So there's this wild thing going on. Yeah, what's going on in Orthodoxy? Why is it exploding? Well, is it exploding? That's the impression, I guess. Yeah,

I mean, I think that it's a double movement. I think that the cradle Orthodox are still leaking out, just like they've always been. So the people coming in, they lose their kids to the culture. But there's definitely a wave of converts. And now we know, because at first we were just going on hearsay and, you know, asking priests and stuff. But now there's been some, some people have done some of the studies to see that it's actually, it's And it's young men mostly that are coming in. My parish has tripled since COVID. And it's the same thing that's happening everywhere. It's mostly kind of young men coming in, intelligent young men, educated, looking for meaning. You know, you usually have the idea that people who end up in the church, usually like they hit rock bottom and then they have like a kind of spiritual these are not the same kinds of people it's people that are really feel more like they're wandering and hopeless and and they're looking for something solid to stand on so that's that's what i that's the sense i get you know yeah

and i've said this before on my shows but like the curb appeal of orthodoxy is pretty impressive because it it it um it feels like and i don't know if this is because orthodoxy has has often been ethnic in the united states i know that's changing rapidly um but there's a kind of a lure or a mystery about it that we thought was a good idea to get rid of as catholics yeah is a terrible idea. And I'm not saying we've done that wholesale, but in many places we have. And so I think people, they want mystery, they want beauty, they want their desire for the divine to be taken with great seriousness. And when I look at Orthodoxy from the outside, that's the sense I get.

Well, I think a way to understand it too is we have to see it like, you know, for the past 100 years, maybe the different Catholic churches and Protestant churches, they've been trying to keep people in. And they had this idea that to do that, we have to just adapt to the world as much as possible to make sure that people don't go out and don't leave. So, you know, let's let's reduce the ritual. Let's reduce the formality. Let's make let's have the guitar and let's have kind of disco ambience for the mass trying to keep people in the thing is that once people have actually left those that are coming back why would they want that yeah they want the real thing the people coming back they want like if i'm going to become a christian i really want to be a christian and so i think there's part of that too the converts you see that both in catholicism and orthodoxy the converts tend to move towards more traditional forms because they're like well you know i already have concerts and entertainment way better exactly exactly so if i'm gonna go for if i'm gonna go for this i want the real thing yeah yeah people

often make a distinction nowadays between vatican two and the spirit of vatic. And Vatican II documents, I think, are very beautiful. I think there were a couple of ambiguities that have been sorted out. But this spirit, if you want to kind of frame it in different ways, but maybe us kind of chasing after the world, yeah, we need to kill that. We need to stop that. That was a very bad idea. Yeah.

I don't know. We'll see what happens, but it seems like when the boomers are gone, it's just naturally going to return because it's really their generation, it's really their culture. You know, they fought for all of the libertine aspects of our society, and so they got them, now we have them, and now their grandchildren that are being raised in complete, you know, freedom to get anything you want, anytime you want, Now they want meaning. So yeah.

Do you want some scotch on that? Sure. Yeah. Josiah, everything good? Do you mind? I think you should probably turn that down a little bit. It sounds quite loud. Okay, then don't worry. What do you think? So there was a big... Cheers. Yes, cheers. It's really great to meet you. It is great to meet you. Do you like scotch or booskey? Yes, I do. Nice. There was a big kind of wave of Protestant converts into Catholicism in the 80s and 90s and early aughts. And we often, you know, it was, it was beautiful and they brought a lot of life into the church and things like that. But undoubtedly, and I need to ask one of them about this, like what baggage did you bring in? Like you're not a Catholic. So like, what did you, what did you overlook? Yeah. Like you're talking about how beautiful our liturgy is, but I mean, you probably didn't really have much of a liturgy where you came from, many of them, not all of them. So therefore, how did that impact the church in a negative way, even if it was an overall boon? And my question for you is, what is it going to look like when orthodoxy is predominantly American

or Western? I mean, it's going to be interesting to see. For sure, there are going to be conflicts that are going to appear. You know, there's a Puritan spirit in America that is very Anglo-Saxon, you know. lay athenite uh you know monastic attitude where i think traditional orthodoxy tended to move from the monastic very very let's say rigorous you know down into a more not i wouldn't say casual but let's say a more implemented form of tradition in the and so we don't have for example in the orthodox church we don't have like orders and we don't have all these different types of practice we just have one but then it's it's just applied differently depending on the level that you want to participate in right so ultimately we should all be praying 24 hours a day doing night vigil service everything but then in reality it ends up being mitigated in the in the life of the church and so i think that there is when some protestants come with that kind of zeal, that Puritan zeal, they tend to approach the church with that attitude. It's like, I want to get it all right. I want it to be pure. I want it to be, you know, exactly the way that it should be. That's definitely a danger. let's say charismatic side of the, of American religion would be a more wishy-washy kind of sentimental version of Orthodoxy. The one thing that I think is actually wonderful coming from Protestantism that will help the Orthodox in America is, is the Bible, you know, because in the old world, people are just soaking in the culture of Christianity. And so this idea that you would need something like Sunday school or like explicit teaching schools for lay people was not that big of a deal because you just lived in it. Everything about your life, the festivals, everything was just soaking. Whereas when you come to America, you kind of need to know a little more. Also because you're faced with people that don believe the same things you do. You're faced with all these things. And so I think that kind of Bible study mentality of the Protestants, right, the desire to actually really know the Bible very well, the Old Testament and the New Testament, I think is something that's actually positive

that can come from Protestantism. Yeah, yeah, 100%. You know, I don't know what you think about this what's that fella's name tim marshall what's his name tim gordon he he had this line he talked about the miyagi complex where these white dudes without fathers go looking toward the east yeah and i thought that was i don't know if that was his original idea or not but i thought thought it was brilliant. There's so much wisdom and beauty in the West, but it's like we forsake it for the sake of something maybe elusive. What do you think of that? It's not to say that there isn't wisdom to be had in the East. No, I think that's possible. For sure, there are some.

I mean, I remember when I became Orthodox, I remember I had this idea, right? I read the Russian pilgrim, had this whole idea of the Jesus prayer. And I was going to find the Staritz and, you know, he was going to teach me the Jesus prayer. You know, that doesn't really exist very much. Like, it's not the reality of Orthodoxy. The reality of Orthodoxy is more like go to confession, you know, and do your prayers and just live it in the everyday. So I think that there's definitely some of that. But at the same time, there's also a light. I do think there is a kind of light that comes from the East in terms of the mysticism. The Eastern mysticism has been really preserved in the life of the Church. And so the Jesus Prayer is the spiritual practice of the Orthodox Christians. It's the same practice that leads to the fullness of the vision of the divine light. But again, it's mitigated into the life of people. It's not encouraged that people do the prayer all the time. But what I mean is that there isn't this special space for the mystics. But it's really the whole church is mystical in its structure. And so I think that that's useful. I think that some of the fathers that are more prominent in the Eastern Church, like St. Maximus or St. Gregory of Nice, for example, I think that they're very useful for us now because they offer that fullness of vision. I think that even St. Maximus offers almost like technical problems to some of the issues we have today in terms of subject-object, the problem of the place of consciousness, right, in the way that the reality unfolds. You know, my friend John Verveke, who's a cognitive psychologist, has started reading some of these more mystical fathers, and he's seeing a lot of connection, you know, in terms of how we talk about how reality unfolds. So at the same time, I think it's good. I think that this connection to the East will bring some freshness.

I don't know if you know this or not, but John Paul II wrote an encyclical called The Light of the East. Okay. Where he talked about the beauty of the Eastern Catholic traditions and what we've received from Orthodoxy, perhaps. I don't know. I don't want to get into that, but it's a great way to make everyone angry. Yeah, exactly. But yeah,

that's really, that's beautiful. So you grew up a Protestant. I grew up Baptist. Baptist now in Montreal. It's very weird. I'm a weird fellow. You might have noticed. My father was Catholic. So my parents were Catholic. Quebec was the most Catholic place in the world. Yeah. You know, and then the 1960s and 70s happened.

And now there's, don't you, I don't even want to say them, but aren't there like blasphemies about the, you said the tabernacle or something like

this? Oh yeah. Well, that was there when they were Catholic too. Like, oh yeah. The curses, all curses in Quebec are religious words. But that's actually, that has to do with the Catholic heritage. Yeah, I guess so. In some ways, it's the Catholic peasants. It's the fact that it meant so much that it could then be used. But it was used by the Catholics. I mean, when Quebec was Catholic, that type of language was already part of the peasant world. Just like you say the dirty words. Even though it was like a Christian society, people would still say the dirty words. It's the same with the blasphemies, like people would use blasphemous words, then they would have to go to confession and confess them. But it's mostly that the 60s and 70s happened, and we had this thing called the Quiet Revolution, where everybody just left the Catholic Church in one generation. It was pretty crazy, you know, and it, you know, I think part of it was the overbearing of the Church before Vatican II, and then in some ways, the kind of Vatican II opening up, all of those two things together seemed to have been part of the fact that everybody was just like, well, you know what? Actually, if the things you told us before weren't actually real, then what's the point? And a lot of people left. So my parents, they also think the catechism was horrible. People just didn't know anything. So my parents really found Christ in the Protestant faith.

Wasn't the original Quebec flag, didn't it have the sacred heart of christ on it i don't know if it just like he looked that up but for sure it has the quebec flag

right now is like a cross with your fleur lily like it's a christian flag yeah

you know wow

yeah

okay so they found christ in a baptist church yeah

well in a kind of a pricest denomination yep yep okay and uh that it

did go me yeah yeah

you're you're canadian

facts that's my only fact that and i like beaver tales um yeah that's so wild i mean how sad eh how sad to

go from which way what is it at the top left yeah look at that the quebec flag history the sacred art of our lord on it oh my goodness. It's so embarrassing. Why? I literally have that flag in my house. Someone gave it to me. Like a Quebec Catholic nationalist person gave it to me. And I have it folded in my basement. That's horrible. But I don't remember that. But yeah, so they became Protestant. And I grew up, so my dad became a pastor. He was a Baptist pastor. So I grew up a pastor's kid. Was

that weird? I mean I guess a lot of your friends probably were from this church as well or no? It was weird it was weird because on the one hand I would say there

was still a real hostility to Protestants in Quebec when my parents grew up. So I would get beat up in stuff in school because I was Baptist. It wasn't a big deal, whatever. But

yeah, definitely there was... What sucks is there going to be people in the YouTube comment section being like, that's based. No, it's not.

Stop punching up the little Baptist boy. Exactly. And so I would get beat up in school, but you know, it was all, it was all good. And then, yeah, but I grew up in a Baptist. So I was like a Baptist in a Catholic world still. So everybody in school would still do like a confirmation and all that. And first communion, but I would be like, we went to something called morality school, morality class, because they still had Catholic teaching in the school. And then we went to this kind of morality class thing, which wasn't great. But then also the Catholic teaching wasn't great either. And then it just slowly diminished. And then the Catholic schools became French schools. They were taken out of the Catholic world and just became... And so it was just slow secularization, kind of planned, like a kind of slow planned secularization. Yeah. And so, but I grew up, so I grew up a pastor's kid until I was about 12 or 13, but it was, it was nice. Did you embrace Christianity? Yeah. You didn't rebel right away? No, I was really, I, as much as I remember, I was always a Christian. You know, I always, I have this little moment. I remember because when you're Protestant, you have to find the conversion moment. It was really young. It was like, I don't know, four or five years old that I remember. But my father was really very bright, even though he is. He's a very bright man, very curious, very... Still a pastor? No, no, no. He stopped being a pastor when I was 13. Okay. And I went to Wheaton College and studied psychology at Wheaton College. And so, yeah, I guess then I was a psychologist kid, I guess, you know. But still involved in the church, still really involved. I grew up really involved in... I was like a youth leader and did all that stuff and wrote all these like plays for for protestant churches awesome yeah how old are you now so i am 49 yeah so we're similar age yeah yeah i'm

40 i don't know two 41 thank you 41 yeah i'm still you know i'm kind of your elder i would say but you know what's funny is you are but what's funny is um because of the lag in the advancement of technology in australia to North America, I find that my childhood looked similar to Americans in their 50s. Flip that top bit up first. Oh, yeah, okay. I was going to say. Yeah. Does that make sense? So my wife, I mean, she's my age. She's a year or two older. But, you know, she remembers, she doesn't remember not having some kind of computer or something. Whereas the first time I used the internet, I was 15, no, no, no, 16, 17, and no one had cell phones until about that time either. So it's funny how I, yeah, all right. That's cool. So Protestant, beautiful, loved Jesus, read the Bible. Yeah, I love it. You're going to need to torch that a bit more. Yeah, probably. And then... You like cigars? Yeah, I do. I don't smoke a lot. I smoke cigars maybe every few weeks. I don't know, every three weeks. This is so delicious. It's funny when you get older, you start to... What? I'm going to tell people what it is. What it is? Oh, yeah. Well, I'm smoking a Cuban, which wouldn't impress you because you're from canada and can get them whenever you want you i'm smoking actual pints with aquinas cigar look

at that

yeah notice it's the eastern uh what do you call it the chasuble what do you call it the

the

what's the fancy greek word uh i don't know it doesn't matter Sorry.