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Oct. 15, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
44:39
Ep. 349 - Lebron Is The Real Victim

Today on the show, Lebron James identifies the real victim in this whole China/NBA thing: himself. We'll discuss the continued cowardice of the NBA and its players. Also, Columbus statues are predictably defaced by idiots who don't understand history. And GQ is "redefining" masculinity. We'll see what the "new masculinity" looks like. Date: 10-15-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Well, LeBron James, who I have been a fan of as a basketball player anyway, he had remained conspicuously silent about the whole China thing up until last night, and then finally he decided to open up and share some thoughts about it.
And listen, we use words like amazing way too often, and so much so that I think the word has lost all meaning, but his response to The controversy with China and the NBA.
It really is amazing for a number of reasons.
So right off the bat here, I want to play this clip for you of what LeBron James said last night.
And it is, well, just watch.
We all talk about this freedom of speech.
Yes, we all do have freedom of speech.
But at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you're not thinking about others and you're only thinking about yourself.
So, I don't believe, I don't want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl, with Daryl Moret, but I believe he wasn't educated on the situation at hand.
And he spoke.
And so many people could have been harmed.
Not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.
So, just be careful what we tweet and we say and what we do.
Even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that too.
Alright, so there you go.
Now, this is sort of beside the point, but what is a... He said he doesn't want to have a word... I think I heard him right.
He said, I don't want to have a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey.
He doesn't want to get into a word or sentence feud.
Daryl Morey is the assistant coach in Houston who originally sent a tweet supporting the pro-democracy protesters in China, but LeBron wants to avoid a word feud.
So he doesn't want to play Scrabble with Daryl, is what he's saying?
I don't even know what that means.
But that's not the headline here, I suppose.
The headline is, everything else he said, which we'll get to in just one minute.
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Okay, so LeBron, while trying to avoid a word and sentence feud, is that why he was rambling incoherently?
So as to avoid forming a complete sentence?
That way you don't have a sentence feud?
I don't know.
But LeBron says that coming out in support of democracy and freedom in communist China is a sign that you're not educated.
He's not educated.
He hasn't been educated on the wonders of communism.
Well, he hasn't been re-educated, I suppose, is what he means to say.
And he cautions that, you know, exercising your free speech can have ramifications.
Sorry, what he actually said was, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen, as opposed to the ramifications for the positive that can happen.
There are ramifications for the negative that can happen.
And remember, LeBron James is the one telling the rest of us to get educated.
Okay.
LeBron also says that Murray's pro-freedom stance caused a lot of harm.
Financial harm, of course.
He mentioned that first.
Because that's what this is really all about.
But also emotional and spiritual harm.
LeBron is emotionally and spiritually harmed by the people in China who don't want to be oppressed.
Basically, what LeBron is saying to those folks is, hey guys, you're really hurting my feelings here.
You're really hurting my feelings.
Why don't you think about me, is the question.
And I'm trying to sell shoes over here, and you guys are whining about oppression.
It's just, you're harming my spirit, bro.
My spirit is totally harmed right now.
Then LeBron sent some follow up tweets after that little powwow with the reporters.
And he said, here's one of his tweets, he said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Okay, so it sounds like he's, I guess he's seen the light and is, wait, no, sorry.
Sorry, I'm mistaken.
No, that's a tweet that he sent last year.
Okay, he sent that last year unrelated to any of this.
Last year, he was saying, you can't have injustice anywhere.
It harms justice everywhere.
But he seems to have changed his mind, I guess, on the issue of injustice.
He's now, before he was anti-injustice, and now he's sort of pro-injustice.
And he's saying, hey, you know what?
Injustice isn't so bad.
Maybe there's something to be said for it.
Injustice is underrated.
That's his position now.
Here's what LeBron really tweeted last night.
He said, let me clear up the confusion.
I do not believe there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet.
I'm not discussing the substance.
Others can talk about that.
My team and this league just went through a difficult week.
I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others.
And I believe nobody stopped and considered what would happen.
Could have waited a week to send it.
Now when I first read this, you know, I read that first sentence, uh, let me clear up the confusion.
And I thought he was going to do some damage control and kind of backpedal a little bit where he's saying, okay, let me clear up the confusion.
And you think, oh, okay, well now he's going to, but then no, you keep reading and, and, uh, and oh my Lord, he's still complaining about the tweet.
Dear God, he's still going on about this tweet.
He's, he's sticking with it.
And now he wants us to feel sorry for the NBA because the league went through a difficult week.
We just had a really difficult week!
You guys don't understand!
Oh, you did, LeBron?
You had a difficult week?
Well, let me tell you what the oppressed citizens of China are going through.
Let me tell you a little bit about their week.
The dictator of China yesterday said that, well, the quote-unquote president of China, big scare quotes around that, he said that people who are trying to separate China, i.e.
those who want to be free, He says that they will, quote, perish with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder.
That's a direct quote from this guy.
The great thing is the news of that quote, that statement from the dictator of China, came out just minutes after LeBron had himself come out and backed communism in China.
But this is what the oppressed masses in China are dealing with.
This is their tough week.
This is their tough year, their tough life.
They might get their bones ground to powder if they try to resist oppression.
LeBron, on the other hand, has been annoyed by some questions by reporters.
So, you know, it's bones ground to powder on one hand, annoyed by questions on the other.
It's a tomato-to-mato kind of situation, I suppose.
But I'll tell you, I'll tell you the thing that is most amazing about all this.
I said it was amazing.
Here's what's amazing.
This is really amazing to me.
LeBron's statement to reporters, his tweets, all of it, he had, it's been a week, right?
It's been a week of this whole discussion.
So he had a week, he had an entire week to come up with a tactful, intelligent, A good, ethical response.
Now, it would be nice if some of these guys would have some guts and they would have just come out immediately and put their foot down and said, you know, here's the deal.
LeBron didn't want to do that because he wants to be more diplomatic or something.
At least that's what I assumed, is that we hadn't said anything yet.
He's trying to come up with how he's going to navigate this and, you know, that's what you assume.
And then a week later, this is what he says?
This is what he came up with?
Now, you know that he must have sat down with his people over the last week, his PR team and everything, and they were talking about, how do you handle this?
What do you say?
You know, you're the biggest star in the league.
Everyone's looking to you to see what you're going to say.
Let's come up with something good for you to say.
Something that kind of walks the line and everything.
And so they sat down, and this is what they came up with.
This.
For him to say that, of all things.
So I guess they said, hey, you know, you should go in there.
And I know what you should say.
This is his PR team, I assume.
They said, LeBron, what you need to do, here's what we came up with.
This is why you're paying us.
This is why you're paying us $6,000 an hour.
What you need to do is you need to go in and say that you have been spiritually hurt by all of the calls for freedom in China.
Now, yeah, that's what you need to do.
It spiritually hurts you.
Yes, that's it.
I am flabbergasted by that.
I am literally flabbergasted.
My flabber has never been so gasted, frankly.
It's not just the cowardice, okay?
We get the cowardice of it.
It's also just being so totally out of touch.
Like, you don't understand how you're coming across to everybody else.
Although the cowardice is really the most disgusting thing, of course, and you see that Courage is something that's just in very short supply in
our culture.
And a lot of people get credit for being courageous and taking courageous stands on things when
really there's no courage involved.
Like we talked about last week, in order for it to be courage, for you to take a really courageous stance means that you're putting something on the line.
It means that you are potentially sacrificing something.
It means that you could lose something by taking whatever stand you're taking.
That's courage.
And that's why for these guys to come out and complain about Trump or whatever, there's no courage in that.
One of those shut up and dribble types.
I've never been one of those who thought that, well, athletes should never chime in about politics and should never give their opinion.
No, I mean, these guys have a platform.
If they want to use it, if they want to use it to express their points of view, then they can do that.
This whole idea that, and it kind of annoys me too sometimes when you've got people saying to athletes, ah, shut up and stop talking about politics.
Well, you talk about politics.
Okay, whatever your job is, I'm sure that whatever you do for a living, I'm sure it doesn't include talking politics, yet you still talk politics, don't you?
So they can do it too.
You know, you can't sit there and tell them to shut up.
They could tell you to shut up.
How you'd feel about that?
So I've never had a problem with that.
But all of this stuff with China has just exposed how fraudulent they are.
You know, and This idea that they're going to use their platform.
Yeah.
You want to use your platform to take a stand.
I I'm in favor of that.
As long as you do it consistently, I use your platform to take a stand.
Sometimes you're going to take a stand.
I disagree with, okay, it's America.
We do have free speech, but now's your chance to use your platform to take a stand that is really meaningful and really important.
Um, And that will require some courage, because yeah, you could lose.
You're not going to lose much.
Your life's not on the line.
You're still going to be rich at the end of it.
Even if you sell less shoes, and even if the NBA loses some money, you're all still going to be millionaires at the end of it.
But yeah, you are putting a little bit on the line.
And they're not even willing to do that.
Because when it comes down to it, a lot of people just are not willing to make any sacrifice whatsoever.
They'll say anything and take any stand up until the moment when they're required to make the smallest little sacrifice, and then all of a sudden it's, oh no, never mind.
Just completely disgraceful and shameful across the board, but not surprising in the least bit.
Okay, I don't want to be a broken record, but as we talked about my man Christopher Columbus yesterday, My good buddy Columbus.
But I had to mention this.
Predictably, statues of Christopher Columbus were vandalized yesterday on Columbus Day, which I think we all saw coming.
And this happened in several cities around the country.
Here's a, let me give you a, I'll show you a shot of what they did in Providence.
Here's a picture of that.
So they've got red paint all over the statue with a message that says, stop celebrating genocide.
Now, I know there's no room for actual facts in this discussion, okay, when we talk about Columbus committing genocide.
I realize that the people who throw paint on a statue have probably never read even one page of one book about this subject.
I very much doubt that they've sat down and said, let me actually research the history of Columbus, his voyages, what actually happened.
Let me research it for myself.
I realize that these people, the kinds of people who would throw paint on a statue, they're getting their information from internet memes, so I understand that.
So to try and correct them in the midst of their hissy fit is sort of pointless, but then again I spend my life trying to pointlessly correct stupid people who can't be reasoned with, so why stop now?
And so I will say, no, Columbus did not commit genocide, okay?
That claim is absurd on its face.
It's not true, not at all.
Columbus was not genocidal.
It is tragically true that a huge percentage of the native population died as a result of the European settlers, but almost all of them died by disease, okay?
And disease brought accidentally, not intentionally.
And that's an important point here.
Now, sometimes you'll hear from people who even think that the diseases were spread intentionally.
Well, they couldn't have done that even if they wanted to, because back in the 15th and 16th century, people didn't understand how diseases were spread in the first place.
You know, spreading diseases by germs was not something that people understood.
It'd be another 250, 300 years before the germ theory of disease was formulated.
So to call the accidental spreading of disease genocide is just ridiculous and factually inaccurate.
So it just is not true.
Now, did the Europeans engage in slavery?
Yes.
Did they intentionally kill people?
Yes.
Were they violent?
Yes.
All of that is true.
But to say that Christopher Columbus himself was genocidal is just a factually incorrect statement, and that's all there is to it.
But what I keep having to say about this in general is, yes, we can acknowledge the evil, bad things that were done by people in the past.
We can do that.
And I think we have done that.
I think everyone understands.
That the European settlers, some of them engaged in atrocities and horrible things happened, and some of them were bad people.
I think we have fully and probably sufficiently acknowledged that, and I don't think anyone denies it, right?
So I think that's sort of been covered.
Okay, good.
And that's fine.
But we also have to, you know, this whole thing of judging historical people, especially people that lived centuries ago, 500 years ago or more, by modern standards is so absurd.
And the problem is, when you do that, if you're going to do that, and this is what I think people don't understand, if you're going to judge Historical people by modern standards, then here's the result.
Every single person, without exception, okay, every single person who existed anywhere on earth at any point up until about, I don't know, 50 years ago, We'll be a bigot by our standards today.
If we are taking modern standards and applying it to historical people, then all of them.
We have to basically write off all of them, all of our ancestors.
It doesn't matter where you live, what your race is, religion, doesn't matter.
All of our ancestors were all scumbag bigots, all of them across the board.
And that's the conclusion we come to.
If we realize that there's something wrong with that conclusion, you know, yes, our ancestors did bad things, they had views that were incorrect, they had views that we find even reprehensible today.
If we realize that, but at the same time we say to ourselves, well, but we can't, what, are we going to say that the entire world was populated, there was just nothing good about them, they were all horrible?
That doesn't make any sense.
Not only that, but that is, on top of being an absurd view, it's also incredibly arrogant and egotistical.
You know, talk about, I think it was C.S.
Lewis talked about chronological, maybe it was G.K.
Chesterton, one of them, one of those guys, talked about chronological snobbery and this idea that, well, because we're the most recent people to exist, we are so much better than everyone who existed before us.
And because we can, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see their flaws.
We can't see our own flaws, but we can see theirs as we look back in time.
So it's chronological snobbery, and it's BS to do that.
I think we have to come up with a more nuanced perspective, and not a perspective that excuses things that were obviously evil and wrong.
So, Europeans who just slaughtered Native Americans, and that did happen, obviously that's evil and wrong.
And they knew it too at the time.
It's not like people in history had no concept of right versus wrong.
That's not the point.
But they did live in a different time.
And here are the main things.
Here are the main differences I think we have to keep in mind when we look and analyze events in history.
The first is that people who lived a long time ago Um, they did not have the same compunctions about violence that we do today.
Now, again, I'm trying to look for a more nuanced perspective here.
So you can't, my point is not that every violent thing they did was fine because they didn't know they didn't know any better.
That's not the point.
It's just that in our modern society, we tend to see violence as just Objectively wrong.
You know, we say things like violence is never a way to solve a problem or whatever.
Our ancestors didn't feel that way.
That's not how they saw it.
And they saw violence as a perfectly legitimate way to sometimes solve a problem.
And I would say that they weren't necessarily wrong about that.
Now, the violence that they used in certain situations was wrong, so they applied that incorrectly in some cases, in many cases.
But I think that we're not exactly always correct, that violence is always wrong.
Of course, there are situations where violence is okay.
I think maybe our ancestors were too far on one end of that spectrum, sometimes too eager to settle problems through violence, whereas we've gone too far in the other direction, with this idea that it's never okay, there's never any situation, it's totally wrong all the time.
I think that that is a...
Sort of ridiculous view as well.
But that's the first thing we have to keep in mind.
Okay?
It's a cultural fact.
They did not quite have the same compunctions about violence that we do today.
The second thing, and this is really important, is that our ancestors did not have this concept of universal human equality.
We have that concept today.
Our ancestors did not.
So if you had said to someone in the 14th century, for example, all human beings are equal, they are all worth the same, they're all equal in moral worth and dignity, probably it doesn't matter who you're talking to.
It doesn't matter what country you're in, what culture, what race you're saying that to.
That wouldn't have meant anything to them.
It wouldn't have meant anything to them.
It would have seemed like it just, it would not have processed,
because that is a, the idea of universal human equality is very modern.
In fact, it's so modern, think about this.
You know, all humans are created equal, endowed by their creator, so on and so forth.
Even when that was written into the Declaration of Independence, as we know, it was so far ahead of its time that the men who came up with this idea and who wrote that down, they themselves didn't even fully apply it.
Because, of course, they still, you know, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.
George Washington owned slaves.
So, in fact, from when that was written to when it would actually be fully enacted in our country, that was, you know, that's like 180, 190 years or something.
It'd be a very long time from when that was originally conceived of and written down to when we actually lived in a country where everybody was legally equal.
So, it is a very, again, it's a very modern concept, and that's just not a concept that people, you know, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 years ago had.
And that's one of the reasons why slavery was an acceptable, practiced institution all across the world, in nearly every culture and civilization.
It was just a way of life.
It's just what you did.
You know, in many Indian cultures, You fought a war with another tribe, you beat them, you took some of them as slaves.
It's just what you did.
That's just how it was.
It's hard for us to wrap our heads around that now or understand that, but that's the fact.
And so now that we live in a more peaceful time, Partly because, at least in the West, we can afford to be more peaceful.
And that's the third difference.
So, there's actually three, I think.
Didn't have the same compunction about violence.
Didn't have this concept of universal human equality.
Also, they didn't live in a world that was settled like we do now.
And our world, of course, is not completely settled.
But it certainly is more than it has been at any other point in history.
They lived at a time where the lines had not been completely drawn.
And so people fought over land.
It just happened all across the globe.
And if you wanted land that you didn't have, you fought for it.
That's the way the world worked at the time.
Which maybe is one of the reasons why they didn't have that compunction about violence.
Because they couldn't afford to.
And the other thing is, if you had land, You realized that you would have to fight to protect it.
And you didn't have, you couldn't spend time, you know, feeling sorry for yourself about that.
You just, you had to fight to protect what you had.
And if you couldn't, then you weren't going to keep it.
And it's very easy for us now, especially in the West.
And it's not like this for everybody in the world, of course, but for us in the West, As we live in this luxurious, comfortable world, for us, we're living this comfortable lifestyle.
And we have the benefits now of hindsight.
And we were born into a world.
Where the truth of, for instance, the equal worth and dignity of all human beings has been, had been passed down to us and taught to us from childhood.
We didn't come up with that.
We didn't fight for it.
We didn't, you know, we didn't earn that.
It was just, we were told that from children.
So we were born into that world and it's very easy for us to look back at our ancestors, um, now and, and just write them all off.
But I think that's a mistake to do.
And, um, Even the bad things that they did.
I think we have to.
It's not excusing it, but it is seeing it within its context.
All right, let's go to this.
So Pharrell is on the cover of GQ and they're calling it the new masculinity issue.
And it's all about how guys like Pharrell are redefining masculinity.
Here's what the new masculinity looks like.
Take a look at this.
Yes, the new masculinity looks like a jacket made for an octopus who is also a crossing guard.
That's the new masculinity.
A crossing guard octopus.
And then here's some more of the new masculinity.
Some more pictures you see there of what masculinity looks like now apparently.
I mean, it looks like he just dove into the clearance bin at Goodwill and just a random assortment of ugly clothing that don't fit.
He looks like my daughter playing dress-up.
Especially the one with the huge jacket, the huge leopard print jacket.
That's the new masculinity.
The new masculinity is a six-year-old girl playing dress-up.
So when my six-year-old daughter plays dress-up, she is now the example of masculinity for men everywhere, apparently.
Now, again, I know there's no point, as I said, in introducing logic into this discussion, but I can't help but point out That these efforts to redefine masculinity make no sense in light of the fact that the very concept of manhood is supposedly subjective and effectively meaningless now.
If it doesn't really mean anything to be a man, then what's the point of coming up with a new masculinity?
In other words, in order for a biological female to identify as a man, which is a thing now that she can do, Doesn't manhood then have to be masculine in order for that to make sense?
Isn't the whole damn point of identifying as a man?
Isn't that the whole point of it?
Isn't that effectively what you're saying?
In other words, aren't you basically saying, you say, I identify as a man.
What you're really saying is I identify as a masculine person.
If masculinity is now feminine, then what does it mean for a woman to identify as a man?
So she identifies as a man, but men are like women.
So she identifies as a man who's essentially a woman.
She's a man who's a woman who's a man who's a woman.
It just doesn't make sense.
So this is the problem.
That's the contradiction.
The whole concept of identifying as a man or identifying as a woman depends on those things being distinct and defined.
You know, it really depends on men being masculine and women being feminine.
But if we're tearing down masculinity and femininity, then everyone might as well stay their own genders, because we're all just sort of meeting in the middle anyway, right?
We're all just getting together, meeting in the middle, swapping clothes, and it's a free-for-all.
And then, in that case, if everything is fluid and it's all sort of, hey, it's whatever, you're a woman, you're... Then, okay, if that's what it is, you kind of have to choose.
Is the point.
We're either doing that, or we're doing a thing where being a man is something objective and definable, but sometimes a woman could identify as one.
So you could do one or the other, but you can't really do both.
Or, here's a better idea, we could do neither of those things, and just men are men, women are women, and you're never going to cross from one to the other.
That's also an option.
All right, let's go to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Stephen, says, hey Matt, my name is Stephen and my parents spanked me growing up.
I'm 20 and don't have kids yet, so I'd like to point out that I contradict the case you had explained yesterday where people think fondly on their spankings because they spanked their own kids.
As a kid, I hated spankings.
I was far more deviant than my siblings and got significantly more spankings because of it.
However, I'm grateful that my parents spanked because it did teach me discipline and ultimately taught me to respect my father in a way that I don't know I would have if they used other disciplinary methods.
My parents also never hid out of anger.
If I was in trouble, they'd send me to my room and before they spanked, they'd go pray in their room to make sure they were making the right decision.
And then they'd talk through what I did wrong, and afterwards, they'd have me pray for forgiveness.
I may be an outlier in that my parents never once hit me out of anger, but I just thought your argument didn't take into perspective an experience like mine, where I don't look back fondly, but could easily be misunderstood as such.
Yeah, well, that's, no, I think my argument did take into account exactly your situation, Stephen.
That's what I was saying, is that I think that although we don't spank our kids, it's not, we just decided that's not right for our family.
I think if you are, as a parent, doing it not out of anger, not because you're unleashing your frustration, not because you're just pissed off, but you're doing it, you know, you're taking, as I said, kind of a business-like approach.
And this is also important, which I didn't talk about yesterday, but that you have spanking as a penalty for certain things.
And the child knows ahead of time that that is the penalty for that thing, whatever it is.
Okay?
And then in that case, then that takes the anger out of it even more.
It's just, okay, that was the penalty.
You did it.
Now here's, here's the punishment.
Um, and they, they might not like it as a kid, but at some level they understand that, okay, I did this thing and that's a penalty.
So if spanking is being approached that way, then I think it's, it's, it can be a perfectly valid and effective form of discipline.
It's certainly not abuse.
I disagree with the people who say that all forms of spanking are abuse.
I just, I don't, I think that that's silly even.
I don't agree with that.
My only, so that's, that's fine, Steve.
It sounds like your, your situation was what we're talking about here, a valid form of discipline.
Um, I just wonder, Of all the parents who do spank their kids, and of course, any parent you talk to, they're going to say that they never spank in anger.
I don't think any parent's going to come out and say, oh yeah, I hit my kid all the time because I'm ticked off.
No parent's going to say that.
But I do wonder, of all the parents who spank their kids as a form of discipline, what percentage of them do it sometimes or even regularly out of anger?
And I suspect that it's probably a rather large percentage.
And in the case of those parents, they are physically abusing their kids.
They may not feel like it.
You never want to stop and say to yourself, oh my gosh, I am a physical abuser of my children.
But they are.
And I'm not saying, a parent who one time spanked their kid out of anger, I'm not saying that they are a terrible parent and they should lose their kids or their kids are ruined for life or anything.
I'm not saying that.
But it is a serious, that's a serious issue.
And that's a line that you just never want to cross.
Okay, this is, let's see here.
This is from Steve, says, Matt, really enjoy your show and everything on Daily Wire.
Shapiro brings intellect to bear, Clavin, humor, and you, a lot of heart and a lot of dad.
Okay, so I don't have intellect or humor, I have heart.
That feels like... Steve, I know you meant that as a compliment.
It feels like a backhanded compliment, a little bit.
Shapiro's a smart one, Clavin's really funny.
You got heart.
You put in the effort, kid.
You're doing well.
No, I appreciate it, though.
Thank you.
This is not so much a question for the mailbag as it is a comment on one of today's questions, specifically the one regarding priestly celibacy.
As a convert to Catholicism from Evangelical Protestantism, I had similar views regarding celibacy.
To me, it seemed too much of a burden to be placed on men that might otherwise have chosen the vocation.
Since then, my opinions have become more nuanced.
I will certainly agree that allowing priests to marry won't solve the pedophilia problem.
Pedophiles are attracted to any situation where they have authority, trust, and privacy with young boys.
Scout leaders, athletic coaches, church youth group leaders, these are all fertile fields for pedophiles.
But you make the case that desire to have a family is a noble and natural thing, and that priestly celibacy is an unnecessary denial of those basic and good instincts.
What I have come to believe, however, is that celibacy is not a burden.
It is a grace that God grants those called to the priesthood.
The Apostle Paul even says that it would be better for his followers if they were more like him, celibate, but it is better to marry than to burn, with lust I assume.
He makes it clear that a married man cares for the needs of his family, but a celibate priest is free to take care of the things of God.
After all, Christianity is a religion of self-denial.
Jesus tells us that if we are to follow him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross.
That a priest is called to celibacy is a gift and an opportunity to mortify the flesh in the service of a higher spiritual goal.
In spite of the paucity of vocations, I would rather have fewer committed priests than lower the bar to get the numbers up.
I think that's a perfectly valid argument.
That certainly is the argument in favor of it.
I think you eloquently expressed it.
And I think it's a powerful argument in many ways.
And I can see that perspective.
That's the perspective that I had.
There are two things we have to take into account.
One is the reality.
of the situation. So we could say, yeah, it's great if priests can carry this cross and exhibit
this kind of self-control, and on top of all the other benefits. Now the thing about,
you know, if you're a priest, if you're a pastor, you've got your flock, that's really a full-time job.
and And so, if you've got your own family, then of course your family has to come first and you have to put your flock second.
One of the advantages of having celibate priests is that you focus 100% on your priestly duties.
And I think that's maybe the... even though that's the practical argument, I think maybe that's the best argument for priestly celibacy because it's, you know, you talk to people in Protestant denominations, for example, and they'll tell you that this can be a real problem.
And this is why it's a real issue in some Protestant churches, Protestant churches where the pastors, you know, they have problems in their own families and with their marriages because they're being torn by these two demands.
And so I think that, practically speaking, that's a very good reason to have celibate priests.
But again, now we run up against the reality, and the reality is that a very large percent—I don't know what the percentage is—but it's clear that a very large percentage of priests are simply not living up to that.
So do we just charge on ahead and say, yeah, you know, they'll figure it out eventually?
Or do we say, maybe it's time to consider making a change?
And then the other part of it is, like I said yesterday, I really feel like the desire to have a family and have a wife is good and natural and noble.
I don't think it's any lesser, I don't think it's a lesser vocation than celibacy.
At all.
I think that they're just different.
And there's a place for both, I suppose.
But we are ruling out, as I said yesterday, the Catholic Church is excluding, is in principle ruling out, men who have a very strong, healthy, natural, and noble desire To have a wife and a family.
That is a whole category of men that we're saying, nope, we don't have a place for you in the priesthood.
And I'm just wondering if that's, in the end, a good strategy.
I think maybe it's not.
I think maybe those men have something to offer.
Even though there are those very real practical difficulties, as I mentioned, I still think those men have something to offer, and maybe we should welcome them.
I'm a little torn on it, I guess, as you can see.
From Carly, this is, Hi Matt, I have a simple question.
What is your new daughter's name?
I don't think you've mentioned it.
Well, thank you, Carly, for asking that question.
Funny story, actually.
Our daughter's name, as it stands right now, is Emma Grace.
First name, Emma Grace.
Here's the great thing.
All through my wife's pregnancy, we debated this.
And I liked Emma as the first name, Grace as the middle.
My wife wanted Emma Grace as the whole first name, like to do a two-name first name deal.
And I told her again and again and again, I made the point that if we do that, We're going to have to spend our whole lives clarifying to everyone that Emma Grace is her first name.
You know, one, it's the whole first name, two names, not first and middle, two name, first name.
Every time we're at an appointment or anywhere, you know, someone asks us her name, every time we're going to have to go, they're going to say, what's her name?
We're going to say, Emma Grace.
Is that first and middle?
Or no, no, no.
First name.
Is that one word or two?
Uh, two words.
Capital E and G. It's on our whole lives and her whole life.
We're going to have to have this conversation over and over and over and over again, millions of times, literally.
We will have consigned her to a life of explaining her name to people.
And that is, there are some people who live a life like that.
And if you have a name, you know, if you have a name that's confusing, confusing spelling, whatever, for any, whatever reason, you know what it's like.
Your whole life, you have to explain your name.
And that is the life of a two-named person.
She will wander the countryside, ostracized, abandoned by society, while people point their fingers at her and say, here comes the two-name.
Get out of here, two-namer.
No two names allowed.
I mean, that's what's going to happen.
And my wife said, oh, stop it.
It'll be fine.
Well, guess what?
A week after she was born, a week after she was born, a week, seven days, my wife came to me and said, man, this is really getting annoying after having to explain the name thing to people.
And I said, ha!
I told you so!
I told you!
This is the greatest I told you so moment of my life.
This is amazing.
Because we're going to have to change her name now.
Legally.
A week after she was born.
And this is amazing.
I get this.
But of course my wife tries to act like I hadn't been arguing this all day.
When she came to me and said, oh, this is getting annoying, she didn't say, she didn't preface it with, oh, turns out you were right.
She just, she said it as if, as if no one had brought this up before.
Trying to underplay.
Which I understand, okay?
Because she can't let me have this I told you so moment.
It's too good.
It's just strategically, in a marriage, you can't let your spouse have one like this.
Because you're always looking for the I told you so.
Which is a healthy thing to do in a marriage, by the way.
It's a little competition.
People always say, oh, never say I told you so.
I disagree.
You gotta keep the competitive spirit alive in a marriage, I think.
Um, it's a little bit of the chess match that goes on.
And so, you know, you stack your chips and now I'm mixing metaphors, but you get it.
So, um, anyway, but so she doesn't want to give it to me.
Um, but we are going to have to officially change her name.
I think we are going to change.
So it was Emma Grace, first name.
We're going to officially change it.
Um, so to make it so Grace is the middle name.
And, uh, and no matter how my wife tries to downplay it, the fact remains that for the rest of our lives, I will have this story about the week that our daughter spent with a different name than the one she ended up with and how it was changed because I was right and I told you so.
We might as well change her name to, I think her middle name should be I told you so.
Emma I told you so Walsh.
That's my, I think that's what I'm going to do.
That's going to be her name now.
So this is, it's fantastic, but I'm really happy about it.
It's just, you know, especially at, look, everyone knows, not to be stereotypical, but in a marriage, the husband doesn't get as many of the I told you so's.
So when you get one as a husband, you got to grab onto that one.
Just don't let it go.
Okay.
Not saying you throw it in her face all the time.
Just put it in a, put it in a, put it in a satchel and just kind of keep it in the closet somewhere.
Just nice and safe.
Maybe store it, store it in a safe, actually a lock box.
And every once in a while, when you need to pull it out, you pull it out and you just say, see?
Remember the, I told you so.
All right.
That's my, don't take my marriage advice, folks.
Don't take it.
I will, we'll leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
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