Fr. Gregory Pine on How to Speak Truth in an Age of Hot-Takes and Endless Commentary | The Deep

We live in an age of constant speech. Hot takes, group chats, anonymous trolling,

performative irony, weaponized labels, and endless commentary. And yet, genuine communion seems

harder than ever. And as a result, we are lonelier than ever. We need some serious rewiring of how

we communicate, how we speak, and how we use our tongues. Today on the div I'm joined by Father

Gregory Pine, Dominican Friar preacher, teacher, and author, to talk about his newest book,

Training the Tongue, Growing Beyond the Sins of Speech, just out from the St. Paul Center.

We discuss what it means not just to stop saying bad things, but how to learn to speak well,

to have real conversations, setting our speech free, truly free. So we can be the truthful,

charitable, humorous, courageous, and disciplined saints we were born to become.

Father Pine, welcome to The Deep. Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's great to have you here.

We're very excited. We're talking about your new book, Training the Tongue. This is a sick cover.

I thought I picked up like a Gene Simmons memoir or something with the like the

Tongue. Exactly. Many people do think that. We're going for Gene Simmons memoir vibe.

Yeah, did you, did you design the cover? I don't design anything. I have no aesthetic sense whatsoever.

For me, you became a Dominican. Exactly. That's not fair. Franchileco was a Dominican.

No, he crushed it. Bless James of Ome also, really great at stained glass. He might be on the

weekend for some of his compositions. No, so I had a conversation with the editor and she was like,

you have thoughts about covers. And I was like, I have some thoughts. I don't know if those

thoughts are worth consulting, but I'd like for it to be a little bit loud because I feel like

there are a lot of books out there, you know, and the covers are pleasant enough, but there's a lot

of sacred art in the Catholic Christian publishing space. And it makes it difficult to differentiate

among or between, you know, better and best. So I thought, you know, just do something a little funky,

a little fresh. And so they delivered it. It's fresh. It's funky. It's very eye catching.

So I wanted to dig in and the question that everyone begins book interviews with is,

why did you write this book? I understand that you wrote it under obedience would be the sort of,

the formal cause. Is that the formal cause of why you wrote this book? I love this.

But just a cause of analysis. Yeah, we could figure this out, right? Yeah, the

the efficient cause. Anyway, you were the efficient cause of the book writing. But the the thing

that struck me before we get to that question is you open it up. And the first thing you see is

good old James three. The the tongue is a fire. And that admonition right up on the top line,

it always gets me let not many of you become teachers because I make my living by speaking to

people and trying to instruct them, I homeschool seven children. So most of my life is spent

talking and teaching. And in fact, I think the whole passage is super challenging to us as

Catholics. And you describe the book in your intro as the remedy, a remedy to the discouragement

set by lofty standards and frequent faults. So why this why this book today, I'll pitch it to you.

What do you hope for people to take away from this if not the the admonition of James three?

Yeah, I think the basic idea, I'm here to encourage. And I think the reason for which I can

encourage is because God encourages the word encouragement in Greek is the root of the word

paraclete. Like the father of the son send us the spirit, the spirit comes by way of encouragement.

And so I don't think the point is to say, Hey, you're fine. He's fine. She's fine. We're all fine.

Everyone's fine. I think the point is to say like, Okay, if we are to flourish, we're going to have

to be saved. I mean, we need Jesus to save us. But the fact of the matters that he's poised to save

us, he's ready to say he has saved us. And so we draw strength from that. So yeah, I think the

basic point of the book is to be like, Hey, you've got this. I like it. Sorry if that's somewhat

banal. Some of the things that I say banal, but that's whatever banal is a great word. Although

here on the east court coast, we're taught to say banal. So that maybe that's a little different

training of our tongue. But let's let's pull it back a little bit. Let's get to you on. Let's

define some terms here. So when you say, I'm going to help you train your tongue. Can you define

that? So we think of like animals, the beasts, right? The beasts have certain sorts of language

and communication, right? And we as humans have, you know, we can train our voices to like

sing loud, the belt like a Broadway star or pronounced words in a fine in different languages.

But you're talking about something specifically human here. So define for us what you mean by the

tongue. Yeah, I mean, the faculty of speech. And the basic idea here is that so we have thoughts and

affections, which, you know, and so far as the issue from the spiritual powers of our soul are

intellect and will call for a certain embodiment. So we are not like spirits dragging bodies around.

We are in spirited bodies or embodied spirits. However, best you capture that. And so it seems like

for us to be good as human beings means having a facility for communicating what it is that we think

and feel and to do so as a way by which to draw close to other people like the whole point of the

book is that we're built for communion like God set us on the surface of the earth as conjugal

animals or social animals or political animals precisely so that we would lean into the relationships

and interactions, which are constitutive of our life. So the basic idea is that we can heal and

grow. We can mature our faculty of speech as a way by which to facilitate communion. That's the hope.

Yeah, I love, okay, I got that. A cultural thought here that I think in our current culture,

there's sort of a feeling that if you're training your speech and training your communication,

like practicing these different methods, and we'll get into some of these like practical tips

that you have, that there's somehow something inauthentic or fake about, you know, identifying

a certain excellence and then conforming yourself to that. And what I would call this is sort of

like the Disney Princess take on life where like there's, there's, every Disney Princess movie

is this sort of journey of discovery that we have these stupid rules from the dumb grown-ups,

usually the dad, the girl realizes, well, I'm going to break free of all the stupid rules and

I'm going to finally express myself in this like fully authentic way. And it seems like a lot of

that is, well, it has to be spontaneous, right? Like the human good, an authenticity, we equate

with spontaneity and a lack of study on our actions or our words. So how would you, how would you sell

this book to someone who's totally sold on like the Disney Princess version of, I need to be my true

self? Yeah, yeah. So don't tell me how to talk, right? Sure, yeah, I mean people can do whatever they

do on the world, please. But actually, let's let's think about frozen, all right? So for instance,

Anna and Elsa are just kicking it as small children, having a gale time. And it's only by virtue of

a kind of accident or slip up that Elsa shoots Anna with like a whatever that is, snow, power,

ray, the ice powers. Yeah, exactly. They cause us some concern in the family. And then they go to

the troll. And they're like, what do we do about this? And he says basically train her. And

they're like cool, cool, cool. We're going to imprison her. I would say is a bad interpretation of

the trolls council. Um, so I think like, you know, the problem isn't with the rules. Yeah, the

problem isn't with the problems with rules that don't correspond to human nature. But the fact of

the matter is that I think everyone recognizes that we need to undergo some maturation if we are

to be fulfilled. So like you put a five year old child in front of a piano and you say, be

spontaneous. I don't think anyone would sign up to hear that concert because it'd be like, woof,

brutal. Or if you were to put, you know, like five year old LeBron James on a basketball court

and say, be spontaneous and just repeated that for the next 13 years. I don't think that we would

have seen, you know, the sports icon of St Vincent St Mary's, Akron, Ohio fame. You know, there

all these people, if they're going to attain to the height of their powers, they need to subject

themselves to a certain discipline. The question is whether that discipline actually fulfills their

nature or whether it kind of imprisons their nature. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is to

provide guidelines as it were so that folks who are motivated to fulfill their nature can do so

in accord with, you know, God's understanding as it were or in accord with God's plan for their

lives. That's, I think that's a basic idea. I like it. Alright, so the first place you start

with these sort of guidelines is just starting with the truth, right? Truth telling, first chapter.

So we're going to undertake this big project to train our tongues. And the first thing we want

to do is conform our speech to truth. Why do you start here? Basically because we're

on the way towards the end. And if we're going to get to the end, we need to journey well,

which means that we actually need to like attune ourselves to what's going on in the world.

So like, for instance, let's say that I hike the Via Alpina in Switzerland, which is this

cool trail that goes from Vadoot's Lichtenstein to Montreau, which is on the north side of Lachlamon.

So basically you walk across the entire country. And if I were to say like, all right, I want to

accomplish this, I need to make sure, first and foremost, that I have an accurate map because

I'm only going to be able to take account of what I can and can't do or take account of how

many miles I should do in each day and where I should stay each night. If I actually know where those

things are, otherwise I'm just going to be kind of prancing in La La land and potentially exposing

myself to great peril. So if we are going to journey together towards communion, we have to do so

on the basis of what actually is rather than on the basis of what might be or what is not.

So I think the idea is like if we liken communion to building a house and living in it together,

then we need to make sure that we build that house on solid rock. And the only solid rock upon which

we can agree is real solid rock rather than not real solid rock. So I'm mixing my metaphors

somewhat, but the basic idea is that if we are going to be nourished by reality, then we need to

well, take real food because we can't just spend our time like lost boys saying here's your

popo, Peter, and imagining that this is in fact a fulfilling meal when truth be told we're just

making stuff up. I was trying to find a way by which to quote Rufio, but I couldn't do it seamlessly.

I'm sure we can find an opportunity for you sometime in the next half hour. I'll try and keep that in

mind. All right, I'll pitch it to you. I did want to ask because you're talking about

always speaking in conformity with reality and you bring up the classic example. It's always like

the gacha example that people when they're like interlocuting with Catholics, I feel like

that well, you don't always have to speak truthfully. Like what if you're hiding Jews in your

attic and the Gestapo come knocking and obviously like this is a real life scenario. This really

happened to people and they had to make a choice. Like can you tell a lie? I actually, I watched

a debate that you had with Dr. Janet Smith. I think it was on Pines with Aquinas like four or

five years ago and you were debating this question. So using that scenario that this is sort of

the extreme that people often go to, I just wanted to touch on that and how how is the scenario

helpful and how do you think it's unhelpful in thinking about speaking truthfully and whether or not

lying is ever justified? Yeah, cool question. I think it's mostly unhelpful because I just don't

think that moral life typically unfolds in high pressure moments. It typically unfolds in less

pressurey line segments if that makes sense. So I think that like, yeah, people bring all of their

moral intuitions, intuitions to bear on this one particular moment of a highly contentious sort.

And then like see that proves fill in the blank. One truth be told, I think that we have to ask

ourselves like how did you get to this moment and then where do you go from this moment? So we're

already in a society that's totally broken down. There are notsies in our streets. Things are

totally crazy. They are looking to kill people on the basis of their ethnic and religious identity.

Things are crazy. Alright, so already it's a strange situation. And then you know, I think that

sometimes we have difficulty sorting out between the charity with which I harbor and defend these

individuals and then the particular means that I deploy to that end. So in the book basically,

I say it's like fine to deploy evasion. It's not fine to deploy lying. But even if you do deploy

lying, it's, you know, it's an efficious lie and it's a venial sin. So you shouldn't worry too

terribly much about the fact. Not to say that we should, you know, like welcome venial sins into

our heart and give them a nice little resting place. We should be working to root out venial sins.

But we also need to recognize that we have a humanity which is kind of underway or it's like in

progress and that we're seeking to cultivate moral creativity. And I think that when you put it in

those terms, it's like in order to tell a convincing lie, I have to have become a convincing liar,

which means that I have to have spent at least part of my life trying to lie well. Otherwise,

like these guys ask this question to person after person after person, they're going to be able to

detect a lie. You know, like the chances that you do this well are like zero. So why do we think

that telling the lie has then been the good course to pursue? I mean, it will probably end up

similarly regardless of what you say. So the question is, how do you live well? How do you live

with integrity? How do you anticipate this moment and plan your evasion in such a way that you stand

a better chance at fulfilling the charitable gesture which you extended to these individuals? So,

I think that we often dichotomize our moral experience in the sense that we say either you lie

or you're a bad dude, it's like grow. I don't know that that's actually the case. I think there are

more things on the table, but I'm blathering and I'll take the opportunity then to say bang a

ring, which is one of Rufio's favorite things to say. Well, good job. You really did work it in

there. That's incredible. Yeah, wow. Talk about truth telling. So, I wanted to ask so because I

think that you talk about having like a definite road map you want to get from point A to point B

and this long Camino that you're taking, which sounds great in Europe. I'd love to do that.

I think that in today's digital world, like we've got the AI stuff coming on and people

increasingly feel like they don't have access to verifiable truth in the same way that maybe you have,

you know, I think of Haleir Belox paths around, like he just all he had was the map and like the

word of the people who lived along the route. And today with the advent of all this sort of like

virtual reality quote unquote, it can be really distressing if you think, okay, well, I'm doing

to be someone who always only speaks the truth. Like, well, maybe I just don't ever say anything,

but I wanted to ask you as a millennial, what are some habits of habits of living and attention

and discernment that we can build to better navigate the world that we live in today and avoid

both deceiving but also being deceived. Yeah, so that's a great question.

And you can see, so in a younger generation, Gen Z, for instance, doesn't really think of

most online media outlets as truth bears. They tend to conceive of them more after the

manner of advertisers, whereas millennials tend to be kind of on the fault line. Gen X tends to

look at these things and say, you know, truth bears, whereas Gen Z tends to look at these things and

say advertisers. And I think millennials are kind of a mixed bag when it comes to that assessment.

So I think I think the real risk is something after the manner of truth and difference,

which I talk about at the end of that first chapter. When we get the distinct impression that

certain people aren't even trying to tell or conceive of the truth, they're just, they just don't

care. Because it's a matter more of political ends than it is of kind of principled approach to

recounting the facts or to draw and close in communion. So I think that this, I think it's a

natural orientation to know the truth. And so I think that the human heart will always

kind of welcome the opportunity to gather the facts, will welcome the opportunity to take a stance

on the basis of what he or she has seen. And so then the question becomes like the question that

you pose, which I am now making my way towards, is how do we do that well? And I think by and large,

we are, we're supposed to trust most of what we see. And I think that that is gradually being

eroded. But I don't think that we should give up on that. I think it's good to be a little bit

gullible. I think the Christian has to be a little bit credulous. I don't think that you can

believe unless you admit the possibility that belief is at least not potentially misleading.

And so I think that there are going to be instances in which we're shown up. Like I made a video

the other day about Eucharistic miracles. And I just got this cool email from a person saying,

Hey, I'm Catholic. I do this in good faith, but I like to examine the scientific criteria

deployed in the tests to which these Eucharistic miracles are subjected. And just so you know,

some of it's not that good, some of it's not that scientific. And so I think that there's,

for instance, if I were to argue for the truth of Eucharistic doctrine on the basis of Eucharistic

miracles, then I would be using bad arguments. And I think that atheists or non-believers of

whatsoever sort would then have, you know, cause against me. So it's important that I discipline

my approach to the truth and my marshaling of the truth. So that way, I don't expose the faith

to ridicule. So that way I'm more effective in my evangelical mission. So I think, but like in

general, I just like read a book about Eucharistic miracles. I'm predisposed to believe the things

which are published by seemingly reputable sources. And then I said it forward and then I got

this. And then the question is, am I am I able to take it and stride? And I think the answer just,

it has to be yes. But I don't think that we're supposed to like approach our toothbrush and

say like, is toothpaste actually good for my teeth? Or is this all just like a secret thing where

in 45 years all of my enamel is going to disappear? And then I'm going to just, you know, it's like

that's insane. That's totally insane. So I think it's like we, we, we, we kind of comport ourselves

with some measure of quote unquote, gullibility or credulousness. And then when the corrections come,

we're willing to take them and stride. And we do so within the setting of a community which is

generally speaking well informed and inclined to the pursuit of the truth. I don't know if that's

it all helpful. No, that is really helpful. And I think that one of the, one of the hardest

barriers I find to like break through to younger people today is that the lack of credulousness.

Am I saying that right? The lack of credulity sort of, I think that's really interesting what

you said about zoomers sort of taking everything as this is an advertisement. They're trying to get

something out of me. And maybe some of the, some of what is said is true, but the motive behind

it is somehow to sell me something. Let's turn to conversation. Another, another characteristic

of younger generations today is loneliness. And a lot of isolated time alone. I was reading some

stats from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fancy that. They put out stats. They recently dropped

this like time use survey. It says that people today, 15 to 29 year olds spend 45% more time

alone than they did in 2010, which is kind of a crazy number. So like, yeah, loneliness stats

through the roof, physical isolation, through the roof. So I think that these tips that you have

on cultivating good conversation, but also why we want to have good conversation, super needed.

So give me, give me kind of like your favorite tips on conversing, which is what you do for,

is it a living, is it called what you do for a living when you're a Dominican and you have a podcast?

Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. That's fine. All right. So best tips on conversation for a lonely generation.

So I think my, my first encouragement is that it's not about winning. It's about trying.

I think that, yeah, there's some measure of anxiety regarding assessment. There's always been

anxiety regarding assessment, but it seems to me that that anxiety is increasing with each generation.

It's, and I think it's in part a monster of our own making because we've tried with each

generation to be more scientific about outcomes assessments so that we can be more scientific about

deployment of financial resources, but we're, we're tailoring our instruction or we're tailoring

our curation of content to those standards. And so people now have like a very clear sense of

when they are succeeding or when they are failing. And like everyone's agreed that this is the only

thing that matters, which is very strange. Because I think that you just miss a lot. You lose a lot.

I think about the way the St. John Paul II talked about the economy. He says, like,

his socialism good. He's like, nah, because in its principles, it's fundamentally opposed to

private property. Now, obviously, you can deploy something like socialism and religious life

when you take account of original sin and its effects. And when you circumscribe it within a

rule of life, which is even gelically informed. Okay. Good. But then he says, all right,

all right. Or is what we're doing here. Capitalism. He's like, I mean, not really kind of,

I mean, insofar as we rely upon a market economy, that's great. But there are things that the

market economy doesn't account for. Human factors that the market economy doesn't account for.

And we always have to be solicitous for those factors. Like for instance, they'll say like,

you know, we have a right to work, which isn't to say like a duty to work or right to work,

because they're going to be certain people who underperform in the workforce, whether because of,

you know, like a developmental disability or an injury or something like that. But we should

still seek to employ those persons, not so that we can just have 100% cogs and wheels.

But so that those persons can work out their dignity in the way in which God intends them to,

you know, which is through work. And but that's not something that the market economy necessarily

covers. I should just try to employ as few people and pay them as little as I possibly can so I can

build my empire yet more blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you get it. So I think that yeah, we're

really concerned about succeeding and failing. And so often we don't even enter into potential

practices or exercises, which we see that we're not going to come on on top. But like, why would I

bother cultivating a hobby of playing the mandolin? When I know for a fact that it's already too late

for me to discern the difference between, you know, half steps because I'm just a lump over here,

just barely making out the difference between whole steps. So, you know, he says to himself,

when truth be told, it's actually humanizing to endeavor to do something musical, which proves

enriching of your relationships and interactions, your life more broadly. So I think the conversation's

one of those things that it's, if it's worth doing, then it's worth doing poorly. I mean, to quote

or paraphrase GK Chesterton because it's a human thing. And I think a lot of our human life is

going to be done poorly, but it's still worthwhile because it's what we're made for. So I'd say that

maybe the first thing to say is this kind of assessment anxiety that we all experience.

In a certain sense, it has to be gotten over through exposure therapy.

It's not the only way. I have a hard time with small talk. I tend to be like, I'm the person

in the room who walks up to someone and I'm like, you know, tell me what are your thoughts on hell

or something like that. And it's a little awkward. So I like to help you open the chapter with

your own speaking in a denigrating way about small talk. So what role does small talk have in becoming

a conversationalist? So I think that my theory is that conversation is about performing communion.

It's just that's how we come together. So again, I think the communion is a confluence of thought

and affection. It's when we share our thoughts. It's when we share our affections that we can actually

share our lives with each other because that's what we have to share. And so when you don't

know somebody too terribly well, you don't have a lot to share because we're vulnerable and we

are somewhat reticent to share it a great depth for fear that we will be betrayed or that we will

be wounded. So we tend to share more superficially at the outset until such times we know that this

is a person whom I can trust and with whom I have a mutual interest, like a shared interest.

But like communion still needs to be performed at every stage of a relationship because that's

just what human beings are for. So I think that like small talk is just superficial performance of

communion, but it can give unto a more profound performance of communion. And it also just,

yeah, it helps people to enter in. And I think that part of that's just a matter of friendliness,

facilitating conversation for those who might be otherwise deterred from participating in

conversation because again, they might have their reasons. So yeah, that's my basic thought.

Yeah, I love the tips on conversation too and like the small talk because it seems that when

you're pursuing that, there's less room for some of these verbal injuries that you talk about

later on in the book to come up, right? If you're filling, if you're filling your conversation or

you're filling your speech with these attempts to grow in the virtues of good conversation and

communion with others, you have less room for things like detraction or slander or gossip.

And while encouragement is good, sometimes it's also encouraging to see the ugliness of what

you're trying to avoid as well. So I did want to turn to those verbal sins, the sort of anti-communian

streak for a little bit. I wanted to talk about gossip in particular. It's the sort of like

anti-conversation in a way because it feels like intimacy. It feels like you're having this

communion with this other person or group of persons because you're sharing this inside information.

But it's also, it's sort of, it's the anti-communian's of eventually like self-destructive and

destructive of those relationships. But if you could, if you could talk to us a little bit about

sort of the drive to gossip and again, very prevalent in the social media world that we live in,

why do people lean into gossiping and excuse it to themselves? And how can we, if we're in this

habit of gossip, how can we basically come back from it? How can we resist that urge?

Yeah. I mean, short answer is I don't quite know why. I mean, I venture some guesses in the book.

I think that there are a lot of particular reasons for which. So I think sometimes we commit these

verbal vices or we commit these verbal sins when we ourselves have been hurt. So it's like you're

in a conversation with somebody in that person, corrects you or is rude to you or doesn't give you

the time of day. Then you break off into a side conversation and be like, you know, like that

gal over there, like totally nuts, right? Am I right? Am I right? You know, because like on account

of the fact that you've been hurt, you want to hurt back as a way by which to exact vengeance or

vindication. So I think that's it's taken certain instances. But more often than not, I think it's

like we just don't have edifying topics conversation ready at hand. And we're made for conversation.

And so we're going to fill that space with something and we often do it with the juiciest morsels

that lie ready at hand. And so we'll often just pray upon people's reputations in the course of

that conversation without ever thinking too much about it. Another thing too is sometimes we do

traffic in people's reputations like intending the currency of admission to some group, some

inset. So it's like these people are cool. For example, yeah, Wednesdays we were pink.

Yes. So it's like, I see that if I'm going to belong to this group, I need to bring the goods.

I need to bring the juicy morsels. Otherwise, I'm useless to them. And I want to be part. So it's

like again, because I don't have access or I don't recognize the meaningful communion, you know,

that I have a present. I want this fell communion, which is yeah, a mockery really of the

meaningful community. But nevertheless, it's it's something that I that I really want really

deeply want. I think Mean Girls is a great example of that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Talk to me about

correcting others. So I'm like a confirmed caloric. And I'm the mother, as I mentioned,

of many children. So to me, it's almost like a recreational thing to correct people.

I find it too enjoyable, right? And it's a problem sometimes. On the other hand, we have the other

extreme in our culture where it's like the what's the mantra like be kind or practice kindness,

which means just like affirm everyone all the time, or you're very bad person. So help me like

find the mean between the extremes of myself and my neighbor's be kind poster. How do you

why are we even concerned with correcting others with our speech? And how do we know when to

offer correction or when to sit back and watch the train wreck? Yeah, right. Yeah, cool question.

I think in part, this is culturally mediated. I was talking to an Hispanic woman the other day

and she was describing her practice of correction. I was like, bro, that's so terrible.

But it's not returned to house of studies with the Hispanic woman.

Yeah, right. Exactly. This is like an extended conversation as to like what to do with her kids.

And just yeah, the affirmations on the one hand and the corrections on the other hand,

I was like, you are just live in life, dialed up to 11 as they say. And this is spinal tap.

So respect. But I think I do think that it will depend in part on the cultural context,

because some cultures are more direct, even more aggressive. The Dutch have this reputation,

for instance, Americans to a certain extent have this reputation, whereas others are infinitely

less so. The French have this reputation, for instance. So I think that, okay. And then

different kinds of correction, correction and justice, you're the mom, they're the kids,

justice, boom, send it. Correction and charity, I entered a religious community with a bunch of

dudes the same year. None of us are superiors. We're all just kicking it together on the same

little level of our religious life. So if I tend to a correction, it's not because like,

I'm over you or he's over me. It's because I love him or he loves me. And we want to help each

other address the obstacles, which stand in the way to our ongoing conversion. Obviously,

you know, there's charity in the background of your corrections and justice. But you're really

responsible for profaring those corrections, because you're the basically like the primary

mediator of life for these kids. And if they are going to be educated in what's up,

then they're going to look to you for that. Now, the question is, how much can these people take?

Because again, depending upon the cultural context, people will tune you out after however many

minutes. It's just a matter of determining where that is, because that should enter into our

prudence. So we're thinking on the one hand, okay, does this matter? On the other hand,

can this person change? And then finally, do I actually love, in the case of, fraternal correction?

And so I think that there's a sense in which the like the positive or the affirmative approach

is not just good tactics, but it's a good demonstration of the charity which informs the practice.

Because I think it's the the office of a friend to kind of coax the good out of the beloved

or to like elicit a doose, a good response from the beloved, not in a controlling or manipulating

way, but to say like, hey, I see in you what you might not yet see in yourself. And that's meant

to come to light because there's something to work in you that's beautiful and it hasn't yet

taken definitive shape without all that can sound patronizing your condescending. But the basic

idea is you got to be able to see in your friend what she can't yet see in herself. And I think

correction is a way by which to facilitate that. And I think that helps to commend your correction

because the love is so evident in the way that you formulate it. So yeah, it depends on any

number of things and it depends upon your state and life, the setting in which you live. But I think

the basic idea is you don't really have much to lose. You might have like a friendship to lose.

But at the end of the day, if you can't talk frankly with this person, how good of a friendship was it?

Yeah, maybe that's somewhat dismissed to say that you don't have much to lose because you might

have more to lose. I think a lot of us don't have a ton to lose. We're just nervous at the

possibility of a slightly uncomfortable relationship or interaction. When truth be told, I just don't

know how much that matters. Yeah, I think it's funny too. I was trying to think of ways to think

about this from like male-female differences as well. I think that I don't live in an all-male

religious community clearly. But from my interactions with like all female groups, it seems like correction

is it's really hard for women to like to offer correction to one another. There's

the direction isn't quite there, tends to harbor resentment more. But I won't ask you to speculate

on the females. But in religious life, do you do you find that fraternal correction can ever like

leads to sort of rifts in the community, or like if it's done poorly, or how do you see that

playing out? Because you're all together, right? Like you're kind of stuck together. And the

most one, if you get to reassign, it's worth it. Yeah, yeah. My sister's like men. So where is like

in a women, in a group of women, I think the characteristic temptation is to over-involve oneself

in the lives of others. Whereas in a group of men, the characteristic temptation is to

under-involve oneself in the sense of to kind of neglect the relationship or the interaction.

So if somebody over does fraternal correction, then that guy whom he corrects will just draw away from

him. And that's really hard in small communities. It's kind of doable in big communities. Obviously,

it's not something to which we should aspire, but you can see how. And like truth be told,

sometimes it's just nice to have space from another individual. Like one of the things that can be

difficult about religious life is that you spend so much time with each other and you do so many

activities together. And sometimes like you realize with some measure of self-understanding that you

just can't get over this, that you're just spinning or you're just perseverating on the hurt

that the other person has caused in your life, that you just need to draw away for a time.

And that might be like vacation or it might be personal retreat or it might be like changing the

seat in which you sit during communal prayers. Like physical space can help. Obviously emotional

psychological space helps more, but physical space can help. And so I think it's just like we are

animals. We are animals. And so we should expect animal type behavior. And I think that yeah,

we're going to draw away for time. But I think it's possible for us to grow back together. And that

depends in part upon the temperaments of the person's themselves, how well-disposed they are to

forgiveness, whether or not they're besieging the grace of God so that they can heal and grow,

etc. There are going to be some things which are seemingly unrecognizable. But I think if you give

guys time and then bring them back together, they tend to, they tend to be all right. I've noticed

this. We have, you know, provincial gatherings at four-year intervals. And you always see it,

just guys reconciling. And a lot of the stuff that kept them apart was they getting knowledge

from a distance was dumb, stupid, not worthy of it. But it just takes time. Yeah, that's the grace

of time, grace of a long life. That's great. All right. So God's planning is your podcast. And you

guys are, you're funny. You have great sense. And you have a whole chapter on the value of humor

and wit. So this, I want to get into that. But what, first one, a question that I got recently

at a conference, a woman asked, she's like, well, you know, life is really serious. I'm like,

I traffic in headlines. That's my, like, I'm always, you know, current events. Pretty dark. We've

got like abortion, trans stuff, war, all the, all the horrible things people do. And the question

she asked was, you know, how do you maintain cheer? How do you stay cheerful, joyful when your

heads and this stuff all the time? So before we get to... And you responded, I don't. I'd be like,

I'm so depressed. I fooled you. But yeah, I wanted to, I won't get your take on, on that first,

before we get to cultivating wit, like cultivating just cheer and authentic Christian joy when life

is very serious sometimes. Yeah, my, my first thought is, so I think about the way that St. Thomas

describes the martyrs, he says, okay, courage is a weird virtue because ordinarily, in virtuous life,

we're engaging with good things, you know, so like prudence, good activities. Or I should say like

good thoughts regarding actions, justice, good activities, thinking about relationships and whatever

else. Temperance, you know, like good food drinks, sexual intercourse as hands on life, you know,

as continues life here on the surface of the earth. Whereas courage, it concerns bad things. It's

specifically concerns like the threat of death. And so I've got to manage fear, I've got to

manage daring in light of that threat. And so it's just kind of presumed that when you're in

difficult circumstances, you're going to experience some measure of pain or some measure of sorrow.

But we're told that the virtuous person experiences his life as easy, prompt and joyful. So how are we

supposed to reconcile those two things? St. Thomas will say, it's efficient that one not regret his

choice. Or it's efficient that the pain or the sorrow of a bodily sort not overwhelm a kind of

joy of a spiritual sort. But the basic idea is that like even when you're being put through it,

you can still get perspective on the situation and still refer it to God who is the source of your

joy. So I don't think that like Christians, for instance, always need to be happy, go lucky.

I think that Christians have permission to be sad. So like, you know, like people in our lives

die and relationships in our lives fail. And you know, interpersonal interactions in our lives

prove brutal at times. And I think all those things are an occasion of sadness. And I think it's

fine to feel sadness. But the question is whether or not you indulge in that sadness, whether you

kind of give into that sadness, whether you wallow in that sadness. And I think the Christian

response is I always have to be able to take that sadness on board with the recognition that

my hope is in the Lord. And so I think it's good to cry at funerals. I think it's good to be attached

to the goods of this earth in a way that's appropriate to the goods of this earth. But I have to

do so with a yet greater attachment to the most high God who will never disappoint me even though

he will seemingly hide from me. And so I think like a lot of the Christian spirit of joy or the

Christian spirit of levity is a matter of perspective. It's like recognizing what's good, what's better

and what's best. And then the claim that that has in your life. And it also means a willingness to

live life in time. You know, so when somebody dies, it's going to feel terrible for a while.

Year two is often worse than year one truth be told. And then year three is ever so slightly better.

And then it gets better still. And you're going to have like kind of derivative thoughts of self

accusation because you're going to feel like you're forgetting this person because the memories

have become less potent. But that's just what animals do. They forget. And it's like the only way

that we can live our lives. Because if they were all present to us at the same time, without the

glory of the life to come, it'd kill us. It'd just totally kill us. So I think just part of it too

is just being patient and persevering with our own weak humanity. Which is yeah.

No, it's always that both it's always that both ends that like we are we are animal and it's so

important to remember our animal nature. And like you said, be patient with that. But it's also the

the facts too. There were Mago Day, right? So we're made in the image and likeness of God. And we have

that component of us as well. Which sort of like brings me, it was that a good segue into

wit and jokes because animals don't as much have jokes. So sort of the connection then between

having this cheer, this like true authentic Christian joy and expressing that in our speech.

Sometimes that comes out in the form of humor and good jokes. So you talk a little bit about

cultivating wit. And at first I had this vision of like Mr. Collins and Pride and Prejudice. And he's

like I examine like ways to speak so that I am more witty and acceptable. But it's not quite that

this is actually like good jokes. How can I become more funny like you are father pine?

Oh, well, I think the first thing is look up hook quotes on Ion to be that. And memorize some of the

insults that Peter Pan slings at Rufio, including you lude crude, rude bag of pre-tued food, dude.

That's devastating. Okay. I'm writing this down. I don't think 44 year old woman should really like

let that one out. Yeah, maybe not. You gotta know myself. Maybe not Rufio for me. Maybe someone else

I'll find me. So I think, you know, this is an Aristotelian point at the end of the day. Aristotle

thinks that we should make life pleasant for each other and that we should cultivate those virtues

which facilitate this transformation. So Christians tend to limit themselves to caring about like

faith, hope, charity, maybe like chastity, maybe like temperance. But beyond that, we don't seem to

care about too terribly many virtues. But as it turns out, like you should care about these things,

like oral hygiene. If I were never to floss my teeth, slash brush my teeth, I recently got one

of those electric toothbrushes. Those things revolutionize a life because I like I always had all

this plaque build up below my bottom row because it's like at a weird angle because I grind my teeth.

And then all of a sudden, this guy's just handling it for me. It's yeah, exotic. So I should care

about that because when I open my mouth, I don't want people saying to themselves, wow, it smells like

a nursing home. That'd be really bad. Well, maybe it's not really bad. It'd be bad.

It would probably put a damper on your efforts to evangelize. I think so.

I think so. Like it's a barrier. Yeah. So I think when it comes to cultivating

wit, it's a matter of making life pleasant. So life can tend to be, you know, painful or sad.

And it needn't not in the sense that we're always fleeing pain or fleeing sadness. But in the

sense that we're seeking to be a blessing to each other, yeah, I need to be somewhat more.

Here we go. This is what I mean at the end of the day. I think that life has lots of kind of

silliness to it. Lots of incongruities, lots of tensions, lots of potentially weighty matters.

And I think that as human beings, we're not capable of bearing all of those things or interiorizing

all those things. So we need to be able to offload them. We need to be able to exteriorize them.

Well, what wit helps us to do so for ourselves and for each other. And it also makes

conversation to welcome space in which people can repose and delight and et cetera. And so I

think it's worthwhile. Like we're not all funny. I mean, like I'm people are like, oh, be

funny. And I'm like, that's, I mean, that's my kryptonite. I can't be funny when someone says

to be funny. Hold on. Let me get my roofioe quote out. Yeah, exactly. So, but I think that we

should seek to be a kind of lighthearted or otherwise levitation, some making words up now,

blessing to each other. So it doesn't mean we're necessarily like memorizing jokes,

but it means that we're seeking like ways by which to facilitate a conversation of a less burden

some sort. Even if it's only just by like being ready to laugh, people who aren't ready to laugh,

often, yeah, are tough. We call them sticks in the mud for a reason, because they're sticks in

the mud. Yeah, yeah, it's totology there. Is that that that one? I don't know. I got one more.

You got another Peter insult to roofio. If I'm a maggot burger, why don't you just eat me?

It's incredible. You two tones zebra headed slime coated pimple farm and paramecium brain. It's

just it's incredible. It's some of the finest insults you'll ever encounter. It's amazing.

I mean, that's like Shakespearean levels, right? It is. Yeah, you scurvy. That's incredible.

Yeah, talk about elevated speech. Indeed.

All right, so the final point, like let's bring it up from let's bring it from roofio to God,

because the whole point of all human speech ultimately communion with each other for the sake of

communion with with God. And so talking in that last bit there about how our speech here on Earth

anticipates the speech of heaven. So what do we what do we know about how speech will be in heaven?

And how should that affect how we train our tongues? The barbells here on Earth. Exactly.

Our Gene Simmons barbells. Sure answers. I have no idea.

My suspicion though is that so in heaven, at least in the near term, we won't have bodies.

So our kind of coming together of thought and affection will be facilitated directly by the

gift of God. And so we'll necessarily involve the use of our tongues or use of the faculty of speech

as we are presently inclined to do so. But but I do think that what we are doing here on the

surface of the Earth will train us for what we're going to do there in heaven. Because Christians

don't hold for like delayed gratification of us, like a discontinuous sort. St. Catharinesia

and it says all the way to heaven is heaven. So what we're doing at present is a kind of progressive

acclimatization. And I think that heaven will be that type of conversation in which we enter and

exit seamlessly or kind of lightheartedly where there are touches of humor, where there's a kind of

edifying culture where others are built up where we recognize in them their excellence, how they

are situated within the mystical body, how they glorify God and worked for the salvation of souls

during their lifetime. And it's not the type of thing where we're going to score, keep,

compare, compete where it's just going to be delightful, utterly delightful. And so I think that

as we work on the faculty of speech in the here and now it's with an eye towards that end,

with an eye towards the ease and promptitude and joy which will characterize our conversation in heaven.

I'm sold. That sounds great. For not knowing anything about how you're going to answer that question

you gave a really great answer. I'm encouraged. Oh good. That's the whole point. Full circle

encouragement. So father, this has been really delightful conversation. Thank you so much for your

time. And I would encourage everyone to head on over. The link will be in the description and

check out training the tongue. Great read for Lent, but anytime of the year for those of us who

speak, which is all of us. Father Gregory Pine, thank you so much.

Maju, I thank you for having me on. If you liked this interview, please be sure to subscribe to

the loop cast. We bring you a new episode of the deep every Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern.