Growing Beyond Gossip & Cultivating Verbal Virtue | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

[00:00:05]Um, it is a pleasure to be with you this evening and for those of you watching at home, it may not be evening, but I still greet you. Uh, my name is Father Gregory Pine and um, I was told to introduce myself and so I will now select what I think are the most pertinent features of my life story. Um, so I was born in Abington, Pennsylvania, which is just two towns out from the city of Philadelphia. City of Philadelphia is affectionately referred to by at least one person on earth as city of saints and city of champions. That person's me.

[00:00:35]Um because I defy you to name me another US city which has two canonized saints within its bounds. You can't. St. John Noman, St. Kathern Drexel, both Philadelphia. It's awesome. Um so I'd like to think that their intercession played a role in my rise to prominence as a second grade basketball phenom.

[00:00:55][laughter] No, I'm just kidding. I've never been good at basketball. Um, so I uh entered the Dominican order in 2010, was ordained a priest in 2016.

[00:01:04]Oh, prior to entering the Dominican order, I studied at a small Catholic school in the Ohio River Valley. You may have heard of it, Franciscan University of Stubenville. Go Barren. Um, and um, since then I've been assigned doing X, Y, and Z things. Um, very few of which hold an interest for you. So I will highlight the fact that at present I am teaching at the Dominican House of Studies uh which I refer to affectionately as the Dominican House of Buddies.

[00:01:30][laughter] Um so the theme for tonight is training the tongue and growing beyond sense of speech and it's the title of a book that I wrote and published with Emmas Road.

[00:01:43]So I'm delighted to give the lecture here at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology which is the home tomas road publishing. So it is a sweet confluence of factors.

[00:01:54]So Melissa who works for the St. Paul Center pitched the book idea to me and she said would you like to write a book about sins of speech? And I said maybe.

[00:02:03]Um now I eventually said yes. And so when people ask me like why did you write this book? The reason that I supply is because the publisher asked me to. Um but that's not entirely sufficient as far as explanations go.

[00:02:16]Because if Melissa had called me and said like, "I'm very interested in the intricacies of relationships and interactions among mermaids and mermen."

[00:02:25]Um, so we're hoping that you could write a book about the theological implications of my culture. Um, I would have said no. Um, because I am unstudied in the ways of mer men and myrr women, excuse me, mermaids. Um, so the fact that she proposed something to which I or I said for which I I had a kind of interest or affinity is not insignificant. And I suppose like what I recognized was an opportunity to preach the gospel, teach the gospel as concerns something with which basically everyone struggles.

[00:03:00]So the book begins with a long passage from James 3 in which James refers to our faculty of speech uh with a variety of images but most of those images are ever so slightly terrifying. So he'll say like the tongue is a fire. He'll say like the tongue is a rudder. And a lot of the implications of his exposition is like it can really consume you or it can really steer you in the wrong direction.

[00:03:26]And I think that a lot of people in their experience of Christian conversion and seeking to respond generously to the Lord's offer of grace, they they feel like their tongue is a is an obstacle or a hindrance to their growth in the life of faith, hope, and charity because they fall a foul of the law of God with such frequency. Um, so I I I said let's let's think about it in these terms. Let's say that our Christian conversion is something like tending a garden. And let's say that you set for your goal keeping that garden free from weeds.

[00:04:01]Now, even if you're super effective at keeping that garden free from weeds, at the end of the day, all you have is a rectangle of dirt, right? But if you make for your goal cultivating good growth, which is to say planting whatever one plants in a garden, annuals, perennials, maybe some shrubs, who knows? Um, my mom was always trying to grow lilacs and I kept mowing over them accidentally with the lawn mower. So, that's on me. Um, right. So, if you focus on cultivating good growth, then you have before you a much more kind of life-giving or edifying task and it may still be the case that weeds crop up, but provided you've done it well, those those weeds will get crowded out to the edge of the garden. they'll be easier to identify, easier to root out, and we'll also kind of have between our navigational beacons a worthy port of call. Because as Christians, the goal of life isn't so much to avoid sin as it is to live like or be like God. You are all of you gods, says the psalmist, sons and daughters of the most high. Or St. Peter says, we are called to be partakers of the divine nature.

[00:05:11]So if the goal of the Christian life were to avoid sin, then we would all do well to die shortly after our baptism.

[00:05:18]All right? Or before our seventh birthday, lest with the age of reason came occasion for sinful iniquity. Um but as we know that's that's not the point. All right? So the point is something far more beautiful, far more wonderful indeed. So I think I wanted to focus on cultivating verbal virtues more so than rooting out verbal vices, but I think they really do go handinand glove.

[00:05:40]Um, in the beginning of the book, I talk about my experience as a young I mean, like as a kid, as a nine-year-old Philadelphia Flyers fan. I remember that I would often speak at the wrong time, in the wrong way, in an offensive manner, like I was constantly getting into trouble. And um, at a certain point, I remember like wondering why I was this way. I remember kind of asking God like, "Why couldn't I be another way?"

[00:06:07]Um, and there's this young lady in my class named Melissa Taffel. Um, she's going to find out that I talk so glowingly about her and she's going to be embarrassed, but thank you Melissa Taffel for being awesome. And um, she was just always so kind, so solicitous.

[00:06:22]She didn't speak out of turn. And I remember thinking like, why couldn't I be more like Melissa Topel? Um, so I think regardless of how you come to the question whether you tend to speak more or less, a lot of us struggle with speech because it's really the lingua franca of our Christian existence. It's the type of thing in with or with which we traffic most frequently and a lot of us experience it as a source of dismay, disappointment, failure um yeah a kind of loss and a painful one of that. So the the hope of the book is to focus on the purpose of the faculty of speech so that in kind of deepening our understanding thereof we might cultivate good growth or we might acquire ways by which to wield that faculty of speech more excellently more edifyingly um in a way that's more holy and happy please God and so the arrangement of the chapters is with an eye to that goal so the first chapter is specifically about the purpose of the faculty of speech which is cultivating communion and I'll return to that and then the first chapter is about telling the truth and then the second chapter is about entering into conversation and then the third chapter is about building each other up and then the fourth chapter is correcting each other and the fifth chapter is about you know like playing with humor and then the sixth chapter is about preaching and teaching and then the sec seventh chapter is about praying and I'll just talk about a couple of things from the first few chapters while seeking to incorporate some of the questions which you lodged prior to the beginning of this filming. Okay. Um, so when it comes to the purpose of the faculty of speech, I said that the very purpose is to cultivate communion. What do I mean by that? Well, when you think about it, we as human beings are kind of strange creatures in that we alone have both spiritual and bodily dimensions to our lives. So you've got things below us like rocks and plants and animals which have, you know, bodily dimensions to their lives. And then you've got things above us like angels which have spiritual dimensions to their lives. But we alone live at the horizon of creation. And this makes our existence ever so slightly silly. So like we can think very beautiful, wonderful thoughts, transcendent thoughts. Our minds and hearts can range all the way to heaven.

[00:08:47]But like if I were to eat dairy, I probably couldn't be more than like 20 feet away from a restroom without things getting interesting, if you know what I mean. Um, right. So, it's like here we are ranging all the way to heaven and nevertheless, the fact that we have a body keeps us um cognizant of our very humble circumstances or our very humble embodiment. So then, how do we live well at the horizon of creation? That's the question. And it's not to, you know, like lust after the life of the angels or lust after the life of the beasts.

[00:09:21]We're meant to live here and to live here well. And the basic idea, I think, is that we're effectively meant to share our life. And I suppose I could advance an argument of an aristoilian oristic sort as to why I think this is the case.

[00:09:35]But it comes down to our having a communal nature.

[00:09:40]So communities aren't something that we just construct. There's something into which we're born or there's some things into which we're born. So all of us come into the world as sons and daughters of parents as brothers and sisters of siblings as potentially members of churches. Right? So we come into this world interrelated. The question is whether is not so much whether or not we will be interrelated. It's a more question of whether we will be interrelated well or ill. And so our lives are meant to take shape within the setting of communities. And I think that's helpful and clarificatory for how we engage in these relationships and these interactions. But then the question within the setting of a community is then how do I share my life? How do I live my life well together with these people whom God has entrusted to my career to whom God has entrusted me? And I think the basic idea is that we're meant to think the same thoughts and love the same realities.

[00:10:35]And by this I don't mean to suggest that we should all be brainwashed to assume an identical shape. But I think that the whole point of community or the whole point of our existence in community is to actually come together by a confluence of thought and affection. But to do that it's somewhat tricky. And I realize that's a vague term. So I will now clarify. So what's most transcendent or what's most metaphysically rich about our lives is the spiritual dimension.

[00:11:04]But in order for me to share the spiritual dimension, I have to concretize it. Which is to say, I need to make certain whatever like morphes and phonemes, I need to actually get it out and I need to do so in an intelligible fashion. So I need to concretize it and in words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs and I need to do so with a certain intonation or rhythmic line and I speak with a certain tamber in my voice and yada yada thus and such. like in order to get my spiritual life across to you, I have to embody it. So, if I were just to look at you and then say, you'd be like, "This dude's creepy." Um, and you'd also be like, [laughter] like, what's going on here? And if I were to be like, "Right, right." You'd be like, "No, no, not right. I have no idea. I have no idea." um because I haven't taken the steps or I haven't deployed the means to the attainment of that end which is a kind of sharing in life. All right. So I think a lot of human life is a matter of concretizing the spiritual in the bodily so that the other can encounter it in his or her bodily experience and then take it up into his or her spiritual life. But in so doing, we can actually come together.

[00:12:18]Because while our bodies facilitate a kind of communion, it's a kind of low-grade communion. Because at the end of the day, where your body is, my body cannot be. And where my body is, your body cannot be. But we're not so circumscribed when it comes to our spiritual sharing. We can actually think the same thoughts. We can actually love the same realities. and not just amongst ourselves but ultimately with God. We can think God's thoughts and we can love with God's affections.

[00:12:48]When we talk about being made to the image and likeness of God, which we hear set out for us in Genesis 1:27, I think um the Christian tradition has typically interpreted that in light of our spiritual nature, that we have a spiritual capacity which makes us capable of knowing God and loving God with his own knowledge and love of himself. And we can actually share in that with members of our family, with friends, with those who pertain to our community. So we can attain to a kind of confluence of thought and affection with God and with each other. But if we're going to get there, we have to enter into conversation, we need to be willing to kind of chat it through to speak in somewhat banal terms. I was actually corrected for my pronunciation of banel.

[00:13:32]Banel is an appropriate pronunciation of B- n. Um, but it's not the first one.

[00:13:37]The first one is benol. And I was like giving a little lecture and this gal in the front row made a stage whisper to the dude next to her. She's like, "It's banal." And I was like, "Bro, [laughter] so just signal when you're going to do a stage whisper and I will just seed I'll just seed the territory." Um, okay. So, we need to talk it through or we need to chat it out. All right?

[00:13:59]Because that's just that's how we're built as human beings. And I think that's one of the most precious things about the experience of university life or collegiate life that you have the leisure. You have the time and space to chat it out. And that doesn't mean that you have to be nerds and you have to spend all of your energy working through fine kind of grained or otherwise detailed philosophical and theological distinctions. But this is a time to to chat it through. All right? There are going to be times uh down the road where you will not have sufficient mental energy to do much of anything except wake up every hour and a half to quiet your crying child. So enjoy the present while you yet have brain cells and the time in which to leverage the use of those brain cells. Um not to I mean it's a good thing to wake up your children. I don't mean to sound yeah like like I'm down on it. Um okay. So the introduction is basically that the purpose of speech is to facilitate communion. We concretize our spiritual life in a bodily expression so that another can take up that bodily expression into his or her spiritual life so that ultimately we can attain to a confluence again of thought and affection because that's what human life is for. Kind of practical takeaway point. The point of being human is to share our lives which means that if you're the type of individual who likes making checklists, I respect you. I too like making checklists. Um, oh yeah, my checklists are in front of me because I wrote those things down. I like making macro lists and micro lists. So, I've got like all the big ticket items and a general sense of when they need to take place and then I have all the small ticket items and I write very small. Um, so it makes life interesting. Uh, so the checklist though are ultimately for quality time. That's the point. If you're all about getting tasks done, God be praised. But the task getting done need be in service of the people being loved because that's the point of human life. There's nothing beyond that.

[00:15:54]You don't get beyond loving people.

[00:15:57]That's just it. Okay. So then the rest of the book is basically intended to flesh out that claim. So the first chapter is specifically about telling the truth. And um my opinions on these matters are not especially popular.

[00:16:12][laughter] Sorry. Okay. I think things are silly, but never mind. Keep going, Gregory. Um, I just going to keep going. Here we go.

[00:16:22]So, you can only have communion on the basis of the truth.

[00:16:27]All right. So, the chances that you tell a lie and the other person tells a lie and those lies somehow overlap or correspond are basically zero. The only chance that you and the other have of coming together on the basis of a shared experience is if you are both willing to figure out what is and then to premise your life on the basis of what is. And I realize the confrontation with the truth is uncomfortable because we all come to a recognition at a certain point like oo I'm not that funny or like oo I'm not that attractive or like ooh I remember when I first began to recognize in other people that I was boring them like you can't unsee that [laughter] you know it's like you'd see it in the person's eyes you're like okay yep I'm boring you're like wow Wow, this is a great blessing. You know, I'm recognizing this now. Nobody told me this, you know, for like the past 18 Oh my gosh. Um, so we have to make hard hard confrontations with the truth of our lives. And it's like, woo, you know, sometimes we'd prefer not to, but it's always good to learn to develop that preference because it's only on the basis of the truth that we can really come together because we're always going to end up posturing and trying to trick other people into loving us until such time as we recognize, no, other people are actually capable of loving us as we are. And the reason that we have that confidence is because God is capable of loving us as we are because he made us how we are.

[00:18:00]a staggering truth. God doesn't love you because you're good. God loves you because he's good.

[00:18:08]Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the father of lights. You would not be were it not for his loving you. So we have to have a certain courage or fortitude in pursuing the truth. All right? Being patient with the truth, persevering in the truth because it's only on the basis of said truth that we can build a common life. So St. Thomas will say lying as opposed to the virtue of truthfulness is sinful or vicious in that one it perverts the faculty of speech. It uses the faculty of speech at cross purposes with its design. Now St. Thomas is no bumpkin. So he knows that we can use our faculty of speech in various ways. You know like I could say I gave a lecture at the St. Paul Center the other night and there were like a billion people there. My brothers are not going to be taken in into thinking that there were actually a billion people here.

[00:18:59]what they know that I'm saying is we were in a small room and we kind of half filled that small room and they're going to be like great. Um, right? So that's hyperbole and we can recognize hyperbole or like I could tell you a joke which might involve mild deception for instance but so long as you know that I'm working within the genre of jokeelling and you're like oh here comes the turn. Oh, there it is. That was mildly humorous. Um, right. You wouldn't be like you liar.

[00:19:26][laughter] you sick sick man. Um, right? Because you'd recognize it as the genre of jokeetelling. Or if I were, you know, a budding thespian and I were trying my hand at the uh acting arts and I was like, let me give you a good rendition of Slave from McBth, you know, like uh you wouldn't think like I think he's lost his mind. I think I think that man is and he's lying again. Um, right. You wouldn't think you'd just be, oh, he's play acting, you know, he's he he wasn't that good at the things to which he was consecrated by his vocation, so he's trying other things. He's worse at he's [laughter] he's worse at those things, but we wish him the best, you know. But you in each of those instances, you wouldn't accuse me of lying. To lie is you're speaking in the genre of I'm recounting the facts. And what you do is you speak, as St. Thomas says, against your mind so as to deceive. All right? you speak against your mind so as to deceive.

[00:20:25]And so in addition to perverting the faculty of speech, this also has a way by which of undermining our relationships and interactions. I don't know if you've ever come across people who lie frequently. All right? But it can be very destabilizing because you think to yourself, "Oo, this person said this thing, but I don't actually know if this thing is true."

[00:20:45]And on account of the fact that I don't actually know if this thing is true, I'm put in the very uncomfortable situation of either saying to this individual, uh, can you prove it and then I've effectively accused him of being a liar or being taken in by it and I'm worried that that's perhaps unjust, you know? So, it's like I teach I mean I teach at a seminary so everybody turns their work in on time, but like let's say I taught at a place where people didn't turn their work in on time. Let's somebody let's say somebody said, "I accidentally fell asleep at my desk while editing my final project and I woke up and it was 20 minutes late. Will you accept it 20 minutes late?" I have to trust that that person is telling the truth. But if the person continues to tell me wild story after wild story, I'll find it harder and harder to do so.

[00:21:30]And that just puts me in a strange like relationship. I don't want to accuse you of being a lot. You're not I don't It's just gross, right? So we should be steadfast on account of the fact that one this is what our faculty of speech is made for and two this is the only way that we can come together without suspicion or skepticism without the destabil destabilization of relationships and interactions which send us into a kind of corporate tail spin. So then people want to know do you mean always like always always and the answer is yes. Now mind you you're not responsible for always emptying your mind into the mind of another. So if I were to meet someone for the first time in that individual order to say like we'll get to this later. I don't really like small talk. So let's just get right to the goods. What medicines are you taking right now? I'd be like that is a very interesting question. And what I would try to do is uh without being too brutal on this individual who is clearly transgressive or simply aggressive. Um I try to be as charming as I could. It's like well wouldn't you like to know?

[00:22:31]Many people have offered me much money for my medicinal list, but it goes to the highest bidder, my friend. What are you willing to offer? You know, so I I try to play it off in somewhat humorous fashion, but that's like a weird question to ask. All right? So, I'm not responsible for telling that individual what it is that I take for medicine, you know? Uh even if it's a kind of cool exotic list of supplements, like, well, I do eat a bit of the toe of the noot every morning, you know? It's like, um, yeah. So, I might want to brag about the things that I take, but I'm not going to. So you're not responsible for emptying the contents of your mind into the mind of another. Um yeah, because many people are going to ask transgressive or aggressive questions which are just not appropriate for social discourse. And um you know like while I wouldn't say that transparency and discretion are themselves virtues, there's a relative excellence to both that we need to incorporate in ordinary conversation which is to say there's a time for revealing and there's a time for concealing and that's entirely appropriate. Okay. Uh so it's it's just good manners not to put people in the type of situation in which they have to make such choices. Uh but you get the idea. But let's say for instance, this is the classic example that someone knocks at your door. Let's say it's 1942. Let's say that you live in the Netherlands. Okay? Let's say that you're harboring Jews in your basement. And let's say the person knocking at your door is a Gestapo officer. Okay? Things got serious. Um and that individual says, "Do you have Jews in your basement?" Here is my moral evaluation of that situation. Some people will say, "You should definitely lie to that individual because it's the most charitable thing to do and because the individual asking doesn't have a right to it." I think there's problems with that type of argumentation. All right. I had a conversation up the hill um with Dr. Han and Father Dave and Dr. Martin, Regis Martin, and um he holds to this position and he is a wise man, much better studied than I am, much more learned than I am. And he just kind of like he's like, "Yeah, I I liked your book. Um, except this was dumb." And I was like, [laughter] he didn't say that. He is very gental.

[00:24:33]Uh, but he was like, "Do but it was the end of the episode and I was like, you are a venerable man and I respect you beyond compare, so I am not going to respond." Um, but here's my evaluation of the situation. All right. I don't think that we can make judgments as to who and who not. That's not a bad formulation. Excuse me. That is a bad formulation. Um, I don't think we can make judgments as to the exclusion of persons from the right to know in the sense that I don't think that we can say this individual on account of the fact that he's an aggressor can be lied to because he doesn't have a right to the truth. Because I think once you start making judgments of such a sort, you're effectively foreclosing on the possibility of that person's conversion.

[00:25:15]How is he going to convert? By access to the truth. So I think that we need to remain steadfast in a kind of yeah commitment to truthfulness because I think it's effectively to entrust the other with oneself and in the setting of that entrustment like there's real evangelical possibilities that arise overly complicated formulation but the basic idea is I don't think that we can rule people out or forclose on people as worthy of truth. Now mind you again I don't think that you're responsible for emptying the contents of your mind into his mind but a lot of things that you might be tempted to do I think basically amount to lying. So I don't think you can say no. All right, I think that's a lie. Nor do I think you can say the Jews are not far off, you know, which is true enough materially speaking, but formally speaking, you're intending to indicate like they are in the neighborhood, you know, uh, which is to say not in my basement, but they are in your basement.

[00:26:06]But I think you can do I think you have a variety of options in this instance.

[00:26:10]So, one would be evasion, like what I did with the individual who asks me my list of medicines. Just a kind of artful, humorous evasion. Obviously, it's 1942. It's the Netherlands. Not too much humor going around here. Um, but you could say something like, let's say you just vacuumed your house. Um, as it turns out, I just vacuumed my house. I am a little bit finicky about the uh cleanliness of the interior decor. So, I know that you are sometimes in the habit of entering houses. Um, were you to choose to enter this house, if you would kindly remove your boots, I would be very appreciative. But again, you're going to do what you're going to do, you know. So, am I serious or am I earnest about this? Not not especially. But I think that what you're trying to do is evade the type of situation in which you either lie or equivocate or refuse to answer in such a way that effectively reveals the location of said Jews. All right. I think you have a responsibility to shelter them because you said, "I'm going to shelter you." So, I think in charity, you do your best to preserve their lives. But I don't think that you should kill their your soul in order to save their bodies. Does that make sense?

[00:27:21]Now, this is going to be very much contrary to many of your sensibilities.

[00:27:24]I realize it's a somewhat unpopular thing, but you have other options. St. Thomas Aquinus will say for instance, you can shoot him.

[00:27:35][laughter] Love him for that. Okay. Yeah, you can shoot him because he's make this is an act of aggression where he's threatening the lives of those entrusted to your care and you can repel force with force and legitimate self-defense. All right.

[00:27:54]Right now, you might not just go straight for the killing. Um, but it would be appropriate to exercise a kind of forceful rebuff or to deploy a kind of forceful rebuff because that is proportionate. Those means are proportionate to the end of protecting another person's life whereas lying isn't. All right. So, this comes up for St. Thomas and secunda secund question 64 article 7. if you're looking for some homework. Um, he says, "Let's say that a certain individual named Richard is attacking another individual named Stephen."

[00:28:27]All right. Now, let's say that Richard is a crazy man and he's wielding like a katana and a lightsaber. And it's unclear to you whether it's a real lightsaber or one of those imitation lightsabers. You know, it seems very convincing. All right. So, these are both dealers of death. He says that you can in the circumstances deploy proportionate force as a way by which to ward him off because you're more responsible for your life than you are for his life. Okay? But he'll say yes, you can deploy proportionate force, but there are types of things that you can't do in order to save your life. All right? So he said like for instance, committing adultery to save your life, those aren't proportionate means to the end. So it's clear in repelling force by force, this is a self-defending act.

[00:29:11]Adultery, nope. Lying, nope. It's just the moral grammar doesn't add up. That's the point that he's making. All right.

[00:29:17]So, you can evade, you you can kill um or St. Augustine.

[00:29:24]So, there are two treatises that St. Augustine wrote apppropo of the theme.

[00:29:27]Damnio and Contraandachio. And then St. Thomas addresses this in the sakunda sukund I want to say in like questions 109 and 110. Um and St. Augustine says there was an instance in which this is during the Donatus crisis. bad guys came to the good guys and said give up the people whom we want to kill. The bishop of Gost was involved in this and apparently he got out ahead of it and said I know where they are the people whom you seek and I will not tell you where they are. All right, it just takes the mystery out of the situation. And so what happened? Well, they imprisoned him and he suffered a great deal but his heroic patience and perseverance converted his capttors.

[00:30:07]All right. So I think the point to emphasize at this stage of the game is that we are not just like engineers of reality pulling at the levers to try to produce certain results or outcomes.

[00:30:19]That's beyond us. We're agents of providence which means that we have to trust that God loves us, that God provides us, that he will not be outdone in generosity. And the only way in which we can work within the bounds of his pro providence is to do so uprightly. Now let's say that you do lie and say no, there are no Jews in my basement. That is a venial sin. St. Thomas identifies three generic types of sins, excuse me, lies. So the first is um would be like a pernicious lie or a malicious lie. This is when you lie to hurt someone.

[00:30:49]Generically speaking, that's a mortal sin. And then you have an afficious lie which is a lie tell someone. He said this is generically speaking a venial sin. There's another lie that he refers to called the Jakos lie which is the lie that you tell for the fun of lying. It's like holy smokes, did you see that beetle? It's like nah that wasn't a beetle. you know, it's just like you just make stuff up because you want to see people whatever. Um, so don't do that either. Um, but when it comes to afficious lies, the idea is that they're venial sins. Now, you know, venial sins in St. Thomas's language are lies only, excuse me, they're only sins after a manner. So, mortal sins are sins in the strict sense, whereas venial sins are sins only after a manner. All right? So like the types of things that you can do to deal with venial sin include blessing yourself with holy water, saying the Our Father, saying the Confederate at the beginning of mass, receiving holy communion, performing a pious act. I'm not saying that venial sins don't matter. They kind of matter, but they only kind of matter, if that makes sense. All right? So if you were to lie, you would repent of that in your heart, bless yourself with holy water, and you might move on. But the fact is I don't think that we should change our moral taxonomy in such a way as to encourage people to lie. Because when we do that then the risk is that they become liars.

[00:32:06]Many of you have probably played the game mafia or secret Hitler. You know that the hangover from those games can be like hours long. It can take you a while to like look your friends in the eyes again. It's like you told me that you were a town person and I was like it can be very destabilizing even whilst playing a game.

[00:32:25]All right. Now, what would it look for us to like train ourselves up to the point where the Gestapo officer comes and we're like, I got this, bro. Nah.

[00:32:33][laughter] And I was like, that's some it's going to take us some time to get that good at lying because these people ask that question of individuals all day long and they are trained killers. What do you think the chances that you're going to dupe them? Low. But I don't think that we should become liars.

[00:32:49]I think that we should become truth tellers. the type of people who can't be otherwise or do otherwise then tell the truth. Okay, last two little things um in the course of our conversations. I'd like to talk a little bit about the art of conversation and then talk a little bit about building each other up in the context of that conversation. So, in talking about the art of conversation, you might think to yourself to this point I would roughly characterize the book as a work of moral theology. And now, Father Gregory is talking about the art of conversation. That's like kind of self-helpy slash kind of I don't know what it is, honestly. Um, but it's not the type of thing that I would class as moral theology. Like, are there virtues and vices of conversation? I thought it was just a matter of temperament or constitution or weird idiosyncrasy or eclectic things picked up along the way.

[00:33:36]It's like we don't typically think about the art of conversation as something that we can work on or something in which we can improve, but it is. When you check in with Aristotle in the Nicameckian ethics, he has a much broader notion as to what constitutes virtue. He thinks everything that works towards our perfection as individuals and members of a community is salient.

[00:33:56]It's not unimportant. So like as Christians, we tend to think like, okay, faith worth it, hope worth it, charity worth it, maybe like chastity worth it, temperance probably worth it. But then beyond that, we don't think of too terribly many more virtues. Um, but St. Thomas lists like 55 in the sakunda sagunda. He's he just keeps going and going and then there's one in the turty pars that'll be a bonus question at the end of this presentation if you know it.

[00:34:21]You'll leave here with a signed copy of training the tongue and growing beyond sense of speech. Um okay so St. Thomas also cares about these things. So he wouldn't say like hey that guy's he's a great guy you know he's got faith he's got hope he's got charity he's got chastity he's got temperance. He um hasn't showered in 18 months. Uh he's got really really rank oral hygiene. He dominates conversation like an absolute monster. And I see him park his car all over campus and there's like 18 parking tickets on his windshield. But like great guy, great guy, great guy. That like that wouldn't make sense for him because those things are all pertinent.

[00:34:56]Those things are all pertinent to our moral life. And so the art of conversation is pertinent to our moral life. We should try to become good conversationalists.

[00:35:05]All right. So here are a couple of things that I think about conversation.

[00:35:09]one is um okay so let's say you got a conversation between two guys let's say one is named Robert and one is named Donald okay now let's say that Robert is probably he's like let's say he's a little more gifted as a conversationalist okay um now what's he trying to do at the outset one I think he's got access to small talk all right two he's going to ask questions and three he's going to listen for answers but I think ultimately where he's moving in this conversation is towards like verbal adventure towards towards mutual discovery towards an experience of deepened communion. All right, that's where he wants to go because that's the point of a conversation. The point is not to posture. All right, or to see if this person could help you get a chic academic placement at the university of, you know, pays for stuff. Um, like I don't think that the point of conversation is not to use, it's ultimately to enjoy as we are intended to enjoy those with whom God has placed us here on earth. All right. So, small talk, I think small talk is totally appropriate. totally appropriate because I think it's a matter of performing the communion which is available to you at present. And sometimes there just isn't that much available to us at present. I haven't met you. You haven't met me.

[00:36:18]We're probably not going to get down into like super nitty-gritty details, at least not at the outset. But if I hear in your voice a Mid-Atlantic accent, I'm going to be like, "Oo, I bet you this person is from Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey. And I bet you we have similar thoughts about fresh produce, the best sports teams on God's green earth, and um hatred coming from other regions of the world. Um you know, so like I'm going to I'm going to be like, "Oo, where are you from?" And that person's going to be like, "Dude, I'm from Delaware County." I'm be like, "Oh." [laughter] [sighs] I'm going to be pumped out of my mind.

[00:36:54]And I'll be like, "Dude, I'm from Bucks County." He's going to be like, "You are a country bumpkin." I'm like, "I know."

[00:36:59]Um right. Right? And then we're going to talk about oh we're going to talk about all kinds of things. But the point of a conversation is to start with the simple stuff. You know people start with weather for a reason. They start with place of origin for a reason. They start with major of study for a reason because they're just trying to see like who you are, what you do, what you're interested in. So then that can become an entree to things of more substantial sharing. All right. So I think that we should look for more substantial sharing. Again, we're not trying to invade. Um we're not trying to like Yeah.

[00:37:29]uh like present ourselves to another person in the midst of his solitude and be like, "Oh, hello. I'm here." Um, right? Like we should have a certain respect for the solitude of the other, for the secrecy or the privacy of the other. But nevertheless, we're looking to share our lives and to have that sharing reciprocated. So, I think small talk is good. The next thing is asking good questions. A lot of people, they don't they don't really focus on this too terribly much, but asking good questions can be a real art and it can be a real delightful way by which to draw people out. Um, it can take some work, but like here's an example of what I think is a bad question. What is your favorite movie? It's like, oh, pressure-filled question. This person probably has like cinema preferences himself. Uh, they're probably well-developed. If he's asking a question like this, I probably should come up with something that is both visually gripping, sufficiently arty as to kind of like interest a philosophically or theologically minded man, but not so a feat as to um yeah, kind of isolate me potentially. So, it's like, oh gosh, oh gosh, what am I going to say? What am I, you know, it's like, holy smoking Josephine, you know, I don't think we need to think about it in that great a detail. Like a an example of a better question. Um, what's a movie you've seen in like the past few months that's kind of surprised you? you know that you can answer that a billion different ways. Uh the most recent movie that I've watched is the movie Tangled, which I love. Um I have a friend who entered the Order of Preachers the year after I did and he was once driving on the highway and it was super backed up for some inscrable reason. So he just pulled off and watched a matinea on a Thursday like 110, you know, like a grown man. Um and he watched Tangle and he said, "I just wept the whole way through. I just wept the whole way through, especially the bar scene." Um and uh he went for his vocation interviews very shortly thereafter and for whatever reason he was just singularly moved I think we could say by the Holy Spirit um to testify to his experience. So like one of the friars asked him like what do you what do you want out of the vocation and he basically said like I'm summarizing I just watched this movie Tangled and I want to love like that and uh as you might imagine this like one 75-year-old Dominican's looking at him like what's wrong with this dude?

[00:39:38][laughter] Well, then sitting next to him was a Dominican who served for a long time at this university, Father Giles Dimmick. Um, yeah, a beautiful man with a beautiful soul. And he paused and he said, "I saw too." [laughter] And then he said, "I cried [laughter] and cried and cried."

[00:40:00]So he was admitted entrance. He is a priest of the province. Okay. Um, [laughter] so, so to ask good questions as a way by which to see like what's this person thinking about? How's this person feeling? How is this person kind of viewing reality or entering into reality? Because that I think holds an interest often enough like we find ourselves in conversation just waiting for the other person to stop speaking so that we can start speaking because we treat it as something that's like agonistic, you know, like competitive or comparative. That's nonsense, right?

[00:40:30]Like we are surrounded by interesting people. But in order to gain access to their interest or the way in which they hold interest, we need to inquire. We need to take an interest. So my suspicion is that when we're bored, it's probably because we're being boring. All right? Those people aren't there to entertain us. They're there to be encountered. But that means we need to facilitate the encounter. All right? So a little bit of small talk, asking good questions, and then listening for good answers. I think sometimes we think of listening as dead time, especially when the person with whom we're speaking is a blatherbox. But that's not the majority of the time.

[00:41:06]Listening done well can be really generative. You know the difference between talking to somebody who listens well and talking to somebody who doesn't listen well. Even like little verbal cues when people say like, "Oh yeah, or I listen to this one podcast. I'm like a weird person who likes learning languages, isn't good at learning languages, but likes learning languages.

[00:41:22]It puts me in conflict with myself." But I listen to this German podcast host by this awesome lady and she's just like her the way in which she listens is like very tender. It's like very clearly affectionate and she cares about the people with whom she's speaking and she never interrupts them, you know, and that doesn't make her like a victim or a doormat. It just makes her beautiful.

[00:41:41]Um, so I think that those are just some recommendations for conversation. And I would say things to navigate around would be imbalance on the one hand and then indelicacy on the other. in balance. It's like so at the outset, if you're kind of stewarding or the custodian of the conversation, then you're probably going to talk a little bit more to try to get things going, but you're looking to get each person to contribute in the way that he or she is well disposed to contribute. So, you're looking for people to exercise their agency to kind of throw their hat in the ring and more. Some people are going to be more introverted and some people are going to be more extroverted. So it doesn't have to look like if there are four people each speaks 25% of the time but it should be if not equal equitable right it should be in some way shape or form balanced so that each person has a sense of his or her agency and feels enlivened by animated by the conversation but we shouldn't be constantly doing mental calculus okay you've spoken this much and you've spoken that much so I need to arrange things and ask you a direct question so that you speak I mean that can be part of it but that should be at the beginning we're hoping to attain to a kind of conversational flow and often The way in which we can do that best is by listening well. The time that we spend listening will settle people down, give them a greater security, a certainty, and a confidence that they are heard, that they don't need to run roughshod over other participants in the conversation to get a word in edgewise, that their contributions are welcome, that you delight in them. Okay. Last thing I'd like to talk about is um gossip. Now, I'm not going to encourage anyone to wear a gossip bridal. It's been uh recommended at times in the 15th, 16th, and 17th century, but not in the 21st. Um, but I want to talk about gossip in a in such a way not so as to encourage a certain scrupulosity, but to clarify the moral concepts, so that way we're able to be yet more free in our exercise of speech rather than bound up and terrified. Okay. So, [snorts] we're going to talk a little bit about insult and then detraction, calumny, and then whispering and then derision, mockery, and then we'll finish up with gossip.

[00:43:37]Okay. So, insult is when I say that you're a stinky person to your face. All right? Now, detraction is when I say true things about you behind your back in a way that ruins your reputation.

[00:43:49]Calumny is when I say false things about you behind your back in a way that ruins your reputation. Whispering, the word that St. Thomas uses is ciseratio is when I I deploy detraction or calumny as a way by which specifically to ruin your relationships. All right? To break up your friendships. And then derision or mockery is when I basically make fun of you to lower you in the eyes of others.

[00:44:13]All right? As a way by which specifically to undermine your dignity or your standing in the community. And then gossip is usually a term taken for bad speech told when other persons aren't present. And usually it's not so much as a matter of like I want to hurt you. More so it's a matter of I need something to talk about so I may as well talk about you. So, I'd say that often times when we lapse into these speech, these these types of sins of speech, it's because we've been hurt and we're trying to hurt back. You know, like you're in conversation with somebody and they snub you. So, you break off into another little conversation pod and you're like, I mean, like that gal, right? Like totally dumb. She's always snubbed, but like she whatever, right?

[00:44:50]Am I right? You know, it's like you're just trying to get back on equal footing because you feel like you've been lowered. And so you're willing to engage in crash speech or in disedifying um you know just hurtful speech because you want to hurt the individual. But I think oftenimes it's just because we don't have anything else to talk about or at least the topics of conversation with which we ought be interested don't really hold interest for us. And there can be various reasons for that. But I suspect it's because rather than being artful in our cultivation of communion or being genuinely interested in things that merit human attention, we are just pursuing entertainment or distraction or addiction. And our interior lives have dried up. And so we see that there are people over here which have a kind of communion and we want to be part of their group. And we realize that in order to be part of their group, we have to tender their currency. And their currency is people's reputations, people's good names. And so we're willing to share whatever juicy tidbit, whatever juicy morsel we picked up along the way so that we can gain admission because we just so desperately want to be part of a group. So it's often done in an idleness of spirit but motivated by whatever a desire to fit in. So then when it comes to these things, so with respect to insult, often enough insult comes out because we're angry and we feel like we have no other means whereby to address the situation. In that instance, I'd say we need to cultivate good boundaries. And when there are people in our lives who transgress or aggress, the only way in which to communicate our boundaries is to do so with our behavior. Our words don't really do too terribly much. And we often act out inordinately or excessively when we feel like we have to use our words. So that's just a brief word about insult. More on detraction because this one can be tough because technically you're saying true things.

[00:46:32]Now, shouldn't you share true things?

[00:46:36]Well, there's a way in which yes and a way in which no. Because people have a right to their reputation because a reputation is very painstakingly won and very easily lost. All right? Very painstakingly won and very easily lost.

[00:46:51]And for many people in many professions, their reputation is their livelihood. So you probably come across Shane Smith who is a comedian who recently converted to the Catholic faith. When he converted, you know, like let's say he had a billion followers on Instagram. his following went from a billion to like 400,000 overnight. Um, and people came at him from every imaginable direction in really savage ways. And he thought that like he was just going to be out of the business. He wasn't going to be able to do comedy anymore because so many of his relationships and interactions had been complicated by his conversion. Now, he's still doing comedy, which is awesome, but it wasn't just wasn't evident that that was going to be the case. So, like his reputation was damaged for noble reasons. Now imagine that somebody's reputation were damaged for less noble reasons. So the basic idea is okay let's say that this individual isn't the best guy in the whole wide world. Do you need to tell everybody that? No. Might you tell your girlfriend who is about to date him?

[00:47:46]Yes.

[00:47:49]Does that make sense?

[00:47:51]So like you don't need to tell everybody everything. [clears throat] But it does make sense to tell certain people some things, especially if it pertains to their health, happiness, holiness. All right? In certain religious orders. So, we're having a kind of like me too moment in the church right now as concerns spiritual abuse. I don't know if you've heard these conversations come up, but it is the case that in certain religious communities, there is what we refer to as spiritual abuse. It's usually a perversion of the virtue of obedience. And religious superiors will often forbid religious inferiors or their subjects to talk amongst themselves because they want to control the lines of communication. So it's all top to bottom or bottom to top. There's no kind of horizontal communication.

[00:48:31]It's all vertical as a way by which to ensure absolute fidelity. All right? So sometimes it can actually be healthy to check in with your peers and be like, "Am I losing my mind or is this insane?"

[00:48:43]And the person will probably corroborate your experience and say, "Oh, no. It's it's insane." and you're like, "Woo, okay, cool, great." Um, so what are we going to do about it? So, I think it can be appropriate, especially in these types of dynamics, to have access to sane, wise counsel, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we talk to everybody about everything. It means having people on whom we can rely, who are wise, right? Who are holy, who have been through it, suffered through it, and that will give us good advice. So I think like if you find you need to vent in a certain situation, that doesn't mean like, okay, I'm venting, so right now I can say every ugly thing ever known to man. No, no, no. Basically, when we work through our problems with other individuals when they're absent, we should do so with an eye to communion. And that means that we need to be able to do so with friends who are themselves upright, morally noble, who are going to hold us to that standard.

[00:49:31]Not like you're being a little bit, but just like, okay, like where are we going with this? Are we looking to repair the relationship? All right. Are we looking to end the relationship? But let's be clear, where are we going with this? Um, so somebody who can hear you out, but somebody who can kind of help you to work through whatever it is um, in a way that's up building or in a way that's edifying. So I think that the call in the chapter is to edification.

[00:49:53]Basically, that we are co-responsible and that we have a capacity to elicit from each other a real beautiful or wonderful contribution. The friend, the office of the friend is to kind of coax the good out of the other. not in a patronizing way or condescending way but like to welcome from the other what it is that he or she is well suited to contribute.

[00:50:12]So I think it's with that understanding that I return then to the image of the garden with which we conclude. Namely that we have the opportunity in our shared lives all right living at the horizon of creation to beautify or to make wonderful the relationships and interactions which God has entrusted us because we're not alone in cultivating the garden. We cultivate the garden together and that gives us just a precious appreciation of the beauty of this human life with which we have been entrusted or with which we have been blessed. So while at times it can seem burdensome like a kind of dread responsibility, know this, it's not just a mere matter of rooting out sin or crowding out vice so much as it is a building each other up on the way to the heavenly kingdom in which we will most definitely speak. For the praise of God will sound forth from every throat. It will sound forth from every tuneful voice. So we need to train our tongues so that way we can train our voices so we can be about the serious business of worship unto ages of ages. Thank you.

[00:51:11][applause]