can't remember where or how it happened, but I started having questions around theological questions around authority. So I came very close to converting in 2015. Just. We were just in the middle of thinking about planting a church in Hamilton at Wesleyan Church. And I just remember having this panic because Sola Scriptura had got to the point where it just didn't hold for me. And it's central to being. [00:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's fundamental, right? [00:35:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And look, debates still go on about it, so I'm not the biggest theologian and thinker when it comes to being able to defend solar scripture or argue against it. But I had this panic about authority, and I had had sympathies towards the Eastern Orthodox. [00:35:23] Speaker B: I was gonna say, you must have looked at other options. Totally. Cause it seems to be a lot of my Protestant friends have gone, okay, anything but Rome. I'll go looking anywhere else but Rome. [00:35:30] Speaker A: Anything but the Pope. Yeah. So Eastern Orthodoxy and its view of the Ecumenical Councils and the collective voice of the Church and the Ecumenical Councils had come up as an option, but it just practically wasn't gonna work. So I remember in my panic, and it was all about emotion, I went and said to my wife, I think I'm gonna have to convert. How is this going to work for us? And then I sat down with a good friend, Wesleyan minister, who had been my pastor for years, very thoughtful, lovely guy. And he managed to argue me back from the brink. And he did it by tapping into. I don't know if he'll remember this. But he did it by tapping into my like of Eastern Orthodoxy. And so he created enough reasonable doubt in the decision to go Catholic. But it made me at the time really lean into the liturgical and own the fact that the contemplative, the liturgical, like, that's in my bones. And so when we started Common as the Church in Hamilton, it leant very much in that liturgical, higher, sacramental view. [00:36:34] Speaker B: Where did that come from? Do you think it's in your bones? How? [00:36:37] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:36:38] Speaker B: Is it just something's always there. Was it? [00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I have. No. I've tried to work that out and tried to trace its source, and I can't. There's stuff along the way. Began going to Kaupo Monastery based on a friend's recommendation in 2012, partly because I'd done two trips to the Holy Land. The first one in particular had just kind of burnt me out. And so it was with my work with tear fund. And so my boss had gone to Khorpu Monastery and he said, oh, you should probably. You should go there. So I did. I fell in love with the monastery and its rhythm of the Liturgy of the Hours. And so I wove that into my life as a Protestant. Little things, too, out of respect to them, like learning to pray the Hail Mary and just going, okay, out of respect for them, I'll say it doesn't do anything, but out of respect to them, I'll say it. And then discovering Catholic mysticism, weaving that in. So I was a Protestant, treating the faith a bit like a smorgasbord and going, oh, you guys have some really good stuff. I'll take that. So it just was slowly being woven into my life, and I would say forming me. And that came to a head towards the end of 2023. It's one thing to do this stuff intellectually, have the arguments, but nobody. If you're in a position like, I was an ordained minister in a church with a public profile, you don't convert just for intellectual reasons. [00:38:07] Speaker B: Oh, no. It's not an easy walk off that one, is it? [00:38:09] Speaker A: You just. So there's. It was only gonna happen if there was some emotional stuff. So that ended up playing out. [00:38:19] Speaker B: So you sitting there for, what, almost eight years with this thing burning away. You just put it aside, did you, and say, well, I can't do this right now. I can't convert. I'll just leave it off to the side. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And it wasn't pressing. Yeah, it wasn't pressing. It was just kind of there that, oh, yeah, this might happen at some point. But I'd often joke to my wife that when I retire, I'll go Catholic. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Nice and safe. [00:38:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So when the bishop spoke to me recently about retiring ministers and how he'd really like if they're gonna come over. He'd really like it if they happen. If it happens when they're a bit younger, so then they can still do stuff. Okay. So it was probably good that I didn't wait till I was retired. But, yeah, I mean, we're talking. It's not even eight years. 2015 was when I felt. So that's 11 years when I felt that first emotional thing that I needed to convert. But it was bubbling away before that, so. But we're talking at least 11 years of it bubbling away there and me just thinking I could leave it off to the soul. [00:39:22] Speaker B: Every now and then, I imagine it must rise to the surface and sort of slam it down again. [00:39:26] Speaker A: Methodist theology is much closer to Catholicism than classic Reformed theology, so it wasn't uncomfortable to take elements of Catholicism and just have them there as part of my Methodist and Wesleyan practice and way of seeing the world. So things like a higher view of the sacrament but not quite getting all the way to transubstantiation. [00:39:54] Speaker B: What view did you hold on that? What's the Wesleyan position? How did you treat it? [00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah, real presence. So there's a sense that something Spiritual communion. Yeah. So there's something very real going on here. We're not simply remembering Christ is present here in this meal and you are communing with him. But we wouldn't have gone all the way to transubstantiation. And for some people in my church, even the sense of Christ truly being present here somehow was a big step up from what they had known and quite transformative. [00:40:25] Speaker B: Pure memorial, sort of meal approach. Yeah. [00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Gosh. And so. But that. Things like that you were able to sort of marry the two, if you like, effectively and sort of have a happy. A happy disquiet that you just pushed aside and just carried on, right? [00:40:39] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Totally. And I had a responsibility, of course, when I'm. If you're leading a congregation, you have a responsibility to them and to their faith journey and to their discipleship and their formation. So I didn't feel the room to be able to explore. And there was no catalyst for me to truly explore. But I'd put that sort of stuff aside because I'm responsible for these people and their journey and I'm here to serve them. Not Myself, it's one thing to feel that obligation. [00:41:09] Speaker B: I totally get that. There must have been those moments where did you ever feel the challenge of am I really acting with integrity or am I being true to myself and the calling, do you know what I mean? Or did you just have that such a focus on the responsibility that you were able to just. [00:41:23] Speaker A: The discomfort didn't come until the emotional stuff and the experiences that came with that. Do you want to dive in? [00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, of course, mate. Come on, we're here for the good stuff. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Come on. So at the end of 20, towards the end of 20, 23, my daughter's health tanked with an issue that's relatively controversial. Won't dive into the nuts and bolts of it, but big challenge for you guys. [00:41:47] Speaker B: I remember following that journey, massive challenge. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Saw us having to get to Germany to effectively save her life. We watched her go from a kind of healthy, vibrant, eating well, young lady to not. And arguments around. I know other people with the same thing have had to deal with being told it's all psychological, but it was definitely a physical thing. [00:42:13] Speaker B: And everyone wants to give you advice, probably, particularly if you're a high profile sort of person, what they think is the best cure. And, you know. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And it came with a hefty bill to have private surgery in Germany. So we had to fundraise. And it was fascinating through that time, watching her faith. Her faith came into its own during that time. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Beautiful. [00:42:35] Speaker A: Whereas me, the theologically trained minister who's been in faith for so long, could answer questions about suffering. Mine hit the rocks. And I remember sitting at my table one morning a little before we were going to Germany and I would get up early and I would pray the Liturgy of the Hours. I had a monastic diurnal with the pre Vatican II Liturgy of the Hours. That's a deep cut right there, which says so much. Just right there. [00:43:09] Speaker B: It's in your bones, mate. They're made of the stuff. [00:43:12] Speaker A: My formation is right there. Pre Vatican II Liturgy of the Hours. Had the candle lit and I couldn't pray it. I was. I felt rage about the situation that we were in. And I laugh about this now, but I was ropably angry in a way that I don't normally feel rage. And it was. [00:43:36] Speaker B: It just all overwhelms you in that. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it was all directed at God. And I said to him, stupidly, if you don't hear her in the next 48 hours, we're done. I'm walking away now. [00:43:54] Speaker B: This is your golden fleece moment. Why 48 hours? What's the. [00:43:58] Speaker A: That's what I'm about to get into. I chose 48 hours because. And you always make these decisions in a split second, but then you can often look back and see the reasoning. 48 hours. Cause I thought in the moment, he probably needs a bit longer than 24 hours. [00:44:15] Speaker B: He is God. But he's gonna. [00:44:16] Speaker A: He needs time to get rid of prep. Probably 24 hours. But anything longer than 48 hours puts me into leading the Sunday service [00:44:24] Speaker B: course. [00:44:24] Speaker A: 48 hours comes and goes and she doesn't get healed. Stupid ultimatum again, against all reasonable theological instinct that I had. And 48 hours ends. And I feel like I've just spoken into the void again. My rational brain is saying, no, that's not what's happened here. But emotionally, I felt like I'd spoken into the void. What's there? There's just nothing there. And I didn't stop believing in God per se, but it felt like there was just this chasm of nothing apophatic. So I look at that void now quite differently, but it felt like a void. So I turned up at the Sunday service that morning, greeted everybody at the door with a smile on my face, like I would every single Sunday. Led the liturgy. Normally I'd get to Holy Communion and I'd have services where I'd turn up and didn't really feel like being there. But when we got to Holy Communion, it'd always be okay. The service has got me to where it needs to get me. And now I'm in this. It was the only service where I did not. When I got to Holy Communion, I just felt like I was handing over bread and purely perfunctory grape juice. Grape juice. Cause us Methodists created grape juice. We stripped the alcohol out. It was a Methodist minister who gave us grape juice. He invented it. Non alcohol flavour, non fun. That's a whole other discussion. So that service, I just felt empty and I felt void. Fast forward. We go to Germany. I'd lost any sense of wanting or having the energy or the inclination to pray or open my Bible. We go to Germany. There were three cities we interacted with. Frankfurt, Leipzig and Dusseldorf. And we're not there to do any touristy stuff, but I still wanted to see the cities and have space just to de stress a little. And all of those cities, steeples everywhere. Yeah, magnificent. So most days I'd go out and I would walk to church and I'd take photos. So my Instagram followers were seeing all these wonderful photos of these old Churches. And the sense was I was having a good. I was enjoying it, but I was looking for solace. And so I'd walk into those churches, the ones that were open and all of them, cause of their age, were either Catholic or they were Catholic and had converted to Lutheranism in the Reformation. But you'd walk in, sit down, the architecture, the stained glass windows, the statues, and in the Catholic ones, there might be a relic somewhere. Mary and I would walk in, sit down, and they just gave me ways to just things to look at and think about. And they were beautiful. Beautiful. [00:47:17] Speaker B: Distraction from the madness. [00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah, distraction from the madness and a sense of solace. And the statues of Mary just got my attention. No lights flashing or anything. They just got my attention. She felt approachable. We come back from Germany and still no inclination to pray or read my Bible. And I had one evening in my office where I just felt sad about it and. And I'd memorized the Hail Mary out of respect to the monks at Kulpoor Monastery. So I just quietly prayed a reasonably earnest Hail Mary. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. [00:48:09] Speaker B: Amen. [00:48:10] Speaker A: Went quiet and then. And I felt nothing big, but I felt a presence. And it's hard not to get teary. I felt a presence and I felt experiences that I would describe as the Holy Spirit before. This was slightly different. It was warm, it felt comforting, it felt reassuring, and for some reason it felt feminine. I'm a Protestant minister who's just prayed a Hail Mary is having an experience of a feminine presence in response to that prayer. It's really awkward. [00:48:53] Speaker B: Yeah, about as awkward as it gets. Isn't that quite right? [00:48:56] Speaker A: And again, nothing huge. I'll have my atheist friends going, it was a figment of your imagination, like you conjured it up. And then I've had others say to me, maybe it was the Holy Spirit. I said, wow, if was the Holy Spirit. Feeling feminine when I pray to Hail Mary is throwing me in the wrong direction. So I don't think it was the Holy Spirit. Someone else saying to me, maybe it was demonic. But a week after that experience, I just parked it, just left it. I don't have to work this out. And a week later, without trying to reason it through or force anything, I just felt like I could turn back to Jesus in prayer again and open my body and thinking that through, like if it was a demon They've just done a really bad job. Because I feel I can go back to Jesus. But thinking through all that, I'd read about Mary in theology. She's just done her job. Her whole job is to point us towards her wedding feast at Canaan Gain. No sense of resigning from my position then. No sense of I have to become Catholic. [00:50:12] Speaker B: That's momentous though it is. [00:50:14] Speaker A: But I still felt like my faith container could awkwardly hold that and we'd be okay. I didn't turn back to her for a while. Cause I back to Jesus again. But we get to the middle of 2024. So that was very early 2024. We get to the middle of 2024 and I felt like the church that I was leading really needed something else now. Needed someone else. I was burned out. I was burned out after the years of leading a church through Covid. A year of being involved in another church's stuff. And then my daughter's health journey. And I could keep ticking over Sundays. But it needed. Needed more to be healthy. For it to be healthy and for me to be healthy. So I decided to resign. So I handed in my resignation letter, gave it a very long lead in. So it was mid-2025. So this was later 2024 that I resigned. Mid 2025 was when it was going to finish Pentecost Sunday. So Pentecost Sunday. Oh, it's all poetry. So Pentecost Sunday, I would. Oh, no, it was Ascension Sunday. Ascension Sunday was gonna be my last Sunday. So I would leave and then the following Sunday would be Pentecost Sunday. So they'd get something new. [00:51:38] Speaker B: That's very appropriate too. Because Ascension Sunday, a big part of it is Christ entrusting the mission. You're entrusting the mission to someone else. Off you go. [00:51:44] Speaker A: Totally poetic. All intention to remain a Wesleyan minister. When I handed in that resignation to the point where there were people in our congregation who wanted to make sure that I would remain a Wesleyan minister. So we're like, yeah, full intention of remaining a Wesleyan minister. But that resignation and not feeling the same responsibility to a congregation and the public just somehow allowed you. [00:52:13] Speaker B: It freed you a little bit. [00:52:14] Speaker A: Yeah. To start asking questions, to start exploring. I don't remember the exact thought processes where I was like, oh, I can actually start exploring Catholicism properly now. It just kind of happened. And the more I explored and various experiences, the more it pulled all the parts together for me. And rather than having a smorgasbord faith, what's ended up happening is everything just feels so Much more integrated now. There was. There were dominoes that needed to topple, like the Rome and the Pope question needed to be answered. Do I think that's where authority resides in the Magisterium? What do I think of transubstantiation? What part do saints have in our life? What is the place of Mary? All those hot button issues, I needed to work them. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Was there one that was bigger than any of the others for you? [00:53:11] Speaker A: The authority of the Bishop of Rome. Interesting, because. Because if you answer that question in the affirmative, then things like the Immaculate Conception, the assumption of Mary, those just fall into place. There's so much else that falls into place. I felt like as a relatively open Protestant, I could take on things like the communion of saints and ask saints to intercede for me and I could probably hold that in that container. I could probably even quietly get into transubstantiation and not tell anybody and it would be fine. But the Bishop of Rome, for me, [00:53:49] Speaker B: that was saying, ironically, when I came back into the church, I still. Some of the Marian stuff, I was still. I had that because ironically, even I'm in this evangelical Pentecostal Church and it's all like, don't be religious, don't be legalistic. And I realised coming back and how legalistic I'd actually become about some of these things and I was to the point of being fearful, you know, I can't even go near that stuff. I'll go to hell. You know, there was a real legalism around it, ironically, but that was the. I had this unease about some of the Marian doctrines, but what that overcame very quickly. And I realized, well, I look at Peter as the rock. I see that what Christ did there in that passage of the Gospels, I can't read it any other way. So I can actually have trust in that authority that the gates of heaven have not prevailed against it. And that was sort of enabled me to then move and then over time the others just began to fall into place. [00:54:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a whole intellectual journey we could unpack here. We won't for sake of time, but for me there was a sequence of questions that needed to be answered. First, was Peter put in charge essentially over the other disciples? Was he given a central authoritative place? And then if you answer that in the affirmative, which top Protestant scripture scholars [00:55:08] Speaker B: do, they're out there say, yeah, yeah, [00:55:10] Speaker A: yep, again, we could unpack that through Scripture. But I think it's fairly. I personally think it's fairly clear in Scripture that Peter was given that place. Then the Next question is, does that role have a succession to it? And then is that succession within the Bishop of Rome? [00:55:27] Speaker B: And that's the Protestant. That's where the scholars would depart. They'd say, yeah, it ended with. [00:55:31] Speaker A: With him, yeah, yeah. Whereas I got to the affirmative on all three of those. And then once I got to the affirmative on all three of those, it became a journey of submission. And for me, as someone who has profile, not huge, but I have a profile who is used to being the person in the room that others might turn to for thoughts or reflections, who has now led a congregation for quite some time, who can speak on the radio and others will listen. The idea of submission became a really big deal. And so it became a journey of submission, of not being the person in charge. So then there are questions that some of my friends who know me well had about some issues in becoming Catholic, where at first hearing it might sound, it contrasted with some of my values. And. And on some of those things, rather than offering the intellectual response, it was, this is more about submission for me. This thing asks me to submit to it rather than it needing to conform to me. That is a really big deal. The church here has a responsibility to transform me rather than the other way around. And that's only gonna. That can only happen if I submit. [00:57:00] Speaker B: And that's not just a theological reality. That is a. You're pushing back against a socio, sort of cultural phenomenon of post enlightenment liberalism, which the autonomous self choosing individual is the prime mover in society. And then you're pushing against that as well. [00:57:14] Speaker A: Yeah, and I see that as deeply problematic in our culture now. And so one of my critiques of where I had got to, because part of it was what got me to the place where at that table, I offered that ultimatum to God. And then this experience of suffering. Suffering almost stripped away my faith. As someone who believes that suffering is somewhat central to the faith, how did I get to that point? And the modernist influence on my faith, the materialist influence on my faith, I put that as part of the problem. So then looking at what's central to materialism and modernism, the autonomy of the individual, not the, the individual is important in Christianity, but the autonomy of the individual and the power of the individual, the individual sitting on the throne is a big part of that. And I realised that I'd got to the place where I had done that to a degree. So the journey of submission was really important. So in my writings I don't have heaps to do with my bishop, Bishop Richard, great man with A lot of mana. [00:58:26] Speaker B: Good man. [00:58:27] Speaker A: He's a very good man. And I feel honoured to have him as my bishop. But I'll write things quite deliberately about my loyalty to my bishop. And I was loyal to my national superintendent in the Wesleyan Methodist Church as well. But this comes with a different feel to it. And so I will talk about the loyalty to my bishop quite deliberately, because that's a big part of the journey of submission. And when I'm sitting there in the cathedral and we're singing Shine, Jesus, Shine, which I sung as. As a Sunday school kid, and I'm feeling aggravated and agitated, there's the bit of me that's like, no, you need to work on yourself here. Because should this be happening in the cathedral, we could have a discussion about that. [00:59:11] Speaker B: But I'm gonna say, no, that's fine. [00:59:14] Speaker A: But I'm not in charge. [00:59:15] Speaker B: That's right. [00:59:16] Speaker A: And I do not have the ability to speak into this at this point. And coming to terms with being good with that and being able to recognise that good in what's happening, that's healthy and that's good. [00:59:29] Speaker B: There's a great maturity in that age. Cause I've seen the flip side, you know, I came back into the faith and then I discovered there was a deeper conversion that had to happen still. I wasn't quite fully all there. And when I experienced that, I really embraced. There was a very sort of what I would call almost tritical, you know, tradition, radical tradition. And I'd gone too far into that a little bit. And I would be around other people with the charismatic. I mean, I'd been a work. And they're hearing around these other charismatic people and all of a sudden it was like, oh, these people are a problem. It's not true at all. [00:59:58] Speaker A: No, it's not. [00:59:59] Speaker B: And what I began to realize was, what's the problem with me? These people are genuinely seeking God. They're praying. They're not saying or doing anything heretical at all. This was outside of the Mass, too. It wasn't even in the Catholic mass setting. And why can't I, as a mature believer, be present in the room and praying, even if I'm not fully on board with their particular spiritual mode? And I realise, see the problem, it's me in that moment. Now. There are certain things you don't ever betray or lines you cross for sure. But this wasn't one of them, you know, and just being present and saying, okay, God, well, you know, I trust you're still at work here, you know. And funny enough, I'VE swung back now, you know, back into some, even some worship leading in recent years again, you know what I mean? It was just. And I find that I would describe myself as sort of trasmatic probably in [01:00:45] Speaker A: some ways, you know, like you see particularly online, I think it'd be very easy for new culture to head down the full blown trad line. And I see there are young converts that I've watched raging against the Pope. You don't know how Protestant you sound, but so you really. [01:01:04] Speaker B: That you're. Because you're new and you really are sensitive to that, right? [01:01:09] Speaker A: Very, very sensitive to it. And there are elements of, say, the Latin Mass that I think are stunning, beautiful. Some of the traditional stuff. I mean, I was using the pre Vatican II liturgy of the hour formed me. But I've discovered how immature I still am. As you mentioned. [01:01:28] Speaker B: We all are, mate. [01:01:29] Speaker A: I know, but I sit now in the cathedral and I used to in my church celebrate if people were chatting before the service and chatting after the service because that's a sign that community is happening. The building friendships and that deepening of relationship is really important. Now if I turn up at the cathedral early, which I do all the time to sit and just look at the crucifix for a while, I get agitated if there are people chatting to each other. If I get to the end of the service, at the end of the Mass, I always go and sit with the statue of Mary to honour her for that experience in saving my faith. And again, if there are people chatting after the service, I just feel agitated. That's so bad. [01:02:14] Speaker B: I'm with you there though, to be honest. That's why I know. I'm struck. [01:02:18] Speaker A: There have been a couple of services where it's been old guys together. [01:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:22] Speaker A: And I said it to my wife and she said, you know all about male loneliness because you've read about it. So them having friendship and people that they're talking to is a very good thing. Yeah, yeah, of course it's a very good thing. But I feel agitated. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's a real challenge in that age because it's very easy to play the first. It's very easy. Look, that person, I was very blessed some years ago. He's passed on now to his eternal reward. But I had a very wise and very pastoral bishop. He's a very holy man. But I remember him talking one day about this. He said he'd often say Mass, he'd be in the cathedral and there'd be a group he used to call the Riflemen the rifle brigade. Cause they'd only go down on one knee. And it used to sort of. He said, but, you know, God loves them too, you know, like. And they could have gone down two, but one knee was more convenient. It wasn't any health reason or anything like that. And it was like he just talked about that. Seeing God at work in everyone's life still, even if they're not fully, you know, where either you want them to be or where they need to be, even where Christ wants them to be. [01:03:25] Speaker A: It's really important to hold that as a convert, because. And it's the same for people who, maybe outside of Catholicism, come into the faith for the first time, having been atheist or agnostic, you get that fervency for the thing that you've taken up because. Because you feel like you're seeing the world in a whole new way. It's very easy for people to then look at where they've come from and go, oh, no, that's not as good or that's bad. And to start firing arrows back. And you gotta. I've got. Particularly in what I do, I've gotta be very conscious of that. So making sure that internally I'm still cultivating the love for where I've come from, because it would be very easy to be the arrogant Pharisee, to go, I've got this new thing now. And this new thing is amazing compared to what you've got. My wife has called me out on it, even in my humour, making sure that in my humour with her, I'm not talking down the faith that she still holds, that I. [01:04:22] Speaker B: That's a good thing to have a wife to call us to account in that respect. [01:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah, she's very good. [01:04:25] Speaker B: Cause you're right. And it's very easy to do, to fall into that trap. And I think that often breeds a cynicism in us too. It's very. You know, I see that now with some of the. The Catholic tragical critics of the Pope, the previous papacy. I think there were valid criticisms that could be made. I was very careful never to ever have any public conversation, even private conversations were very, very guarded for me because I just didn't want to be a source of trying to foster disunity. There were things that, you know, I think there were legitimate criticisms that could rightly be made. This papacy, though, all of a sudden, that's just carried over now because you see that pattern of cynicism and has remained in people. They cannot just be content in God and trust. No, no, no, No, I had these big criticism last time. They must carry on. The cynicism carries on. [01:05:10] Speaker A: It's very destructive. Yeah, it's entirely unhealthy. And to a world looking on, it doesn't look good. It's the same in the world that I was in with people, constant Christian bickering with each other, it's destructive. There's a world watching us. We need to be totally conscious of that and celebrate where there are differences, celebrate what is good. So that's why I love going back to the church that I led with my wife, because those people are still family and some of them still have a deeper, richer faith than I have. Lots of them have a deeper, richer faith than I have, and I still have a lot to learn from them. [01:05:52] Speaker B: What do you think was. Are there changes? There were big challenges for you. What was crossing over? What was the, you know, for want of a better term, what was the. Are there things that, you know, you found a bit more burdensome or that you found hard? [01:06:06] Speaker A: That's a good question. I am finding it hard. And it's still very early. Like, we're only weeks away from Easter. Finding it hard to spot. And I know cathedral life is different from local parish life, but how I become part of the community in the churches that I've always been a part of, we'd think very carefully about what happens for someone from the moment that they walk in the door to how they integrate into community and how they are being formed. That's not clear for me. In the churches that I've been a part of, the small group model was really important. You would encourage people into small groups where they would build relationships. Formation would happen. That's not a given in the environment that I'm in now. So I'm still trying to spot how do I become part of the community that isn't just becoming a reader or a server and being up the front. [01:07:06] Speaker B: I think that's a weakness right now in the church in New Zealand. And it's something that there are. There are good people working and striving to address it. But, like, we're really blessed to be in a very good, vibrant parish, lots of good young families. But that's the same struggle we're having, is how do you actually have that authentic community beyond just Sunday? And ironically, what happened. I remember when I was coming up and there was a lot of talk about how negative the ghettoised Catholicism was of yesteryear in New Zealand, but I realise now they didn't, okay, they tore down the ghettoized thing. But I think they threw the baby out with the bathwater and they didn't replace it with anything. Sort of just, you know. And now, you know, your experience I think is a reflection of that. You sort of like what really is. We need a sense of, I think the small group model of some kind, but intentional, smaller, communal life within the life of a parish needs a recovery. [01:07:56] Speaker A: So I'm thinking about the part that I can play in my cathedral parish. But I also don't want to be the guy who just. The Protestant who just jumps in and goes, oh, you guys should do this [01:08:07] Speaker B: here, you guys, here's how it's done. [01:08:09] Speaker A: By the way, if you could change these things in the service on a Sunday and get rid of Shine, Jesus shine, that'd be you. Really happy. Don't want to be. I don't want to be that guy. There's also the Catholic mind and the Catholic culture is quite different from what I've grown up in. So whilst I am theologically aware and had to do a lot of study to come in so Catholic theology, I feel like I've got a solid grasp on that culture and the way you think is very, very different. So for instance, I have instincts in what I do when I'm on the likes of Life FM of talking about the biology and going, here's how I read it, here's the context, here's how it can be interpreted. Whereas now I recognize that the authority of the magisterium as the interpreter, so what relationship do I have to that? And what can I say with confidence and what can I not say? Working out all that stuff. [01:09:04] Speaker B: That's a wise instinct though, you know, not many of you should presume to be teachers because you'll be judged more harshly. I carry that with me all the time in public speaking. And you're right, you realise, oh, there is a certain responsibility here. And this is one of the things for me I realised too is that even though, I mean when I was an anti Catholic Protestant. No, we don't have that magisterium stuff and you know, sola scriptura rara, everyone does have a magisterium of some sort. They're either doing it themselves personally, or they have a governance of elders or whoever who actually are helping you discern and interpret what you. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Yep. Or you've given it over to some big personalities on YouTube. But there's always someone who. People who you see as an authority, which is why it's so bad when someone. When a leader falls, when a leader is found out to have been doing stuff. The fact that people. There are people who will fall away from faith when that happens says that they've been viewed as an authority in a way that we might not formally recognised. [01:10:06] Speaker B: Yes. What do you say then to Catholics to help them, you know, new converts in their midst. And this Easter, I know a lot of places have had an abundance of new converts come in and it happens usually around Easter each year. What can, you know, cradle Catholics, people who have been in the faith a bit longer. What do they do to help you on that journey? [01:10:29] Speaker A: That's a really good question. I am a firm believer that people stick around if they feel like they have friends. And so those people having friends, Catholics that they do life with, who they're in their homes doing meals together, who just catch up from time to time, whether it's a deep and meaningful discussion about the Bible or whatever or not, those friendships need to form. So being able to identify how those friendships happen, not just expecting that they're going to volunteer to become a reader or a server or be up the front because they're not a small group will who'll feel confident about being up the front, but a lot of them are not. So just thinking through how those people integrate in a way that doesn't demand that they be self starters. How does it become really visible for them, how they become a part of the congregation and form friendships? [01:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very wise insight. Yeah. Cause I think the tendency is, particularly if you got a compelling and strong resume of experience pastoral ministry as a minister, you tick a whole lot of boxes where it'd be like, grab that guy, we'll get him to do all 20 different things in the life of the parish, you know. But yeah, it is that fundamental communion with others that really matters. [01:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Friendships. And I still don't actually know, apart from me being the guy who instigates it, starting to talk to people who sit next to me, which. Which is a very good thing to do. [01:11:59] Speaker B: Of course it is. [01:12:00] Speaker A: But it's still on me to instigate that as opposed to the church going, here's how you fold into us, here's how we wrap around you as you begin, for some begin this journey of faith. I think, particularly for those who are new to faith, as opposed to someone like me who's made a very conscious decision. So no matter how this goes, I'm in. And because I've had bad church experiences, I could go the rest of my life in the cathedral, not make any friends. And I'm still there. But for a lot of people, that's not how it works. [01:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, too, I think that, yeah, we are, you know, we have a strong sacramental economy. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. But we are human persons made in the image of God, and we are supposed to be communal in nature. You don't say, well, we'll push that aside. That's not relevant. You know, as long as I've got the Eucharist, I'll be fine. As long as I've got the sacraments, I'll be fine. No, no, no. There's something almost transactional and utilitarian about that. [01:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there is. [01:13:00] Speaker B: You know, it's not the complete picture, [01:13:02] Speaker A: and there's an ontological reality to our union in Christ. Then you've got the Pope and the bishops and the priests, and then there's our unity that takes place in the sacraments. There's a spiritual ontological reality there. We are united, whether we talk together or not. But that does need to play out in physical ways. And so then asking the question about how that deep reality plays out physically, so it's mirrored in our physical lives, so that the physical then in turn, as we're talking about kneeling stuff, feeds back into that ontological spiritual reality is really significant. So all of our churches need to be thinking that through. How does that deep spiritual union play out physically? So that people can see it and experience it in very real ways with [01:13:51] Speaker B: their body, an embodied reality. Right. And that's how cultures are shaped and changed as well. Because you. I mean, I think what's becoming increasingly clear in the west is that you can't form a society just around social contract theory from liberalism. It doesn't work. You need a sacred, transcendent idea that binds everyone together. But then that has got to be. It's not just an idea. No, it's got to be lived. So liturgical life and the embodiment of that and then the communal aspects of that, then it filters out into the wider nation as a result, you know, and it's so fundamental. Like, one of the greatest things we could do is form authentic communities of faith. That'd be a profound evangelistic powerhouse. [01:14:32] Speaker A: If you think about the documents of Vatican ii, which I just think are magnificent. Jefferson, personally, there's talk in there about the place of the layperson. The place of the layperson. Cause you can lose the priesthood of all believers very easily, in a sense of what the Catholic Church is, because the onus can very easily move towards the clergy. [01:14:52] Speaker B: Just ask Father, help me. Yeah. [01:14:53] Speaker A: Without understanding the priesthood of all believers and what our place is as lay people, but our place, according to the documents, is the consecration of the world. So in what we do and how we live, we are consecrated the world. But the starting point, the kind of home base of that, is our faith communities. And then from there we move out and we consecrate the world. But that means that those faith communities need to be really tight. We're encouraging each other in that. We are consecrating each other to a degree with our faith and how we do our faith life together, and then it flows out from that. But if that core is not good, solid, knitted together, then our ability to consecrate the world and what we do, we can. [01:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's so fundamental. I'm reading a bit at the moment about acedia. Cause I think a lot of what we even call burnout today is probably that. And ironically, we try and mask it with activism and busyness. And the Desert Fathers, they recognise that. They recognise that was actually one of the symptoms. [01:15:53] Speaker A: Distraction. Yeah. [01:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. But you can't. What is it? We tend to think in terms of sloth, but that's not what a seed actually is. It's a loss, really, of that first love, you know, restore unto me the joy of salvation, you know, and that's. You need. You can't do that alone, you know, you just can't. It's either despair or, I think, extremism. If you try and struggle through life without community, I can't see any other path. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd agree. [01:16:19] Speaker B: What would you say to people who maybe are more recent converts, who are perhaps. Cause I know someone actually said to me recently, oh, you know, it would be great if there was some pathway for new converts. We came in with all of the zeal and the fire and now we're sort of like, oh, you know, you've got a whole lot of tools already in your toolkit that you're coming in with from your previous experience. But a lot of people don't. What would you say to them? Maybe they're feeling the sort of. The weight of it and that expectations didn't live up to what they maybe hoped for. [01:16:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really good. That's why the Tuesday mass after Easter was so good for me to see someone rattle through the words, the priest not really present, but to recognise that the sacrifice is still real and the sacrament holy. The Eucharist is, as you mentioned, is the source and the summit of our faith. So no matter what my experience is of people in the church, my experience of Jesus is still there, and it is still good. And it doesn't demand that I feel anything, doesn't demand that I bring anything to the table. It is a gift of grace. And so I think cultivating that and remembering that, and look, if you've got the gumption to do it, do put yourself out there. But remembering that we flow into and we flow out of the Eucharist, that that anchor is there no matter what else is going on, and it's there no matter how we feel. It was decided hundreds and hundreds of years ago that the holiness of the priest does am, that no matter what, Jesus is turning up in the room. So when we turn up at Mass, even if we choose not to take the elements, he's there, he's with us, and he's always with us. Now, that doesn't solve all the ups and the downs of life, but I think coming back to why we're there, no matter what our experience is, it's for lifelong Catholics as well. And those who might have been in the Catholic Church for years and are thinking about walking away because they had a bad experience or they feel like the church is a little late, lackluster, or because shine, Jesus, shine, doesn't feel very reverent, but Jesus is still there. Yeah. We turn up at Mass because we're with Jesus. [01:18:33] Speaker B: He's still present. Yeah, that's really. That's very, very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. It's. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of challenges ahead for you, too. It's a journey, right, that you're. [01:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah. One of my really big challenges is going quiet like we're having this discussion. I've got other podcasts and talks to do, but I've got to balance that sort of stuff really carefully as well, because I need to learn. [01:19:01] Speaker B: You just need to embed. Right. [01:19:02] Speaker A: For a moment. Yeah, I need to learn to just sit. So one of my big challenges is just working out how much I talk about this stuff, and it would be very easy for me to start down the road of Catholic apologetics. [01:19:18] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [01:19:19] Speaker A: I don't think I'd be very good at it at all, but it'd be very easy for me to head down that track and to start getting some traction as a public Catholic personality, as opposed to just remaining a Christian public personality. One of the things that I said to the bishop when we would very early discussions about me coming in was that my desire is not to serve the Catholic Church, specifically, I will do things to serve the Catholic Church and I'll explore how I best serve my parish. But my service is through the Christian community, and that needs to continue. So making sure that I maintain that voice, that I don't just become the Catholic voice, is really important to me. So I have a challenge of working out how that plays out well as well. [01:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. I've come to think of it as like the convert's curse, really, is that. And we've seen a lot of this lately. People who, particularly overseas, they've come into the faith and then they've formed a public profile and probably in the apologetic space. And then often they start to get into trouble because they're just not really grounded enough yet or haven't given themselves enough time just to really fall in love with it in a very deep way, you know, and be formed. [01:20:30] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I see that danger with celebrities who convert to just Christianity, let alone Catholicism. Whereas I look at Paul, Paul's conversion story and the road to Damascus, and then three years of just silence and learning, and then he goes off to visit Peter and the other disciples. But he names Peter as the. [01:20:54] Speaker B: Take note. [01:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. That I get a sense of legitimacy, because I've seen Peter. But three years of silence and then he goes off to the church authority to get his legitimacy and then it's them who send him out. But that's three years of silence. Whereas now we're. Because everybody has a microphone, we're expected to speak straight away. And if you're a celebrity and you mention that you've come to faith, then everybody wants to know all about it. And then us Christians look at them as some sort of banner waiver as well, that are with us. [01:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's. And I think that's the onus on us on the other side. Cause even when we met for coffee recently, and I'm like, oh, there's a million and one things. I think Frank and I gotta team up and do this, this and this in the Catholic world. And then I realised, no, no, no, that's just let it go. You know, he's a child of God, made in God's image. He's on this journey, you know, and sure, if these things crop up, you know, the timing will be right. God will make it happen. You don't force anything. You just. And I think it's on us just to let converts be converts, you know? [01:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'm more than happy to share my story. But I recognize very much that I'm not a baby Christian, but I'm a baby Catholic. And there is, again, I've got all this theological awareness, though there are Protestant friends who could argue me down very, very easily. But I've got all this theological awareness. But Catholicism is more than a puzzle to solve. Our faith is more than a puzzle to solve. It's a life and a rhythm to be lived into. And I'm only just starting that. [01:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. And that's a good insight. Cause it's not. If it was just an intellectual lockbox, then more people would be. Cathy, you just have to unlock the right intellectual keys they'd be in. That's not what faith is. That's not what, you know, the call to follow Christ is. It's more profound than that. [01:22:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a gift of grace. And that grace, unless you feel compelled by that grace, you're not gonna end up in. Ultimately, it's a grace that captures you. I remember that Mass where transubstantiation came home for me. Intellectually. We could talk about ousia and the changing of the being of the elements. But again, it's ultimately an emotional connection. I remember sitting in that Mass and having that sense that Jesus is there, he's in the room, and there's nothing that I have to do. My faith doesn't conjure this up. My emotions don't conjure this up. He's just simply. And for us to sit in the room together with him saying nothing and me saying nothing. This is profoundly beautiful. And it's a gift of grace. There's nothing that I have to do to get this. I know that there's all the argument about faith and works and all the stuff that we do. But when I look at the sacraments and I look at the idea of works as I really see them in the Catholic faith, they're just a constant turning back to. [01:23:49] Speaker B: Of course they are. [01:23:50] Speaker A: It's the work of loss, of love. Because that grace calls me to turn back in that direction. So I come back to Mass because there's this gift that is given there that I've done nothing to live up to. [01:24:03] Speaker B: I mean, what does Paul say? I mean, faith without. You can have faith that moves mountains, but without love, it's dead. It's that act of love that is love, God, love, nature. That's the work we're called to, you know, and it's just. It's funny. Cause people often think about even the word transubstantiation. I Think it is one of our challenges in the Western world. Cause in the Eastern, they live with that more mystical understanding. They believe it's Christ, but they don't have to give it a formula where Western was a bit different the way we approached it. But people often think, oh, this is a way of describing some process. But that's not what Aquinas actually is seeing. He says, no, no, no, no. It is a miraculous act of God's power. Transubstantiation is a technical term. That's not the. It's not a mechanism. It's. Why is it the body and blood of Christ? Because of this profound act of God's grace and power. [01:24:50] Speaker A: It's miraculous and it is deeply mysterious. We might be able to understand some of the Greek terms and the metaphysics of it, but. And it's also worth recognizing that the only reason the word transubstantiation was put on the table was because the Reformation was pushed the issue. [01:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. [01:25:06] Speaker A: It needed to be worked out and it needed to be explained because there was protest going on around it. Otherwise I think the west would still look a little more like the east and be completely fine with a deep mystery being there that we will ultimately never completely fathom. [01:25:22] Speaker B: And there'd be speculative theology around it like there was and stuff. [01:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's only once a dispute arises at a council and the Bishop of Rome needs to adjudicate that you end up with those sort of things being exposed. Yeah, yeah. [01:25:36] Speaker B: And that's a very good and important reminder. Aye. That. Yeah. It's so easy to lose sight of what really matters, you know, in all of this, you know, that presence of God made manifest substantially. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. [01:25:51] Speaker A: So I'd probably just encourage Catholics watching this to be mindful of that, too. One of the most inane debates I've seen online between your full blown traditionalists, Novus Ordo people is what you do with your hands when you pray the Lord's Prayer. The Orens Posteruno to all my Protestant friends watching, this'll be what? And it'll confirm everything. [01:26:14] Speaker B: I knew they were legalists. [01:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah. It'll confirm everything they think about Catholics. [01:26:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:19] Speaker A: But having not read exactly what you should do with your body in every part of the liturgy. I remember getting to the Lord's Prayer and a whole bunch of people around me were putting their hands up, holding their palms open, and so I did it. And I just felt so connected to the prayer. This is really beautiful. And then for some reason, online I found the debate about what you should be doing with your hands and all the full blown tradition is going, no, only the priest should be putting his hands up during that prayer. You should be holding your hands together in prayer. And it just completely threw me. But now I'm back at the point where, no, actually I feel really connected to God when I hold my hands like that because I'm receiving grace. So I'm going to hold my hands like that. But it's very easy to get lost in the debates about the detail. And the detail's not unimportant. No, but we can totally lose sight of the grace that we are receiving and everything there is directed towards us receiving that grace. [01:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Are you motivated by that love? Again, is it directed towards God or is it all about you and about being proved right? And it's. Yeah, it's very easy to fall into. And I think, as I said, I've been there and I'm still, that's why I've still got to catch myself, you know, what would you say to Protestants? What do you want to say to them? That I'm not obviously not looking for a pick a fight here. I'm saying, what would you say that, you know, that what advice would you give them who may be a little bit, I don't know, maybe even standoffish with Catholics a bit or, or weary about it all. [01:27:52] Speaker A: That's a really good question, partly because I don't want to presume to speak, but there's so much richness we can gain from each other. [01:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah, beautiful. [01:28:07] Speaker A: So much richness. And even in the looking at our foibles like I talk about the debate of raising your hands or putting your hands together when you're saying the Lord's Prayer. But other churches, what do you wear? Like, how are your seats placed? Where should the microphone be sitting? What volume should things be? Like those mechanical debates play out everywhere. But there's a richness to be gained from each other. Like the Protestant love of Scripture. [01:28:33] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [01:28:35] Speaker A: The Catholic Church, which gave us the Scriptures and down through the ages, copied the scriptures by hand so that when the printing press arrived, it was all there, ready to go. There is a Catholic Church love of Scripture as well. But the Protestant desire to dive into and know the nitty gritty of Scripture, to carry that over into the Catholic Church is really good. But then looking the other way, the reverence, even the reverence of the Scriptures, processing the Bible and having it held up the standing when the Gospel is read, Remember strangely, at the Good Friday service. When the Gospel came to be read, everybody in the cathedral sat strangely. I don't know how it happened. I think a couple of people did it. So everybody did it. And the bishop up the front said, we stand because this is the Gospel. So that reverence for the reading of it, I think is really good. [01:29:31] Speaker B: And do you notice the kneel and the pause when Christ breathes to the last, when you get to the Passion? There's something very profound about that. [01:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So being able to spot that reverence, I also think on. I also think the Catholic distinction between honour and worship has a lot of layers to offer to Protestant thinking. Doesn't mean that we necessarily get to the place where you're honouring Mary in the ways that Catholics do. But I think thinking through that distinction has a lot to offer the community on the Protestant side, friendships being really important. There's a lot to be gained there. So the two speaking together, not just about our differences, though, those in. So that dialogue's important, but those two speaking together, getting to know each other rather than trying to fire arrows over at each other. I think we have so much to offer each other. [01:30:24] Speaker B: I got one last question for you. Has your cause very much part of your public presence has been the political angle? You know, I'm the same. I haven't shied away from it and you haven't shied away from it either. And I think that's appropriate. There needs to be. Needs to be Christian voices in that space. Have you felt your political. I don't wanna say alignment or allegiance. That feels like you're supposed to join a tribe all of a sudden. That's not what I mean. But has alignment shifted, has political views or shifted along this journey as well or not? [01:30:55] Speaker A: It's a good question. One of the early disagreements that you and I had was just after I'd become an ordained. Just after I'd become a minister, I think. And you notice as a criticism that I had been a Green Party member and I'd been a Green Party member. [01:31:12] Speaker B: It was pretty harsh. That was a low blow for me, I think. [01:31:15] Speaker A: You know, I'd been a Green Party member for about a year. It was only about a year. And it was because there was stuff in their constitution at the time that I just really aligned with as a person of faith, the community, the care for the planet, et cetera, et cetera. But when I became a minister, I took my role of being. Of not promoting a party, not being aligned to a party really, really seriously, and did right throughout my years as a minister, that I would teach people, be part of their formation in a way that would give them the tools to vote well, but I would never tell them how to vote and I would never express myself, hopefully, in a way that would influence their vote. So in my congregation, we had people who would vote Act New Zealand First, Green, labor, national, and all of them felt comfortable to be there, from what I'm aware, even though there was a clear social leaning in our congregation. And over the last few years, actually since COVID and 2023, with my daughter's health, I've actually backed away from that conversation relatively significantly. And I've got friends who are agitated about that. They think that I have a responsibility to be your voice in that space. I don't. The conversation has shifted dramatically in the way that it happens. So I used to do it with a sense that I could make a difference in that space, whereas now I feel like any discussion in the political space gets weaponized very, very easily. It doesn't mean I don't raise my voice every now and then, but I feel the need to back off and work out what that looks like now so that it plays out in a really healthy way. And I'm more interested in the heart of a person than how they might view particular legislation, because I think the heart of a person, when it's formed in a healthy way, leads to good outcomes in the other. So if I'm honest, I'm not sure what my place in that conversation is at the moment. And I'm working that out. [01:33:26] Speaker B: Can I say sorry too, on camera, actually, for that? Cause I'd totally forgotten about that. But I remember it now. And I remember actually at the time thinking it was a bit calculated on my part. Cause I thought, well, this will play well to the bass, because I just have to mention the word Green party and I score some cheap, easy points. And so I'm sorry for doing that because that was. Yeah, like, I've been on a journey over the. It was about 15 years ago that happened. And realising that in actual fact, that sort of tribalistic, stick the knife and score a few cheat points where you can. It's not really that fruitful. It's not building the kingdom so much as it's building your own empire. [01:34:05] Speaker A: I appreciate that. [01:34:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And I really mean that because, yeah, I remember at the time thinking, oh, great. Oh, he was in the. He's a grandparent. Great. This'll, you know, score some points and. And get the audience over my side. [01:34:17] Speaker A: You know, if Anything. I'm at a place now where I look at our political discourse and our politics and I honestly, and I say this honestly, I just think a pox on all their houses. I feel like our political system is very broken and I don't feel like I have a political home and I haven't for quite some time. [01:34:37] Speaker B: I'm the same. [01:34:38] Speaker A: I'm quite comfortable with that. I actually think that's relatively healthy because I don't want to get into that, that tribal space. I go and I vote every single time because I think it's important to do so. But one of the things that I used to do, leading a church, just before every election, on the day of the election, I'd do a communion service so that people had a space to come before they'd go out to vote, where they'd remember where their allegiance really lies and where the answers really are. Cause politics, whilst it has solid influence, our national politics, it's not salvation, it's not going to save anything. It's just one part of the puzzle. And that part of the puzzle needs to be put in its place. And we, as we've walked away from religion, spirituality, a sense of a big story, we've gone and we've looked in other places to try and build some sort of utopia. And so I think we have this outsized view of politics that has got it to the point where it feels like a battle of good and evil every time. Like the future of the world completely hinges on how this vote plays out. When that's just not the case, it's very much. [01:35:46] Speaker B: That is Good Friday with Barabbas, you know, Barabbas, you know, which means Son of the Father. He's a political revolutionary. He's claiming a title that he's not entitled to. He's not the real Son of the Father. Christ is. He's put alongside Christ. And the crowd says, choose. You know, they say Pilate, says the crowd, choose. And so it's actually a type of Antichrist versus Christ. And what is he? He's offering you salvation through every revolution, through politics, through power. And that's the temptation we've gotta fight. We've gotta fight. And it took me a long time to really clue into that and realise that, you know, you can't save the world through politics. [01:36:15] Speaker A: Yes. [01:36:16] Speaker B: Another thing, too, I know is for you is of course, the media space. Cause that's your. You know, you're skilled, you're very gifted in that regard. It's your bread and butter. Do you. I mean, how do you find all that? Because the reality is that there is a crisis in the media at the moment, crisis of trust and everything else. But also at the same time, it feels like that's often being played on and people are quite happy to see sort of, you know, take it to extremes again. You know, Like, I feel like there is a place for the media, but how does that all sit for you, you know? [01:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's an interesting question. As a chaplain to media personnel, my job is to sit down and to listen and to care, no matter what, no matter what I think about anything they might have done, no matter what I think about the media. So I have opinions on the media. But when I look at the controversies as they light up, I see the. So if I think about some of the most recent controversies and the personalities in the middle of it, and I won't name them, but I see those. [01:37:13] Speaker B: Well, by the time this comes out, there'll be another one for people to. Uncertainty. [01:37:15] Speaker A: I know. I think I'm actually talking about that. But I see the people in my. I want my instinct. And I've cultivated the instinct to go, how are they doing? Are they okay? So I instinctually and have formed myself into a space where I look at the media differently. So if I read a story and there's elements of the story that I disagree with, the first thing I do is I go and I have a look at who wrote the story, who put the story out. Cause they often remain unseen. And one of my first instincts will be to pray for them. And then if I think there might have been a traumatising element to that story for them, I'll get in touch with them. And I actually think that should be our first instinct as Christians now. Sure, there's a place to challenge the media when it really is out of line. And that goes on. Which is why, personally, I think the loss of the BSA is a really big deal rather than reforming it. Because that accountability is important and it needs a body outside of itself to call it out when it needs to be called out. But my first instinct as a Christian should be love. And if you think the media is the enemy, and I don't think that, but there are a lot of Christians who think that. [01:38:30] Speaker B: Oh, sure. And it's a blood sport now to take them down, right? [01:38:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:32] Speaker B: But if you. [01:38:33] Speaker A: If you think the media is the enemy, the one who went to the cross and asked for the forgiveness of those who were putting him there told us to love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you. So if our first instinct is, how do I fire some arrows at them? I think we need to check that and go, what does love look like here? And not just the sentimental love, but actual love. What does love look like? That's why we started chatbots, and that's [01:39:01] Speaker B: why I have a huge respect for that work. Because, like, okay, great, we know there's a crisis. We know there's a crisis of trust and unreliability as well at times. Great. You've just given me yet another example. Whoever it is that's doing it. Look, look this, the media, look at them. They're terrible. Great. But what are you doing to actually bring some sort of resolution and bring truth and goodness into that? And I see what your work is. You're actually proactively doing that. [01:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think people need to remember, too, that there is so much media pumped out all the time. If we're just talking about news, there are stories coming out 24 7. Most of it we don't take any notice of because it's doing its job, it's informing us, it's calling out things that need to be called out. And then occasionally there's stuff where we go, oh, that's really bad. And then we've got to not fall into the trap of painting the whole. With the brush of that piece. [01:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And my dialogue with different journalists I've engaged with and met with over the years, and you realise, yeah, it's not actually a giant monolith of nefarious, dystopian, despotic characters who have come to destroy your world. You know, they're all got their own struggles and their own challenges within the industry too. [01:40:09] Speaker A: You know, the conspiracy theories that play out about the media, the United nations, the government, the World Economic Forum, all these things, once you really get to know them, you realize how disorganised and. And for want of a better word. Cause this sounds very critical, inept. They really are. [01:40:27] Speaker B: Oh, it's true. [01:40:28] Speaker A: None of them could do the conspiracy theories that are told about them. [01:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't prescribe to malice. What is actually most likely just being confidence, you know, or just their own human frailty on display. Frank, man, we've talked for ages. This is good. I've really enjoyed this and I just. I have to say thank you to you for taking the time and. And, yeah, it's been. I've really enjoyed it. It's been a real blessing. [01:40:53] Speaker A: It's a real pleasure. Thank you. [01:40:55] Speaker B: Thanks, Frank. [01:40:56] Speaker A: Hi there. [01:40:56] Speaker B: If you're enjoying our content, then why not consider becoming a paid supporter of our work? You can do that at either Substack or Patreon, and the link for both are in the show notes for this episode. If you do become a supporter, then you'll get access to exclusive content, early release content, and also you'll be helping to fund all of the offline work that we do as well all of the youth camps and the events that we speak at, and all that other stuff that happens that you don't see online. A huge thank you to all of our paid subscribers. It's thanks to you that this episode is made possible.