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 Deep, 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 be. To become. Father Pine, welcome to the deep. Hey, thanks so much for having me. It is great to have you here. We are very excited. We are talking about your new book, Training the Tongue. This is a sick cover.

I thought I picked up a Gene Simmons memoir or something. Exactly. Many people do think that. We are going for Gene Simmons memoir vibe. Yeah, did you design the cover? I don't design anything. I have no aesthetic sense whatsoever. For me... So, you became a Dominican, is that... Exactly. Oh, that's not fair. Fra Angelica was a Dominican. No, he crushed it. Blessed James of Ulm, also, really great at stained glass. He might be on the lookout for some of his compositions.

No, so, I had a conversation with the editor, and she was like, do 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, 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's fresh. It's funky. That is great. It is 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 the book?

I love this. Thank you for this causal analysis. Yeah, we could figure this out, right? Anyway, you were the efficient cause of the book writing. But 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 3, 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. Catholics. And you describe the book in your intro as a remedy to the discouragement set by lofty standards and frequent faults. So, why this book today? I'll pitch it to you.

What do you hope for people to take away from this, if not the admonition of James 3? Yeah, I think the basic idea, I am 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.

The Father and 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 matter is that he's poised to save us. He's ready to save us.

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 is somewhat banal. Some of the things that I say are banal, but it is whatever.

Banal is a great word, although here on the East Coast, we are taught to say banal, so maybe that is a little different training of our tongue. But let us pull it back a little bit. Let us define some terms here. So, when you say, I am going to help you train your tongue, can you define that? So, we think of animals, the beasts, right? The beasts have certain sorts of language and communication, right? And we as humans have We can train our voices to sing loud, the belt like a Broadway star, or pronounce words in different languages, but you are 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, insofar as the issue from the spiritual powers of our soul, our intellect, and will call for a certain embodiment. So, we are not like spirits dragging bodies around. We are inspirited bodies, or embodied spirits, however best you can 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.

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 that. Okay, I got that. A cultural thought here that I think in our current culture, there's sort of a...

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 practical tips that you have, that there's somehow something inauthentic or fake about 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 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 fully authentic way. And it seems like a lot of that is, well, it has to be spontaneous, right? Like, the human good and authenticity, we equate with spontaneity and a lack of study on our actions or our words. So, how would you sell this book? To someone who is totally sold on the Disney princess version of, I need to be my true self, so don't tell me how to talk.

Sure, yeah. I mean, people can do whatever they darn well please, but let's think about Frozen, all right? So, for instance, Anna. And Elsa are just kicking it as small children, having a gay old time, and it is 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. Yeah, exactly. That causes some concern in the family.

And then they go to the troll, and they are 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, which I would say is a bad interpretation of the Trolls' Council.

So, I think, like, you know, the problem isn't with the rules. Yeah, the problem is 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 would be like, woof. No, I have one of those.

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, 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... I like it. All right, so the first place you start with these sort of guidelines is just starting with the truth, right? Truth-telling. First chapter. So, we are 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 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 Waduz-Lichtenstein to Montreux, which is on the north side of Lac-Lamont. 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 po-po, Peter, and imagining that this is, in fact, a fulfilling meal, when truth be told, we're just making stuff up.

So, I was trying to find a way by which to quote Rufio, but I could not do it seamlessly. I am sure we can find an opportunity for you sometime in the next half hour. I will try and keep that in mind. All right, I will pitch it to you. Thanks. I did want to ask, because you are talking about always speaking in conformity with reality, and you bring up the classic example. It's always like the gotcha example, the people when they're 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, this is a real-life scenario. This really happened to people, and they had to make a choice. Can you tell a lie? I watched a debate that you had with Dr. Janet Smith. I think it was on Pines with Aquinas four or five years ago, and you were debating this question.

Using that scenario, that this is sort of the extreme that people often go to, I just wanted to touch on that, and how is this 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, life typically unfolds in high-pressure moments. It typically unfolds in less pressure-y line segments, if that makes sense.

So, I think that, like, yeah, people bring all of their moral intuitions to bear on this one particular moment of a highly contentious sort, and then they're like, see, that proves fill-in-the-blank. When 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 Nazis 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. All right, so already it is 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 is fine to deploy evasion. It is not fine to deploy lying, but even if you do deploy lying, it is an officious lie and it is a venial sin, so you should not worry too terribly much about the fact. Not to say that we should welcome venial sins into our heart and give them a nice little resting.

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, these guys ask this question to person after person after person.

They're going to be able to detect a lie. 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, bro, 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-rang. Which is one of Rufio's favorite things to say. Well, good job. You really did work it in there. That is incredible. Yeah, no, seamlessly. Yeah, wow. Talk about truth-telling.

So, I wanted to ask, though, because I think that you talk about having a definite roadmap you want to get from point A to point B, and this long Camino that you are taking, which sounds great in Europe. I would love to do that.

I think that in today's... Digital worlds, 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, think of Hilaire Belloc's Path to Rome. Like, all he had was the map and the word of the people who lived along the route. And today, with the advent of all this sort of virtual reality, quote-unquote, it can be really...

It's distressing if you think, okay, well, I'm going to be someone who always only speaks the truth. You're like, well, maybe I just don't ever say anything, but I wanted to ask you, as a millennial, what are some 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 is 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 bearers. They tend to conceive of them more as a matter 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 bearers, 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 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 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 drawing 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 posed, 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 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 marshalling 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 you And then I set it forward, and then I got this, and then the question is, am I able to take it in stride?

And I think the answer just, it has to be yes, but I don't think that we're supposed to approach our toothbrush and say, is toothpaste actually good for my teeth, or is this all just 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 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 in 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 at all helpful. No, that is really helpful, and I think that one of the… Hardest barriers I find to break through to younger people today is that the lack of credulousness. Am I saying that right? The lack of credulity. I think that is really interesting what you said about Zoomers sort of taking everything as this is an advertisement. They are trying to get something out of me, and maybe some of what is said is true, but the motive behind it is somehow to sell me something.

Let us 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 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fancy that. They put out stats. They recently dropped this 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.

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 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, I think it's fine. All right, so best tips on conversation for a lonely generation.

So, I think my first encouragement is... That it's not about winning, it's about trying. I think that... Yeah, there is some measure of anxiety regarding assessment. There has always been anxiety regarding assessment, but it seems to me that that anxiety is increasing with each generation, and I think it is in part a monster of our own making because we have 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 tailoring our instruction, or we're tailoring our curation of content to those standards, and so people now have a very clear sense of when they are succeeding or when they are failing, and 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 that St. John Paul II talked about the economy. He says, like, is 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 in religious life when you take account of original sin and its effects, and when you circumscribe it within a rule of life, which is evangelically informed. Okay, good. But then he says, all right, 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, a right to work, because there are 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 in wheels, but so that those persons can work out their dignity in the way in which God intends them to, which is through work. 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, dot, dot, dot. You get it. So I think that's it.

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 out on top of. 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 lunk 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 is one of those things that if it is worth doing, then it is worth doing poorly. I mean, to quote or paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, because it is a human thing, and I think a lot of our human life is going to be done poorly, but it is still worthwhile, because it is what we are made for.

So, I would 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. Is that the only way? I have a hard time with small talk. 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? It is a little awkward, and so I liked how you opened 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 at 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 time as we know that this is a person whom I can trust and with whom I have a mutual interest, like a shared interest. But communion still needs to be performed at every stage of a relationship.

Because that is just what human beings are for. So, I think that small talk is just superficial performance of communion, but it can give unto a more profound performance of communion, and it also just helps people to enter in, and I think that part of that is 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 is 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 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.

While encouragement is good, sometimes it is also encouraging to see the ugliness of what you are trying to avoid as well. So, I did want to turn to those verbal sins, the sort of anti-communion streak for a little bit. I wanted to talk about gossip in particular.

It is a sort of 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 the anti-communion, so eventually self-destructive and destructive of those relationships.

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, you know, 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, and 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, that gal over there, totally nuts, right?

Am I right? Am I right? Because 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 at stake in 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 prey 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 in tendering the currency of admission to some group, some inset. So, it's like these people are cool. Like the mean girls, the plastics? Yeah, for example. Yeah, Wednesdays we wear 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 that I have at present, I want this fell communion, which is a mockery, really, of the meaningful communion. But nevertheless, it's something that I really want, really deeply want.

I think Mean Girls is a great example of that. Um, yeah, yeah. All right, talk to me about... Correcting others. So, I'm like a confirmed choleric, 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, what's the mantra? Like, be kind, or practice kindness, which means just affirm everyone all the time, or you're a very bad person.

So, help me, like, find the mean between the extremes of myself and my Neighbors 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 is so turbo. Do not return to House of Studies with the Hispanic woman. Yeah, right, exactly. This is like an extended conversation as to what to do with her kids.

Yeah, the affirmations on the one hand, and the corrections on the other hand. I was like, you are just living life, dialed up to 11, as they say, and this is Spinal Tap. So, respect. But 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 in justice, you're the mom, they're the kids. Justice, boom, send it. Correction in 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 tender a correction, it's not because 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.

We stand in the way to our ongoing conversion. Obviously, there's charity in the background of your corrections and justice, but you're really responsible for proffering those corrections because you're basically 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 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 office of a friend to kind of coax the good out of the beloved, or to like elicit, adduce 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 at work in you that's beautiful, And it hasn't yet taken definitive shape.

Without all that can sound patronizing or 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 in 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 three male groups, it seems like correction is, it's really hard for women to, like, To offer correction to one another, 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 find that fraternal correction can ever, like, leads to sort of rifts in the community? 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. Unless, I don't know if he gets reassigned elsewhere, but... Yeah, yeah. So, like men, so whereas like 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 kind of neglect.

The relationship or the interaction. So, if somebody overdoes fraternal correction, then that guy whom he corrects will just draw away from him, and that is really hard in small communities. It is kind of doable in big communities. Obviously, it is not something to which we should aspire, but you can see how. And truth be told, sometimes it is just nice to have space from another individual. 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 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 from it 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 is 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 persons themselves, how well disposed they are to forgiveness, whether or not they're beseeching the grace of God so that they can heal and grow, etc. There are going to be some things which are seemingly unreconcilable, but I think if you give guys time and then bring them back together, 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 can acknowledge 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, Godsplaining 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, I want to get into that, but first, a question that I got recently at a conference, a woman asked.

She's like, well, you know, life is really serious, and 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 horrible things people do. And the question she asked was, you know, how do you maintain cheer? How do you stay cheerful and joyful when your head's in this stuff all the time? So, before we get to... And you responded, I don't. You're like, I'm so depressed. I fooled you.

But yeah, I wanted to get your take on that first, before we get to cultivating wit, like cultivating just cheer and authentic Christian joy when life is very serious sometimes. 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. So, like, prudence, good activities. Or I should say, like, good thoughts regarding actions. Justice, good activities, thinking about relationships and whatever else.

There's temperance, you know, like good food, drink, 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 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 sufficient that one not regret his choice, or it's sufficient 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. Oh, good.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 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 in to that sadness, whether you wallow in that sadness. 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. So, when somebody dies, it is 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 are going to have derivative thoughts of self-accusation because you are going to feel like you are forgetting this person because the memories have become less potent.

But that is 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 end, that 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 fact, too, that we're Imago Dei, right? So, we're made in the image and likeness of God, and we have that component of us as well, which sort of brings me, 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 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 Mr. Collins and Pride and Prejudice, and he's like, I examine ways to speak so that I am more witty and acceptable. But it's not quite that. This is actually 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 imdb.com, and memorize some of the insults that Peter Pan slings at Rufio, including, you lewd, crude, rude, bag of pre-chewed food, dude. That is devastating. You do not come back to that. I am writing this down. I do not think a 44-year-old woman should really let that one out. Yeah, maybe not. You've got to know thyself.

Maybe not Rufio for me. Maybe someone else. I'll find my... 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 always had all this plaque buildup below my bottom row, because it's 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 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 would be really bad. Well, maybe it is not really bad. It would be bad. It would probably put a damper on your efforts to evangelize, to be honest. I think so. Exactly.

Yeah. So, I think when it comes to cultivating wit, it is a matter of making life pleasant. So, life can tend to be painful or sad, and it needn't. Not in the sense that we are always fleeing pain or fleeing sadness, but in the sense that we are 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, wit helps us to do so for ourselves and for each other, and it also makes conversation a welcome space in which people can repose and delight and et cetera, and so I think it's worthwhile.

We're not all funny. I mean, people are like, oh, be funny, and I'm like, that's my kryptonite. I can't be funny when someone says to be funny. Hold on, let me get my Rufio quote out. Yeah, exactly. But, I think that we should seek to be a kind of lighthearted, or otherwise, levitatious, I'm making words up now, blessing to each other. So, it doesn't mean we're necessarily memorizing jokes, but it means that we're seeking ways by which to facilitate a conversation of a less burdensome 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, there's a tautology there. Is that what that was? I don't know. I got one more.

You got one more. Another Peter insult to Rufio. If I'm a maggot burger, why don't you just eat me? It's incredible. You two-toned, zebra-headed, slime-coated, pimple-farming, paramecium brain. It's just, it's some of the finest insults you'll ever encounter. It is amazing. I mean, that is like Shakespearean levels, right? It is. Yeah, you scurvy knave, not you. Who wrote that script? That was incredible.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about elevated speech. Indeed. All right, so final point. Let us bring it up from Rufio to God. Because the whole point of all human speech, ultimately, communion with each other for the sake of communion 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 know about how speech will be in heaven, and how should that affect how we train our tongues, the barbells, here on earth?

Exactly. Are Gene Simmons barbells? Short answer is 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. We'll be facilitated directly by the gift of God, and so it won't necessarily involve the use of our tongues or use of the faculty of speech as we are presently inclined to do so, 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 delayed gratification of a discontinuous sort.

St. Catherine of Siena 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 work 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. Oh, thanks. I'm encouraged. Oh, good. That's the whole point. Full circle, encouragement. So, Father, this has been a 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 any time of the year, for those of us who speak.

Which is all of us. Father Gregory Pine, thank you so much. My joy. Thanks for having me on. If you liked this interview, please be sure to subscribe to the LOOPcast. We bring you a new episode of The Deep every Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern.