Ep. 1 - Welcome to The Manly Catholic!

James Caldwell  0:01  
Welcome to the manly Catholic. In this podcast we will inspire, challenge and equip all men to become the men they were created to be. Join us as we journey together to become the best versions of ourselves and strive to change our communities. One man at a time. Hello all and welcome to this brand new podcast titled The manly Catholic. My name is James Caldwell and I will be your primary host and with me here right now is my co host Father Dominic Couturier. Am I saying that right father Dom? Yeah,

Father Dominic  0:41  
yeah, you got it. That's that's what it is.

James Caldwell  0:45  
So in this episode, we just want to introduce ourselves, give you just a brief background, some information on us why we are doing this podcast. And finally what to expect from us moving forward in each episode. Just a little bit about me. I'm a convert to the Catholic faith entered Easter Vigil 2018 in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, shout out to St. Thomas Aquinas and father Peter Mossad out there in Colorado. I was born and raised in California, I grew up in a non denominational background, I went to Christian school my whole life, never truly studied, or dove deep into my faith because frankly, I was never really challenged. I grew up in kind of a small bubble, Christian bubble. It led to when I started grad school, I met my now wife, Betsy, and she was born raised a cradle Catholic. And she made it very obvious from the get go that she was Catholic, and that was never changing. So I better get used to that. So I thought to myself, well, she's a beautiful girl. And we're both Christian. So this shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? How foolish I was so but now it ends up being an tremendous blessing. Because of her witness with this, that simple statement, I started diving into the Catholic faith more vigorously. I wanted to tackle kind of the main objections that Protestants had to Catholicism, especially sola scriptura. The Pope Mary, praying to the saints or what I thought was Catholics praying to the saints, why do they have all these statues, things like that? Long story short, started listening to you know, Patrick, Madrid Catholic Answers. Matthew, Kelly, Bishop, Baron, were on fire, his team, etc, etc, the list goes on. And one by one, those dominoes started falling. And like I said, in 2018, I entered the Catholic Church, which has been one of the best decisions I've made in my entire life. And with that, I moved to Grand Rapids in July of last year 2020. And I met father Dom who actually was just ordained That same month, we moved out here July and followed on became ordained a priest. And that same month, we became parishioners here at St. Roberts Avenue Minster in ADA, Michigan. And we both kind of realized I started doing spiritual direction with Father Dominic. And we both realized we both had a very strong passion for masculinity and for helping men, especially in the Catholic Church, we both saw a need. And that's kind of what led us down this road to start creating this, this, this podcast that we're going to bring to you. So with that being said, I'll explain a little bit more down the road by when I give this over to father DOM and let him give you a bit of background information on himself.

Father Dominic  3:46  
Thanks, James. It's, it's definitely an honor to to be invited onto your, onto your podcast, your brand new podcast that that you, you felt the Holy Spirit calling you to. And I just think it's awesome to to be a part of this in whatever way that the Holy Spirit wants me to be. And you know, being your being the co host. And it's it's an honor. And, you know, having having listened to your story, just now, I realized something. You said you were never challenged in your faith, at least to a certain extent. And as I look back in my life, I feel that in many ways, I never really was challenged in my my faith, either. But born and raised here and in Michigan, Greenville, Michigan, just just north of Grand Rapids small town is second youngest of six Catholic family and I greatly cherish my childhood. And I remember going to church all the time. I remember praying the rosary as a family. I remember all the prayers, and it was very special to me. And, you know, having having grown up in a big family as well, it was good to see you know, my brothers and sisters. Pray as well, it was just it was just a really beautiful family, family unit of faith. And, you know, we work hard, we played hard, and Jesus was that was at the center. And, but I never really made the faith, my own and, you know, no fault to the way I was raised, I cherished my childhood, my parents instilled in me, deep morals and values that I still cherish today. And I would probably say around the time I was 15 years old, I just checked out of church really, and 1718 when I was out of the house, you know, just quit going to church altogether, and just really immersed myself into the secular world and still held on to my morals and values, you know, I would say that I was a good person. And if someone asked me, you know, hey, I'm Christian. But I never really made the faith my own, I never really understood the Catholic faith in its fullest sense. And so I was never really challenged, I was never really interested, interested in it. until I was about maybe 2829 years old. And I actually did have someone in my life, a Protestant,

challenged me about some of the things that you talked about James, Mary, the Pope, statues, and all these things that make us Catholic and all these things that are kind of like this interesting mystery to those who aren't Catholic. And I set out trying to define these these questions that this person was asking me and not necessarily to increase my faith, but just to find the answer. And just just to answer these questions that this person was asking me really challenging me. And when I discovered these answers to these questions, most most pointedly with Mary and the saints, and with the Pope, and most especially the early church, fathers, patristic, fathers, early church fathers, you know, such as St. Clair man, St. Bishop of Antioch, or St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, Polycarp, you know, all these heavy hitters, these these beautiful, strong theological writers, you know, in the early first parts of the centuries, as Christianity was growing, as I read what they wrote, I realized that, wow, they sound very Catholic, and they were talking about things about the Eucharist and confession and things like that. So at about 2829 years old, I, I decided to learn more. And then that's what just made me hungry and thirsty for the faith. And it led me back into the, into the Catholic Church. And there's already there's, there's so many other variables and dimensions to this to this story as well. But just from a superficial perspective, just touching on the mountaintops, those are the big ones, someone challenging me. My parents actually instilling in me good, solid morals and values that, that I held dear, even throughout my whole life, even when I was away from the church. And, you know, the early church fathers, like I, like I said, someone challenging me. And that's what really brought me into the faith. And I got more involved in church, I got more involved in apologetics, youth ministry, and, and then at a at a retreat at a men's retreat, I really felt the Holy Spirit challenged me to, to discern the priesthood. And so I stepped out in faith and decided to do that. And I did that when I was about, I think 32 years old. And seven years later, you know, here I am, as a priest. And so I'm still, like you said, James, I'm, I'm still hungry for the truth. And most especially, I just feel the Holy Spirit in a very particular way of my ministry, to to talk about authentic masculinity, not macho ism, not like double Oh, seven James Bond kind of ridiculous. masculinity that actually is toxic, right, that's toxic. And what we're talking about is freedom and men to really understand what does it mean to be a man after God's own heart? What does it mean to be on fire for Christ? What does it mean to be a Catholic husband, a Catholic father? What does it mean to be the priest of your domestic church? You know, so, in, in reality, you know, this is this is really what I'm excited to unpack in this podcast into the future. And it's just been a really good blessing to beautiful blessing to see that, you know, you James, being prompted by the Holy Spirit to start this realizing, yeah, they're there. You see a deficit out there, I see a deficit and let's just name it. And it's that it's that masculinity. And I think that if we unlock authentic masculinity with, with the teachings of the Catholic Church, I think we can we can empower men to be to be free and to be strong and to and to help build this culture and society into something that's good, true and, and beautiful, but not not toxic. So anyway, I could go on and on about this, obviously, but I'm gonna I'm gonna turn it over, back over back over to James But again, it's it's an honor to be here. So

James Caldwell  9:49  
why is it you can see we're both very passionate about this topic. And really, the mission of this podcast is pretty simple. It's to inspire encourage challenge and equip Catholic men to fulfill their vocations, and really become the man that God created them to be. And the reason for that is that To be honest, men have failed. Just look at our culture. And we can see how, you know, single motherhood numbers are rising. A recent statistic said 40% of children are now born out of wedlock. And we look all around us culture has kind of lost its sense of direction of morals, there really is no moral compass anymore. And the sad thing is, is that the church is no better, you know, especially the Catholic Church at its bleeding. You know, nearly 70% of Catholics believe that mass, the Eucharist is simply a it's just a symbol. There's no transubstantiation going on. Only 33% of Catholics believe that only 29% of Catholic men believe that attendance at weekly mass is quote, unquote, very important. And only 34% of them agree that Catholicism is among the most important parts of our life. And then finally, only 33% of Catholic men that were surveyed attend Mass weekly, if we are not doing the basics, putting Catholicism first putting God first who gave us all these gifts in our life? I mean, how do we expect to succeed? You know, the church needs men, to fulfill their vocation to step it up and be, you know, the priests, husbands, fathers, single men, every man that's out there, God created them to be in his image. And we need to have men in our society that are willing to step it up and say, Enough is enough. We need to, to do something different, because clearly what we're doing right now is not working. So you know, Father, Dom, and I were talking when we were thinking about starting this is Why us? Why would somebody listen us, you know, to two men, you know, I'm just a husband and a father. He just got ordained as a priest. And, you know, we asked this question frequently, and we both kind of just came up with, you know, what, why not us, you know, we don't have PhDs in theology, or philosophy or anything along that nature. You know, I'm trained actually as a physical therapist, Father, Dom's obviously a priest, you know, we want to relate to the men who day in day out or just trying to figure out how to be better how to be a better father, be a better husband, just be a better student, or be a better construction worker, whatever you're doing out there. We just want to really speak to those men out there. We are two men who are striving to become saints, just like all of us should strive to be and we can become saints, it is possible, we struggle with the same things that you guys struggle with. I'm sure throughout the course of this podcast, we'll be bringing up some personal struggles that we either have dealt with in the past or continuing to deal with. So that is who we are. That is what you can expect from us just honesty, we're going to challenge you. But we're going to be loving and caring and compassionate as we do that. So what to expect moving forward. As the name suggests the man the Catholic, we are targeting primarily Catholic men. But of course, the things that we talked about is going to be rich, and so many different topics and varieties, it truly is for everyone. But as we go forward, Catholic men are really who we're striving to, to reach and to challenge. For now we're going to release weekly episodes and coming up, we're really gonna dive into Bishop Olmsted's into the breach. And that'll be coming up in the next few episodes that you can look forward to more really break it down, and what he meant, what he was talking about, and what we got out of it. With each podcast episode, we want to try to provide practical tips and lessons that you can apply that day with each episode, we will challenge you and we will make you uncomfortable. Like I said, our goal is always out of love as Jesus Christ did. He always lead with love, but he always challenged his followers, his disciples, He It was never just a fuzzy feeling that he left you with no, he really got to your heart and said, Are you are you doing this? Can you do better, and that's what we want to do as well.

So to wrap up our very first episode here on the mainland Catholic, I just want to leave you guys with a quote actually read this morning from St. Catherine of sienna. And she said, be who God made you to be and you will set the world on fire. Again, from St. Catherine of Siena. That is be who God made you to be and you will set the world on fire. Amen. Father DOM and I really want this podcast to help you become who God made him to be. And we truly can set the world on fire and change the world one family at a time. Father DOM and I are so excited about this podcast. We can't wait to keep this going with you and to channel You each and every week, men, Father Dominic and I are on the same journey. We are trying each and every day to be holy, to be a saint. And every week we want to challenge we want to love. You want to bring hope to this world and truly try to change the world, one man at a time, one family at a time. So for myself, James and Father Dominic, we're wrapping up our very first episode, and we will see you all next time on The manly Catholic. Thank you all so much for tuning in to another episode of The manly Catholic. If you have not already done so please hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss a single episode. It will also help grow the show and reach as many men as possible. We truly think this podcast can change families and help men to change the world. Thank you again so much for tuning in and God bless you.