Sharks, Street Gangs, and the Making of a Monk w/ Fr. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.

Father Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.—Benedictine monk, teacher, surfer, and former professional juggler—joins the show to talk about Georges Bernanos's classic novel Diary of a Country Priest and the new unabridged translation that restores it to its full power. 

Along the way he traces his own half-hearted, failure-strewn "yes" to God: riding waves at the beach that inspired Jaws, blessing a Los Angeles street gang at two in the morning, and praying the rosary beside the very protesters he came to disagree with. 

What We Talk About:

• How Father Wetta describes his own "yes" to God as a half-hearted, tentative string of failures—and why that puts him in the good company of saints like Moses the Black and John the Baptist
• What surfing and juggling taught him about patience, silence, and learning to laugh at yourself, and how both became unlikely preparation for monastic life
• Why Diary of a Country Priest reads like the opposite of an action movie, delivering small, quiet bursts of grace instead of explosions
• What the new unabridged translation restores: the more Catholic passages cut from the English edition readers have had since 1937
• How the novel speaks to loneliness, distraction, and despair by recovering silence, boredom, and true leisure

Resources Mentioned:

• Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, translated by Michael R. Tobin
• Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux
• Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper
• Paloma&Fig

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and Monk Camp Chaos
• 01:28: A Half-Hearted Yes to the Lord
• 03:51: Surfing, Sharks, and the Contemplative Life of Failure
• 09:37: The Flying Fettuccine Brothers and Learning to Laugh at Yourself
• 13:21: Shut Up, Keep Your Head Down, and Listen
• 16:37: Praying the Rosary at a Black Lives Matter Protest
• 22:10: Fourth of July and Blessing a Gang in LA
• 28:13: Diary of a Country Priest: Quiet Bursts of Grace
• 36:10: The Restored Translation and the Passages You've Never Read
• 39:43: Silence, Boredom, and Leisure in a Distracted Age
• 44:19: Failure, the Atheist, and a Faith Deeper Than Argument
• 55:05: Grumbling, Priesthood, and the Joy of the Eucharist

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Resounding Yes Podcast. Resounding Yes is a show centered around Mary's fiat and reflects upon how we say yes to the Lord. We are podcast by Creative Agency Ploma and Fig. Visit PlomaandFake.com to learn more about our Creative Agency, including lots of engaging creative content all through a Catholic and artistic lens.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Okay, thank you for joining us, Father. It is a joy to have you on today. How are you?

SPEAKER_04 0:37

I I'm a little distracted, but I'm fine. We've got monk camp going on, and it's it's total chaos. Little seventh and eighth graders dressed in monastic habits.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

That is so fun. So, Father, looking back on your own vocation and journey towards priesthood, what has your own yes to the Lord looked like over the years? We like to ask our guests all about their yeses. Um, how has God continued to deepen or refine that response to your life as a monk, a priest, writer, or teacher?

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Um, uh I tend to write whatever crisis I'm going through at the moment. So um again, the question was how has God revealed himself to me?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Or how how has what has your yes to the Lord looked like over the years?

SPEAKER_04 1:34

It's been very half-hearted, I have to say. It's been extremely tentative the whole time. Uh very uh I I used to, when I went to confession, I used to say, uh, oh my God, I am half-heartedly sorry for having offended you. And I kind of like my sins, but I'm gonna try not to do them anyway. And my confessor finally made me stop saying it like that because he said it wasn't authentic, but I felt like it was. Um I've uh my yes has been really just a great string of failures when I look back at it. Um but but that's that's okay. We were just talking about Moses the black, and he was a great failure in his own right. So was St. Drogo. So was John the Baptist, if you think about it. I mean, the guy ate bugs, right? So um he couldn't have been that big of a winner. Um the what has it looked like? I've been, you know, it's I I I the some I invited the abbot to come talk to my ethics class, and in closing, they asked him what it was like to live with Father Gusin, and he said, it is a great challenge. And when when the when he asked me to be the postulate master, I said to him, I I bet I but I'm a terrible monk. And he said, Yeah, but your heart's in the right place. So I guess what it looks like is uh a half-hearted monk whose heart none the whose whole half of the heart, however, is in the right place. How's that?

SPEAKER_03 3:16

That's a wonderful thing. It's a very honest. I love that. Um a little bit of a pivot. So we recently we actually saw your video from I want to say 2010, um, where you were surfing with the shark in the water, and I believe it was was that in New Jersey?

SPEAKER_04 3:36

Oh, right. Yeah, it was and at the very beach where the the situation that inspired Jaws took place. Oh phenomenal the shark uh the gray white attacks like 20 people on the beach and then went up Tom's River eating people along the way.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Um so it's it's famous for shark attacks. Right, absolutely to be honest, sharks aren't very dangerous at all.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

No, they're not. They're not. I'm um born and raised at the beach, and and so it's not every day that you get to have a conversation about surfing, especially um with the priest, and um to connect this a little. Christina previously hosted um Dr. Peter Craft on the show and discovered he actually.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Yeah, he's not a real surfer. I have a bone to pick with him. He's a he's a bodyboarder, but he claims that's real surfing, and it's not.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

It is different.

SPEAKER_04 4:34

He and I are gonna have to come to blows one of these days if I ever meet him. He, of course, has no idea who I am, but someday he will, by golly. He's bodyboarding is is great fun, but it's not surfing. It is. I bought his book, Sir I Surf Therefore I Am, but I found it very disappointing. But I but I find all of his other writing great, fantastic. We use it in my apologetics class. So good.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Well, can you share a little bit more about your own love for surfing? What drew you to it, and what you enjoy the most about it, and um maybe even a little bit of advice to listeners who maybe want to learn.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

All right. Um, well, don't learn. It's too crowded out there already. We need fewer surfers. Um but no, it's uh I'm actually surprised that more surfers don't become monks. Uh it's very contemplative. You spend about if you if you're out there in the water for an hour and a half, you get maybe 10 minutes standing up on the surfboard if you're really good. So, really, most of it is spent in the frustrating act of trying to paddle back out again, and then the more frustrating act of waiting for the next wave to come. But if you can learn to love the process or love the question, love just the part about getting salt water in your mouth, then it becomes this great experience. My mother is a famous artist, and when people come to her, when young artists come to her and they say, Shall I be an artist? She says, Well, do you like paint? And if they do, then that's a good sign. Then the second question is, Do you have any paintings with you? And they usually do, and then she'll say, Okay, now go do 50 more of those, come back and I'll tell you whether you're an artist or not. Because the thing is, like a creative genius like nature or or like anything great, uh, it takes a lot of fail. Well, it takes a lot of failure. I mean, first you have to take a lot of just being in the water before you can get to the payoff. A lot of people want to be surfers or be writers, uh, but don't want to do the work that it takes. We used to this we used to call them 3103s on the beach because they spend three hours waxing up their surfboard, 10 minutes in the water, and three hours getting the bird back on the car. Um that's it. Like I was out last summer, and uh there's one of these guys who was pretty good, but he was kind of a jerk. There, they're I'm a longboarder, so we tend to be pretty mellow. And this guy was a shortboarder, and he was getting frustrated because there were a lot of longboarders. He's like, Out of my way, kooks, you get away. And so I asked, I I I just I talked to everybody out there because once you get a monk out of his monastery, you can't shut him up. And I I said to him, uh, because he was wearing a wetsuit and almost nobody else was. I was like, Ooh, aren't you a little hot in there? And he was like, It's only a one mil, you jerk, or something like that. Well, he didn't say jerk, but well, you get the point. And I was like, Oh, okay, you know. Um I don't know, I tried to say something else. He said something rude, and finally I looked at him and I said to him, Look, if surfing doesn't make you happy, find a different hobby, you know. And the other guys laughed. And I thought he was gonna punch me or something, but he looked around and he goes, You're right, dude. I'm sorry. Like, which is what I love so much about surfers is that they're they're totally uh that spending that much time in silence waiting for things makes you a very sort of mellow person. A lot of people think it's the dope, but it's not, it's just being out in the sun.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

It takes a lot of patience, absolutely waiting out there. It really does.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

It does. And for the record, since I brought up dope on your podcast, most of the really good surfers don't do that stuff because they're too in love with themselves and too important to be in shape, so they don't do dope.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Right. They don't need drugs.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

Just say no.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Well, to follow up on the not very common topic of surfing in priests. We also heard that you maybe once worked as a professional juggler, which we don't necessarily always hear that from priests.

SPEAKER_04 9:22

Yeah, well, that that there too was a sort of a good practice for being a monk. Um, luckily now I have Parkinson, so I can't juggle, but uh, because the mysteries of charity used to always call me up whenever they needed entertainment. They'd say, Father Ragasa, can you come juggle for our poor? Can you come juggle for our superior? Can you come juggle? And I'd say, No, sister, I'm really busy. I've got this issue. You're busy at 8 a.m. Saturday morning? I'm like, well, I've got an appointment at night, so you could come at 7:30. I'm like, ah, fine, whatever, I'll do it. I call them holy bulldozers. There's no way to say no to a missionary of charity. Um, but yes, the uh I grew up on an island in the Gulf of Mexico called Galveston, famous for as a tourist destination, but also famous for its natural disasters, serial killers, and 19th century architecture. And so, aside from surfing, if I wanted to make some quick money, well, I wouldn't make I never made any money surfing, but if I wanted to support my surfing habit, I had to earn some money. And the best way was to rip off tourists. So I but I had a friend who was also a surfer, and he was really talented, like he could do anything. He did trick biking and trick skating and also and so, but I was a good talker. So the two of us formed a group called the Flying Fettuccine Brothers, which uh for about eight years we were you could hire us to be at your grand opening, or it's where I learned to dislike children, actually. Probably the roots of my vocation to celibacy. Uh, that uh those little kids they they they never uh never mind, I won't go into it, but uh the where was I anyway? So yeah, the the flying it yeah, I think we're actually online somewhere. If you look up the flying Fettuccine brothers, you might catch a bit of our act.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

We'll definitely have to find the biggest.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 11:33

Since failure seems to be the since failure seems to be the theme of the show so far, I the what a guy who we took usually if you're gonna work on the street for tips, you've gotta find a mentor who will kind of look out for you and teach you the ins and outs. And our mentor was a guy named Timothy Finger with a creepier name you couldn't come up with, but he was he built himself as the world's worst juggler, and he all he did was just try to do things and and mess it up and apologize. And it was the most hilarious routine ever. He was great, and he would take I I remember during his in the middle of one of his shows, a dog ran into the circle and grabbed one of his juggling pins, and he had and he did the whole rest of the show with the dog swinging the dog around and having the dog jump over him and jump through him and teaching the dog tricks and stuff. He was kind of a comic genius, but but he also taught me that failure is is part of the fun of it too, that like being able to laugh at yourself is kind of important when you're a performer of any sort, or even when you're not a performer, even when you're by yourself, you gotta learn to laugh at yourself.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Absolutely. That's such a that's such a great lesson. Um, and speaking of lessons, other than failure, um, have you learned or carried any lessons with you into your vocation and priesthood?

SPEAKER_04 13:07

Um yes. Uh well, I'd say I've learned them. Whether I've implemented them in my life is another question altogether. Um I when I first joined the monastery as a young full of myself sort of kid, I remember asking one of the old guys saying, Do you have a piece of advice for a future monk? Which was, of course, presumptuous then. I didn't know I was gonna make it through the novitiate. Um, but I said, Well, any advice? And he said, Yeah, shut up. And he said, Shut up, keep your head down and listen. And those are the three best pieces of advice I've never followed. But I but I intend to follow them, and that's that's I guess why the abbot made me postulaster. Um but listening, you'd be amazed at the things that happen to you when you just listen to people. How enemies become friends and people you never thought you'd get along with suddenly, you do. I I well, I don't know, I'm not sure how much time we have, but I a cut I don't know if you remember, but a few uh back during COVID, right as it was ending, Black Lives Matter came to say well, it was started in St. Louis, but they wanted to tear down the statue of St. Louis. There was a time when they were going around tearing down statues of people. And uh myself and I and a bunch of priest friends when we said the rosary around the statue, and they um but my in the rule of Saint Benedict, it says that a monk isn't to get involved in another man's fight, that you just pray for them. Um even if you think you know who's right, he says, you you don't know the situation, so stay away. So the abbot said I was permitted to go say the rosary, but if things got confrontational, I was not permitted to continue to stay there. So things got controversial, got confrontational, and and this guy named Umar Lee started making noise, and people started fighting and things, and so I just backed up and backed up and said my prayers. And pretty soon I looked around, and there was no, I was with all the Black Lives Matter supporters. Um, and there's this black kid on my left, uh kind of neat-looking kid with tattoos, dreadlocks, and he kind of looks over at me, and I look over at him and I go, uh, you're not here to pray the rosary, are you? He goes, No? Are you one of those holy, one of those religious people? And you know, I looked at myself, I go, Well, a man can't go out in a in a hoodie anymore without getting judged, yeah, which luckily he found funny. Um, but he says, um, so we started laughing and talking, and and I said, and he said, Um, well, I said to him, Why are you doing this? What problem do you have with St. Louis? He goes, Oh, I don't have any problem with St. Louis, but I heard there were white supremacists out here, and I I planned to resist them. And I said, Well, that's you know, and if you're listening, you know, to somebody, you begin to give them a little bit of credit. And so I said, Well, if that's what you're here for, then that's a noble aspiration. He goes, Are there any racists in your group? And I was like, Well, it's Missouri, yeah, probably. Um, but but in my defense, like Black Lives Matter is anti-family, anti-Christian, Marxist, blah, blah. And he goes, Well, wait a second, hold on. I I I'm a Christian myself, and I don't know what Marxism is, so I don't think I am one. And and he says, and I'm married and I have a kid, and you know, and he's like, So I think I'm pro-family. And and I was like, okay, all right, you're obviously okay, but this Umar Lee guy, he's he's a really horrible person. He's a violent, evil man. And he goes, Well, ask him yourself, he's standing on your right. And I was like, Oh god. Uh and I look over, and yeah, there's this big Muslim dude, big beard and prayer hat and stuff looking at me, and I was like, figuring I had nothing to lose, I said, Well, Mr. Lee, I have heard that you are a violent, evil man. And he says, Where'd you hear that? And I said, the uh the internet. And and he said, uh and I said, but but in my defense, I saw you on the news, and he goes, Oh yeah, and the news is real fair to Catholics. And I thought, well, this guy's got the moral high ground now. And we got to talking, and pretty soon, like, we're we exchanged numbers, and he handed me the megaphone and a bottle of ice water. He's like, Well, let's get this protest started. I'm like, if the abbot sees me leading a Black Lives Matter protest, I'm in, which he did the next day in the news. Um, but he said, You can't pray with us? I was like, Well, yeah, I can, but I don't agree with you. He said, You don't have to agree with us, just pray. And so we all said the prayer of St. Francis together, and and now Umar and I have a podcast where we disagree about stuff. He's really the irony is that we we almost always agree. For our for our C uh for our season finale last year, we for su because it's called disagreement, um, we did we decided to have him go to Mass. So the title of the episode was Umar Goes to Mass. And he comes back and he says, Um, so you guys believe that's Jesus up there? And I go, Yeah. He goes, Well, like, no, not yeah. Like it's actually Jesus on the altar. I'm like, yeah. He's like, no, no, no, not not yeah. Like Allah, creator of the cosmos, is incarnate at the priest's hands at every mass. I'm like, yeah. And by the way, you're at like the top 30% of Catholics now theologically. And he says, uh, how come you don't dress up for that? Yeah, and you know, I I was just sort of floored, like he has more respect than I do, you know. The the irony is that we never disagree about anything. But um, where how did I even get into that? Oh, yeah, that's well, I spent my summers in LA, and last year I was driving down the street. Long, long story short. Um, there are a bunch of the do you know?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

I don't know if you uh know if you know what a cholo is, but they're a I know those there was a song a long time ago, and that's about all I know.

SPEAKER_04 20:03

Well, they the it's particularly in LA, they're com they're common, but they're basic basically uh Mexican-American street gang guys, and they have tattoos all over their faces and things, and oh heck. I guess I'll tell the whole story from beginning to end. Do we have time? Or do you would you rather get on to your next episode? Well, let's let's No, no, please. Okay, so I I sub in for I I go surfing every summer now in LA. The abbot lets you go down there because there are a bunch of priests that need subs, uh, and they all are in inner city areas because they're really conservative, and most of the church in LA is not, so they get end up in San Pedro and Wilmington and Long Beach, places like that. Um, so if you've ever been to LA, the 4th of July, are you are you from LA?

SPEAKER_03 21:03

Belle looks like she's probably from I'm not I've been there though, and I absolutely love it. I'm actually from the East Coasts, but I love LA.

SPEAKER_04 21:11

Yeah, where are you from, both of you?

SPEAKER_03 21:13

I'm from Bethany Beach, Delaware.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Ah, I used to have a uh sweatshirt from the Delaware State Parks Um Beach Patrol. I competed against them. Cool. Apparently, there are a lot of sharks out there.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

There are quite a few, so that's why I was so interested in your shark encounter.

SPEAKER_04 21:38

Are you from Delaware as well, Chrissy? So now I'm interviewing you.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Um I grew up in um Colorado, actually, but I'm currently local to Middle Georgia where Paloma Fig is.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Oh, okay. All right. I go to Colorado all the time to see. Christophanic. And I think of it as California, but without the class. Like or not or not without the class, without the pretense. They're just they're just straight up hippies. But anyway, I love Colorado. Where was I? Oh yeah. So anyway, 4th of July in LA is fantastic because for because fireworks are illegal, which means that the street gangs put on fireworks displays for their neighborhoods. And it is amazing. Like easily $50 million worth of illegal fireworks go off. Like hand grenades, small arms fire, like everything is in the air in every direction because Long Beach competes with San Pedro, which competes with uh Compton, which competes with Wilmington. And like rich people rent helicopters and watch from above. And a family in Wilmington, uh Will Westside Wilmington, uh shout out to all my homies, um, asked me to come out and watch the fireworks with them. And it starts at it actually starts like three days early. But on the 4th of July at dusk, the fireworks start, and at two o'clock in the morning they were still going off. And I was like, Well, I gotta get home. And they're like, Well, you'll never get home because of all the cholos in the streets. And I was like, Well, what's a cholo? And they say, Well, you'll find out if you try to get home. Um, and sure enough, like I got I made it maybe five blocks from the house, and there's this big Hispanic gentleman with uh goatee and tattoos, and you know, the flannel shirt buttoned up all the way, and the shorts with the white socks pulled up straight out of the movies, saying, No, not this way, don't you can't come this way. Uh, presumably because they don't want the cops to see them setting off fireworks. Um, so I turned around, I got if I went all over LA, tried to get back to my parish. Finally, I ended up maybe seven blocks from it, and sure enough, there's this big dude standing in the middle of the road. So I pulled over, rolled down the window. I was like, Hello, uh, good job, great job on the fireworks. Thank you very much. Do you mind if I just cut through here? And this guy, I didn't look, I didn't get a good look at him until I pulled over, but he's got a big tattoo on his neck that says, To heck with your life, except not to heck, right? Um, and a teardrop tattoo, the whole business. And um he says, please exit the vehicle, sir, like he's a cop or something. So I did, and he he looks me up and down. I'm dressed like it, like I am now in a black hood and habit, and um he says, uh, what he goes, What the hell are you, Holmes? Like that. And I looked at him and I kind of froze. I said, I'm a priest. And with that, his buddy walks up, and his buddy's got a skull tattooed onto his face with like little black roses all over it and stuff. And he goes, No, he didn't. He goes, he ain't a priest. Look at him. And so I said, I went, uh, Benedict Vos Omnipotent Steus, Pa Terrafield. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. He says, Let me get my kids. He runs off. He brings back, I bless both of his children, and then the other guy goes off and gets his mom and his girlfriend. I bless them. And then they're on the phone texting their friends, and pretty soon, like the gang's all here, you know, like literally. And I'm blessing holy metals and paintings of Jesus. And they bring out a bag of tamales and some coronas, and we we sat there and drank beer and ate tamales till like three o'clock, two, four o'clock in the morning, and finally I was like, look, guys, I gotta go. Um, but uh and he they're like, Well, thanks for stopping by, Father. You know, like, well, it wasn't like I had a choice, but again, to make a long story long, um, you know, the I I I may have judged them when I pulled up the first time, but once once I started to listen to them, they all had real lives, real life stories. I mean, I I had I run into them under any other circumstances, I probably would have been afraid, you know, or I was afraid, and yet there is a real a genuine piety and and and a sense of having Jesus in their midst that I maybe I haven't really found anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

That's so there it is.

SPEAKER_04 26:48

Put that in your pipe and sleep in it. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

No, that's an incredible story of a really amazing experience. Um okay, so I went oh go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

Yeah. No, I went back the next year to looking for them, but this the house they came out of was sold, so I ended up in Boyle Heights talking to Cholos there instead.

unknown 27:15

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_04 27:16

Different Cholos.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Different. So we invited you on to a resounding guest today to talk about this novel, Diary of a Country Priest.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Um it's 30 minutes in and I haven't even started yet.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Um, we would love to hear from you about it. Um, for listeners who may have never encountered Diary of a Country Priest before, how would you describe this book? Why has it remained such a significant work in Catholic literature for so long? I know you you weren't the writer or the editor or anything, but this is this book is very meaningful to you.

SPEAKER_04 27:57

It it is. I if you think if you imagine every Vin Diesel film ever made, this is the exact opposite, right? It's if I I personally like I'm a big fan of zombie literature. If there's not an explosion within the first few pages, I get bored. And this and this book starts off. Hold on, let me see if I've got a copy of it right here. Um the very first sentence of the book reads. Oh gosh, now I got a translator's note. Come on, part one. Um, like any other. All parishes seem alike these days. It's almost shockingly boring. Or or it seems that way at first, but it becomes this odd sort of um film noir mystery, except the the except that it's about uh a young priest who's a failure. Yeah, speaking of failures, who's trying to navigate the personalities of his parish in a tiny little nowhere parish because he's not a very good priest, and it's it's sort of one it's one surprise after another. It's one uh false turn, one one um adventure after another, but they're small, quiet adventures. It's like it's like every time you're looking for an explosion, what you get is some weird small quiet burst of grace instead, and the shock to the system is almost unbearable. I mean, I I cried on on almost every page of this book uh because it's so beautifully written for one thing.