Father Stephen Gadberry is a priest in the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas, ordained on May 28, 2016. Born and raised on a farm in the Arkansas Delta, he enlisted in the Air Force after high school, serving in Texas, Germany, and Central Iraq during the mid-2000s. With degrees in philosophy and theology from St. Joseph Seminary College and Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, he’s a scholar and a shepherd. As Word on Fire Institute fellow, he’s also hosted EWTN’s Breaking Bread and tackled obstacle courses on American Ninja Warrior. When he’s not leading Mass at St. Theresa Church in Little Rock, he’s lifting weights or coaching CrossFit, he spends time with his dogs, Murph and Shorty. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.tryarmra.com/SRS https://www.betterhelp.com/SRS This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://www.boncharge.com/SRS https://www.meetfabric.com/SHAWN https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.helixsleep.com/SRS https://www.lumen.me/SRS https://www.patriotmobile.com/SRS https://www.ziprecruiter.com/SRS Father Stephen Gadberry Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/fatherstephenjgadberry “The Making of a Catholic Priest” documentary - https://youtu.be/HumCsGbVAp4 Ministry with Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire IG - https://www.instagram.com/bishopbarron IG - https://www.instagram.com/wordonfire_catholicministries Mayhem Hunt IG - https://www.instagram.com/mayhemhunt Saint Theresa Catholic Church IG - https://www.instagram.com/sainttheresalr YT - https://youtube.com/@sainttheresacatholicchur-kb8cn Saint Theresa School IG - https://www.instagram.com/stscougars Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?
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?
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...
that terrifies us and so we do all these things that distract us from that the life of faith is really preparing for a good death father stephen gadberry welcome to the show man thanks a lot happy to have you here thanks but uh yeah you know i found you actually i don't remember how i found you but i ran across your instagram profile one way or another and uh i just
I saw what you're posting, working out on your cycle, lots of hunting, shooting your bow. And I just, I think that's, I don't want to sound offensive. I think it's really cool that you're a priest displaying like raw masculinity like that and making it cool. And I mean, I think that, masculinity has damn near disappeared in the world over the past 10 to 15 years.
And we just spoke, we think it's making a comeback. But on top of that, you just don't see priests doing that kind of stuff. And I think everybody, I mean, I grew up Catholic, and you just don't think of a priest out... hunting big game, or doing grueling workouts, or shooting their bow, or cycling, or really any of that. Everybody kind of thinks of them as, what do they do?
Pray all the time and do the rosary? I thought that was really cool, and that's what drew my attention to you. I think I've been following you for about a year, maybe a little longer. I just wanted to get you on the show. We had my friend... Father Dan Rehill on, and that was a fascinating interview.
And so, yeah, I kind of want to do a little bit of a life story on you and then dive into some of the stuff with the Catholic Church. I've got a ton of questions. But, yeah, thanks for coming.
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.
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.
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Chapter 2: How does Father Stephen Gadberry embody masculinity as a priest?
You're making knives now?
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.
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.
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?
Oh, very cool. Yeah, thank you. I'll wear this stuff. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Enjoy it. The Bible and the knife are really cool, man.
Yeah.
So is the gear, but... Well... That's really good. There you go. Everybody gets these except doctors. Sometimes I don't give them to doctors because I'm self-conscious. It's Vigilance League gummy bears made here in the USA. They taste amazing. You're going to pass your drug test. There's no funny business in there. I'll make you some later. Cool, cool. But yeah, they feel good.
Go ahead, rip them open. Try them. Try them.
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.
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Chapter 3: What role does silence play in spiritual growth?
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,
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.
So I'm talking to contractors and doing building plans and calls to the hospital, you know,
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
That's a lot of people. It's cool, man. 95% Hispanic? Yeah. Yeah. What do you give the Mass in?
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.
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.
Well, that's not exactly what I meant. I meant I didn't realize Arkansas was growing. I heard Bentonville is going crazy. But... It seems to be this wave of Christianity of people coming to Christ. So don't move in there while they come to church. Are you saying that?
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How can people maintain balance in their lives?
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.
What are your thoughts on psychedelics? I found a lot of healing through them. A lot of my friends have that have been to war. And it's always a very very controversial subject within Catholic Christian world. A lot of people say it's demonic. A lot of people say it opens up, you know, people are trying to open up their third eye and that's how demons come in. It's like a window.
A lot of people say that, you know, it's a false reality that you experience. But I've seen a lot more good than bad come from this stuff. Way more good. And so I've heard that some people use psychedelics to open people up before exorcisms. I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on psychedelics?
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.
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?
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.
What about from a spiritual standpoint? You know, like with people that's saying it's demonic, it's demonic forces, you're opening yourself up to the spiritual realm. I mean, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on that? Is it spiritual suicide?
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.
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?
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of free will in faith?
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.
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,
Eight years old, huh? Yeah.
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?
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.
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.
So that was childhood. That was a big, big thing. How long after your dad and your sister died were the twins born?
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: How does trauma affect personal boundaries?
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.
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.
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.
Why do you want to go back, though? You want to go back for curiosity? You want to go back to talk to who?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of psychedelics in spirituality?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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Chapter 8: How can anger towards God be expressed positively?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah.
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