Today, I discuss two personal stories related to the Catholic Church that upset me greatly and caused me to rethink my relationship with the church and faith. Who would have thought getting married and getting your kid baptized could be so complex and filled with barriers.
For the Sponsor I Wish I Had, it is all about coffee! The Phillips Latte Go 5400 is a fully automatic espresso machine that also makes milk based drinks such as lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, espresso, Americanos and more. The milk is external, which means much less cleaning!
In the Just The Tip segment, I discuss why you need to cook your holiday meal food early...like, weeks early, so on the day of, you can be a guest at your own party.
For the Whisper In, it's @whiskey_noobs on IG and the podcast. If you like bourbon and whiskey, which I do, then this account is for you. Blind tastings, honest product reviews and great suggestions for all budgets. Give them a listen and follow!
Music by purple-planet.com
music by Wondershare Filmora 12
SIDMEDIA.net
@saturdayisdadurdaymedia on IG
@Saturdayisdadurdaymedia on YouTube
Today, I discuss two personal stories related to the Catholic Church that upset me greatly and caused me to rethink my relationship with the church and faith. Who would have thought getting married and getting your kid baptized could be so complex and filled with barriers.
For the Sponsor I Wish I Had, it is all about coffee! The Phillips Latte Go 5400 is a fully automatic espresso machine that also makes milk based drinks such as lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, espresso, Americanos and more. The milk is external, which means much less cleaning!
In the Just The Tip segment, I discuss why you need to cook your holiday meal food early...like, weeks early, so on the day of, you can be a guest at your own party.
For the Whisper In, it's @whiskey_noobs on IG and the podcast. If you like bourbon and whiskey, which I do, then this account is for you. Blind tastings, honest product reviews and great suggestions for all budgets. Give them a listen and follow!
Music by purple-planet.com
music by Wondershare Filmora 12
SIDMEDIA.net
@saturdayisdadurdaymedia on IG
@Saturdayisdadurdaymedia on YouTube
The Catholic Church can kiss my ass. And I'm Catholic
welcome into the story lesson advice podcast for another episode. Thank you to everybody who has been listening. And I am excited to continue to build this out. I have additional podcasts coming, I have additional blogs coming additional videos, and even more down the road. So thank you to everyone who is supporting me while I'm doing this. And I hope you're finding value out of it. All right, so I said that the Catholic Church can kiss my behind and I'm Catholic. So I've got a two part story here to tell you are really two stories to tell you that are hopefully will paint this picture as to why. So first, a little background, I born and raised Catholic up in Norway, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula almost by Canada. So that's where I was born and raised, went to a K through eight, Catholic school, I went to a Catholic College, all through my youth, I was an altar server and did all that stuff. As a kid, and even into college, a little bit of everything. So my parents and us we weren't like ultra religious or anything, but we were part of the Catholic Church. And we went to church on most Saturdays or Sundays. And, you know, said prayers before most meals and said prayers before most bedtimes, that kind of thing. So I think it was fairly balanced where, where faith and religion was definitely a part of our house and a part of our family. But I never felt as a kid that it was being shoved down my throat. So I always had what I thought was a pretty decent relationship with with the Catholic Church or with religion or whatever. So fast forward to, I'm in my, what is it early 30s. And my wife and I are engaged, and we are looking to get married. And we got engaged in November. And we were looking to get married just a month later in December. And all we were looking for really was just a ceremony. And the reason that we were looking to expedite this was because my father had been sick with cancer. And we were kind of unsure how long he was going to be healthy enough or alive to attend a wedding. So we thought, hey, what if we just did like a super small ceremony, just our immediate family, just so my dad had that experience of seeing his son get married, and we had that celebration, and then a year or so later, we would sort of plan our week, our actual are real, you know, wedding, which is what we ended up doing. And that was a year down the road. So we weren't looking to you know, hurry up and elope and tie the knot and do all that nonsense. But we were trying to do that to make sure that my dad could experience that while he was alive, and healthy enough to do it. So we had both lived separately in the Dallas area for about 10 years, each almost by that point. So we had on and off gone to church. And you know, I was kind of living with roommates or living on my own and in my mid 20s. And, you know, going out and drinking and doing all that stuff was more important to me than doing a lot of church, but I still managed to go to church, you know, I'd say maybe once or twice a month. And Beth and I, my wife, we went a few times and everything. But as a lot of people do. If you live in a city for a long time, and you're younger, you tend to move around to different apartments, as the one you're in becomes too expensive, or whatever. So I had lived, you know, in this part of town, and that part of town and the outskirts of town, that kind of thing. So a lot of times if I was still going to church, or when I was still going to church or when Beth and I would would go together, that we would just sort of find whatever one was closest to us for that day, or, or whatever, wherever we lived at that time. And our tenure, so I never had like a home based church in Dallas. So the reason I say that is because when I went to talk to the Catholic Church, and explain our situation and ask about getting married, I guess I was naive and didn't realize this. But I was told by six or seven different preset six or separate different Catholic churches that I had been to in the DFW area over the years that they would not marry us because we had not been at a particular church for at least six months to a year. And then on top of that we had to go through a a six to eight week long marriage or marriage kind of bootcamp or whatever, in order to be approved by the Catholic Church. So I really tried to plead with them. I explained the situation about my father and that really, really bothered me because I felt like our intentions were good. We had been dating for a couple of years. And you know, we were engaged in this was not a rush job. We were both in our 30s. So like we you know that we had spent the time going into this where we were committed and we knew we were making a long term decision and And that coupled with the fact that my dad was sick, and we were trying to at least provide him with that experience, that the Catholic Church was unwilling to do that. So we said, Alright, so we ended up finding a different administer at a different in a different religion, I think it was a Lutheran, and they married us in a church that December 27, the day after my dad's birthday, and my parents were their best family was there. And we just had, you know, 30 minute quick ceremony and went out for pizza afterwards. But at the end of that, that really bothered me that I felt like that my our intentions were pure, and given the unique circumstance, and given the fact that I had been a lifelong practicing Catholic and had education background and altar serving background and all those things, it's sort of my wife, that they would be inclined to, you know, to work with us to do something, even if it wasn't something that was, you know, formalized or something, just some sort of a mock ceremony or something so that my dad could could experience that. And they wouldn't budge. So that really bothered me for a while. And years later, my wife and I had our daughter, and we decided to get her baptized, and we went to get her baptized in the Catholic Church. And we found out that because we were not technically married in the Catholic Church, that we could not baptize our daughter yet. So even though we had a legal marriage, and it was faith based, and we were inside of a church, because it wasn't a Catholic church, we were not allowed to, to baptize our daughter until we got married in the Catholic Church. So we had the ceremony with my dad. Then a year later, we had that same pastor or minister, kind of do another marry of us with all of our friends and family at our, you know, our quote, unquote, wedding. And now we had to get married for a third time in order to get our daughter baptized. So that really bothered us as well. And then on top of that, we had already been married for seven years, six years that we had to go through a that Catholic marriage bootcamp where we had to get assigned a mentoring, coupled, and then they had to coach us through the six or eight week long program before we could do the baptism. So two examples here feeling like Man, we are really having to go the extra mile here for two practicing Catholics, lifelong Catholics. intentions are pure, all we want to do is just keep moving forward with our life. And we were kind of getting, you know, the the metaphorical middle finger from the Catholic Church, I understand they have rules and all that stuff in place. But it brings me to something which we'll talk about in a minute. So we had to go through this marriage boot camp thing. And we remember we went to this couple's house, and they were probably 15 1015 years older than us. And they sat down and they said, You started this questionnaire or whatever, and started the process. And they said, how do you to handle when when you have to pay the bills? How do you handle that? And it was just like crickets, and my wife and I are looking at each other. And we're like, we, we told them like, Hey, we've been married six years, like we we have all this stuff down. And they're like, you know, well, what do you do if if you want to be intimate with each other? And again, we're like looking at each other. Like, well, this is designed for like younger people that are like 19 or 20. When they're getting married. They're like, look, we're in our mid 30s. Okay, we have a two year old kid, like, can we just move this along with this? So we have to go through that. And then we got married, we had to have a marriage ceremony in the Catholic Church. And then after that, then we could have a baptism in the Catholic Church. So those two examples, long winded here. But those two examples, to me really reframed my perspective on on the Catholic Church and the whole experience, and it taught me a valuable lesson.
All right, now it's time for today's sponsor, I wish I had. And today's sponsor I wish I had is a product that I have had for a couple of years. And my wife and I absolutely love it. We're both huge coffee fans. I'm more of the fan of actual coffee. My wife is a fan of drinks that are coffee adjacent, that tend to have a lot more syrup and flavorful yumminess and less coffee flavor, but we both like quote unquote coffee and coffee drinks. So we got to curate for years. And we're just you know, dump a gallon of creamer and sugar and all of our all of our drinks every single morning. And eventually we decided to get a new coffee machine and one of the criteria for me, because in my career, I sell commercial coffee machines and a lot of these machines that I sell, have milk coolers that are attached to the machine, and you can do milk based drinks like lattes and cappuccinos and the milk will run through the machine and then it kind of makes the drink all at once. And that's great. The only thing problem with that and it's not a problem for a commercial foodservice operation is the cleaning because the milk is running through the machine running through tubes in the machine. So there's a lot of cleaning involved to make sure that milk doesn't build up and coagulate and all that. So one of our broad criteria, my criteria for buying this machine was I really wanted to find one that had an external milk source. So that the cleaning of the machine was just cleaning the water and the coffee that went through the machine not also have to cleaning the milk that was going through the machine. And lo and behold, we found it, the Philips latte go 5400 This machine is the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, the greatest thing in the world. It has an X terminal milk craft that attaches right to the machine so you don't have to do anything yourself. It is a super automatic one touch machine where you push a button and it makes your drink you can do lattes, cappuccinos, macchiatos, mochas, regular coffee Americanos, espresso is the whole nine yards. So it really offers a ton of flexibility, it's got a huge water reservoir. So you can have multiple cups of coffee before you have to worry about filling this up. Or if you have friends staying over, because you had too much to drink the night before, whatever, you don't have to worry about having to refill the watercraft or the reservoir every every two minutes. It's got a huge Hopper for beans, which is really cool. And it's just a great machine. It's super easy to use super easy to clean. And I highly recommend it we bought ours through I believe William Sonoma, but if you go to Philips website, you can find the latte go 5400 There are a couple of different versions of the machine. Each one that goes up includes additional features. So I would highly rec recommend that if you like coffee, if you'd like milk based drinks, especially as we're into the colder, colder part of the year, and it's almost Christmas time, you might need to put this on Santos list, the Philips latte go 5400 today's sponsor I wish I had. Alright, so let's talk lesson. To me, the lesson in all of this is understanding the difference between religion and faith. And for me growing up, I was in church because I was in a K through eight, school. So that was Catholic. So every Wednesday we had church, and then on Sundays, most Sundays, we went to church. And then once I was in third or fourth grade, I started being an altar server. So I was in church, most of that time. Pro tip, by the way, if you are an altar server, or have kids that are an altar server, always opt to do the Christmas Eve mass instead of the Christmas Day mass and the early Christmas Eve mass. So you're done. And out of there, you're done with church five, five o'clock, six o'clock, and you don't have to sweat it, you can wake up on Christmas morning, and enjoy the whole day. So there you go, parenting hack, extra extra, just the tip, and we haven't even gotten to that yet. But for me, you know, growing up that was that was just part of the part of the life. And again, my my family was we were in it, but we weren't, we weren't crazy into it. It wasn't like, you know, kind of an overwhelming or a burden, some sort of approach. But I always found a lot of it kind of peculiar because I was confused as a kid about the kind of the rules, the regulations, all the prayers, the singing, the standing up to sitting down. And I know all of that is steeped in ritual and tradition and everything, but I always found all of that stuff kind of silly. And I'm not trying to talk bad about anybody that enjoys that part of it. But to me, that seemed to be not the part that I was in church for. And I kind of always had the understanding that hey, if I'm going to church, it's kind of like to pray it's kind of to be there with my thoughts. And kind of to have a place where I can kind of focus in on that kind of stuff, even as a kid even though you know, I didn't know what I was doing or saying or whatever. But it always kind of struck me as odd that there was so much formality and rigidity and kind of regulation towards the process. And it kind of always made me think like, Okay, if if, you know, if I'm back in, when Jesus was walking around, hanging out with his his 12 buddies, it seemed like they probably had way more way more conversations and way more just kind of, you know, metaphorical, let's sit around and have a beer and just talk about stuff and listen and that kind of thing, as opposed to this, you know, formality, this this rigid process and that was kind of one of the things that bothered me about the story that I was telling both stories about the baptism and about are trying to get married. Was that I feel like you go back to when Jesus was around and present him with this option. The answer is probably going to be a yes. Right because we know what the intentions are and, and all of that so that kind of rigidity always struck me as odd and weird. But that was kind of what I just sort of was like okay, cool. And then I went to college and went to Catholic college St. Norbert College degree unites wonderful experience in college, and it was a Catholic college, that was the first time I had been to a Catholic church that wasn't set up the exact same way. And this one had the altar in the center, and then it had all the seating around it. And I can't remember what they called it or whatever. But the whole reason was that it was kind of a more of a community vibe, and less, you know, the, the leadership up there, and the people down here listening, it was more of kind of a inclusive and community sort of centric ceremony, or church or mass or whatever it's called. And I remember thinking like, Okay, that was pretty cool. And that was like, like, the St. Norbert was pretty proud that like, they were doing something that was, you know, like really pushing the boundaries of the Catholic Church, because they had the altar in the center instead of in its traditional place. But I remember just that in and of itself kind of made me feel more like, yeah, that seems a little bit more modern, or a little bit more kind of how we would interpret that in today's world, as opposed to 2000 years ago, where 1000 years ago or whatever. And then next to the church, or kind of adjacent to it, they had this really cool reminder, remember what it was called, but it was like a giant prayer room. But it had all these glassed in ceiling tiles, and it was kind of just like a quiet room. And I remember always going, wanting to go there, instead of going to church. And going somewhere with this. It's not this isn't a religion thing. But I always gravitated towards that place. Because what I've learned to determine was that I was kind of leaning more towards the faith side of the faith side of it, and less towards the religion side of it. And the standing up to sitting down the singing, I do not sing, and I do not sing in church, and I got yelled at so many times in school, and like, don't make me sing, like, Do not make me sing. But the singing the standing up to sitting down. Everybody's saying the same prayer at the same time. That was it just whatever, but kind of going off on my own and just sort of being alone with my thoughts. And if I was inclined to pray, praying in the way that I would talk to a higher power talk to Jesus or God or, or, you know, whatever. And that was sort of the way that I gravitated towards that. And I kind of realized years on that. Yeah, the religion thing is less important to me than the faith thing. And I know that they go hand in hand, but you don't have to be an investigator to take a look at what you know, sort of scrutiny the Catholic Church has been under for the last X amount of years with, with some less than admirable practices and cover ups and all that kind of thing. But to me, I think the the lesson in this for me was that sort of helped me understand that there is a difference between religion and faith. And ideally, they can be two sides of the same coin. But a lot of times, they can be competing against each other. And I think that is a very important lesson to learn as an adult, or even as a young adult, and not that you have to shun one or the other, but understanding that one is faith. One is religion, one is pure, one started out as pure, but maybe isn't so pure anymore. And practicing your faith doesn't require weekly or monthly donations, or for you to stand up or sit down. But practicing religion does.
So one of the conundrums I'm facing, and my wife and I have talked about this, so I shouldn't say one of the conundrums I'm facing, one of the conundrums we're facing, is the idea of, of what do we do with introducing religion and faith and all that to our daughter, because we want her to have exposure to it. We want her to be able to feel comfortable with it, but we don't want to feel like it's shoved down her throat. And there's the balance of what's the best way to do that. Because oftentimes, it feels like and I have little experience with churches and things like that now that that have youth programs, but it feels like it's awfully immersive, which isn't a bad thing but to go from zero to 100 versus just maybe kind of inch worming your way along so the conundrum is what do we do with that because you've got your traditional Catholic churches which I was just talking about that I do not love sort of the the the even the physical layout of them and then sort of the formality of you know, the standing up to sitting down the singing and the doing all that and then you've got that sort of on one side and then on the other side, you've kind of got you know, these some of these mega churches where they've got you know, rock bands and huge stages and fireworks and smoke and, and people are screaming and dancing. Then all that, and hey, if you're into that, that's great. I'm not judging, I just, that's probably not for us right now at least. And our daughter would probably be overwhelmed with that kind of an environment. So, you know, we're trying to find a balance of something that's modern, but something that's maybe a little bit more low key. And trying to figure that out, it's kind of difficult, but from the lesson that I learned about knowing the difference between religion, and faith, the advice that I would give myself years ago, or my daughter, as she's growing up, would be find your faith first. And then worry about the religion later. Because if you're sincere, and you're genuine, and you're seeking out the the idea of faith, and you're seeking out understanding what everything that's involved in that, then you believe that there's a higher power God or whoever your higher power is, and that higher power isn't going to care if this religion says this person is a saint, and this religion doesn't, or this religion, you have to jump on one lake for two minutes before you can have the Eucharist. And this one, you have to do a handstand for two minutes before, none of that matters. With faith, if you're going to God with an open heart, and you're asking, or you're being thankful, or whatever the case is, no one, God does not care about those kinds of details. So the advice that I would give would be find your faith. And I think the best way that you can do that is just be open minded. And if you are accepting that there is a higher power and that there is a God, then just start there. And if you have to say a prayer, say it casually say it conversationally, don't worry about the wording of certain prayers, I, another Catholic Church, you know, whatever. A couple of years ago, I remember it was all in the news, because in one of the prayers that our Father, which for anybody that's not Catholic is like the most sacred prayer, for the Catholic Church are one of the most sacred prayers, they changed, like, two words, or three words. And it was just like this, you know, had to get had to get all everybody assembled, the Avengers had to assemble their voting and back and forth and deliberation. And it's like, who cares? It's a couple of words, you know, like, what's the intention of the prayer? Are we still meeting the intention of that. So with praying, once in a while, our daughter says, let's do a parent dinner or something like that. So we make a joke of it. And we see how fast we can make the sign of the cross and, and we try to be silly about it or whatever. But I think that's a good way to start. Because then the kid or whoever it is, is able to find and kind of discover and ask questions about that on their own, as opposed to literally having the book thrown out. So the story that I gave you about us being rejected by the Catholic Church for some type of a marriage ceremony, because we wanted to make sure my father was still alive and well to be a part of that. And unable to baptize our daughter until we got married for a third time. That kind of chat my ass, if you will about about the Catholic Church. The lesson looking back, I think learning is understanding the difference between religion and faith. And the advice would be to find your faith first and worry about the religion later on. All right, in today's just the tip segment, I have a culinary tip for you that served me well, when I used to cook professionally and served me well after I was done and hung up the Abraham as we get into the holiday season, especially real close to Thanksgiving. But even if it's too late to use this tip for Thanksgiving, you can use it upcoming for Christmas or New Year's or whatever the holidays that you're celebrating. So the idea is everybody gets up Thanksgiving Day super early, right and they get the turkey on and they get the grill fired up and the oven is on and you're just in the kitchen all day long, just cranking out food all day long. Typically, it's not food that everybody loves, or everybody loves not food that everybody loves as much as something maybe like pizza, or steak or tacos, or nachos or whatever. So you're slaving away all day long with food that isn't necessarily anybody's absolute favorite, but you're doing it because it's Thanksgiving. So my just the tip segment here is to do all of that prep or as much as possible in the weeks or even a month leading up to the day. So all you have to do on the day before is warm stuff up. Now there's a few things that you're going to have to cook from scratch, but a lot of stuff will hold really, really well. And one of the things that I did as a practical example is I took instead of Turkey I cooked turkey breasts, big turkey breasts, like two of them. And I cooked them a couple of weeks beforehand so I had plenty of time to brine them overnight. and cook them perfectly let them cool down. I did all of that, slice them up perfectly. And then I vacuum seal them. And even if you can't do that, you can just zip lock them and I froze them. And then the night before two days before I pulled them out of the freezer, I let them come up to refrigerated in the refrigerator. And then all I had to do was warm them up, and I used to warm them up in the oven. Also, I hit him with some of the gravy that I made several weeks ago and also froze. You can do this sometimes with vegetables like roasted potatoes or whatever. And I understand people want to go crazy and show off for for the holidays and cook as much as possible. That's great. I'm just saying if there's a handful of things, or even one thing you can do days or weeks before and that's one less hour you have to spend in the kitchen. I think that's a huge win because the whole purpose of you being with Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever and having family and friends, you're supposed to be part of the gathering. You're not supposed to be the one catering the gathering. So if you've got to do some of that cooking, try getting ahead of it by a couple of days or a couple of weeks. All you got to do is warm stuff up. That is today's just the tip.
Okay, for today's whisper in, I am talking about an Instagram account, and podcast that I've been following for probably six months. It is called Whiskey noobs. And the guy that handles this is a very balanced and very appropriately opinionated when it comes to giving thoughts on whiskies and bourbons. I love bourbons. And I love some of the big brands. And I like some of the more obscure ones as well. But this guy does a really great job of giving you an unbiased opinion on different things, different categories. And he also does a lot of blind tastings with different whiskies and different bourbons, and gives you his honest opinion. And I think people gravitate towards wanting an unbiased opinion, because you can realize that there isn't a right or wrong answer with the different types of whiskey or bourbon that you like. And it's just things that you like or do not like. So I highly recommend checking out the whiskey noobs Instagram at podcast account is excellent if you like whiskey. Even if you think you know what you're talking about. It's still great to have another resource to remind you of something or encourage you to try something else. So whiskey noobs that is today's whispering
cooldown time. All right. So let's recap the stories we already mentioned. Not being able to get married in the Catholic church not being able to baptize our daughter until we got married in the Catholic Church. The lesson from that learning the difference between religion and faith. My advice, find your faith first worry about the religion later on. For the sponsor, I wish I had it is the Philips latte go 5400 Super automatic coffee espresso latte machine. Unbelievable. You can make all of your favorite milk based drinks or coffee based drinks with this and it has an external milk source, meaning you don't have to worry about extra cleaning in the machine. It's super simple. One of the best purchases my wife and I have made in the last several years. For the just the tip, it's all about getting ahead if you can do any food prep in the days and weeks leading up to whatever holiday or event that you're hosting. That's only going to buy you more time so you get more time to be part of the event and less time catering the event. And finally, for the whisper in today, we talked about the Instagram account and podcast whiskey noobs this guy does an awesome job of giving a very unbiased and very balanced opinion of a whole variety of whiskies and bourbons, some that you are very familiar with some that you're not very familiar with a lot of blind tastings, just a lot of real, very raw opinions on this, which I love because people tend to gravitate towards that type of information. And you have to remember that there is no right or wrong if you like a particular whiskey or bourbon or don't like a particular whiskey or bourbon. So I think this guy does a great job. Whiskey noobs is the Whisperer And so that wraps it up for today. Thank you so much again, if you have not already, please check out the YouTube page. Saturday is Saturday media and our website, s ID media.com. Or I've got all the podcasts, the videos and all the blogs that I update about every week or every other week at the latest. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.