00:00:00:00 – 00:00:34:20
Speaker 1
Welcome to conversation, the podcast of Belmont Abbey College. My name is Doctor Thomas Ferrer. Callie. I’m the interim dean of the Honors College at Belmont Abbey. And today we are joined by Tom Carroll. Tom Carroll is the director and founder of the Catholic Talent Project. Prior to this role, he had served as the superintendent of the Archdiocese of Boston under the great Cardinal O’Malley.

00:00:34:22 – 00:00:37:11
Speaker 1
Tom, thank you so much for coming today.

00:00:37:13 – 00:00:38:16
Speaker 2
Good to see you, Tom. Thank you.

00:00:38:17 – 00:00:50:18
Speaker 1
Wonderful. The Catholic Talent Project just, was established a few months ago. Please tell us why you created this this new organization.

00:00:50:21 – 00:01:12:21
Speaker 2
Sure. So for the past five years, I’ve been superintendent Catholic schools in Boston, which is one of the largest Catholic school systems in the country. And my experience there, revealed a lot to me. But the most important thing is, that the mere fact that there’s, you know, a saint’s name on the front of a building doesn’t mean that what’s going on inside is consistent with church teaching.

00:01:12:23 – 00:01:36:10
Speaker 2
And so I decided, if you are trying to address the mass of rated disaffiliation in this country, that there’s the best place to start. That is where all the kids are, which is in Catholic schools. And right now, by the time a child hits, just looking at children from Catholic families, 50% of them fall away from the faith by age 13.

00:01:36:12 – 00:02:00:00
Speaker 2
By the time they hit 18, 86% fall away. So we have an incredible failure rate. And Catholic schools themselves have children from preschool, the 12th grade. So we have them for 16,000 waking hours. Now, I joke some of the math classes, they might not be awake the entire time, but it’s a lot of time, so it’s not about getting a, kind of small elevator pitch to convince the kids.

00:02:00:02 – 00:02:21:13
Speaker 2
And so our number, we do a lot of things in Catholic schools, but the number one is to draw our children to God and set them on a path to eternal salvation. To do that, if that is the goal and it was my goal, then you need to have people, your sales team, if you will. All the teachers and the school leaders have to be on the same page and they have to one, believe in Catholicism and all that.

00:02:21:13 – 00:02:41:11
Speaker 2
The church teaches the entirety of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And then they have to also be committed to evangelization. And so we have a lot of, you know, we have 32,000 kids in Boston. That’s a lot more than Jesus started with, you know, 12 minus one for Judas. So we got a pretty big base of people to start with.

00:02:41:12 – 00:03:01:09
Speaker 2
And so I don’t think, you know, people have talked about a Benedict Option. I don’t think we should shrink away from the culture. I think we need to be engaged. But we need to have people who really understand their faith. And we owe it to the children that our job is to save their souls. There’s nothing we do in a Catholic school that is more important than the saving the souls of the children in our custody.

00:03:01:11 – 00:03:26:09
Speaker 2
So that’s what I learned from in Boston. So I replaced 75% of the parochial school principals, the largest intentional turnover of Catholic leadership talent in the entire country. There 175 dioceses and, United States. And then I started a new program called The Saint Thomas More Teaching Fellowship. And that was to help those principals find faithful witnesses for every classroom.

00:03:26:11 – 00:03:50:23
Speaker 2
So Pope Paul the sixth one said, modern man more willingly listens to witnesses than to teachers. And if he listens to teachers, it’s because they’re witnesses. So I think that pretty much captures what our challenges is. We have to make sure that we have faithful witnesses in every classroom, and if we do, then I think we’ll be better positioned to light that fire of faith within each child that we come in contact with.

00:03:51:00 – 00:04:07:16
Speaker 1
Wonderful. So currently, Other Catholic Talent Project is looking for, applicants in Boston and San Francisco. How quickly do you hope to expand this project outside of those two archdiocese?

00:04:07:19 – 00:04:29:23
Speaker 2
Right. So obviously Boston, we’re doing great. So once I started the Catholic Talent Project, which is looking for, we’re looking for teachers, we’re looking for principals. We’re also looking for superintendents. So over five years, we plan on creating ten hubs around the country. And we picked Boston because of my background in San Francisco, because Archbishop Corleone is very, very impressive.

00:04:29:23 – 00:04:54:10
Speaker 2
And he’s got seven years left before he hits, you know, has to submit his resignation at age 75. Seven years is a lot of time to turn around San Francisco. And I frankly, we could find easier places to do this in. But I think if we turn around Boston, in San Francisco, the message to all the other bishops around the country is almost every place in the country is easier than those two locations.

00:04:54:12 – 00:05:12:11
Speaker 2
So if you could do it in Boston, San Francisco, with apologies to Frank Sinatra, who is saying about New York, you could really do it anywhere. And so that’s what we’re starting with. But we’re adding to every year, next year, we’re going to add, at a minimum, Charleston. And then I’m looking for one more. And then we’ll have ten hubs over that time at the same time.

00:05:12:13 – 00:05:27:09
Speaker 2
I’ve gotten a lot of interest from classical Catholic schools, needing help both to find principals and also to find teachers. And so if somebody is interested in teaching or leading a Catholic school, we’re also helping out with that as well.

00:05:27:11 – 00:05:35:11
Speaker 1
So what qualities and characteristics are you looking for in these young men and women to work with you?

00:05:35:13 – 00:05:58:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, the first date, they’re very similar. They have to believe. Right. And they have to believe not just in the easy stuff, but they have to believe in the entirety of the Magisterium. So if somebody says to me that they believe what the church teaches, except for everything from Humanae Vitae forward or except Genesis, you know, God created man or woman, the chance of them getting a job through me is zero, right?

00:05:58:05 – 00:06:24:08
Speaker 2
So, I know what a Catholic believes. I’m not sure what word you would use to describe people who kind of pick and choose, but in a sense, they’re they’re choosing themselves to be the divinity divinely revealed. Truth is what they happen to agree with. I don’t think that’s a Catholic view of the world. And I think if we’re trying to inspire children, I think the people that will inspire children to embrace the Catholic faith are people who are passionate about their faith and who are believers.

00:06:24:08 – 00:06:44:02
Speaker 2
That’s number one, far and away. Secondly, and that’s kind of a you know, when I interviewed principals, if people went believers, they didn’t go to church. I ended the interview. As simple as that. I don’t want to waste their time or my time. Then the second thing is there’s a constellation of constellation of qualities that are important for a teacher.

00:06:44:04 – 00:07:05:01
Speaker 2
One is intellectual curiosity. We want everybody to be lifelong learners. But if their teacher isn’t a lifelong learner, it’s not intellectually curious. They want to inspire that within somebody else. So the kind of person who reads lots of books all the time, even if they don’t finish them, is constantly spending, like all their spare cash on buying books at an independent bookstore.

00:07:05:07 – 00:07:25:19
Speaker 2
Those people tend to make really good teachers. I’m looking for a certain IQ. You have to be smart. In order to educate kids at a high level. And I’m looking for people with some grit. Being a first year teacher is not an easy job by any stretch. I’m not selling people an easy gig. I’m actually selling them something very difficult.

00:07:25:21 – 00:07:48:04
Speaker 2
I want them to strap their cross on and be willing to, you know, do everything that’s needed in order to bring these children to God and to educate them at a high level. And every first year, teacher goes through tremendous frustration. And I think if you don’t go through it with the zeal of, you know, somebody who’s got a missionary focus, it’s very hard to get through that first year.

00:07:48:06 – 00:08:12:11
Speaker 2
And then they also have to learn somebody I think has the personality that they can engage in a personal encounter with the child. And what I mean is, you know, an example I cite a lot is, Pope John Paul the Second when he was a young priest, he would take young men kayaking and hiking, and he did that not to teach him how to hike or to kayak, but because he was beginning a conversation.

00:08:12:11 – 00:08:34:06
Speaker 2
He knew what obviously, what talents and gifts that he was given by God. And he just wanted a low key way to begin a conversation and conversion. Nobody has ever converted somebody question by walking up and saying, hey, like to become a Catholic today? It just doesn’t work that way. So we need teachers who have kind of this personal magnetism that they can draw kids.

00:08:34:06 – 00:08:46:02
Speaker 2
And the kids need to know that you believe in them, that you care about them, that you love them deeply. And if they have that level of comfort, they’re very open to almost anything you want to do.

00:08:46:04 – 00:08:51:03
Speaker 1
In addition to recruiting teachers, will you’ll be recruiting administrators, principals.

00:08:51:05 – 00:09:16:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. So one of the best things I did in Boston was oversee, complete overhaul of who was sitting in leadership positions. And, so dioceses across the country, they just part of them. It’s it’s very time consuming to find talent. Right? There’s a shortage of teachers, the shortage of principals, shortage of qualified superintendents. So as a result, the typical principal doesn’t have the ability because zigzagging around the country to find.

00:09:16:19 – 00:09:36:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. Then I can like I go to Thomas Aquinas or Belmont Abbey. I go to Franciscan Ave Maria, also create at a secular schools like Princeton in Japan, at MIT and Harvard schools that are secular and in some cases, you know, a bit politically correct. But through their Catholic apostolate, it through a friendly philosophy teacher, theology teacher.

00:09:36:02 – 00:09:57:13
Speaker 2
I found great students at some of those institutions. So it’s extremely time consuming, and it’s beyond the capacity of an individual principal, many cases an individual superintendent. When I was superintendent literally spent 70, 75% of my time hunting for talent and cultivating talent. And I had a large enough staff that everything else I could push off for other people to do.

00:09:57:20 – 00:10:19:11
Speaker 2
Not everybody has the ability to do that or the personality, the interest in doing it. But I think if we don’t have the right team on the field, we’re just not going to get where we want to go. So, for example, if some billionaire bought an NFL team and I’m probably the least athletic person in the country and said, money’s no object, I want you to go out and recruit, feel the best team that I want to go to the Super Bowl this year.

00:10:19:13 – 00:10:42:09
Speaker 2
And then the next day, I flew to Wimbledon and hired the best tennis players. They’re going to get creamed soon, they said on the football field. So it doesn’t mean that the tennis players aren’t talented. They are. And it doesn’t mean that the people at our Catholic schools, that are not Catholic or don’t believe in everything or not, don’t have any gifts, but they’re not the right people to win this particular championship.

00:10:42:11 – 00:11:02:01
Speaker 2
And so I need people that are willing to convert. We have people that are completely faithful but just don’t agree on evangelization. I don’t think that’s what Catholics should do. That’s what evangelical Protestants do, where that’s what the Mormons do. And those two both do a much better job than Catholics do at converting people. So I think that is our core business.

00:11:02:01 – 00:11:24:10
Speaker 2
If you want to think like what? Why do we exist? It’s to evangelize children. And when you have an 86% failure rate, you have to reconsider how we’ve got schools organized. And I think Catholic schools properly ordered, and a lot of them are not properly ordered, are going to be the key to evangelizing children. You look at what what’s happening with the growth of homeschooling in this country.

00:11:24:10 – 00:11:50:03
Speaker 2
It’s even in Massachusetts, like a 20% increase in homeschooling over the past couple of years. In Massachusetts, you wouldn’t think would be ground zero for growth in homeschooling. But a lot of parents are trying to raise their children in faith. It’s very daunting in this culture. And so recognizing that parents are the first educators of their children and the primary source for their faith formation, we have to help them.

00:11:50:05 – 00:12:15:18
Speaker 2
And but very few people that homeschool, would seriously entertain sending their kid to a diocesan Catholic school. So the question is, why is that? And it’s because they don’t trust that there’s consistent belief from teacher to teacher to teacher. It’s in many ways, to use a sports analogy. Since Bill Satterfield, they’re the head of Belmont Abbey is Abbey’s a former Olympian.

00:12:15:19 – 00:12:45:09
Speaker 2
So I’ll use this as sports metaphor, but, it’s as if, you know, we’re running a relay race and you got four people. If one of those four people drops the baton, the chances of winning is very remote. If 2 or 3 people drop the baton there is note you might as well just move on. Right. So making sure a kid in a Catholic family still believes faith by the time they’re 18, given all the influences from their friends and popular culture and iPhones and all the rest is very difficult.

00:12:45:11 – 00:13:07:20
Speaker 2
And if so, every other teacher that they come in contact with is dropping the ball. That kid is not their faith is not going to be intact. And once kids hit the teenage years it’s very very once they hit middle school they start you know sensing their independence. It’s a natural state of development. And their friends and their influences in school become more prominent than the influence of the parents.

00:13:07:22 – 00:13:25:15
Speaker 2
So I think if we want to really get them across the finish line in good shape, we have to work very closely with the families to make sure that we’re never dropping the baton and we have the right people on the field, and if we do that, I think it’ll be very well received by parents and it be very well received.

00:13:25:23 – 00:13:46:22
Speaker 2
In terms of, the pearly gates, when these kids get, to eternal salvation because, I think the way we’re doing it now is pretty messy, and I don’t think we’re getting the results. And I don’t see how anyone if if we continue to have an 86% failure rate, they will be, you know, eventually we’re all going to age at will be dead at some point.

00:13:46:23 – 00:14:05:08
Speaker 2
I mean, everybody’s dead at some point, but but the, you know, the pews are replenished all the time by the young. Right. So if you have an 86% failure rate, there’s nobody coming in. We’re going off to our eternal rewards, whatever they may be. But if nobody’s coming in to replace us, the church is over in a generation.

00:14:05:10 – 00:14:27:10
Speaker 2
We’re going to go the way of Europe. We’ll have all these beautiful church buildings, and we’ll be great for cute Instagram photos and for fancy weddings, but not much else. So I don’t know what you think of Europe. I like visiting it, but I don’t think we should as a country, emulate Europe. And from a faith formation perspective, you know, it’s not the path to having lots of people believing in faith.

00:14:27:10 – 00:14:49:23
Speaker 2
It’s basically, with some exceptions, Poland would be an example. But even in Ireland, you. I’m Irish. You have a country that won’t even embrace sanctity of life anymore. And it just a generation ago that would have been unimaginable. Some of the things that have become popular in Ireland. So I think the American church is actually in much better shape than a lot of other countries.

00:14:50:01 – 00:15:09:20
Speaker 2
But I think the key is to embrace faith, not walk away from it, and to figure out how do we make sure that these kids, and it’s what their parents want or what their grandparents want to. So it’s not like we’re arguing with people. It’s just they want it. But we can’t let the popular culture overwhelm these children, right?

00:15:09:22 – 00:15:34:09
Speaker 1
The reformation of Catholic schools is a gargantuan task. You spoke a lot about the importance of hiring solid men and women faithful to the magisterium of the Catholic Church. What else is needed? What are what are some of the other hurdles in reforming a K through 12 school?

00:15:34:11 – 00:15:54:15
Speaker 2
Well, just take a moment if I can, before I answer, and I will answer your question is there’s some things going on in the backdrop that are really profoundly important. One is, and I didn’t realize this till I went to Boston and I just is Boston is Boston, that we’d have a fairly number of cookie priest, if you will.

00:15:54:23 – 00:16:15:07
Speaker 2
Just because it’s, you know, it’s Boston, one of the most secular parts of the entire country and where Harvard is and all the rest, but all the priests that we have. And this is not just in Boston, all across the country that were inspired by John Paul the second. They’re the most amazing set of priests. And so they’re just below my age.

00:16:15:09 – 00:16:38:06
Speaker 2
But and then everybody down went to Pope Benedict, and now in Boston, 80% of the seminarians are homeschooled. So they’re totally locked down on faith. They’re completely committed to evangelization. So that’s so I, I joke that part of my job is at my age is to make sure that people older than me in the church don’t destroy it before people younger than me save it.

00:16:38:07 – 00:17:05:11
Speaker 2
And so I think the combination and, and, you know, we we were spent some time with students at Belmont Abbey College today and the generation that’s coming out now, there’s like I complain like a lot of people about this generation and stuff, but the the portion of this generation that embraces their Catholic faith. All right. And I say this as a Catholic convert, are some of the most inspiring Catholics I’ve ever met in my entire life.

00:17:05:13 – 00:17:34:04
Speaker 2
And I’m meeting most of them when they’re like 22 or 23 years old, and their faith is so deep and so profound. They have a commitment. They have missionary zeal. And they they all want to get married. They all plan on raising families. And I just think the combination of the JP two generation getting old enough so that they’re running all the dioceses in the country and that it will eventually the the people that I’m recruiting through the Saint Thomas Moore program.

00:17:35:00 – 00:18:04:18
Speaker 2
I and I know just because I’ve been doing for three years are going to be spectacular. But you jump another ten years, whether they’re still teaching or they’re involved in some other Catholic apostolate or whether they just pursuing in the vocation of marriage and raising a family. I think the combination of the priest and this generation of really devout Catholics, when those two people are in charge, I always joke the Catholic when I talk to people in the seminary like the Calvary’s coming, you’re part of a calvary, whether you realize it or not, but the Calvary’s coming.

00:18:04:20 – 00:18:25:23
Speaker 2
So we just got it. We got to hang on a little, and all the people who are older have to do everything we can to help these kids. And for grandparents, it’s bad like you should be. If you have the resources, get your grandchild the best thing you could do with your money, rather than saving it. To give away at your death, is to pay tuition for a college that’s going to set them up and reaffirm their faith.

00:18:26:01 – 00:18:43:19
Speaker 2
There’s no better investment of time and money than that. And so I think the older generation, the new generation, just because housing costs so much and, college costs so much and people have a lot of college debt, I think they’re going to be financially really strapped. But the older generation is don’t really, really have most of the wealth in the country.

00:18:43:19 – 00:19:06:15
Speaker 2
It’s people over 60 years old. So I think some of that wealth should be unleashed to make. If you’re Catholic and you’re serious about it, stop complaining to your children about your grandchildren. Like do something about it. Write a check and send them to a really good college and encourage them when they come out. And maybe they’re not, you know, becoming a lawyer or a doctor, but they want to become a missionary in some way.

00:19:06:17 – 00:19:23:11
Speaker 2
Don’t say like, oh my gosh, why are you doing that? You should embrace it. If they decide they come to you and they they’re they’re seriously thinking about a religious vocation. Embrace it. Don’t discourage them because you want the grandchildren, you know. So I think the older generation has a role to play. One is get out of the way of the generation that’s coming.

00:19:23:17 – 00:19:42:20
Speaker 2
But the other one is for people who are devout. You should be cheerleading that. The kids that are now in their their low 20s and stuff. Now, you should be cheering them on and doing everything you can to help them, even if you have to cosign for a loan for somebody’s house, for example, you want people that, like I’ve met today at Belmont Abbey College.

00:19:42:22 – 00:20:01:20
Speaker 2
You want them to be involved in the church. You want them leading the way, and you want them to have the financial ability to raise a family despite what housing costs. And if you can make you can make sure they get a good education and you can make raising a family a little easier because you’ve got the financial resource, then you don’t.

00:20:01:22 – 00:20:17:18
Speaker 2
I don’t know what giving money to Harvard or giving money to, you know, like a million. Yeah, the money to the app or whatever. I’m sure that’s a good thing, but I don’t think it’s the same order. If given the failure rate we have and how many people walk away from the faith. This is a five alarm fire.

00:20:17:19 – 00:20:29:04
Speaker 2
We’ve got to change what we’re doing. And I think the grandparents should stop complaining that they should start becoming an active part of the solution. And so I think that’s a serious part of it.

00:20:29:06 – 00:20:38:08
Speaker 1
What role do parishes and parents have in supporting this reformation of Catholic schools?

00:20:38:10 – 00:20:56:23
Speaker 2
I think so, you know, obviously a lot of parishes have schools in them and they should be supportive. In Boston, we tax parishes that don’t have schools. We tax them to support Catholic schools. I actually I’m not a big fan of taxes, but that’s what I support because I think it’s not just in the interest of a parish that happens to have a school.

00:20:56:23 – 00:21:17:13
Speaker 2
It’s in the interest of all of us that we have healthy schools. The other thing is anyone involved in the Catholic school, and I always say this to priests when they they get the phone call that they’re going to be suddenly be put in charge of a school, and they’re also running, in many cases, multiple parishes. So back in Boston, it used to be you’d have 5 or 6 priests per church.

00:21:17:15 – 00:21:43:06
Speaker 2
Now you have one priest for 3 or 4 parishes. So it is a daunting job. But if everything you do, making sure that that school is operating and also making sure that that school leader understands not just that the religion class has to be done well, but every single second of every single day is in the service of our mission of ensuring eternal salvation for these kids.

00:21:43:08 – 00:22:04:23
Speaker 2
So you can’t honestly teach art, music, architecture, human rights, rites of women or anything science without reference to the Catholic Church. So a lot of priests accept the premise that their role is just to watch the religion within the school. And I don’t agree with it. I think we have to make sure that the kids are educated and the the grand sweep of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

00:22:05:04 – 00:22:23:21
Speaker 2
It’s one of the reasons I like the Honors College at Belmont Abbey. And they need to know the incredible breadth of everything the church has done. And service to the poor and the marginalized all across the globe. So kids shouldn’t be looking at their feet when somebody asks them whether they’re Catholic or not, they should be proud.

00:22:23:21 – 00:22:46:05
Speaker 2
We created Western civilization. We had the greatest advancement of humankind in the history of the world because the contribution to the Catholic Church. But we shouldn’t imagine that they just automatically know that. Right? So it has to be very deliberately taught. And then I think, and a lot of people are doing this, about 300 classical schools in the country, about 100 of them are Catholic.

00:22:46:07 – 00:23:06:13
Speaker 2
Your chest in academies, which does high schools that are classical schools. But I think we need whether you call it, you know, liberal education, not liberal in a political sense, but, in terms of the liberal arts or you call it a classical school, I think that’s a more fully alive, curriculum that people are getting in an awful lot of schools.

00:23:06:15 – 00:23:23:19
Speaker 2
So I think parents, when they hear that their child wants to study the liberal arts rather than cringing and thinking they’re going to be living in their basement for the rest of their lives because they’ll never get a job. If you look at some of the best liberal arts colleges around there, graduates do really, really well because they know how to think.

00:23:23:19 – 00:23:46:14
Speaker 2
They know how to be independent. They’re very well educated and, they have great success. But if you want to deepen somebody’s faith, getting them to really go back and understand first premises, is a really important, part of a full education. And I just don’t think that that’s since the, you know, back university, Chicago used to have a legendary Common Core.

00:23:46:15 – 00:24:04:23
Speaker 2
They’re one of the last holdouts, but it’s largely been destroyed across the country. We just had these kind of random distribution requirements. So I think we need to need to go back and have the the courage to defend, that, that approach to teaching and defend also Socratic teaching as well. Right.

00:24:05:01 – 00:24:13:05
Speaker 1
Before we conclude, are there any, inspirational stories of what’s happened in Boston or around the country that you’d like to share?

00:24:13:07 – 00:24:38:12
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we have, you know, we had a Chinese kid, it’s going to one of our Catholic schools, wanted to convert to Catholicism. His parents were on a one year assignment at Harvard or MIT. I forget which one. And and we presume were fairly close to the government. So it was somewhat dangerous for them to convert to Catholicism, given the relationship between the communist government and and Catholicism these days.

00:24:38:14 – 00:24:57:10
Speaker 2
And so we had a conversation with the parents to make sure they understood the enormity of what was happening here. And to their credit, they agreed to let this kid was about ten years old, convert to Catholicism. So I think that’s a parent who, you know, they could and they were not ignorant of the risk to their family of going back.

00:24:57:10 – 00:25:17:23
Speaker 2
And this could affect what opportunities they had when they back to China. They did it anyway. We have another kid. I forget where he went undergraduate, but he went to Franciscan University for a master’s in theology. And, we got him a job as a theology teacher in high school. It’s also a, great baseball player. Played Division one baseball, but a huge personality.

00:25:18:07 – 00:25:38:15
Speaker 2
Anyway, he’s a brand new teacher this year. He’s, this past year, he’s been a confirmation sponsor for six kids. Wow. I mean, that’s, you know, another guy who actually is the person I made head of the Saint Thomas for Teaching fellows in Brookline, which is kind of like Cambridge, one of the more liberal parts of Massachusetts.

00:25:38:17 – 00:25:58:17
Speaker 2
And a lot of people in the school are not Catholic. But he had a, math and science. He taught math and science, and he converted three kids from scratch to Catholicism in the middle of math and science instruction. And he’s kind of had a particular expertise at converting boys. So, and I met all of his former students.

00:25:58:17 – 00:26:25:05
Speaker 2
I thought he was the best teacher that they had ever had. So all of those, those anecdotes to me suggest that there is a thirst and yearning in this country, you know, among kids at the youngest age. For some, in the midst of we have phenomenal wealth in this country. The technology is like what you basically when you’re walking around with an iPhone, you’re walking around with what used to be a gigantic desktop computer, just sitting in your back pocket or your breast pocket.

00:26:25:13 – 00:26:45:01
Speaker 2
So we have all of this affluence, but you sense that for a lot of kids who have not embraced faith, there’s an emptiness to their life and a yearning for meaning. And a lot of children don’t have people in their lives that are faithful, or they don’t have a male role model in their life. They’ve never seen a man on their knees praying.

00:26:45:03 – 00:27:09:13
Speaker 2
And so I think we have to recognize that our success stories show that these kids are looking for something. And I think that that emptiness that they feel is the lack of a faith and a belief in something larger than themselves. And so rather than ignoring it, we should lean into addressing that. And I think we should speak boldly about, you know, why we believe what we believe.

00:27:09:19 – 00:27:36:08
Speaker 2
And we often don’t talk to children about suffering. Just think like, well, they’re little kids, but little kids, they always have that. Their grandmother might have died. Their mother might have been diagnosed with breast cancer. So the notion that little kids don’t know anything about suffering is completely ridiculous. And so we need to teach them. Yet the secular world, as you know, they have a therapeutic answer to suffering, but there’s no secular version of redemptive suffering.

00:27:36:09 – 00:27:59:13
Speaker 2
So even in your most difficult moments, the church provides solace. And at its heart, Catholicism is a joyful faith. So what we’re selling is infinite mercy and eternal salvation. Not a bad thing that you know. So it seems to me, you know, if we got a bunch of people had their head screwed on straight, you know, staffing all of these schools, that shouldn’t be a difficult to sell, difficult thing to sell.

00:27:59:13 – 00:28:21:09
Speaker 2
If you got 16,000 hours. And I think these kids would not feel as vulnerable and as lost as they do right now, because they’re now been dropped into a culture that is sacrificing in the past. That, frankly, makes me dizzy. But that’s left these kids in a really, really bad spot. So it’s not just that they’re not Catholics, right?

00:28:21:11 – 00:28:40:14
Speaker 2
But it’s just this they do believe in a religion, but the religion is now secularism and narcissism. And we’ve tried that for a bunch of years, and the kids are not better off with this new modern secular religion. And so we should admit it, and I wouldn’t have tried it anyway. But we did try it, whether we like it or not.

00:28:40:16 – 00:28:47:03
Speaker 2
And the evidence is in and it’s been a complete disaster from one end of the country to another.

00:28:47:05 – 00:29:16:20
Speaker 1
Well, thank you, Tom, for joining us. We wish to thank the audience for, for joining us here today. Please subscribe using Spotify, Google or Apple. And until next time, God bless. You.

• Catholic Talent Project