Father Stephen Gadberry
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We're coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like on the dashboard of the truck. We took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard. So he leaned over to grab it. When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went in the ditch and caught a culvert and started in cartwheels. What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Let's see, there were, I'm trying to think, there were like all sorts of stuff. One of it was like the role of the people in the church. One of the problems that we noticed was like, in some ways, like too many priests were getting, you know, a big head, getting power hungry. And so I was like, well, hold on, like you are the priest, you have been ordained for this, this is true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But also you got to recognize that your flock have a voice as well. So recognizing like the role of the faithful. That was one of the biggest things from Second Vatican Council. There's a million different, I say million, not a million.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
There were a bunch of different things that came up, but the shortest, most concise way of putting it is like, it was addressing how priest need to be more pastoral
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
the preaching of the gospel and whenever i say that i don't mean like watering the gospel down to make people feel good what i mean is like recognizing that we have a job to preach the gospel to all people um so it's calling us telling us to do our work and with the it was also pointing out the fact that the the lay faithful that means the people that aren't priests or deacons like they have a voice and they have to go out and preach the gospel too that's kind of the shortest way of putting it um but it
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
recognizes the needs of the time. That's kind of a simple way of putting it. Some other things were like liturgical reforms. The mass used to always be completely in Latin. Some of the changes were doing some of the stuff in the vernacular, which means the language that the people speak. And so it doesn't mean getting rid of Latin completely. That's a beautiful thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
A lot of churches still use a lot of Latin. But it wouldn't make sense for me to preach to my people in Latin if they don't understand it. I need to preach to them in English or Spanish, you know, whatever language they understand. Yeah, it's basically coming to the times with the gospel, the gospel that doesn't change, bringing that gospel to the people today and the questions that they have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Are they taking kneelers out? Some are. You know, what's really cool is, like, there's a resurgence in those. Part of—there was a—one of the unfortunate things about Second Vatican Council is there were some people who were out there who took it and just did what they wanted to with it. They interpreted it the way that they wanted to, so they stripped their churches, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
got rid of all these traditions, like the nailers, for example, bad or music or art, took terrible liberties to interpret the stuff the way they wanted to interpret it. And it went to an extreme. So what we're seeing now is like, so for example, the liturgies,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It was just like, take the kneelers out, take the sacredness out of it, and make it more like a social gathering, is how a lot of people responded to it. What we're seeing now, though, is more people are coming back to those traditions of saying, there is a social element, but it's got to be a sacred moment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
If we want to hang out and just listen to fun music, we can put on iTunes or something, or Spotify, or we can go to a concert, we can go out to a restaurant, go to Pizza Hut or something. But if we want to encounter God, there has to be a sacred element. So people are putting the kneelers back in, bringing sacred music back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Get rid of that. Well, that would be some of the priests or the bishops that— They were just doing what they wanted and not following the tradition. So they weren't doing what the church was teaching in those moments. It was just disobedience. There's really no other answer to it other than that. They weren't doing what they were told to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think so. I think so. I mean, we're all sinners. We're all broken people. Some people are intentionally... Some people, well, all of us mess up. Some people are, like, intentionally acting badly, you know, against those. I don't have a lot of experience, you know, with that. You know, let me back up a little. So, like, I was in Rome for four years. I was at the Vatican all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Got to meet the Pope a number of times, a bunch of cardinals and bishops from all over the world and stuff. So, like, I know a lot of people in power. And I've never met anyone that's, like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
intentionally trying to burn the place down okay there are but there there are you know who are they i don't know who they are but i'm not going to be naive and say they don't exist yeah but they're coming to light they're they're they're uh everything comes to the light so they exist but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it scripture says and
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, so I did it twice, 2018, 2020. I didn't make it through the first round. They just invited me on. I was like, well, sure, why not? I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but... Just, I gave it a shot. It was fun. One of them was in Dallas. The other one was in St. Louis. You know, cool thing about that. Like you mentioned the Instagram page earlier.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I don't put a lot of ministry stuff on there. It's not like I'm hiding the priesthood. It's actually like quite the opposite. I don't put a lot of pastoral ministry out there because the souls of the people that I'm with are sacred. Like people, your soul is sacred, John. Like mine is. Like the human soul is a sacred thing. God dwells within that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And whenever I'm privileged to have an encounter with a soul in my church, a sheep of my flock, I take that seriously. And so like, I don't put that stuff on social media. Like I'll share some stuff every now and then, like some school stuff, I'll share some things with the school, other things in ministry, but it's not a lot because that's such a sacred thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I share a lot of my own personal life. I don't hesitate to share my soul with people. So the neat thing with the Ninja Warrior, I did that. I got a lot of pushback from people, a whole bunch of pushback. From who? Priests, some other priests. Why? Also some of the people in the church as well. Because it wasn't a holy thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You should be doing holy stuff like praying or studying or stuff like this. You shouldn't be wasting your time going on TV and doing the Ninja Warrior thing. But you know what was really cool about it was to bring it back full circle. Like this connected the Vatican II stuff. We gotta be in the world, but not of it. We have to go out and preach the gospel boldly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So I did the, I ran the course of my clerics just like this. They had a little clip on there that told a little bit of my story. You know, I crashed and burned that, you know, so that was whatever, that doesn't matter. But people saw a priest doing something that they don't see a priest doing. And you would not believe how many phone calls and emails I got.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Not people to say, hey, congratulations, good job, or like, oh, you're a loser, you fell in the water. But calling to say, like, calling, sending emails, sending letters in the regular mail. Hey, Father, I saw you on Ninja Warrior. That was cool. But my marriage is falling apart. This and this and this. What advice would you give me? Hey, Father, saw you on TV. That was neat. My kid's on dope.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
What's a way that I can be with him? Or like, hey, I was abused as a kid. And it's fun watching Ninja Warrior with my kids, but I'm always thinking about this trauma from my childhood. How can I get healing from that? And so by me... Doing that, it opened up a lot of avenues of communication with people, which is really cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Same thing with fitness and the hunting stuff. Those are two things. I love CrossFit, love hunting, and I share those stories, and it's the exact same thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. I mean, we can't sit in our little palaces. We've got to get in the trenches with the people, you know? And if I'm going to preach effectively, I've got to know what they're living. I've got to be with them out there. Like you just said, that's what Jesus Christ did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
This God who is beyond all things, this God who made space and time and is beyond space and time, entered into the confines of space and time to be with us. He did miracles, yeah, but also he walked and talked with them. He had to have cut up, you know, with them. Jonathan Rumi, he's just The Chosen. Have you seen the TV series or heard of that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. And... Like, there's a lot of stuff in that show that's not in the Bible, but it's plausible. He's joking around with them. That stuff, I think, really happened, even if it's not in Scripture. Jesus, they had to have cut up. They had to have joked around, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I'm sure they got, you know, ate some, you know, I don't know, roasted lamb or something, got heartburn or, you know, wasn't cooked enough and diarrhea or something. I don't know, but, like, we're humans, you know, and we just got to continue that in ministry, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Um... It's, uh... I got a lot of thoughts. Like, I... There's a lot to unpack here. First of all, no one commits suicide because things are going all right. No one does that because life is worth living. So they're broken. There's a lot going on there. Internally, there's also problems externally, support systems that are not in place that should be. So I recognize that element of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But also, like... And this is, like, I'm not saying this lightly. I don't want any listener to take it lightly or anything, but, like, I think it's a cowardly thing to do. They've got so many burdens that are pushing them into the grave, and they want to, like, it's just almost too much to bear.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So they'll end their life, but in doing that, that burden is handed over to someone else to sort out or figure out, you know, and... I don't know. It's just a complicated thing to unpack. I've had people at the church commit suicide or family members, things like that. Not my own family members, but family members, church people have done funerals and stuff like that. It's tough, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I wish I could give an answer. It's just a messy thing. Do they go to heaven? God's grace is big. God's grace is big. God can get anyone to heaven that he wants to get to heaven, you know. And in those situations, you know, in years past, it's kind of like a thing from Second Vatican Council, you're asking about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like it was, if somebody committed suicide, it was immediately like, there was a teaching for a long time that they were just immediately condemned to hell because it was murder. You're murdering yourself. Thou shalt not kill. And you've killed yourself. But the act of murder happened. Like, you committed that act of murder even though it was yourself.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Now the church recognizes, like, it's a lot more complicated than that. Now that we understand psychology and the human mind and everything. And so we recognize how, like, God sees the brokenness in that person. And it's God's desire to save, you know, broken people. You know, it's...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
kind of hard to to say that like yeah short answer can they go to heaven yeah they can definitely go to heaven does it definitely mean they're going to heaven no i don't know i don't know who goes to heaven or who goes to hell it's up to god i don't want to sit here though and and make it an easy out for somebody you know and that's that's um some ways like i don't
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
This is something I'm struggling with. This may have come up on one of your recent episodes on this subject. How do we talk about it in a way that doesn't give it a blessing, but actually addresses the cause? And in a way that doesn't create like a heroism in it. Does that? I don't know if that makes sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, and that's what needs to be addressed. They're not. So how do we get to the heart of that? It's a bigger burden to kill yourself. Yeah, but even in my own life, not to the point of suicide, but one of the reasons we were talking earlier about boundaries and stuff, it's hard for me to ask for help because I don't want to be a burden. I grew up in a poor family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It was hard to get by with everything, and I didn't want to be another burden. And so that's so ingrained in me that it's hard for me to ask for help. So I can understand what it's like to not want to burden somebody. So how do we tell? I'm like, you're not a burden, buddy. You're not a burden. You may be screwed up. That doesn't mean you're a burden. You still got dignity, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We're all screwed up. We all like fight with stuff. We wrestle with stuff. And I say screwed up in a loose way. It's just a tough thing. People just want to be loved, man. We just need to walk with people. You know, how do you, this goes, a lot of the stuff we were talking about earlier, man, I'm just, I'm trying to figure this thing out myself. I've been to a lot of school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I have a lot of experiences. That don't mean I know what I'm doing. I'm just a lost fool in this thing called life. Every day waking up saying, God, help me to not be as, like a little bit less of a loser today than I was yesterday. And any way that I can help other people around me be a little bit less of a loser today than they were yesterday, like I'm doing what God's called me to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And that just means like, I have to be willing to sit with uncomfortable stuff. So then how do we I think that's where we can improve, is sitting with people in those moments when we don't have an answer. Because we want an answer. We want something to fix it. We want a treatment. And unfortunately, a bullet or a pill is often where the mind goes to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And gosh, I think it may, I don't know if it was one of your episodes or not, just a recent one. I was just listening to it on the drive over here. But how somebody can be under the influence of something, and you're not thinking clearly in that moment, you know? And it's so easy to make a permanent decision in that split second.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But how do you sit with somebody in that moment and say, listen, I don't have an answer for you. I can't imagine how much it sucks for you, but I want to sit with you right now. Whatever we got to do, we'll do it. And that's hard because it requires us to surrender control because we want to fix it. Especially for guys, we like to fix stuff. We don't want to be a burden.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We want to get it done now. We don't like to ride things out. So there's so many things that go against the way that we're built. So many things that are pushing against our own DNA, the way we operate as men. But for us to just sit there in that tension, in those crosshairs, or that crossroads is... not having an answer. I think that's where we start. Like, what does that look like? I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But it's a messy thing. I wish we didn't have it. I wish suicide wasn't a thing. Yeah. But it is. And it's hurting a lot of people. Yes, it is. Anyway, yeah. If there's any way I can help anyone, you know, I know a ton of people listen to this. Oh, yeah. Reach out. Like I just said, I can't answer anything. I can't be a savior, but I got some grit, and I'll just sit it out with you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, but I haven't paid attention. Someone asked me a similar question a few weeks ago. Before, I'd never thought of that until they asked it. I kind of forgot about it until just now you asked. Short answer is no. I'm sure they have, and I just wasn't paying attention. Or maybe they have, and I was, but I didn't know it was them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
What is it? It's a group of us, just knuckleheads that like to work out and hunt. So Rich Froning, one of my best friends, he's big in the CrossFit world, just lives up the road here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Who's he? He's old and washed up now. He's still a fit guy, super strong. Him and a few of our best friends, we started hunting a number of years ago. We've always been passionate in fitness. And from that, we just wanted to get more people ready to hunt. Hunting is a tough thing physically. And so just creating a training program to do that. And it's still new.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We're still getting it off the ground and everything. But yeah, training program to get people ready to hunt. Mayhem hunt. Right on. You getting ready to do any big hunts? Yeah, hoping to do a bear hunt this late spring. Then this fall, I'll go elk hunting again in September. Probably Montana this year, maybe. Nice. I want to take you. And alligator hunting. We're going to go alligator hunting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Let's do it. You and me and Theo Vaughn. Let's do it. Yeah, the suicide thing, that's a tough one, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I see it from both sides. I don't understand any of it because I'm not in that situation. But from my perspective, I can see the brokenness. I should have mentioned this in the talk or just a second ago. I can see the side of the individual and their brokenness. No one does that because things are fine. But also I've been with the victims or the families afterwards.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And I see everything that they go through too. And I see that and it's like, it's just so much pain all around. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. So purgatory is like, we would believe whenever we die, before we have the full beatific vision, that's heaven, seeing God face to face. We're still not worthy to be in the presence of God. Because we still have imperfections from this own life that... that have to be worked out, that have to be purified of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so purgatory would be like that time that would, that final purification that would make us fit to see the face of God and not die, not be overwhelmed, but be freed from anything that could hold us back. So what happens there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, they do. It's just... I don't know, time of purification for any wrong doings. I don't know. There's no like formal teaching of saying like, well, here's the protocols or here's the things that happened there. I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No. Yeah, because then you'd be outside of time. Like it wouldn't be like the same time constraints that we have now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a complete... I've had a bunch of schooling, I promise, but I revert to farm boy. I wish I could give some better answers for a lot of this stuff. It's like, I don't know. Mama just said go, and so I'm doing it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Thanks, Sean. I bet you did, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
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Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
For me, one of the ways that it comes about is just like clarity from like all the stuff I've been going through before. So it's almost like a retrospective, like just time to reflect. So going back to like the work stuff. It's a superpower that God's given us, men in particular, to provide. We're the providers, and we've got to do stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And if you don't, your family dies, the village dies, society dies, the world dies. So we've got to put stuff out. We've got to be producers. Satan likes to use that because if we get too task-oriented, then we forget about... like making time for the main things, for the important things. So you were talking about these different little signs or affirmations that God would give you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Whenever you're just working too fast or too much, you're going to miss them. I'm sure there's 444s that you walked by before, like when you're just on a mission, just going. They were there the whole time. But what's going on now is you're more aware of it. And the more aware of it you become, the more you'll see them. And you'll really realize how present God is in your life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Setting time aside to slow down, to be still and know that God is God, it's a sacred moment. If you think about Sunday, like the Lord says, keep holy the Sabbath. Don't do a bunch of serve all labor. It doesn't mean you can't do work. But it's the first day of the week. It's like a proper orientation to God. If we can set aside work for a moment...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's not laziness, but it's actually an act of faith. Because what we're doing is saying, God, I can bust my ass, but if I take this hour, this day, this week to be with you, be with my family, to do whatever, I'm recognizing that you're God and I'm not. And so... capable of doing this work, capable of doing this stuff, but you could end my life right now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I exist because you're holding me in existence. And so whenever we take these little breaks, it's like a profession of faith that God is going to take care of us. And so for me, to bring it back to the last question that you made was like, when I'm out in the woods, out in the mountains, it's just time for me to stop and let the dust settle from the rat race that I'm always running.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then just get clarity. And for me, it doesn't take long. I mean, it could be an afternoon hunt, like going out to hunt whitetails. It could be a drive in the truck when I have the radio off. You know, nothing at all. A 20-minute drive. Could be working out just for 20 minutes, 30 minutes an hour, whatever. But a little bit of space to decompress and let the thoughts fall in line.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
For me, that's kind of how the Lord speaks. I got all these puzzle pieces that I've been picking up. Whenever I take that time of silence... I can put all those little puzzle pieces in order, and then I get the big picture. I don't know if that makes sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think what you're saying is clarity. Yeah, mindfulness is all this stuff. It's all over pop culture. It's all over the place because there's something behind it. Definitely the clarity. What were you saying? How does Sade take advantage of this? So, simply put, he'll allow us to fall so deep
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
into our own endeavors that we begin to believe that we're God of our own life, that we can save ourselves. If I can work this hard and make this kind of income and do all these things, it doesn't even have to be an income. It could be productivity of any sort. It could be whatever you're doing. But whenever that becomes the main thing, we end up worshiping that, an idol.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then the lie that we begin to believe is that we're self-sustaining. I can take care of it. I don't need God. We begin to believe that we're in control of everything. Like we're, yeah, like we're God. So that's the way that Satan will do it. It's a very tactical way of him to get us off path.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, thanks for the invite. I only work on Sundays, so I've got all the time you need to know. Not really. Yeah, no, it's, you know, in the Catholic Church, the pastor, the leader is called father. Because, you know, like being the spiritual father, you know, a father is one that generates life. And if you're going to generate life, you got to have some energy in you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Because if he knocks on the door, you know, Satan appears like in a way that you can't deny that it's Satan. You're going to say like, no, get behind me, you know, in the name of Jesus, be gone. Because it's going to be so obvious. So therefore he likes to hit us where we're strong. He goes to our talents. And then from there, he,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It starts upping the pride and the ego, and that's the root of all sins, pride. So that's kind of a simple way of putting how he manipulates it. Well, how can people keep a balance? How do they know when they're going too far? I'd say look for the fruits of the spirits. I mean, if your marriage is crumbling, what's the most basic things?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
If you're not doing the most basic things, then you need to put stuff in order. So marriage, if your marriage is falling apart because this thing is now your wife, if the work that I'm doing becomes my wife, or if I'm a dad or a mom and I got kids but I'm never with them, This is something I'm always on the guys at the church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
All this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question. We don't know when it's coming. We know it's coming and we can't control that. You know, and so that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I've got some hardworking people in my church, and they'll be gone Monday through Friday, and then be home Saturday, and then have to leave again on Sunday, Sunday evening, so they can go to their Monday through Friday job way out of town. They're spending the whole day Saturday sleeping and recovering, and then they got basically Sunday to be with the family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, you're working to provide stuff for your family, but At the end of the day, your kid just wants to be with you. Hey, Dad, will you play with me? So what do the relationships look like? Is the work that you're doing supporting those relationships or is it getting in the way of them? That's kind of a simple way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Also, another way would be like look at your own vices and sins or addictions, for example. Yeah, I'd say look at those secondary signs, relationships, and then just your own virtues or the lack thereof.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Man, work. Work? It's hard to stop because I love going. I love going. That's one. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, so outside the Sunday Mass is, you know, got this large community. So I'm essentially in charge of all the operations for the community, for all the members of the parish, but then also all the buildings, the structures. So it's a little bit of everything. It could be, of course, preparing for Sunday services,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
preparing people for marriages, doing marriage counseling, doing funerals, going to the prisons, hiring contractors to do work. We're starting a lot of development at our school right now. The school is exploding. And so it's cool, but it's making some problems, like some good problems, but we've got to do construction.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So I'm talking to contractors and doing building plans and calls to the hospital, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
finances got to oversee all the books and everything i have a bookkeeper who does that but i mean i'm over her so i gotta make sure she does that um you're a ceo essentially yeah yeah that's kind of how we operate all the all the pastors all the the catholic priests at their churches are it's their little village interesting do you got you've had over 10 000 members it's wild yeah we're out in arkansas again little rock man that's a
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And I think we have a lot of, men out there who aren't fathers because they're not generating energy. They're just, they're stale. They're stagnant. They're too closed in on themselves. But I mean, we got a fire in us and God just wants us to spread that thing, you know? So yeah, I just try to do that through the social media stuff and day-to-day life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Spanish and in English. We have seven Masses over the weekend. Two of those are in English and the other five are in Spanish. Wow. Yeah, and it's still growing, man. People are still coming. The community is growing. What's bringing them in? Work, a lot of it's work. I mean, Little Rock, just like so many other cities in the U.S., are growing, especially these conservative states.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
People are leaving the more liberal states to go to these conservative places, and Arkansas is a very conservative state. And so that just requires the growth and development.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. We're at the point now where we realize the juice that the world's given us doesn't satisfy our thirst. It doesn't quench our thirst. And so we're going deeper. We're realizing... That the passing things of this world, as good as they are, they're not the best thing. We can use them as long as they take us to something higher, something greater, something outside ourselves.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And people are aware of that. We live in a world now that's so divided. Everything is so polemical. Is that the word? Polemical? Like it's on these extremes? Yeah. that, I mean, everyone's on edge all the time, you know, and that's exhausting. It's so exhausting. And so people are just wanting some time to breathe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so that naturally opens up this spiritual side of people, which then leads them to ask big life questions. And whenever you slow down in this crazy life, like you realize, after all the work, after all the stuff I do, after this life that I live, I'm going to die. And ultimately, all this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question. We don't know when it's coming.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We know it's coming, but we don't know when, and we can't control that. And so that terrifies us. And so we do all these things that distract us from that. So the life of faith is really preparing for a good death. Memento mori, I don't know if you've heard that before. I'm sure you have. Like, remember your death. Memento mori, it's a Latin phrase. And it's just an ancient Christian reflection.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
A lot of times you'll see Christian art and there'll be a skull in the corner of the painting or on the table or something. And it's a reminder that you're going to be six feet under someday. And so we have to live every day so that we prepare for a good death, basically, when we go to meet the maker and give that final account. Do you see a lot of spiritual warfare?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I crash and burn all the time, but it's part of the fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, it's pretty hidden. It's not like the movie, the stuff that I see isn't like you see in the movies. It's pretty hidden. A lot of it's marriages. Satan is going after families. That's where he's going. And I see that all the time, so many broken families.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I've done three funerals over the last month, over the last few months, two of them within a week and one back in November, of a 17-year-old, 19-year-old, and a 24-year-old that got shot. You know, just violence. gangs or drug stuff or whatever the reason. Like, I see that. I see marriages falling apart. I see infidelity. I see kids just losing their mind because they don't have good parents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And the parents are just lost and confused. And so that's how Satan, he can't destroy the world. I mean, he could. But like, He'll do it one family at a time if he's going to do it. And to take it back to the whole work thing, he goes after dads. If a dad is not there, then he's the cornerstone of the family. Moms are necessary. Of course, the women are necessary. So is dad, the men.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So when it comes to warfare, spiritual warfare, I see it like that. That's the biggest place where I see it, families being broken apart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Good and gracious God, we give you thanks for this day and the gift of life. Just pray that you send your spirit upon us. Give us a double portion of your spirit that we may open our heart to you and be faithful disciples. Help us to follow your word, follow your voice, to be men.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's all disordered, you know. It's all disordered, yeah. Most simply put. And God created the universe and everything in it in a proper, ordered way. Logic is like... People don't argue with numbers. Two plus two is four. There's some objective truths. It's a simple thing for that. But like... Evil comes in, and Satan, he can't make stuff. He doesn't create things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
He just distorts what's already there. So he'll manipulate the truth. He'll manipulate what is real. So he'll manipulate the way that we see identity or gender. Say, you know, this is what... All of humanity, it's male and female. But now it's like, no, it can be whatever you want it to be. It's like, no, you're turning something that's good into something that's bad. You're distorting it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's a lie. He just flips all this stuff on its head. So one of the words that you use, like just these perversions, that's a good word for it. It's just perverting the truth. It's twisting it around and saying two plus two is five. It's all over.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
after um after the image and likeness of jesus christ that we may follow his example and be willing to die to make sacrifices for the love of others amen amen and uh everybody gets a gift but i'll give you your main your one of your gifts later but this will be pretty fitting so that is um
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Good question. It's a lot, I would bet. It seems like there's a lot around it. Man, I just keep going back to freedom. Freedom, like that's... All this stuff is bad in as much as it takes our freedom away. God wants us to be free. To be a saint is to be in the presence of God, and that's perfect freedom. That's the fullness of life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Anything that takes away our freedom, our free will, our consciousness, it gets us away from that. But freedom, that's ultimately what... When God made Adam and Eve, He made them perfectly free. Until they started doubting and questioning and then kind of not thinking that they were free enough. So they tried to make their own freedoms, the forbidden fruit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like the scripture will tell us that just the image of the forbidden fruit. But it's about freedom. All these other things are bad in as much as they take our free will away from us. So AI is a good thing, man. It's here. You know, it's not going to go away. So how do we move forward with it ethically and morally? Right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And as much as it helps us with productivity and to be more free, that's great. But if it takes away our freedom, what I mean is like if we rely on it so much that we're not creatively thinking and making decisions on our own, then it's bad. Because ultimately that's what it's all about. Like God wants us to be free. And what's the ultimate freedom? Like this radical creativity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So going back to the work conversation, work – that's done freely and properly ordered is a creative act. That's what work is. You're creating stuff. You're cooperating in the creation of the world. So there's a lot of dignity in work. But yeah, just freedom. So in any way that all this stuff around us takes away our freedom, it's not from God. What is the freedom?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The freedom is to do the right thing, to do what's right, not freedom to do whatever the hell you want. It's the freedom to do what's right. I'm not free to go out and rob 15 banks today if I want to, because that's not right. I'm not free to go out and just drink a 30-pack of beer and then drive around town. That's not good. I'm not free to kill somebody just out of cold-blooded murder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That's not freedom. If there's a
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, yeah. To make the right choice. We're free to make the right choice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Correct. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then so you mentioned psychedelics just in passing. We can jump into that a little bit later or whenever you want. But like something with that or alcohol or drugs or like anything like this is like it would be bad in as much as it takes our free will. Tom Sequinas talks about alcohol, for example. And like, you know, how much can you drink?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And he says to the point of hilarity. That's kind of like the way he just... Because to the point of hilarity means that you still have full use of your reason. But as soon as something takes away your faculties, then you're not free in that. And that's where Satan wants to come in. Because if we don't maintain the proper use of our faculties and reason...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
then that's because we've surrendered it to someone else. And so anytime that we surrender that, like if we're under the influence of something to the point where it takes away our faculties completely, we've surrendered that free will to somebody else. And at that point, they're free to make decisions in our name. I mean, to really simplify it, like think of a parent raising a kid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The parent's gonna make decisions for the kids because it's their proper, you know, like it's their right thing to do. You know, a power of attorney is another example. You give someone else the freedom to make decisions in your name. But that can be a slippery slope if you give the freedom to the wrong person. They can abuse that power of attorney and just screw you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then if you take another step further into the spiritual realm, if you give your freedom to some spiritual being that's not God, then that's how Satan makes his way in. Is our destiny chosen for us?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So God's knowledge doesn't necessarily predetermine where we'll end up. He may know where we're going to end up. That's not because He's predestined. It's because He knows all things. God's outside of space and time. God's all-knowing. The foreknowledge of God is, I guess, kind of a simple way of understanding this. St. Augustine, or St.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Augustine, depending on how you say his name, he talks about this free will and predestination and everything. And it's like God's foreknowledge is that which guarantees us the freedom to choose rightly in that moment in the future. So it's like he knows all this stuff, but it's just like a parent leading their kid through something in life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And you walk with the kid and you say, okay, we're here now. Let's make the decision. I've taught you all this stuff up to this point. Now you're going to make the decision. What do you make? If it's a wrong decision, you help your kid learn from it and then move on. If it's the right decision, they keep going. So God's foreknowledge is kind of like a parent walking with a kid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So, yeah, that's the kind of simplest way I could put it for when I get too theological with it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I mean, God would know. He knows all things, so he would know that. But for him to know if we're going to be a believer or a non-believer, if we're going to be in heaven or hell, does not mean that he would have predestined that. God cannot predestine, or like, it's not in God's nature to will something bad for somebody. God is love. And so God would not
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
create any of us, like with the plan of sending us to hell. It would be the choice that we freely make in that regard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
This initial thing is like, how much of your free will can be maintained in that? And if it is surrendered in the use of that, who is... who is rightly going to be your guardian during that moment. That's kind of one thing. That's kind of a high thought or whatever. But they're doing a lot more studies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think with more of these studies, we'll have a clearer understanding of the morality of it and the ethics of it and everything, which is good. So we have to do the studies and everything and figure out more. The big thing is, how can you control the consistency of it? Like in a beer, you know how much alcohol is in there. Now, like with, yeah, do you know how much is in it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then if you can measure it and know how much is in it, then you can control how much you take, which can control effects.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That's a good question. Man, I'm still learning more about it myself. Now, if you compare psychedelics to drugs, crystal meth or something. I think those are two totally different creatures, you know, or cocaine or whatever, like one of these man-made drug or something versus like something that is naturally derived. I think that in itself is an argument that needs to be explored more.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
To answer your question, like, does it open you up to the demonic stuff? I think... I think it can. I think it can. Just in the shortest answer. Yeah. It gives me the jibbies. I don't know if I'd want to do it. Have you ever done it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We can't... There's so much more in this world, in this universe, in this life than what we can just sense. You know, what would be an example? I mean, you can look up something on Wikipedia and you can read one article, but there's still all the rest of Wikipedia that's still there and exists, even though you haven't read it. We have our senses that allow us to take information in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But think of those senses as just experiencing like one Wikipedia page of what this life is all about. That's kind of like a horizontal kind of way of understanding. But if you take that vertically, like to the spiritual realm, yeah, I mean, it's all around us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Just today, like life experiences will reveal, life experiences will reveal that there's more to this life than just the things we can touch and see and smell. I mean, every human being has had a good day and a bad day. We've all done stuff that has changed our mood and make us happier or sad, mad or angry, whatever it may be. We've all had people say something to us that,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
it's a word that we hear in our head but it does something inside us it could piss us off or can make us feel loved and consoled um it's all around us it's all around us we got to be aware of it respected but at the same time we can't get hung up on it what i mean is like god wants us to live live life like be in reality do you think there's ways to access it Prayer initially comes to mind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I did bring some little toys for you, a few of them now or later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I don't know, like a shortcut. I'm a little, I'm a redneck from the farm. Okay. Sure, yeah, there's definitely ways to access it. Okay. There's definitely ways to access it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
First one is actually... Bible. But I do a lot of stuff with Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire. I don't know if you've heard of him. Does a ton of stuff in evangelization. We started this project a number of years ago with Word on Fire to create a series of the Bible. And the goal in this is not just to read the Word of God, but to experience the Word of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Fantastic question, Mr. Duff. Brian, was that his name, Brian? Brian. Yeah, good question, Brian. Man, first thing I would say is be pissed at God. He's a big boy. If you're mad at God, the only way to encounter God is in reality. I mentioned that earlier. I think I did. If not, I was thinking it. But yeah, the only way to encounter God is in reality, not in fantasy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So if you're pissed at God, tell him. He already knows what you're feeling and thinking. He knows what's in your mind. He knows what's in your heart. He knows all the stuff that you saw. He was there with you. And that's the beauty of Christianity, that God is, I mean, it's the message of the cross.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like God doesn't sit on some, you know, crystal throne and gaze on us like a, you know, somebody watching fish in a tank. He was crucified. Like he's been to the depths of hell. He knows better than us what that is. And so first thing is meet God at that spot. Because it's only through reality and in reality that you're going to encounter God. So start with that stuff. Man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then from there, everything else just kind of snowballs. What was the second part? The last question that he said?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So, yeah. The end. It's okay to be mad at God. I think a lot of people have never been given that freedom to be mad at God. Some of the best prayers that I've had, I've chewed him out. And then afterwards, he brings some light to it and meaning to it. So start there. And then he's so good. Why do these things happen? That's the typical question of suffering.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
If God is so good, why is there evil in the world? And it's because of his love. And I'll explain that because it doesn't make sense. If God loves us, then how can that be the reason for the evil? Love is always proposed and it's never imposed. God doesn't spiritually rape us. He always intimately invites us to a deeper relationship.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
He gives us the full free will to respond however we want to respond. Because love, again, is not forced on somebody. It's an offer. It's an invitation that's given. And then we respond to that. We're broken people, man. And so therefore we make dumb decisions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And those dumb decisions can be here and now, or they could be generational things that you could, I don't want to make it more than what it is, or like, kind of like, But you could do something now. I'm thinking like the butterfly effect. It's not really the butterfly effect, but you can do something now. That's going to cause something evil 50 years or 100 years down the road.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so there is, of course, the scriptures. This is the Gospels, the four Gospels. And then it's got commentary from the church fathers, from saints, from Bishop Barron. It's just a beautiful text. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. And then... This is, I think you'll like that. Oh, man. I just got into making knives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Let's say I'm a father. Got some kids. Let's say I had a long work week. I come home, just hammer some beers. And then I get in a fight with my wife and I punch her in front of my kids and the kids start crying and then I kick them and tell them to shut the hell up. And then like the next day, like everyone's quiet. We get through the week and then like there's some reconciliation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Wife didn't leave. I apologize and all this stuff. The kid had some trauma. Then the kid's going to grow up go through their stuff and they may see something, you know, when they're in their 50s. Let's say they're in their 60s. They got their kids now and then some little, they got their first grandkids. And then maybe it's the guy's daughter just has their first grandkid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then the guy hears that from his daughter that the husband was abusing him or something. And he goes home and shoots him, goes to the house and shoot him or something. Like that would be an evil act, you know, murder. And kind of like a seed was planted years before. Does that kind of make sense? So we can do things now that have effects in the future.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And if that happens at the physical level, it also happens at the spiritual level, too. And so the free will stuff, it's like that. But it's here now. It doesn't have to be a generational thing. I can make a bad decision. I've made a ton of them. I'm going to make more of them in the future. I don't want to. It's not like I plan on it, but I know I'm a broken human being. And so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You know, emotions can get the better of us, and then we just do stupid stuff. And that's why, and to bring it back to the God thing, it's because He gave us free will. We get mal-informed, or we follow our emotions instead of using our reason, instead of thinking stuff through. We say stuff we don't want to say. We do stuff we don't want to do, shouldn't do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. Whoa. So I made that one for you. It's kind of sharp. From scratch? I got the blade already pre-forged and treated and everything. He treated, but I shaped it and did the handle. There's two engravings on there. Ajiquodajis. We may talk about this later. It's like a motto that I go by. Feminacious Loyola. It means, like, do what you're doing. That's the literal translation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's because God loves us, and He gives us that free will. And whenever we make dumb decisions, it affects the whole community. So that would be kind of the answer I'd give Brian, like kind of twofold. First of all, the first part wasn't a question, but I would just directly respond to the anger thing. Be mad at God. Whatever emotion you got, bring it to God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then two, not to make it just too easy of an answer, but like bad stuff happens because... We do dumb stuff. And we do dumb stuff because God has given us free will to, you know, ultimately do the good. But whenever we don't choose the right, there's consequences.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I feel like I got punched in the face. I don't know if any of that made sense.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Some heavy stuff, all those.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, it's good. I like the shock and awe. I don't know. Catch my breath if I'm mumbling or stumbling. Knock the wind out of me. I'm getting warmed up, though.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, Wynn is the name of the town. Little bitty old town. It was around 9,000, 8,000 people growing up, which is kind of wild going back to the church thing. I'm leading a church now at 39 years old. That's bigger than the hometown I grew up in. Basically like the mayor of that town, you know? It's kind of weird. Yeah, I grew up in Wynn, Arkansas. It's a farming community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I grew up on a family farm. We got rice, soybeans, wheat. 200 acres or so. Just a German family. Grew up in this German family. Hardworking family. We're a poor family. Everyone in the family is poor, but hard workers. Although I didn't inherit wealth or anything from my family, I damn sure inherited a work ethic and just put the nose to the grindstone and get stuff done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And that's something I learned growing up, do that work. I'm the second oldest of five kids. And I'm 39. I mentioned that earlier. I was born in 85. When I was eight years old, my dad and older sister died in a car wreck. And I was in the truck with them. My little sister was in the truck with us. It was a one-car accident. We stayed at my dad's parents' house the night before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And we were driving back to the house the next day to get ready for school. Dad was going to go to work, take us to school and everything. And it was about a mile and a half away. down the road from our house. We were coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like on the dashboard of the truck. And we took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So he leaned over to grab it. When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went in the ditch and caught a culvert and started doing cartwheels. My older sister, Courtney, she was 11. The truck landed on her. She died immediately. My dad, he was 32, which is wild, you know, to think that. He had I think he died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Punctured lungs, stuff like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I had just some cuts and scrapes, a broken ankle. My little sister, she was three. I was eight. Little sister was three. She just got crushed. She was sitting on my dad's lap. None of us were wearing seat belts. And she was sitting on my dad's lap. And so whenever we hit the culvert, she just got crushed between my dad and the steering wheel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So everything like from the waist down was just crushed, collarbone also, and her arm. She was in a body cast. I remember that mom, you know, pulling her around in a little wagon for that. But I remember, you know, dad was there just kind of breathing heavy and I remember sitting on his chest and him groaning about it. Now I know why. You know, punctured lungs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But the sense of it is don't half-ass it. Like, whatever you're going to do, just give it hell. Like, don't half-ass it. Go all in. Yeah. And then the other side of that is Hebrews, I think, 4.12. I don't remember the verse exactly. But it's the word of God, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing the heart and soul, bones and marrow. That's a two-edged knife, so I thought it was gonna fit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You wouldn't want someone sitting on your chest if you had a punctured lung. And then, yeah, you know, for an eight-year-old, that's some... Do you remember that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
May 5th, 1994, you know, it was probably around, I don't know, 6 or so, 5.45, 6.15, somewhere around there maybe. No, probably later than that, probably around 6.15, 6.45 in the morning. It just grew as a little kid's brain, you know. So... Talking about little signs from God. I remember just the week before, we were on the farm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
My uncle, who ran the farm, just the week before, he was saying, Hey, Steven, if you ever run on the tractor and you need to stop me, just come out, just wave your hands, and I'll know to come check on you, come see what you need, because I won't hear your voice. So just wave your arms. I realized shit wasn't good, like trucks upside down. It's like something out of a movie scene, a war zone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So I'd hobble my way up to the side of the road and little cars coming, so I'd flag them down. And I'd say, yeah, here's the phone number. And then they went up to, I don't know if he called, I guess he called. And mom, yeah, answered the phone and We live on the farm. My grandparents lived on the farm as well. They're deceased now. So mom calls my grandpa and says they were in a wreck.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So she turns the corner and picks him up, and then they come to the scene. They wouldn't let her up there, though. I mean, it's a small town. My dad worked at the radio station. Big personality. Everybody knew him. So he was well-known in the community. Mom, too, because of him. the cops wouldn't let her come up just because they knew how bad it was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so, I mean, you can just imagine what would go through a mom's mind, you know, with that stuff. And my sister's airlifted to Memphis. It was about 45 minutes away, an hour away. I was taken to the hospital there and then taken by ambulance to the Children's Hospital in Memphis. Yeah. Man. Wow. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I remember being at the children's hospital and they were, that's when they, everyone was there. The, the priest came, drove over from, from, you know, where we lived and there was a nun who was at the other church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
She was there too and family and I remember them telling me like, you know, your dad and sister died and I, I didn't know what that meant but I just remember kind of being a little mad at that, like angry and like hitting the, hitting my hands on the, on the, the hospital bed but,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Man. Mom was pregnant. She was pregnant. She knew that she... Her and Dad knew that. They knew they were pregnant. She goes to the doctor a couple weeks later, you know, a week later, whatever, for a checkup. It's a lot of trauma. Didn't know... check up for the baby and for her. And the doctor was like, you know, I got some news for you. And she's, you know, did I lose the baby or what is it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And the doctor said, no, you got twins. So she was pregnant with twins, man. So then I basically helped mom raise my siblings and everything. So the little eight-year-old boy, I remember carrying, felt like a strong kid whenever I, to be able to carry both of the little baby babies. What do you call them? Baby carrier, baby bucket, whatever you put the little thing in to carry a baby.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Oh, man, that's... I'm framing this. Enjoy it, yeah. Yeah, thank you. I'll make you another one that you can use. Right on. Got some shirts here, too. We can, you know, you always need more gear. Hats from our hunt group, Mayhem Hunt. But, uh... Oh, thank you. Can I have too many T-shirts?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
What do you call it? I don't have kids. I don't have no wife. Baby carrier. Maybe a bassinet. I don't know. Whatever you carry a baby around in. Something like that. So, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Later that year. Just a couple months later. Yeah, no, it was, it was still very, they just found out they were pregnant. All of us were like, um, I think we're April. So about March or April is whenever I guess mom and dad was a really fertile time. We were all born in November, December. They were born in December. My brother. Wow. Wow. I don't know what to say to that. How much you can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was like, damn. I still don't know what to say. You know, it's kind of cool. We were talking about different things for ministry and suffering. It's cool how God uses that. Because whenever people come to me after the shit hits the fan in their lives, they're like, Father, I need an answer. There's not an answer. And so it's given me the ability just to sit with them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Sometimes not an answer is okay. You have to have a reason. Because I don't know. I'll never understand why. And I go through waves of just being angry or indifferent or mad at God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Good question. My grandpa. My mom's dad was probably the biggest one. Quiet man. His name was Herman. Herman Joseph. He's deceased now. Quiet, hard-working guy. It's funny. He smoked cigarettes. Then he had a heart attack, so he had to quit. But he was one of those guys that quit. But he kept smoking.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So he'd go in the bathroom every night and smoke cigarettes, put the bathroom open, think that we couldn't smell it in the rest of the house. It's kind of funny. But yeah, so he did it. A couple of uncles also stepped in and kind of took me under their wings. Different ones. They all fathered me in different ways. No one can replace a father.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You know, I had a lot of good examples, but I never had a dad. One uncle taught me just a lot about just hard work, physical labor, just kind of being raw. He was the farmer. The other one, just a lot about, like, humor and just living life, having fun, you know. There were some other good people, too, that kind of took me under their wings, friends, parents, you know, Boy Scouts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
There was a scout leader, a couple scout leaders that that took care of me and helped me a lot too. So it took the village to raise me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think just time. And even now, I'm still working through a lot of this stuff. Going back to the work subject, I'm a typical dude, just bottle it up, do work, and that'll distract me from it. So I'm still processing it, to be honest with you. I started doing some counseling stuff in January, and that's been really phenomenal, just working through a lot of different stuff. And that's been helpful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But yeah, I just put my nose to the grindstone and just kept going. That's kind of what's got me through life. It's kind of like fake it till you make it kind of thing. Work until you figure something out. How's your mom? Good. We're hell raisers. But she's good. She lives by herself. She never remarried. Gave herself, just completed us, doing everything she could to raise us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
She lives in the same house that we grew up in. And it was a house that my grandfather built when he was in high school in the 40s. She still lives in it. Old house. She still lives there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
They're knuckleheads, man. One is in Washington State. Not much contact with him. The other one is in Arkansas. He's a mechanic, like a... He works in guidance systems on farm equipment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
His sister, she lives in Detroit, just outside of Detroit. I think Southgate's the name of the little area. She's got a few kids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Mm-hmm, yeah. Born and raised. It was a non-negotiable. There was something good about that. Now that I'm older, I hear challenges from people, like saying, oh, well, you know, It's not right for your parents to impose that on you or they should have given you the choice. Well, like, old kid shits in their diaper. Like, mom's going to change the diaper.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You don't ask the kid, hey, you want me to change your diaper? You know, same thing with the food. There's some basic human needs that... other people who are rightly in charge of you, responsible for you, make decisions on your behalf for your good, your well-being. And our spiritual well-being is the same thing, which would include virtue, being a virtuous person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But we grew up, all the farmers went to this little Catholic church there. We were a faithful family. We weren't super holy. We didn't I mean, we'd always pray before meals. We'd try to pray the rosary every now and then, but it usually would end up with us falling asleep or, you know, us fighting, the siblings fighting, and then mom or grandma yelling at us, and it just kind of unravels quickly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You know, kind of real-life prayer. Went to Mass every Sunday. That was a non-negotiable. It was just a simple, steady presence is what it was. And that's one of the graces that I took from it, just a point of stability. And all the stuff around us that was always changing, ebbing and flowing, it was a point of stability. And so it set that foundation for my life, like even now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Faith is that bedrock. It's that place of encounter where I encounter the Lord in the midst of the storm. I grew up Catholic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Find some good examples, some good role models, and ask them to take you under their wing. You don't have to explicitly ask them, but surround yourself with good people. You're going to do the stuff that you see other people do, so find a good role model. That's the simplest thing. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Just playing stuff. I love playing. I'm just a boy. Now I'm a big boy in a grown man's body. So we were very poor. We didn't have internet or TV. We had TV, but didn't have internet, didn't have cable TV, didn't have video games or anything. We had big farms, so I'd just go out and play with stuff. Shoot a little BB gun. You know, shoot Robins and Cardinals and stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You know, the typical boy hunting outside. I would just play. I've got a sandbox in the backyard, and I'd go out and play with that. I had a bunch of Legos. They were my dad's, so I'd play with Legos a lot. Just creative stuff. I was a good kid. I wasn't bad. I had a lot of energy. But I was a good kid in class, good kid in school. I was respectful. I did Boy Scouts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was in Boy Scouts my whole life, from Tiger Cubs, I think that starts at first grade or whatever, to Eagle Scout, which was in high school. So did that. Did sports. Played sports. Football. Football, track, and golf. I wasn't really good at, because I was small. I've always been a small guy. But I had some grit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Could just go to some dark places and just, like on the football team, I wasn't good enough to start, but I had enough grit to, like, I was, like, coaches always calling me in to run the plays, like, against the starting offense or defense. They'd knock the tar out of me, and I'd get right back up, which was kind of fun. We would always, Friday night football in Arkansas is like a religion.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Well, it's like Tennessee here, too, I think. But Mondays, we would always watch the film of the Friday football game, and I remember one time in particular, I was on a kickoff team. I was flying down the field, and one of the, The guys on the other team, I didn't see him. He knocked the tar out of me. He just knocked me off the sideline.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was right on the sideline anyways, and he hits me so hard that I go into all of my teammates and I just disappear. Then I reappear like 15 yards down the field chasing after the ball. It was just kind of funny. Yeah, football, track. I did golf. We didn't have a membership at the country club. We were too poor for that. But I had a big farm, so I was always out hitting golf balls. Nice.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I had a little green in the front yard that I mowed. What got you interested in the military? I just wanted... I don't know. At the time, there was no reason. I went to college for a year, and I hated that. So I didn't go to the military for college. It wasn't to leave home because I loved being at home. There was an itch in me to go explore. I just wanted to go explore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I had some cousins and some friends that joined the military. Yeah, so I went. Went into the Air Force. It was 2005 when I went in there. I was pretty pumped. I wanted to go as fast as I could. So I went to the recruiter and this was, yeah, you know, height of OIF. And so I was like, well, what can get me out of here the fastest?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And they needed SEER instructors, the Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape guys. So I was like, okay, yeah, I'll do that. So I did all the... Prep for that, the pre-training and pre-test and everything. Go to basic training. Long story short, I get washed out of that and get put into a logistics job. We can unpack all that. But it was fun. The military was really, really fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So basic training, I would love to go back through it now. I don't know about you, but just being older and knowing the mind game that it is, it was so fun. Part of my coping mechanism is humor. And... It was, yeah, that got me in so much trouble in basic. I remember our instructor, Terry Shirley, we had a lady. There was our flight and we had a sister flight. We did a lot of training together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And she did a lot of instructors with us. She had a chip on her shoulder, man. She was just like every instructor. I was like one of her favorite ones, which made it bad for me because she was just picking on me nonstop. Like Jackass was the name that she gave me. And so anytime we were training, she just said Jackass. Everyone's like, Gadbear, she's calling you. You got to go.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But she was always just on me, always. I did so many push-ups. I was one of the fittest guys in the flight at graduation. She also knew I wanted to do this seer job, and so she knew I had to be in good shape, so she was helping me with that. She was trying to help me with mental toughness as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
They smell darn good. It's a good gummy bear. I never thought I'd say that in my life. That's a good gummy bear.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was the guide bearer, or the guide-on bearer, carrying the flag and everything, and up front marching. I remember one day we were on the— on the drill pad training. And it was just a bad day. Like nothing was working. And I was just, it just was, I kept getting, I kept messing up. And of course, you know, you're in the front of the group.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So if you take a wrong step, everyone behind you is off too. And she, man, over and over and over, I kept messing up. And then she got in my face and she's like, damn it. When we go, we're gonna start marching and we're gonna turn left. We're going to start marching and we're going to turn left. All right. This man, this man. Forward march. Left face march. You know, so we're going.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
My dumb ass went right, right after she told me that. And golly, she flipped a switch and it wasn't good there. But that was kind of a fun thing. I just wanted an adventure. Yeah, it's about military. I went down that little bunny hole. I just wanted an adventure. I found it. There was a lot to do there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So when that happens, like... Like immediately I had to start providing for the family. I was an eight-year-old boy, so I didn't get a childhood. So one of the ways that I'm struggling with it now is like all the, it's kind of like the shrapnel of the bomb. I didn't get a childhood, so I had to grow up like overnight almost. My mom has zero income, like a very little income.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
She didn't have a college education, so she doesn't make a lot of money. So as soon as I start working, or as soon as I could start working, I had to start working to make money for the family. I just had to provide. As a kid, a little kid, you can't do much to provide, but I babysat, helped mom a lot of stuff in a lot of ways. As I got older, I started working.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I helped a lot financially and doing more to take care of the family. The way it's messed with me is currently now with boundaries, like not telling people no. It's hard to say no. It's hard to stop working. It's hard to turn off because I didn't really have a choice as a kid. And...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
How does it affect my ability to say no? I'm not naive to the tight situation that we grew up in and the fact that mom couldn't do it and so someone had to help her. We had family that would help. But, like, in my mind, I was like, well, that's my job to do. I've got to stand up and do it. And so anytime I see a problem now, I feel— You feel responsible. Yeah. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so I feel like I've got to fix it for people. And I'm good at it. Like, I'm really good at what I do. And that's part of, like, the superpower. But then one of the ways that it's not good is, like, people come to me just for an easy solution, and I'll fix it, and— Man, I just started this therapy stuff in January, so I'm working through all this right now. It's tough. Why do I do it, though?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So as a child, there were a lot of moments whenever I didn't have a voice. Like I would want to go play or something, but I couldn't go play. The answer would always be no. I just felt like it... If I wanted something, I just had to do it. If I wanted something done, I had to get it done. If there was something fun that I wanted to do, I didn't ask.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I learned pretty quick to not ask to do much stuff because most of the time I couldn't. I don't know. That's just trickled in now to what we're doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, man, that's big. Yeah, the resentment can be big. It was this last month. It's been good to work on that and the way that... So if someone comes and wants help with something, I can get the resentment in there because it's like whenever they ask me, I feel like I have to say yes. I feel like I can't say no. So I feel like I don't have this freedom to say what I need to say.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And also there's some resentment there because it's like I had to figure out life, and I'm still figuring it out on my own. Now I'm getting a lot better with doing it with friends and other people. But as a child, I had to figure it all out on my own. And that taught me a lot. But I get the resentment because I can judge people for being lazy or not motivated. I just want to say, figure it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
wrestle with a little bit, struggle with it. I love the struggle of life. I think a lot of people don't. And so I get the resentment there whenever they're not willing to struggle a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. In a way, going back to the work stuff, we were talking about this earlier, it gets in the way of my other projects. If I do stuff, I want it to be efficient. Let's get it done. Let's be productive. Let's do it efficiently. So therefore, it can be harder for me to do some of the stuff that just takes time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Some of these counseling sessions or times I'll be meeting with the family or something, For them, the healing that they need is going to come through them just kind of telling their whole story. But in my brain, I'm just like, what are the main points? Give it to me in a minute and a half. Let's get it done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So, yeah, the time thing is a big thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That's a good, I like that. It's interesting, whenever I would be in these situations, For example, if someone asks me a question, I feel like I have to say what they want to hear. And so I'm not free in that. And so what happens is psychologically and emotionally, I go back to the eight-year-old Steven. And in my mind and my heart and my brain, I'm just thinking like a kid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so now what I'm trying to do is rationally think through the thing and say what needs to be said. as a mature Steven instead of the little boy Steven. And so that's hard to say what needs to be said, but I know it's the right thing. So for example, it's like, instead of saying yes to somebody saying no.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
What's interesting, though, is that whenever I do that, a lot of times I'll see them almost flip a switch and they'll start acting out of their child. So the no that they hear takes them back to childhood trauma, whatever sort. And then they'll start acting a certain way or getting defensive or this excuse or whatever it may be. But it's almost like a switch being flipped.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then they'll start acting a different way to me out of that childhood trauma. But the neat thing now with ministry is that I can then love them in that situation. The response that they're giving is out of a trauma that they have from whenever someone didn't love them properly. And so then they respond to me out of that childhood mentality, and then I can love them in it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And there's some healing that the Lord does through that, if that makes sense. So it's just kind of neat to, through like, by me having healthy boundaries, like the Lord is healing people, people through me, you know, because it forces them to bring to light stuff that they're struggling with and then let the Lord into that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, it doesn't. It makes sense. It makes sense. I don't want to give definitive answers on it either way just because I don't have all the knowledge yet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And also I know that I'm like an authority figure when it comes to like religious things. So like... This isn't a religious thing, but people would see me as an authority figure. So if I give an answer on something, they'll take it as the gospel.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Sort of like if you spoke about self-defense, arm training or whatever it may be, people are going to listen to what you say because you know what you're doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
There's more to explore there. I want to know more about the psychedelics. The reality is they're here. more people are opening up to them. They're starting to do studies and everything with it. Uh, I think it's going to be good to get some objective data, you know, to make those choices. But then it's, it's a natural thing. Like it's, it's, it's a fruit of the earth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Um, I'm, I'm just ignorant about it. I'm, I'm curious about it. I want to learn more. Um, I wouldn't be opposed to trying them sometime, but it would be a specific context, a time and place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Does it go fast or slow, those 15?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, I don't have the objective to make a definitive answer on it, but it sounds like such a sacred experience. And putting everything in perspective, like you said, it starts with death. And pretty much from there, it's like, okay, well, I've died. So can't get much worse than that. And so everything else falls into line.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Earlier, I was talking about this whole thing of memento mori, like remember your death. It's the exact same principle. Like we would pray or go on a retreat or something like that, and you could come to one of these points, This is like a medicinal way to come to that same point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so I think, you know, I can't make a definitive answer, but I think there could be an argument in the future once we get more information or more data on it to where we could say there may be a place for it, you know, in people's daily life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I don't know if you want to do it daily, once or whatever, but there could be a place for it to take us to that point of putting everything in perspective. Because I'm thinking like when someone's sick, they take medicine to get better physically, right? Whereas you could say, well, if they ate healthy and worked out before, they may not have gotten sick.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But you get to a point where, okay, you need medicine to break this sick cycle. Mm-hmm. Psychologically, it sounds like the exact same thing happening. It's in this, I think you mentioned it like that, this circuit that's just a closed circuit. Default mode network. Yeah, and so like a defibrillator. It stops the heart so that then it can go back into rhythm and everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We would do that physically for the body with the heart, with medicines. So I think there could be a place for this in the future.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. On the spiritual side, man, if I'm in doubt, I don't mess with it. I'd hate to – it's playing like Russian roulette. You'd hate to – You didn't get the bullet. You know, it's like, well, you may get a bunch of clicks, but if you get the bang, then you're screwed. And so this could be a similar thing. Like, man, maybe not. But at this point, in the future, it may be different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But at this point, like, there's just no definitive answer of saying, yes, it is demonic or no, it's not. So therefore, like, my advice on that is always, like, just go in with caution. I'm not saying do it or don't do it. I'm just saying, like, just with caution and prudence. Yeah. I'm really curious about it, though.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like on a computer screen or something?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, finished basic, went to Sears School. I didn't even make it to the whole course. I was just doing the end doc before they send you off to Seattle or wherever the training, somewhere in Washington State. Fairchild. Fairchild. Is that Alaska or Washington? It doesn't matter. So before they send you off to the actual school, which is about a year and a half for that, it's a long training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You have an in-doc course. It's sort of like... buds. You know, it's not that long, but it's just two weeks of getting kicked in the face. So I started that and got to the second to last day. I got washed out. It was for multiple demerits. It was really deflating, so I was really excited about it. I was physically strong, ready to go, but mentally I wasn't strong enough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Not because I was trying to be weak, but because I just hadn't gone to that spot mentally before, like to that dark of a spot. I mean, I grew up with some dark stuff, but They were all kind of exterior things, but that internal drive to push into the point of discomfort.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Even though I worked hard my whole life, and I still do, at that time I didn't understand what it meant to push a little bit deeper, go past the point of comfort. It's got multiple deep matters. For example, one night we had to make tent stakes. I don't know what it was like for buds, but you're doing PT all day long, and then they give us projects to do at night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
uh you're getting sleep deprived you know so you're or if you do sleep you'll come refreshed but you're you don't didn't get your work done so they're you know it's you're gonna you're gonna pay for it somehow so one night we had to make tent stakes and i didn't make them long enough i think they had to be like 16 inches long or something mine were 14 and 15 so that had a shovel one of my shovels was had dirt on it for the morning inspection so that was another one we had to make a
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Sleeping bags out of pieces of parachute. We had to, you know, sew it up at night. Had to have six to eight stitches per inch. And if there was more or less, it would be another demerit. And so I had some spots on there where it was, you know, didn't meet that criteria.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And it sucked because if you had this little window of stitches, let's say I had 10 of them in this inch space, I was only supposed to have eight stitches. They would measure it and say, oh, you got 10. And then they would go like every little stitch in that inch and count another stitch and say, oh, you got 10 demerits on this or whatever. So that. What else? I think those were good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The shovel, the sewing. So where'd you go? Where'd you go when you left? Yeah. Got reclassed into another job. We took maybe... You went to Iraq. Yeah. So after that, I had to wait two weeks to get another job. That was about three weeks. You just put it on cleaning detail until they put you in another school. So I did logistics. They put me in a school to learn logistic planning.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So people and stuff had to move it. I did cargo. Most of that time was cargo movement, which was really fun. That time in the middle... I got washed out of SEER, which sucked, man. But it was a good kick in the face because I wanted to do it so, so bad. And I thought that I was prepared for it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But it broke me in a good way because now it's one of the things I took out of that was the need to dig even deeper, be more alert, pay more attention. They put in that logistics job. While we're waiting, we're just cleaning every day. You probably remember that. Like if you don't just sit around and do nothing, they make you do something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So we had to clean every day, the same barracks over and over and over. But, dude, idle time is like a bad thing when it comes to the troops. Like you can just do some dumb stuff. Like you don't need –
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
booze or drugs if it's just a bunch of you know meatheads together we would uh like overnight we'd stay up all night just being dumbasses we would do like demolition derby we'd put guys on the office chairs and one on one end of the hallway one on the other and just you'd run them and crash mend each other just stupid stuff like that
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
One guy had a bowling ball one day, and I don't know where the hell he got a bowling ball from, but it was in the dorms, and so the guys were just rolling it up and down the hallway. So I picked it up in my time, and I threw it, and they all got out of the way, and it hit the emergency exit, and the fire alarm went off, so I had to call them and make up a story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like, I was talking to my mom, and I leaned against the door, set it off. I was scared, man. Did logistics, did that training. That was down in Lackland. I got assigned to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. That was cool. That was my first time out in the real world. Growing up, I was always in the family. Then the military, they're always watching you. But at Ramstein, I was like on my own.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Of course, you got the base, got your work, but I was making decisions on my own. And that was one of the first times I really feel some autonomy and making free choices for myself. People are big advocates of that, and that's good. We do need to make our own choices. But sometimes it's to the detriment of family and community life. So growing up, the family was so close.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I didn't have a lot of freedoms because, well, this is what the family's doing, so that's what you're going to do. And it sucked as a kid, but one of the good things that it taught me was, like, how to be a team player. There's going to be a lot of stuff in life that you're not going to want to do, but you got to do it because that's what love requires. So just do it, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So then in the military, Germany, I get that freedom. It was really cool. Just right out of training, I got a car, and I did a— Quality control. When people were PCSing, I would go and be the liaison between the German moving company and the troops just to make sure everything was going well. That was cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Got to drive all over Germany, meet all kinds of people from E1s to OTNs and everything in between. So that was fun. That gave me a lot of time alone, a lot of time in the car. I'd pray, just drive in silence, just think. God really started working on me then. How? How? Silence. I just shut the hell up and then, like, 4-4-4. I became aware of all these little bitty things around me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And it would be little affirmations. I can't even think of a concrete example right now, but it was just peace. I experienced a peace. You shut the chaos off around you and my soul could breathe a little bit. And I fell in love with that. So I wanted to do it more and more and more and spend more time in silence. And... Eventually got transferred out of that into the cargo side of this office.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that because I drove a big forklift every day, worked in the warehouse. We were knuckleheads. There was a big tire that we were shipping one day. My dumb ass got into it and convinced the other guys to roll me around the warehouse. I was rolling around. The chief comes out and just chews us out. It was one of those things where he could—
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like we were good troops. We worked hard, but we just did, just did that kind of stuff. So he, he yelled at us, but he wasn't too mad. I remember one time we, uh, this kind of guy, chief was like, um, I got in a box and he called this emergency meeting for the whole flight and they all came down. I was in this cargo box. No, you know, nobody knew he did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And, uh, so in the middle of his briefing, I jumped out and scared everybody. I was kind of, we would, um, sometimes we would have cargo to take to the, to the airport. And, uh, It would be like we'd have to take it on the forklift as one of these big center pivot, you know, 10K, 10,000-pound forklift. So we'd drive across the base to drop the cargo off.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I had a lot of good examples in my life and just try to... Yeah, we're on this journey and it's rough. It's a tough, you know, life is brutal. And, you know, if we're gonna get through it, we gotta like put the nose to the grindstone. But to have the fullest life as we're going through it, like you've gotta confront reality. You know, you only find God in reality, not in fantasy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But me and my buddies, we would have a competition to see who could take the longest route back. So we would be driving back to the housing area of the base on the big forklift.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, so that was fun. While I was in that cargo unit, that's when I deployed. I was at Balad Air Base. It was a smaller compound on Anaconda, LSA Anaconda at Balad, Iraq. Huge base, basically a logistic hub. You may have passed through there. I'm sure you did. That was fun. That was one of the funnest times of my life. Like I wasn't... I wasn't kicking in doors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So in that way, I was like, like I was blessed, you know, because that's a big thing to carry, you know, and that, you know, being out there. That being said, man, rockets and mortars were coming in every single day. I remember the one day I walked out of the office, you know, we got those, the concrete stuff. like walls or barriers or whatever that are around all the buildings and stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And I come out the front door of the office, and right there beside the door is a bullet. It hit the concrete. It's not a big deal, but for me as a 19-year-old kid, I see that bullet for the first time, and I'm like, oh, wow, this is real stuff. And then so many of our guys are experiencing that. 19 years of preaching in the choir, most of the people listening, they get it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think most of society doesn't, though. And I think that's it. I had a great experience in the military up to the day I left. I loved it. But one thing I'm really frustrated with is the way that a lot of veterans are treated. I mean, 19, 20, 25-year-olds. The brain is still being formed. And the stuff that they're doing, and they're doing it proudly, and they do a good job doing it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then they'll get their discharge, or honorable discharge, you know, finish their enlistment or whatever. And that's kind of like, well, you're on your own now. I mean, like the addictions and so many veterans, just the struggles that they have. It's kind of like a lot of promises fed to them that aren't delivered after the fact. That kind of frustrates me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So like the bullet that I find doesn't compare at all. to like what so many other guys and gals have done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But I said, I've never been in that position. In ministry, I've been with a lot of people who've been in that position, either whether it be military troops or murderers, you know, in prisons or murderers who are, you know, maybe not caught yet even. But this in the military, I think it's a different, you know, you mentioned cheering them on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like it's, I think a lot of people don't understand that, like what that means. Um, it's something that was done for duty, for duty's sake.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And there's like not a, I don't know, I'm not in the situation, but I really don't think there's like a lot of joy in like, like the individual life that was taken, like the person, you know, the, the name, but more so like the actions that have been stopped that they were doing, you know, and that's, I think a lot of people miss that distinction. Um, it's no small thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
uh yeah so yeah so i was over there in iraq it was it was it was a good experience for me and i don't take it lightly we were shot at a lot but again what i went through doesn't compare to at all anything but other guys and so it's just like a walk in the park um but Like when it came to work, it was just, we didn't stop. It was just logistics, moving stuff all day long.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And by finding God, you find the fullness of life. And so if you want the fullest life, I mean, you gotta be real. And that requires like, Don't be fake, you know, and be real. Be authentic, you know. So I just try to share that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so that was a neat experience. But then also to support you guys, like the ones that were out there. I mean, because we would get, all the cargo came through our office and we would get If a shipment came and it was wrapped in all black plastic, we knew. It went to the guys that didn't have a name. Some guys across the flight, well, it was y'all, the different special ops guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It would come in, and there was no questions asked. You just call them, say, hey, we've got a package, and they would come over and get it. It was mission-critical stuff. A lot of it was really big, intense stuff. you know, weapons of different sorts, gear. I remember one time, though, like, we got this big shit, man. And I was wondering, I was like, what is in there? Like, I'm curious.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was always wondering. They bring the big flatbed truck over, and we load it all up. And then all the guys climb onto the trailer and start cutting open the boxes. It was like, it was pallets of gummy bears. And... It wasn't chocolates, but it was a bunch of candy. And they just drove all over the base just like Christmas to throw the stuff out. And I was like, you got to be kidding me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But it was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I was over there. That was 07. It was just one short deployment. Yeah. I want to go back to Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Not for the sake of war, but, like, I just love people. I want to hear people's story.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We may get into this a little bit later, but this puts it in perspective. So later on, years down the road when I'm in seminary in Rome, I had a classmate who was living just miles from the base where I was at over there. He was a Chaldean Catholic. I think it was Chaldean Catholic. It's part of the Catholic church, one of the lines in there. But he was from Central Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And we're sitting in class learning about God, talking about putting things in perspective. Like we're sitting beside each other when eight years before, like we were within miles of each other. Isn't that wild? That is crazy. It's wild. And so like when I say I want to go back to Iraq, it's like I just want to like see people and like. like their lives, like the good people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
There's some good ones over there. Like the farmer that had the best fruit I've ever had in my life was when I was in Iraq, the melon, some cantaloupes or watermelons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
See the people. No one in particular. There's no individual person that I met. You just want to experience the culture there? Hear stories, yeah, experience the culture, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Do you think you'll do it? I don't know. I'd be open to it, but I don't know. Probably not. Yeah. So it was 07, quick deployment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
This whole time I'm growing a lot in my faith and praying a lot more, and this idea of priesthood comes. How did the idea of priesthood come? It started as just a random idea. Like when I'd be in the car driving around, doing the quality control stuff, or on the forklift working, or in the warehouse, be at the gym, be doing other stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And out of nowhere, this idea of being a priest would come to my mind. Where'd that come from? It's kind of random. And I just wouldn't think much about it. And I'd go back to what I was doing. And a few days later, it would happen again. I'm like, that's kind of random. I wouldn't be doing anything that would trigger a thought like that. I wasn't reading the Bible. I wasn't at church or anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was loading up munitions. I was driving a forklift, whatever it may be. And this thought would come. It's sort of like the whole 444 thing. It just happened more and more often, and I was like, okay, I've got to pay attention to this. Once I started paying more attention, I started getting more signs, more affirmations. One thing, for example, when I was in Iraq, I went to mass one day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It was one of the first days I was there. finished up Mass, there was a guy who came, his name was Joaquin, and he comes up to me after Mass, never met him, he's never met me, didn't know each other, and he didn't say, hi, I'm Joaquin, good to meet you, what's your name? He just came up and said, you're thinking about being a priest, aren't you? And I was like, what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, just out of the blue, complete stranger. And that was, little things like that, you know, people making comments.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, I mean, have you told anybody around that person? No. No, there's no reason why he would have known it. I'd just gotten there. I was the only one from my unit that was deployed at that time. So everyone else was new to me. I didn't know anybody that didn't know me. And that guy didn't know you. See, this is what happened to me in Sedona.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've seen him again. We've been in contact, actually. Really? Afterwards, yeah. Yeah, because it was the very beginning of the deployment. So as the deployment went on, we talked more and established a friendship and everything. But he lives in Oregon. Well, did you ask him how he knew? Excuse me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
one pace yeah and it's and it's all in and uh i'll just let you pick it up from there you had some good stuff to say about that just like a dog chasing the ball that's what i do i wake up and just chase it and uh you know too fast and asleep for my two speeds um yeah you know we live in such a fast-paced life world and and uh that's good that's a good thing god made us to be creative he gives us this energy and um you know this productivity
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
He was a very holy guy, so I knew it was like the Lord put it on his heart. Was he a Catholic too? Yeah. This was right after church on one day. One of the first days I went there, I went to Mass, and he was there. And so the first words out of his mouth are? You're thinking about being a priest, aren't you?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You know, I think that stuff happens all the time, but we're just not paying attention to it. We're all in our own little worlds. God's still working, man. Like, He's all around. We just got to open our eyes, get out of our little bubble. We also got to be bold. You know, I think at the very beginning, we talked about boundaries and saying no. We've talked about it outside, too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Whenever we say that, whenever we speak the truth, like, God works through that. So I think... Not only do we need to be more aware of how God is working around us, we need to be aware of how He's working in us and be bold in the way we talk. You can say some stuff that's going to be awkward. It's going to hurt. It's not going to be comfortable, but it's what needs to be said.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That's a terrifying thing. Um, so yeah, so he, that was, that was an example of like all these, I say little things, there were big things, but they just kept adding up one after another. And then, uh, eventually I contact the, the diocese of Little Rock, which is where, where I live in the Catholic church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We got, if you think of it like a state, the geographical region of a group of churches would be called a diocese, which is what we call it. Um, so I contact, the area where I live in Little Rock, and tell them, hey, I'm interested in being a priest. Can I come visit and talk to you guys? So I flew back and just visited with them, went to visit the seminary.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And that kind of sealed the deal once I came and met with the bishop and everything and then visited the seminary. So I was like, this is cool. As much fun as I was having in the military, I had so, so much fun. You know, I'd enjoy going back in. It'd be fun to do it again, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But as much fun as I was having, there was a different kind of joy that I experienced whenever I came back for that meeting. It was just like a deeper peace. Like, I was having fun before, but then I experienced a peace. Sometimes I'll have peace in the fun that I'm having, but fun. Being happy is just a passing emotion, but the peace... And that joy, that's a deeper thing. And I experienced it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And I was like, okay, this is it. And I went into seminary. That was 2008. No hesitations. No, not really. I mean, once I connected all the little dots and all the little invitations became the big invitation from God, I was like, Why wait? Should I get off the pot? Okay, well, God, if you're this clear with me, why would I wait?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No need to sit around and say, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. He's called you, Stephen, so go. I dropped my nets and went. That's fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It was there. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, we don't get married. We give our life completely to the church. Also, part of that is intentionally to perform. like to prefigure, to live now what life will be like in heaven, like where we're just us and the Lord, like that radical, intimate relationship with the Lord alone, you know? But yeah, no, that thought definitely went through my mind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And it's probably harder now than it was then. I don't mean hard like in a way that's creating a crisis, but like all of my buddies have kids and kids and stuff, you know? And so like I'll see them and... And part of my brain will think like, what would it be like to have a wife and kids? It's never in a way where I'm thinking like, oh, I want to go find a wife.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I want to go make babies or something. But it's just like, it's written on the heart. We were made for that, which is why the desire is there. So it's good. Yeah, so yeah, that's your question. It definitely came. But, you know, it'll still come, but the same, it's kind of like any other commitment. Like if someone wants to get married or something, like they say their I do's.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It doesn't mean you stop seeing beautiful women, like for the men. Or for the ladies, it doesn't mean that she won't see other handsome guys. But you can say, wow, she's pretty. He's a handsome guy. But the commitment's been made. So that's kind of what it's like for me now. I've made the commitments. And there's a lot of freedom in that. There's a lot of freedom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And this desire to work is a blessing. It's a superpower from God. God made you to be fruitful and multiply, to have a family. And to have a family requires you to take care of them. So the hustle here, the work that you do every day is providing for the family. So that's good. The most primal way of providing for the family is going out and killing an animal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So while I may see a pretty lady or something or see a family and think, oh, I wonder what it'd be like to be a family. It doesn't register as an option because it's not. It would be the same if I was married and then saw other beautiful women. I already made my free yes to her. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
What was seminary school like? That was some of the best years of my life. My whole life has been fun. It's been a kick in the face every day. What's the average age of the seminary?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, right out of high school. Just going straight into seminary. Some guys like me, you know, early 20s. I was in the military. But as you know, I mean, it doesn't matter what job you do. You grow up fast in the military. So, you know, a lot of life experience there in the military. Up to 40s, some guys in their early 40s. late 30s.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Every now and then you'll get some guys that are older in their 50s or something that'll go to seminary. But most of the guys were between, I'd say, 18 out of high school up to late 30s. So it's an eight-year process, four years of philosophy and four years of theology. I did my philosophy In Louisiana, you read that at the beginning. It was at St.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Joseph's Seminary in Covington, Louisiana with the Benedictine monks. That was a cool place. Cajun country. Have you been to southern Louisiana? Only once.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah? That's fun. I went alligator hunting there a year ago. What? You need to go. It's so fun. What happened? I use my bow. You should put an arrow at the base of their skull or a pistol. You can use a pistol if you want. That's pretty cool. Those things are mean. They just wake up pissed. They're dinosaurs. That's where Theo Vaughn's from. He's from southern Louisiana?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I think from Mandeville or Covington, Louisiana. But that's where the seminary was. I didn't know it. Yeah, so we were talking about him earlier. He seems like a cool dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Let's all go alligator hunting together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That would be fun. Down there with the Benedictine monks, you know, so cool. They had this big old monastery. You know, they were walking around in their black robes and everything. We would just wear, you know, we had a uniform, like suits. We'd wear a suit every day to class. But that was fun, man. Studying philosophy was fun. I fell in love with education. I fell in love with learning.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So it was fun to study the philosophy, fun to be with those guys. But it was fun to be at that place with the monks. The motto for the Benedictines is ora et labora, pray and work. And that was really ingrained into me growing up. And there it was really clarified, just work and pray, work and pray. If you do that, God will provide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So bust your ass and do everything you can to stay holy, to be holy. And work hard and toe the line. It makes sense. It makes sense. There's a lot of freedom in that. And you don't get lost in this other stuff. One of the good people, too, most of the guys there were from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, just good old boys, a bunch of foreign boys and stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so that's just, you can provide now by getting a check and buying the stuff you need. Another way to do that is go out and Get an animal, put something on the table. But there's so many studies out here. You've got a bunch of really cool friends. And I'm sure they could chime in on this. I'm thinking of Huberman. I'm sure he could. There's some science behind this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Every year we'd have a big football game around Thanksgiving, and we would have a big bonfire, and that was always a lot of fun. I was in charge of building the bonfire. Me and a buddy of mine, Brian Phillips, he's a priest in Austin, Texas. We were in charge of building it every year. We'd go out, scout for trees, cut the trees down. haul the wood up, and then just start building it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The last year we did it, it was 33 feet tall. It was 20 by 20 foot, 33 feet tall. Massive. So the day starts, we have mass. All of us have mass together at midday. Then we go out and play a football game. And then after that, we... Just have a big meal and light the fire. It's really cool. The seniors are the ones that light the fire. We all go out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The seniors, when you're a senior, everyone marches out in this line with these big torches, and then you put it in and just hang out until the next morning.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah. Where did it start? We believe with Peter, right? Peter and the disciples. Yeah, so with Jesus Christ. Short answer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, yeah. So, the... The beautiful thing about the Catholic Church is the important thing that we really focus on is apostolic succession, meaning like coming from the apostles. So Jesus comes, he loved everyone, he healed everyone, but he also called a very specific group of people to follow him, to learn from him, and then to continue the mission that he started.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And he gave them gifts, anointing, to continue all the things that he did. You know, the apostles, the 12 disciples. And then, but we've got, you know, we can follow apostolic succession from Christ to St. Peter through all the popes up to Pope Francis right now. So we've got the genealogy of it. Am I saying all of them are good? No, they were like corrupt times in the church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That doesn't take away from the fact that people can be corrupt while the institution still maintains its dignity. And so, although, you know, we've had some good popes, we've had some bad popes, we've had good Christians and bad Christians, you know, everything in between. So it comes back to apostolic succession, you know, just that line of popes. So Peter was the first pope, the apostle. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then now, like, apostolic union, it's like the connection to the Holy Father. And not so much him. We don't worship him, but we recognize him as the father figure of the church. He followed Pope Benedict, who followed John Paul II, who followed John Paul I, and then Paul VI, and then John XXIII, and all the way back. And so we go back to that, to the lineage of...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But of like disconnecting for a second for the sake of productivity. We can get so zeroed in on the stuff that we're doing, this tunnel vision, it can shut us off of a lot of stuff. And so when you rest it, like you rest for a little bit, it just allows the brain and the heart to breathe a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
the popes and then under them would be all the bishops uh who are in communion with the pope and then under the popes or the bishops would be all the priests who take care of all the faithful around the world there's not every every square inch of the world is delegated to some catholic diocese which is kind of cool interesting yeah it's like for the sake of salvation of souls like there's somebody spiritually
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
designated to have spiritual authority over every soul on this earth. So although there's 10,000 people in my parish, I'm a pastor of a general area. My parish is not just my church. My parish is the whole area, the whole geographical area where I'm at. So I'm, of course, responsible for taking care of the Catholics at the church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But also every other soul that lives in my area, whenever I die and I meet the Lord, one of the things that I've got to answer is like, how did I serve all the sheep in my area? And so it's like this spiritual authority would pray and make sacrifices for them and try to bring them to Jesus Christ. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
One of the things that really opened my eyes up to the universality of the church, that's a big thing. Catholic... And the small C, like the big capital C, Catholic refers to like the Catholic Church, but it means universal. It's like worldwide you say that, but what does that mean? My theology, after I finished seminary in Louisiana, I went to Rome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was in Rome for four years, which was a phenomenal experience. And I really had a universal experience or an experience of the universal church, people from all over the world. I did my graduate studies in theology at the Gregorian University. It's a university that was founded in 1551 by St. Ignatius of Loyola. So to go to a seminary that's that old, 500 years old, was really cool.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And the people in my class, there was around 120 students, men and women from all over the world. As I mentioned earlier, like the... The classmate, one of my classmates was from Iraq, just miles. We were miles apart. And then we were sitting inches apart a little bit later. And like little things like that. I keep saying little things. That's a very big thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But it's those things that really shows the greatness of our God and like the plan of all this. Like it's, there's so much, so much to unpack. You know, it's a big deal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So the canon, as we have it, that's what we would call it, the canon of Scripture. It's like one of the official books of the Bible. It wasn't until around probably the three and four hundreds. Christianity wasn't legalized until 313. So even before then, it was illegal to be a Christian. So they were killing people left and right. They didn't even have the Bible before then.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So it was around the three and really into the 400s, not until the 400s that the actual canon of Scripture as we have it now was established. And so that in itself points out like apostolic succession. You know, a lot of people talk about just Scripture only. Yeah, of course we need the scripture, but I can't be the only thing because that was the fruit of the community's relationship with God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
When I go hunting, for example, because that's what we were talking about, I'll go out for a couple weeks at a time every fall, and it's a nice disconnect. It's terrifying. I mean, you're out there alone in the elements, maybe with a couple friends, but... I do a lot of it alone too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so that would, that calls in tradition. So Catholics, for our authority, we don't just refer to the Bible, we also refer to, or make reference to tradition as well. Scripture and tradition is how we, you know, where we go to for authority. So, yeah, so the Bible, 400s.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, there's no reference to any of them. But there really wasn't an understanding of the Catholic Church as it is now. I mean, there was. But it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that there were other sects that then broke off, you know, Protestantism. Then all the different churches that flowed out of Protestantism. Okay. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So up until then, like, if you were a Christian, you were Catholic. Okay. Yeah. And even... Okay. Up until the 1500s. So if you were a Christian, that's what you were.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so you go in those dark places that you've been putting aside for the last year, two years, your whole life, whatever. You've got to wrestle with that stuff. But the silence is a sacred thing, man. And our culture is terrified of it. I'm scared of it. But because it's in the silence that you wrestle with your demons, but beyond that, it's in the silence that you hear the voice of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, I would say so. I would argue against that. So I would agree. We do need a direct relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. How do we have that physical relationship with Jesus Christ now? It's through the church that he established. The church that he established and instituted with the apostles that he gave all authority to continue the ministry that he did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
to carry on the preaching of the good news, salvation, eternal life, through him, only through him. So how do we maintain this physical relationship with Jesus Christ? It's through the church that he established, in particular through the sacraments that are administered through that church.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So whenever the Catholic Church, one of the things that we talk about all the time, it's the meat and potatoes. It's what it is. It's the sacraments. So... to celebrate the sacraments, to celebrate the Eucharist, for example, you have to be a validly ordained priest, a priest that was validly ordained by a valid bishop who is in communion with the Pope.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And he would be in communion with all the popes before him, which take us back to the lineage of, on the line back to Jesus Christ. So what he handed on, they handed on. Jesus walked and talked with the apostles, spent time with them, touched them, They called their successors, spent time with them, walked with them, put their hands on them for the ordinations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That's continued for all the ordinations to the priesthood and the episcopacy to be a bishop to now. All validly ordained bishops have been consecrated by a bishop that came before them. All priests are validly ordained by a bishop that was validly ordained. And so there's an actual physical touch. Like when the bishop put his hands on my head,
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And while demons will scare us, And rightly so, they should. Something even more terrifying is the voice of God. And what I mean is like, in that silence, God can ask you to do anything. You know, drop your nets and follow me. And it could reveal itself. He could ask you to do anything. Move across the world and do this project or whatever it may be. And then the ball's in our court.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And in order in my hands, in ordination, there's an actual concrete physical touch that like one hand to the next, 2000 years. That's pretty cool. And so how do we have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Yeah, we can talk to the Lord in prayer, but that's a spiritual relationship with Him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
If you're, earlier we talked about like going to the mountains and how that'd be hard for you to go for a week. You mentioned getting away from work, but I think more than that, I don't think you want to be away from your wife and your kids for more than a week. You want to be with them. So if you were around the world, you could call her every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
You could do FaceTime with your kids, but it's not like walking through that door and picking them up and hugging them. There has to be physical touch, which is why God became man, because to save us completely. He's not removed from this experience that we have. It's a physical thing. It's raw, man. It's raw, which makes it so real, which goes back to the question that Brian had at the beginning.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, you're mad at God? Okay, be mad at God. Let him have it. It's only in reality that we encounter God, which includes everything that we live day in and day out. So for me, that's one of the most convicting things of the church. Yeah, I've studied all the theology. There's so much there. I remember a lot of it. What I don't remember, I can easily look up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like, the reason I'm sticking with it is because it's so damn real. There's a physical touch to Jesus Christ through this faith that I'm living. What is the physical touch? Through the sacraments. In the sacraments, Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacraments. The sacraments, those celebrations or those rituals that we'll do, in which Jesus Christ becomes truly present.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
in a supernatural and sacred way. It's like the Holy Eucharist. We believe, and we live around the fact that that's the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. And the Eucharist can only be celebrated, again, through a priest who's been ordained. The whole line that I pointed out a second ago. Can't just be Joe Schmoe that does it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's gotta be someone who is in communion with the church. So that's the kind of the tradition element, like it's handed on. I don't know if that makes sense. What are all the sacraments? You got seven of them. First is baptism. That's what cleanses, washes us of original sin, makes us beloved sons and daughters of God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We're no longer just a creature of God, but we're a son and daughter that's greatly loved, welcomed into his family. After that, you've got the, if you take the sacraments of initiation, you've got baptism. You've got the Holy Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ, which we talked about that. John 6, you know, you can go and read about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
The bread of life discourse, Jesus says over and over and over, I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Like a At no point does he say, I'm just the image of, you know, the bread and the wine is an image of me. He says, I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so like what he ended on was the Eucharist in that. Paul speaks of that. Take this, this is my body. Take this, this is my blood. Take and eat, take and drink. So it would be asinine for Jesus to say, you have no life in me. unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood. He doesn't make that possible. So we got the Eucharist. That's the second one. The third one is confirmation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And that scares us because if we truly open our heart up to the Lord, man, we don't know what he's going to ask. We lose control, but we don't really have the control to begin with. Anyhow, so many different ways we can take this, but the silence... Hold on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It's where we receive the fullness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, we receive God's love, God's life in the Father. But confirmation is kind of like what really opens up the full use of those sacraments. It's like having a bunch of firearms. You get them at baptism. But then after all your training, then you know how to actually shoot them. You know how to use them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So confirmation is that supernatural sacrament that God gives us to unlock all those, you know, it's the magazines he gives us. So to actually use the weapons, you know. So then you have the sacrament of reconciliation through which our sins are forgiven. There's a lot of people argue with this one or say, well, I can just go to God and tell God I'm sorry. Like, yeah, you can. You should.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We should do that every night. But our sins also have a communal effect. No sin that we commit is just between me and God. Because we are people of community, there is necessarily, like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
the healing for any wrong that we do sin must have a communal element to it because it affects the community and so that's where that's what the sacrament of reconciliation comes in where uh on behalf of jesus christ like the the priest speaks those words of forgiveness of absolution absolve you the name of the holy spirit you know so it's it's the very minister of god's sacraments
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
in the name of Christ on behalf of the community, grants that pardon for the communal elements. So that's the sacrament of reconciliation. We've got the sacrament of anointing of the sick. So whenever people are sick physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, there's an anointing that we'll give them with some sacred oils. We'll pray some prayers over them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
James talks about that letter, James. of sending the elders to anoint them with oil to the sick. And what that does is allows us to unite our suffering to the cross of Christ. It gives meaning to it. So you're not just suffering, you know, a depression or physical ailment or whatever. But now through that suffering, you're united to Christ. So therefore your suffering is saving souls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like it's a prayer that's offered up to God. You're united to the pains of Christ on the cross. And he works through that for the sake of sanctifying the world. So then you become, you don't become a burden to society. You become a A beacon of hope and blessing through which the Lord comes through your brokenness. That's anointing of the sick.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And the last two, and this isn't, they're not in order, numerical order like this, but the last two I'd mention would be the sacraments of marriage or holy orders. Or what? Holy orders, priesthood. Okay. Yeah. So, both of those are sacraments of a vocation or calling. What they do is commit us to... to a way of life. It gives us a vow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so we all have free will, and God wants us to love most fully with that. And the best way to love is to love perfectly, which would be a love till death. And a civil contract does not bind that. There is a binding element within that, but it's through the sacrament that it becomes a supernaturally bound contract. So husband and wife, for example, or a priest, I guess, till death do us part.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So the sacraments, you mentioned through all those, this is gonna bring it back to how this started was like, that allows us to have a true actual physical contact with Christ because in all of those, we've received Christ himself in a very distinct way through the baptism, the anointing of the sick, through confirmation. through the holy orders, priesthood and ordination.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But there's an interesting thing with the Eucharist. These other ones, you receive it once, and it's like something that happened, kind of like it unlocks God's grace in those moments, and then you move forward. With the Eucharist, the presence remains in the bread. The presence remains in the wine. It's been consecrated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
It becomes the body and blood of Christ, which is why all churches, Catholic churches, keep a tabernacle where we keep the Eucharist. It's kept over like a locking key because it's a sacred thing. We don't want people to do it. you know, do anything with it, you know, anything sacrilegious with it or anything like that, that presence remains. Yeah. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Why do they have to go through a priest to get that forgiveness? Good question. It would be what I referenced earlier, one, for the communal element, like the sin that's been done, it affects the whole family, even if it's a private sin. But then also just the surety of hearing the forgiveness, of knowing that the Lord's forgiven us. Yeah. I wish I could explain it better in that regard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, nothing prevents God from forgiving us. How would you know, though? That's a very simple answer. It's not like I'm trying to make a cop-out answer or something. What's the surety of it, that it's been forgiven? You know, we can pray it and we can believe it. Like, how do we know it? Of course, we could have faith that we're forgiven, but what's the actual physical guarantee?
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I guess to bring it back to the flesh, what's the actual physical guarantee that it's been forgiven? Because you can pray about it and it still kind of will linger in your head. Like, well, you know, what if I wasn't? Or maybe, yeah. But through the words of the priest, we're physically forgiven. Because God wants to save all of us, not just our souls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
At the end of time, we'll be raised up, body and soul.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Yeah, but we still have free will too, so we're still capable of messing up again. That's the mystery of salvation on the cross. It's one definitive moment when we're all forgiven. It's been done. It was a concrete moment in space and time 2,000 years ago. It's also a supernatural reality that's still being played out every moment. We are being forgiven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Like the very fact that we're being held into existence is by God's sheer act of mercy and love. It's His grace that keeps us alive. So we have been forgiven that actual event 2,000 years ago. We are being forgiven like constantly because we're not worthy to live. Like it's God's grace that's making it possible. So that could be equated to forgiveness like actually here and now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And then we pray to be forgiven like at the final judgment. So it's like all three can be true, which then just reveals to us like layers. You were asking earlier about angels and stuff like that. There's a lot of layers, right? There's a lot of layers. We can compartmentalize a lot of things in life, but you can't compartmentalize. What do you mean layers? I mean like angels.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So we got the physical realm around us. But also there's like a supernatural element around us. Like there's angels and demons around us. There's so much stuff going on. Like what? Spiritual warfare. Satan and all of his angels and all of our angels. I mean, there's a lot of forces at play.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
We're not just roaming around this earth doing our own little jobs and living our own little lives, everyone doing their own little thing on this big ball. There's gotta be something more. There has to be something more than us just living our 80 years and then dying after 80 or 90, whatever, 60. And that gives meaning to life. That's why we struggle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
No, I envision the demons just trying to get us off path. Anything that they can do to get us off track. to create us to sin, to create more doubt in who God is, to have more pride, to be more independent. And what I mean is like not depending on God. So they're doing everything they can to distract us and separate us from God.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And so the angels are doing everything they can to help us stay focused on God. It's all about ordering everything to God. That's what it means to live a virtuous life and struggle for holiness every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Angels and demons? Mm-hmm. It's a battle. I mean, we would see them. But also, like, you know, I don't know. I don't see angels. I don't see demons. I know they're real, but they exist in a different realm than us. Like, it's... They're not bound by space and time. And so they don't sit around a desk and try to negotiate. We can't even fathom what that battle looks like.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Sparks going against each other. I don't know. But it's just like there's two forces pulling this world and everything in it two different directions. good and bad, light and dark, heaven or hell, whatever you want to call it. There's two forces that are at play.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Even for someone that doesn't believe in God or doesn't want to believe in anything, any kind of higher power, if you are somewhat conscious and somewhat aware of life and the world, you would agree that there's a tension here. There's got to be something. There's got to be more than what we're just seeing. There's a constant pull between what's good and bad. I wish I could explain it better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
How was the pope chosen? It's at a conclave, that's what it's called. And all the cardinals from around the world will come together. And they'll pray, and then they'll cast ballots. And then when a certain number of those votes are passed, then the pope is determined. But it's through the voting process of the different cardinals.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I was there in 2013 whenever Pope Benedict stepped down and Pope Francis was elected. That was a cool experience, man. There were, I don't know, 20,000 people, 30,000 people there, St. Peter's Square, probably maybe more than that. But there were so many people. It was the most energetic thing I've experienced in my life. It was so cool. We're all out there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
And, you know, whenever the Pope is elected, they're on the Sistine Chapel. There's a bunch of movies out there, a lot of it's just like Hollywood stuff, but they do go in the Sistine Chapel, they vote, then the smoke will come out, either the black or the white smoke, whenever the white smoke comes. It means, you know, a pope has been elected.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So we're all out there, everyone hanging up, hanging around, just waiting, They meet in the morning, and then they meet in the evening. And they continue to meet and vote until the pope is elected. And then the white smoke will come, and they choose one. So we're meeting that evening, and it went late. So we're like, something's going on. And finally the white smoke comes, and it just went crazy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
I mean, so much energy. And then he comes out. He gives his initial greeting. It was a really cool thing. And he said, you know, like something along these lines, you know, I'm your holy father. Like, I'm... I'm the new Pope, but I'm just paraphrasing it. Basically, if you want me to, like, I need your prayers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So before I can even start this ministry to pray for you and lead you, you've got to pray for me. So we'll just do this right now. And so, like, there was dead silence. You could hear a pin drop. It was crazy. Everyone was just praying. Yeah, so I was there for that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
But it was through the process of the cardinals coming together from all over the world, and they'll cast their ballots until one is chosen. I don't know if it's 50 plus 1 or if there's got to be a percentage, 80% or something. I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
That was the Second Vatican Council. It was in the 60s. The whole...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
In the church, because it is a human institution just like anything else can be politicized, but the Second Vatican Council was a gathering of the bishops and the cardinals and some representatives, lay representatives of Catholics from all over the world that come together for a number of years and with the goal of identifying the needs of the times and...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
essentially kind of laying out what's going to be the next steps forward. Realizing that Scripture and tradition, we're going through that again. We have to follow the Word of God. Nothing that we can do, that we do, can contradict the Word of God. But also the way that we're living is not the way that we were living 2,000 years ago. So...
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Peter and Andrew, James and John, when they were fishing at the Sea of Galilee, they weren't saying, hey, which AI do you use? Do you use Google? Do you use Gemini? Or do you use Copilot? Or Claude, what do you use? AI wasn't even on their radar. They weren't talking about in vitro fertilization. They weren't talking about Ibogaine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
Actually, I would bet that they'd be talking about Ibogaine before AI or anything like that because that could have been around. But... The point I'm making is like, we have to address things now that weren't issues a thousand years ago, that weren't an issue 20 years ago. So this was in the 60s.
Shawn Ryan Show
#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest
So they were addressing, calling out the issues that needed to be addressed that had not been addressed before so that we can gain some understanding from sacred scripture how to live in this world that we're living in. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, so it was a gathering of... What were some of those issues? Um...