Claymore: Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Claymore: Become Who You Are
#746 Young Men Discerning Truth Amid Cultural Chaos w Gen Z Author John Krueger (+Bonus Panel Discussion)
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Something is shifting under the surface of American culture: Gen Z men are walking back into churches, asking blunt questions about truth, purpose, and what it means to live a good life. Recored before a live audience at St. Mary of Perpetual Help, we talk with Gen Z author John Kruger about his new book Dwelt Among Us: America’s Catholic Comeback, and why this renewal feels rooted in more than politics or vibes. When the world gets louder, thinner, and more online, the search for meaning gets more serious.
We zoom out to the spiritual and historical backdrop, including Pope Leo XIII’s 1884 vision and the St. Michael prayer, then trace a century marked by war, ideological revolutions, and a steady assault on marriage and family life. We also get honest about what young people have actually grown up with: new atheism, social media identity traps, economic anxiety, and the loneliness epidemic. The thread running through it all is simple and demanding: reason points toward truth, and the human heart cannot live on substitutes forever.
To close, we hand the mic to men from the audience who share their own conversion stories, from atheism and online ideology to Scripture, Augustine, and finally the Sacraments.
If this conversation challenges you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one sign you’ve seen that people are hungry for faith again?
Dwelt Among Us, America's Catholic Comeback by John Krueger
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Live From The Catacomb Cafe
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the Claymore Become Who You Are Podcast, the production of the John Paul Touraine News Center. I'm Jack Rigrid, your host. We're recording with a live audience on location at the Catacomb Cafe, located in St. Mary, a Perpetual Health Parish in Bridgeport. We have a true shepherd here, uh, Father Tom. If you haven't uh met him before, you gotta come to this parish. You know, they don't build beautiful churches like this anymore. It's fantastic. And the catacomb space down below, if you haven't been here, you've got to stop and visit to um Father Tom. Our guest today is John Kruger, who wrote Dwalt Among Us, America's Catholic Comeback. And I want to talk to him a little bit about, you know, there's a movement that's happening that few people would have predicted. It's a revival of young men. Just when you get to about the most toxic place you could think of in this culture, we have this movement of young men. Now we saw it in our apostolate with with Claymore. I meet John, and he's a Gen Z guy that actually wrote about this. I just thought evil was peaking, you know? And I think it probably is. So so what's going on with Gen Z, John? Uh is this a trend that's gonna continue? And if so, what's what's driving it in the beginning?
Why Gen Z Men Are Waking Up
SPEAKER_02The Holy Spirit, I'll say the first thing. Purely the Holy Spirit that God can only convert souls. It's the only person that's gonna move someone's soul to convert. So that's first and foremost. But I think, yes, in a more concrete sense, it will continue. Absolutely. Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_04We're seeing really real roots, right?
SPEAKER_02I think it's real roots. I think it's very real roots for a whole host of different reasons cultural, technological, societal. I think there are very real roots that are forming, but again, only the Holy Spirit will truly convert a heart.
SPEAKER_04So what what do you think? And I I want to back up. So I just want a short answer here because I want to back up into what Pope Leo XIII uh uh saw in his vision. But before I do that, what do you think is driving these these young men when you're talking to them? I keep hearing from them is like, what is the truth of things in essence? And i are you sensing that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll tell you what, no publication, no pundit that I have seen has really gotten to the core of it. And that's partly why I wrote the book, is because I didn't think no one got to the truth of it. They didn't get to the more secular matters, they didn't get to the spiritual matters. They had pieces and chunks, but I really believe that my book captured the essence of all of it. So I'll say more, you know, besides the spiritual, technology has been a big one. You see that with AI right now that's coming in. Um you see that with the loneliness epidemic that's been happening the last 30 years. That's that's been a big thing. You see that with all the sexual confusion right now, been an absolute horror. We're in Chicago right now. They had they have some interesting things going on in Chicago, I can tell you that. Those are just a few of the things, and I go on uh to mention others in the book as well, and I tie in my own story.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Let me just give our audience a little taste because I want to back it
Pope Leo XIII And The St Michael Prayer
SPEAKER_04up. I'm gonna read you something from John's book, Dwelt Among Us, right from the intro. And and this is really something. Some of you have probably heard this already, but when I read this again, I just thought, holy cow, you know, you you really start to see the roots of this. On October 13, 1884, Pope Leo XIII was just finishing Mass in the Vatican chapel, froze in a trance-like state, and overheard this chilling dialogue proceed forth from the tabernacle. The voice of Satan and his pride boasted to our Lord, I can destroy your church. The gentle voice of the Lord said, You can, then go ahead and do so. Satan says, To do so I need more time and more power. Our Lord says, How much time and how much power? Listen to this, listen to this. And when you see this crazy demonic protest and stuff going on, here's Satan. How much time, how much power? I need 75 to 100 years and a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service. Our Lord says, I got goosebumps when I think about this. You have the time and you have the power. Do with them what you will. Immediately upon receiving this vision, he rushed from the chapel to his private office and wrote down what he had heard. And in retaliation, crafted this prayer to be said at the end of every low mass throughout the world, and that's the St. Michael prayer, right, that we all know. And it's the last thing I'll read, just this quick snippet here. Pope Leo XIII's extraordinary prophetic vision, and this is what I want you to answer now, if you can, John, for us, it ushered in a century of utter turmoil and anguish. Listen to this, never before seen in the scope of human history. Now, when I ask that, when you what and I want all the Gen Z guys that are out here too, and the in the in the older ones, when they wonder what's going on, this is historic, isn't it? This evil. I mean, we've seen a ton of evil, we'll get into that, right? But this is what's happening since that hundred, since 1884 in human history.
SPEAKER_02So you could start the story really, you know, with the fall, right? You could talk about how God has worked through salvation history. Why did I pick uh 1884 rather with Pope Leo's prophecy? Because that explains the world that Gen Z, that these young men grew up in, right? And so it's sort of like a fish swimming through water. We don't really understand it when we look at in the context of our lives, but when we look at it the context of history, we start to see this is you know two world wars in 20-ish years, and then all this economic turmoil, this political turmoil, communism, you know, devouring half the globe. So let's just let's put that in context what you just said.
SPEAKER_04So 1884, there's a couple of other revolutions that happened first, but just to save time, think about this. Was it 1914, right? World War I. So soon after that, World War I, and then what? How much later they said, well, this is the war to end all wars, and then what happened?
SPEAKER_02World War II. Yeah. And no one saw it coming, and it just came out of nowhere, right? And you had other revolutions that and by the way, at the end of World War I, all the Catholic monarchies, all the Christian monarchies of Europe were destroyed, and they had more secular governments put in place, more liberal governments put in place after that.
SPEAKER_04Communism comes in. Communism kills a hundred million of their own people. Their own people. Yeah. Without the wars and stuff going on, right? You know, i i if you think about this, we had the sexual uh uh uh revolution that's at the same time as communism, right?
SPEAKER_02Right? It's not a coincidence that Marxism and sexual you know libation, they all come in at the same time in the 60s, right after the world is essentially destroyed, right? Europe is obliterated, America with the nuclear bomb lost a lot of its moral credibility on the world stage after that. And so you have this sexual licentiousness and you have communism starting to spread and into the sixties and the seventies.
A Century Of Upheaval And Collapse
SPEAKER_04You think okay, if Satan he hates God, but if he if he can't kill God, who's he gonna go after? And it's marriage and the family, right? And then take out his church, and this and everything crumbles, huh? Everything starts to crumble.
SPEAKER_02That's what uh Fatima said. That's what Mary said the last battle would be over the family and over the domestic church, which is the family.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So for these young guys growing up, they grew up in this toxic thing. In the 70s, what was legalized? Do you remember what happened in the 70s? Abortion. Abortion, right? Yeah. It's amazing, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll tell you what, first, I mean, Ronald Reagan legalized divorce in California, and he later said that that was his greatest regret while in office was legalizing divorce. Because that paved the way for the whole nation to be legalized divorce, and that was really the first disintegration of the family, and then after that, the abortion pill, etc., etc. The birth control pill, obviously, and that just disintegrates the family step by step by step until you have I think it's like 40% of people are not married or something crazy like that, just these crazy statistics that are not ever before seen in human history. Everyone has always had families, uh, everyone has always had children, and now it's just like it's a very pointed structural collapse at the family. Yeah. It's never before seen in human history.
SPEAKER_04And now what happens in the in with the LBJs, uh, the great society, right? We we actually rein in socialism into our country. The bureaucratic state grows like how do you even remember? I mean, it was it's it's crazy becomes huge overnight almost, you know. And so I lived in Chicago. I was born I was born on the in the South Shore. People coming in and just they're knocking down houses and building these like Cabrini greens uh of the world, you know? And it was amazing the crime that came in and stuff with that, right? In a
From New Atheism To COVID Insanity
SPEAKER_04bureaucratic state. So now, just because of time, we got to forward to 2020. You remember that this is like peak insanity now, right? So so this is the way I'm picturing it. 1984, 1984 is a hundred years. Sure. So now Satan shouldn't have lost his reign. But you see, you see the you know, the leftover, huh? It's got momentum going. It's got a lot of momentum. And he has the power of what? The heart. That's what we just read. Right. Most of the evil in the world, I think, is it's manifested by people that have have lost their hearts to over the evil, right?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Well, I mean, first before 2020, 20 years before, you had the new atheism that was just sweeping the country. We don't need God, we don't need formalized religion. Mostly after the terrorist attacks in 9-11, that God was responsible, religion was responsible for most of the conflict. So we had that, which we were born into as Gen Z. We were born into that culture of very, very secular, you know, new atheist ideology. And then we had the technology spring up in the 2010s and in the 2010s, I guess you'd say. And then 2020 happens, and you know, that whole insanity with COVID, that's just that that was you're right, it was peak insanity. It was peak.
SPEAKER_04Remember, I mean, who's gonna forget what Klaus Schwab said? You will own nothing and be happy. So all the Gen Z guys in the audience, right? You will own nothing and be happy. You know, there's this something doesn't make sense for them.
SPEAKER_02That's true right now. No one could afford a home. No, you can't.
SPEAKER_04No, it's true, right? It's really true. You know, the value of the dollar, cause inflation, et cetera, et cetera, right? So you were living in this in this proverbial pot, like frog sitting in the pot. Somehow that frog jumped out. Or something carried it out. Something carried it out. So so where are we at with that? And why are these guys waking up? You know, Father uh Tom a little bit earlier talked about uh how many people are coming into the church, how many we know this with RCIA. I was just talking to Spencer. He's here with the Knights of Columbus, working in the college and stuff. I asked him about it. He said, It's amazing, you know, people are waking up.
SPEAKER_02You know, I I'll say this. I think you saw it 20 years ago. If you said you were Catholic, especially as a man, you know, young guy, people would kind of look at you, you know, that's sort of soft, it's sort of weak, that's you know, okay, who cares? And certainly the state of the church was like that coming out of the nineties, which I don't even have to mention. But I think now you're seeing people, spe you know, and right about this, celebrities, people that are at the top, you look at JD Vance, Marco Rubio very, very, as far as I can tell, staunch in their faith. It's okay to be Catholic, it's okay to believe in the Christian religion. It's uh it's okay to to agree with these traditional principles, and not just okay, like we could win with these things in the culture because people are hungry for them. And so it's really taking it from the mindset of like losing to the mindset of we can win hearts over to Christ. And it's not just about vic you know, we're not playing the victims. We're we're victors, we're victorious in the resurrection. And now I think a lot of people are starting to act like that.
SPEAKER_04Why is it Gen Z men? Because it's gonna be pretty lonely there if a bunch of guys are in the church looking for wives. I mean, hopefully the the girls become attracted to this be it is gonna be a battle, brother. I mean, what are we gonna do about the about the women, you know? Well, I don't know. I I certainly have a very claymore for men for a reason, right? We can't get always get to the women, you know.
SPEAKER_02We just hope be staunch and firm in your faith and God will lead you to the right one. I'll say that some you know, very strong in her faith girlfriend at my Newman Center in in college. And so I'd say start looking at the churches, start looking at the Newman Centers if you're in college. But if you're strong in your faith, if you're following God, he'll lead you to the right one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no doubt.
SPEAKER_02So while you're on that, let's talk about your personal
Finding Faith Through The Newman Center
SPEAKER_02journey. Sure. So I lived at a Catholic church for two years in college. Um, I lived at the Newman Center and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It was interesting when I chose Madison as a choice of college. People were saying that how could you choose that? It's a very it's the most liberal city almost in the country. Yada yada. I said, you know, I'm not worried about that. I you know, as far as I'm concerned, uh you're gonna deal with that everywhere. So I'm not worried about that. I had no idea about the Newman Center at the time. But I I went, I fell in love with the place through some circumstances that I won't spoil, you'll have to read the book. But it's a it's a pretty funny story how I got there. Pretty, pretty interesting. It's not the usual path to how I uh that everybody would experience, but I I basically took a stand for what was right, got infamous for it, and found refuge in the Newman Center and fell in love with the community, fell in love with the place, ended up living there on my last two years of college. And and I thought, you know, honestly, I was like, okay, this is a great journey for me. I'm glad the faith is alive and well in my life. Maybe I could write a book about this and share my experiences about living in a church. And so that was about January of twenty-five. And I I went to the Sikh conference, and then I'm like, wow, there's a lot of young people that would buy this book that I would write. And then I heard about, you know, Pope Leo, he's the first American Pope, and you started to hear all the studies and and polls coming out saying that this might be a broader trend. And so that became the story was the broader trend, and then I incorporated my personal story into the broader national trend to inspire more people, hopefully.
SPEAKER_04What I got out of your book clearly is again, if you think about this this crescendo of of of evil, really. And and it's not finished yet, is it? I mean, evil's never. You're gonna have to you're gonna have to battle socialism here in this country. You know, look at I mean, uh Zoran um uh Mamdani, he's real. Katie Wilson from Seattle. We have Brandon Johnson in Chicago. They're not uh hiding the fact that uh no yeah, they're not they'd like to take this country into a socialist and Marxist and even Islam with uh Mam Dani and I write about most of what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_02I mean, communism is obviously condemned by the church, it's very dangerous, right? And Islam is spreading in America, and why can't Catholicism be building churches at the rate that Islam is building mosques in Texas, right? Like this is the Bible belt. That's just insane things. It is insane. As Catholics, we should be as zealous, obviously, with the zeal of Christ, and and more zealous because ours is true and we should believe that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well you look, we saw this evil so clearly, right? I mean, I'm actually banned from local library for just talking about the the pornography in the children's section, right? Literally banned. So let me ask you
Politics Pressure And Public Moral Confusion
SPEAKER_04this. Can you get political for a minute? Are you okay with this? Because because tell me what you think, because i in in in in 2016, all right, I thought we were going to hell in a handbasket. I really did. I didn't know how it was gonna stop. I thought, you know, because here's Catholic social teaching, like a pyramid in front of you, like a two-dimensional triangle, right, held up by the human person, marriage and the family in this corner, right? Christ in the church in this corner, and then the third necessary society, Pope Leo XIII, called polity, how we organize our government. When you knock this out, which got knocked out, right, through the sexual revolution and onward. Look at abortion came in. We actually redefine marriage, right? Then religion is taken out, and then what happens? I'm gonna get political, and just you don't have to answer anything if you don't want to. Joe Biden is in there before Trump comes back the second time, and he puts those weren't a nice four years. No. And think about this. Think about the attack, and I want you to think about this from a from a demonic, really evil place, right? He puts a man, Richard Levine, in charge of the HHS, right, where Robert Kennedy basically stands right now, and puts him in charge of human health and and human health services for the whole nation. This is a big organization. Worried about the mental health of the whole nation. I'm going to put a man, think about the how logical this is, who dresses as a woman, calls himself Rachel Levine, wears high heels, and actually is promoting transgenderism on public television. And talking about, you know, it we should be able to give puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and actually mutilate their bodies. Now, this should be a reflection of strong marriages, religious freedom, right, our country is based on. Now you have such a turnaround that you have this pressure pushing down on us. And I felt here here's a long way I set you up for this, then it's just to say if Kamala Harris and Tim Walls were our pre- We may have to edit this out. I don't know. If we ever wanted to get it out anywhere, right? But if they were our president today, and I'm going to ask our audience, you know, I mean, if our if they were president today, would we be under some persecution right now? And would Gen Z men, would you guys have the guts then to come out and say, hey, I I'm gonna be vocal about this? This majority.
SPEAKER_02It would certainly be tougher, I can tell you, than just because the polity is not, like you said, aligned with our our values for the most part. And obviously Trump's the Trump administration is not a perfect, you know, thing either, none of us are, but a hell of a lot better than Kamala, I can tell you that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean, with this, none of this corruption, I wouldn't think, would be exposed to this level, right? Right. They were uh we know guys in our apostolate that that that were standing up and praying outside of abortion clinics that were arrested. And so this was a ladies that were arrested.
SPEAKER_02And you see it in the UK, you see it in Canada. That that's their work, scary stuff and that and euthanasia and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_04Here's
Small Groups That Rebuild Community
SPEAKER_04where it's hopeful, I think. Is I thought, look, it we're gonna go out with our apostolate and save as many souls as we can. We'll catch one or two guys, right, at the end. And then here comes Gen Z coming through, and I start hearing these guys ask us questions, and they want to know more, and they're hungry. And and they the it I think it just got so toxic. And and here's here's what we're finding. The human heart was made for something more, right? The human heart was made for more. Absolutely. And when it gets to the point and they look out and there's mental illness, anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies out there, you you can't find a girl, you can't find a guy, you really can't afford to buy anything, right? At least a house and settle down, blah, blah. And so something's got to change, right? So you can either get addicted to porn, you can go, you know, you can go gamble in your your your basement, right? And don't get out of there, and then you got loneliness, etc. You can vote for the socialist, and maybe he'll fix it. Maybe he'll fix it, right? And so, and they don't know history, so they may think that way, right?
SPEAKER_02Then we have to be there as a church to catch him. We have to be there. I had a fantastic pastor at UW Madison that he emphasized small groups and small men's groups, women's groups, Bible studies, everything. And he grew the number of smuggles. I think there was at least dozens, if not hundreds, of smuggles by the time he was done there. But I I think that was and not everybody stayed, but you got them introduced, and people came for a reason. They were curious, they were, you know, hungry for more, like you said. And it just sometimes that that invitation to coffee, that getting them into the door, that invitation to the Bible study to the small group. I mean, sometimes that it's all it takes, and they'll find community, they'll find friends, they'll find the Lord, hopefully at the end of the day. And I I really, you know, I'm a big believer in the the small group apostolates. And I was part of one uh I mean, I'm part of uh one here in Illinois, a Bible study in a small group that's been fantastic, and they're they're all over the place, especially in the big cities. It's what we're finding. Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, New York, you know, California, even and you have to search them out. And so you have to have that little bit of virtue, a little little fortitude, a little courage to go and actually go up to the the real life front door and knock and go into the place instead of you know scrolling. So it's it's a little different experience once you step out into that. But once you do and you find that community, it really grabs you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And and so when you leave college and the Newman Center, it's so important to continue to build those communities. Every parish like this has to have those small groups with Claymore, and again, uh Dwalt Among Us is is amazing. I mean, when I was reading this, I was amazed on how beautifully you laid this out. So when you're when you're talking, John, about these communities and these small groups. I mean, as men, we have to keep these things going, don't we? Because there was a time where you know we'd be working in guilds and we had trades and we'd be doing this stuff.
SPEAKER_02And I mentioned the bowling leagues in the book the 90s and the 80s, and those are gone now, too.
SPEAKER_04So all of us need to be cognizant of that. We need to reach out. It's a great place to do it in a parish, but then we we find out uh not only that, then once you build up the community here, then you start to invite these neighbors and and friends and different people that are that are in your community that aren't going to to any type of a church and are seeking something more. And this is a great time, right, to to evangelize others.
SPEAKER_02That's the thing. It's you know, taking it from that losing mindset, that victim mindset, to we can win and we can win the culture, and we can make America a Christian Catholic country through and Through and it's just it starts within your own neighborhoods, within your own families, just those invitations to those things. It's one thing to be cognizant of it, I think. It's another to have the virtue to go and make the invitation and then be persistent in the invitation as well. Persistence plays along, you know, it plays along very well with a lot of people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And and I think, you know, men to men, you know, where you can really shear your heart, you know. Right. You know, the friendships that I have, you know, I'm down one day and the next guy's up, and it's and this guy's laughing at me because he went through that last week, and you go, All right, all right, all right, I'm coming out of it, right? You can't get that from Chat GBT. No. Before we get to AI will be our last subject, John Paul II said that the the first great battle of every man is going to be on the battlefield of the human heart. And we need to be there for each other. You need to go vertical, you need the sacraments and prayer. But and then you got to share that, right? And you know, if anybody's familiar with AA, you know, uh Bill Wilson, who started that, right, was an alcoholic, and he said, every time I had this real drive to have a drink, I went out to help some other drunk, you know? And I think that's what we do with our faith in essence, right? Every time you get disappointed or you get down, go out and reach for somebody and start to talk to them. It's amazing how fired up you feel.
SPEAKER_02I think it was Fulton Sheen who said whenever he was lonely, he would go out and serve the poor. Right? I think that was Don't sit there, man.
SPEAKER_04Don't sit there. You know, there's too many temptations. And I and I I'm very interested in
Staying Grounded When Church Feels Messy
SPEAKER_04this. How do you navigate confusing signals coming out of even the church? You know, I mean, Gen Z's coming in and you go to a church like this and you walk in, and and just the beauty alone, but every church is not that beautiful, right? Right. So let's say you're trying, you're coming into to church, but now you you find a pastor that's uh you know, that's uh a little bit more liberal or whatever, not speaking the truth to your heart. What would what do you do in a case like that? I mean, how do you navigate, you know, I'm looking for the truth. What is the truth of things? And then you see confusing signals. Can can can we push that off somehow, or what are you doing to navigate those things, John? Yourself? And then what are what are you seeing?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, yeah, certainly. I mean, the parish that I go to uh in in Milwaukee, I go for daily mass, and it's not necessarily it's not the person, the the specific priest that sustains me, it's the Eucharist that sustains me. It's the daily rosary that sustains me. So, and you know, there to a certain extent you can push it off. But I think if you s you know stick to the sacraments, the sacramentals, those will ground you. And obviously that, but with a strong prayer life as well, prayer has to be at the center of it. Because that's what prayer is, essentially. It's a it's uh humbling yourself before the truth and which is ultimately God.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so you'll find it one way or the other, you'll find it. And sometimes you'll come in conflict uh come in conflict with some of those those obstacles, and that's where your fortitude, that's where your courage comes in to s to say what you believe to be true. And I don't know, maybe you're maybe what you think is not quite true, and then that gets sharpened and that gets ironed out, but you have to have that courage and fortitude to say that.
SPEAKER_04So you're gonna have to, and our audience is gonna have to take your faith seriously because I don't think this is the time to be wishy-washy because because if you're looking for the truth, you're gonna have to dig in deep. And we have it, right? We have the catechism, we you know, we have this beauty, the positive faith coming down to us. And I think we just have to really go there, really to take it in. And that's what I'm seeing with young guys doing. Somehow they're discerning this and they're saying, nope, I'm figuring out where to go. I'm getting good advice. And maybe that's the Holy Spirit too. But they're finding, they're finding the truth.
SPEAKER_02They're finding the truth. I'll say one thing. Uh in in the book I write this, technology's actually played a big part in that because during COVID, you had answers to things. You don't go out, you you look it up online, you look at the podcasts and the YouTube videos, and you found the truth that way. That's certainly how I found a lot of the truth of the Catholic faith. And so technology is not not a bad guidance, it's a tool to be used, and certainly a lot of people are using it. But once you receive that, I I think the best thing to do is to go out and share that with another human and to get human advice and spiritual direction from a priest.
SPEAKER_04And so as as we wind down, what
AI Truth Seeking And Transhumanism
SPEAKER_04about AI? You know, it it is it the same? I mean, I can I can use it for good or bad, you know, but is it gonna solve all our problems, John?
SPEAKER_02So I'll give you my philosophical answer. Hopefully it doesn't take too much time, but you look at what intelligence is, right? Intelligence, the angels are intelligent, the demons are intelligence, they're comprised of the intellect and the will. Okay, and same with us. We have a soul that's comprised of the intellect and the will. Now, AI, you could say, you know, it's not real intelligence. In that case, you don't really r worry about the will, but there is a certain intelligence to it, so then what's willing it, right? Like what's pointing it in the direction that it's going. And when you use AI, you're willing it. So it's really not you're searching for the truth. You're just trying to confirm your own intelligence as you will in ChatGPT. You know, it's it's a feedback loop, and you see it with these horrible stories where people are getting these really bad ideas to do stuff to others or themselves, and it's because ChatGPT, you know, there's lawsuits right now. ChatGPT is prodding them on, it's prodding along i in their intelligence, and so it's it's like a it's a horrible feedback loop that it it's it it mimics real intelligence, but it's really not. And so I'd say less is more on that. And and and last question then, are we are we gonna live forever with this transhumanism? Ask Brian Johnson. He spent quite a bit of money on that, right? And um I don't know. I actually go over a scenario in the book. Yeah, you do it's sort of interesting, but I I I don't think so.
SPEAKER_04I think there's a point where you're Did you go over that scenario where we're almost have to decide not to, you know, if they get up to a hundred and so I'll give you the scenario.
SPEAKER_02It could look like we're gonna not die, right? Like we could be offered a a treatment or something, maybe we're put in a vegetative state, our physical bodies, but our conscience is somehow downloaded or something. So it'll be sold to the public as you know, you'll be able to live forever, take the live forever pill, whatever that may be. And whether or not it works is besides the point to me. But the scenario I propose is that, well, to the Christian, I mean, death is our gateway to to life, right? And so you kind of have to choose not to take that that you know, live forever pill, whether it works or not, that's again besides the point. But to choose to die almost in a certain way to choose to age. Right, because it sounds like why wouldn't you take the live forever pill? There's a chance if you're at the end of your life, why not?
SPEAKER_04And we're not talking about euthanasia here.
SPEAKER_02We're just saying, hey, I chose I'm not gonna continue to try to get one more year out of this out of this 112-year-old body or it's to you know, let you know, let yeah death run its course and let nature run its course and and have death be, you know, your gateway to life, as as our gospel says, as our Lord shows.
SPEAKER_04Well, John, thank you so much. And thanks everybody for being with us. You know, Dwelt Among Us is very exciting. America's Catholic Comeback. When when you've been working as hard as we have, trying to evangelize and trying to do these things and trying to wake people up, and uh all of a sudden to turn around or find these young guys asking us questions. I tell you what, it it gives me the fighting spirit again. So thank you so much. Thank you, I really suggest that everybody gets this book. Even if you are part of Claymore, this is a compliment to it that'll just it'll open up your eyes in a in a different way. So I hope you and I can do some stuff in the future. I've got I've got some ideas to get this to get this out more. Hey, thanks everyone. Thanks for being with us today. We
Real Conversion Stories From The Crowd
SPEAKER_04appreciate you. All right, we're back. You know, it's it's a very exciting time, like I said, when we're we're meeting these young men. They get me in the fighting spirit, you know, and we need each other to do that. So we've got uh Ben, Philip, and Jackson up here, and they're gonna tell you just a little bit about their story, and I and we really want them to share their story with you because we all have stories. We've got to tell each other our stories. You've got to realize that that these that God wants our hearts, huh? And it's amazing how it's it's happening. So it's very important for us to be able to witness. You know, Pope Paul II uh, when he wrote his encyclical on evangelization, said the world needs witnesses more than it needs teachers. And if you're gonna be a teacher, be a witness first, huh? Very, very important to to men, especially today, that we witness to one another. Ooh, I think it's real. So, Ben, we're gonna start with you, brother. I'm gonna pick on you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, sure. So uh so I was kind of raised in a nominally Lutheran household. So I would have called myself a Christian growing up, but really we didn't practice the faith. And uh when I was in middle school, I met my first atheist, and he questioned me on why do I believe in God? And after about five minutes of talking with him, I was like, you know what? I guess I don't. I just didn't have any reasons to believe in God. And so I became like a very militant atheist. This is kind of like the heyday of the new atheist movement. So people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, you know, yeah, we've mentioned some of these guys earlier, especially like on YouTube and stuff, you know. So I like watch all these atheist YouTube videos. Pretty powerful arguments if if you don't have one on the other side. Exactly. I mean, yeah, this was these were the only people preaching to me, were these atheist so-called intellectuals. And and yeah, I was like really swept up into that, especially like on social media, you know, growing up also with like you know, the social media generation, like I really didn't develop very good social skills as a kid. So like I was very online, very on social media, and I eventually, by the time I get to like middle school, higher towards high school, I get very involved in like online politics, and I'm like all over the place. I like him really into like libertarianism. Then I go like all out into like Marxism, like unironically, Marxism. This is a real thing. Like there were real and I laugh because I I know it. Like I was reading, I had a copy of the Communist Manifesto. I was reading it like this is serious, and it was not great, obviously. Like I was super like just online. I was very like depressed, obviously, because I was trying to find an identity for myself, and these ideologies came to me saying, like, look, this is your identity. Like politics essentially became my religion. Like, I gave it my all. I went to like socialist conferences, which they charge $50 for, by the way. Which this is real, they did that. And uh and yeah, but I was in those communities. This is back in like 2017, 2018. I was starting to see the beginning of this trend that we're talking about. A lot of young men, especially who were in these very political spheres, right? On whatever side of the debate they were on, they were starting to get attracted to Catholicism towards traditional Christianity. And this really intrigued me. So all of a sudden, my YouTube feed was just filled with videos that were about the Catholic faith. And I came across this one video that was called An Argument for the Existence of God, and I watched this video and I had no idea what he said. He was going through one of St. Thomas Aquinas' arguments for God, and it just blew me away that there was more to religion than I had given it credit for. And this is a time in my life I was just very depressed. I was very searching. So I had just this moment with God where I said, God, if you're real, I need you to show me, you know, and nothing happened in that moment, but it was through discovering those like YouTube videos, and I started reading philosophers. Uh, I came across uh Dr. Edward Faser and his work on the philosophy of God, as well as someone named David Bentley Hart, um, who I wouldn't really recommend checking him out too much.
SPEAKER_04But at the time give us the good ones, Ben. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03It's true. But I also came across writers like Scott Hahn, Brand Petrie, um, you know, just excellent biblical theologians who showed me the Bible in a new way, and I just fell in love with the Catholic faith. And it took me a while to join the Catholic Church. I actually became Eastern Orthodox first. I was in the Orthodox Church for a number of years, but just, you know, the call of our Lord in the Catholic faith just kept uh, you know, tugging at my heart. And eventually, yeah, I joined the Catholic faith through this wonderful parish, uh St. Mary Perpetual Help, with uh Father Tom, who's an amazing pastor.
SPEAKER_04And uh yeah, obviously much more could be said, but that's kind of a brief keep sharing the story and listen to the next guy share his story, right? It's amazing how we find it. You know, you said something about identity there, you know, it's amazing that when you get disconnected, you just get blown around by the spirit of the age. You you actually don't know an identity. It's really something, isn't it? Yes. And and I see it all the time, you know. And the other thing is when you talked about an encounter, you know, sometimes we have encounters in different ways. And God did allow you to encounter in your own way, right? And Pope Benedict XVI, I'll never forget, when he said, you know, at the end of the day, our our faith is not going to be some kind of a lofty philosophical idea or an ethical decision. It's gonna be an encounter with an event, an encounter with the person, right? And the encounter will give you a new horizon and a decisive direction for your life. It's it really is something. This right, it's powerful. So thank you. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00All right, Philip, you're up next, brother. Good to have you here. Fantastic. Thank you. Um so I guess I'll get started with where I come from and who I am. I grew up not dissimilar to then, a Christian household. Uh were various denominations throughout my childhood, uh, growing up in the South. I grew up in Texas, so I was uh, you know, Southern Baptist or Baptist, or you know, we went to whichever church made sense at the time. My mom was one of the people in my life who was always very, very into seeking truth, very into to trying to delve into the religious experience and the the various pieces that made things fit together. So she really modeled that for me. So she was a seeker. She was, absolutely. Still it is, still, you know, a very faithful woman. But for me, what what ended up happening is that as I got older, I got into high school, and then I was preparing for college, and by the time I got ready to go to college, some of the things that I had begun to learn started to sit wrong with me. And I think that that was at that point that I just started to kind of drift. I'm not technically Gen Z, I have to say. I'm a little bit older, so my my experience was not finding atheism online until much, much later, at which point there were a lot of people who classed themselves as anti-theists. I never thought of myself as such. I would have called myself an agnostic atheist. I didn't really believe in God, but I wasn't sure. And so I just kind of stayed in that state for for quite a long time. And it wasn't until I got engaged with my fiance and we started to question, okay, well, what is marriage? What does it mean to have kids? What do we want to impart to them? What are the values that we want them to carry forth in their life? What do we want to be that kernel that we put in their minds early on?
SPEAKER_04Let me just stop here for a second. So what prompted those questions? In other words, what was there an institution that was around you or was somebody helping you? Because I meet so many people, then I ask them, why are you getting divorced? And they said, Well, we never talked about any of those things. So what was the catalyst for that, you know?
SPEAKER_00My fiance, 100%. My fiance is an incredibly thoughtful person. It's something that I try every day to learn more from her because she she thinks about things, she thinks about things deeply, and she cares about truth. So this to her mattered. Uh, and it mattered enough that she was able to provoke me out of my complacency. And so, uh, you know, not to sell myself short, the first time we came to St. Mary of Perpetual Help for uh the Latin Mass, we got here, and as we were going to walk in, she was like, I can't do it. I can't do it, I can't go in there. And I was like, Nope, you got me out of bed at 8:30. We're going into the Latin Mass and we're going to enjoy it. And we did. We did, we did, we absolutely enjoyed it. I think it speaks to, you know, what you mentioned before, the beauty of the church, uh, the beauty of the liturgy, and the effect that the sensual can have on the spiritual. I think that's a really core component of what moved us. And as we started traveling down that road a little bit more, we watched the Catholicism series by Bishop Barron. We found that to be very compelling. And then throughout RCIA, we both did you both go through together?
SPEAKER_04We did, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Just this, just this last year. Oh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So uh so tell the audience, because you told me very briefly we just met, but tell them a little bit about your your wife, just a touch, because I think they'll relate to it because we have uh somebody in in in power in the United States here that has a kind of a similar yeah.
SPEAKER_00So uh my fiance was is is Indian, so she grew up in a Hindu household. And so, you know, I won't get into the details of too much of why we we came in this direction, but suffice to say that uh it was still her driving a lot of like why this direction with Catholicism, Roman Catholicism specifically. But yeah, we we just went through RCIA and throughout that process, especially here at St. Mary of Perpetual Help, there were amazing catechists that we we got to know very well, we got to ask any kind of question we wanted, and we got to be as intellectually curious as we could. And that was probably the shifting point for me. If I were to point to like a singular experience, it was encountering Augustine and the writings of Augustine, specifically on the literal interpretation of Genesis, having had a great number of encounters with young earth creationism and specific anti-intellectual bents of literal interpretation, I found his teachings to be and his perspective to be uh incredibly refreshing with respect to what it means to have uh the natural science tradition and what it means to have the theological tradition. And it made the theological tradition that much richer without having to give up anything from what I had learned in my science classes or anything of the sort. And I thought that was a beautiful thing, similar to a point that you made in your book. There are a number of amazing thinkers, scientific and otherwise, throughout the history of the church, that represent an intellectual tradition that if you just haven't had an opportunity to study it, you don't know.
SPEAKER_04So how many and and I'm gonna have to to cut you here because but but I want to ask you one last question because I think it's so important. If you haven't studied history, not only church history, but history in general, you don't realize that the philosophers and somebody like Augustine, they've been asking the same questions, right? It's it's a different way. You know, we hear this progressive thing, we're gonna get smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. And there are things we we discover, right? I mean, there's things in technology that we didn't have, obviously, he didn't have in the third and fourth century. But at the end of the day, these these were bright people. I mean, it's not like we went from the caveman into what we have now, right? I mean, it's amazing, even before that, right? Socrates, Aristotle, uh, Plato. I mean, they were asking these questions. So isn't it beautiful when you tap into that and you go, holy cow, the church actually has roots in philosophy and built on, say, Aristotle and and and Saint Thomas brings, you know, the the beauty of the gospel and doesn't throw out the philosophy. In fact, brings it boom into the Middle Ages, right? And so it's amazing, isn't it? You can go as deep as you want and you just go, whoa, dude, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll we'll we have to talk. You give me a give me a give me a call, right? We'll get you on a we'll get you on a podcast and talk all of us guys, right? We'll talk about this. I'm gonna go to Jackson. So you came from Dallas, right?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So my name is Jackson Wrzezinski. I moved here about a year ago from Dallas. Um, and I would say that's probably where my journey to religion began. You know, my generation as we're getting older, you gotta decide what kind of man do I want to be, what kind of a head of a household do I want to be one day. And you know, I want my kids to be uh righteous, and then by that I just mean moral and ethical in their decisions. I didn't grow up in a household.
SPEAKER_04Not moral relativism, but something with some humanity.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, yes, absolutely. I didn't grow up in a religious household, and it through my life, it's very apparent through the trials I've gone through that if I had God with me on having my back, I wouldn't probably have gone through a lot of the stuff I have. And that's basically the reason why I decided to go through RSA. We actually went through it together. It was a great process. Um I didn't saw each other beforehand? No, no, you didn't know he's from Dallas. I didn't realize he was from Dallas actually from Texas until now.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_01But so Yeah, I don't have anything uh too deep into it about knowing any atheists or conversion. It was just more of a personal self-journey for myself, you know, figuring out the kind of person I want to be and uh how I want to live my life when I'm you know blessed to have a family of my own.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so excellent. You know, so I I think this again, i when you're when I'm looking at you, the the you know, we think about what makes us different than animals, right? And we have intellect, reason, and free will. And so we forget this, but this is what I think is part of the Gen Z movement, right? Reason is always a search for the truth. What is the truth of things? How should I live, right? What's the meaning and purpose of my life? This is in us, and I think you guys are allowing it to come out. You guys are finally saying, you know what? I see this culture, dude, and it's not enough. And just question it yourself. Because when you start to question it yourself and you surround yourself with good people, good friends, good books, right? All of a sudden, boom, it works the way it's supposed to work, and say, Jackson, what is the truth, right? And then your your will should be a motor, John Paul said, to the good. What is the good? That's what you just said. Be more, you know, righteous, moral, have virtues. You speak a lot about that, John, right? And so
Final Charge To Keep Witnessing
SPEAKER_04so I'm very excited, you know, when when I hear you guys. I mean, it's very exciting. I see good looking young guys like you, and I go, holy shysters. We have we have a chance in life, you know. And I know there's some more guys out there, right? We'll have to get you on the show somewhat uh sometime. So it's amazing. You guys are amazing. So thank you so much, huh? Thanks for being here. Thanks for having the guts to come out and witness. And don't don't give that up, right? Hey, thanks everybody. Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.