- Welcome back everyone to the front line with Joe and Joe. Joe Bessilow and Joe Ressinull, you're exactly right, Joe. - We work for the man upstairs as you do. - You're setting me up quite well. You just gave me an alley youth. - The greatest revolutionary act to commit right now is to open your mouth and speak the truth. - Whether you're an academic or you're a regular guy, you have to be fearless. - And once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello again everyone and welcome back to the front line with Joe and Joe. Joe Bessilow, as always joined by Joe Ressinull, and once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach on the Veritas Catholic Radio Network, 1350 on your AM dial 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faith to the New York City metropolitan area. Download the app, share it with your friends. You'll have access to all of our content and please wherever you see Joe and I on social media, excuse me, Rumble, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, like, subscribe, share, do all that fun stuff, help us out. So Joe and I just love conversations we're about to have today, all right? Because saints go into the breach. That is the common denominator of saints, okay? They see the breach, doesn't scare them. They go into it many times, they're martyred, okay? But they inspire the greatness that we need, especially as Roman Catholics, because we set our standards high and the saints help us to do that and to aspire to that very high level. Well, you know, Kimberly Begg has written a new book, Unbreakable Saints Who Inspired Saints Tomorrow Courage. This is gonna be a great conversation. Some of you out there are familiar with Kimberly. Having said that, let me do a quick bio, Kimberly Begg is a Catholic wife and mother of five children who's trying to cooperate with God's grace to guide her family to heaven. An attorney for more than 20 years with experience, strengthening Catholic and conservative causes. She helped found Young America's Foundation standing up for Faith and Freedom Seminar, a program for students at Catholic schools while serving as the Foundation's Vice President in General Counsel. She serves on the Board of Directors of Young America's Foundation, the Board of Advisors for the Claire Booth Loose Center for Conservative Women, which I wanna talk about. I wanna make sure we get to that a little bit later on. Promise Kimberly, we won't get you in too much trouble. But for conservative women and the D.C. Board of Regents of Thomas Aquinas College, she is Director of Programs and General Counselor for the Ortoner Family Foundation and Editor of Catholic School Playbook and Online Resource for the Renewal of Catholic Education. I know that was a mouthful. Kimberly Begg, welcome to the front line with Joe and Joe. - Joe and Joe, you guys are the best. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really, really excited to be here. - God, up tight. We're excited for this conversation. Believe me, Joe or Cinella, where do you wanna go? - And we always start with a prayer to our lady and name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and men. Remember, almost gracious Virgin Mary. Never was it known that anyone who sought your help or sought your intercession was left unaided inspired by this confidence. We fly into you, a virgin, a virgin's arm. Mother, to you, we come for you. We stand sinful and sorrowful. Well, mother of the word, incarnate, despise not a petitions, but in your clemency here and answer a say, man. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and men. - Well, as Joe Pesso said, you're in for a treat today and I'm going to tell you why. Because Kimberly is from New Jersey. And the three of us are from New Jersey. Whenever you get three people from New Jersey craziness, always aspire. So that is the first point. The second point, she lived in Newark, New Jersey for a little while while she was going to law school and she ate mussels at a Portuguese restaurant every day. And I love that. 'Cause I love mussels and I love Newark and I love Portuguese food. So I know this conversation is going to be very good. Now, the subject at hand, the world is crazy, Kim, and it's not good crazy. You see, New Jersey's good crazy. It's bad crazy. - Bad crazy. - It's bad crazy. If I could live on the moon with my family, I would, but they haven't figured that out yet. I'll leave that to Elon Musk. But in the meantime, we have to live here. And as Catholics, we're in the world. We're not of the world. And I think we have an advantage because of the sacraments and I want to discuss it with the two of you. I think Catholics have a distinct advantage in this crazy, crazy world because we live a sacramental life. Your thoughts as a mom. - 100% agree. As Catholics, we all have an advantage over the world. St. Teresa of Lizzou said, "My home is heaven and the world is my ship, and not my home. Goodness gracious me." - No, it's okay. - But love St. Teresa has so much. But she recognized that we are here for a particular purpose. And the reason she knew that is because as a baptized Catholic who went to mass and had the graces of the sacraments, she knew that she was supposed to be able to know God, to be able to know how to serve God and to spend eternity with God in heaven. And as parents, our children should have an advantage in this world too. In that at baptism, we make promises to God to raise our children Catholic. And that has to mean more than just checking off a mass box and checking off a box for having a big party at first Holy Communion and at confirmation. It has to mean showing our children the truth of the sacraments and giving them the wonderful example of how to live a sacramental life based on truth. - Joe, I just wanna jump in. You're so right. And I think a key to that too, as far as living a sacramental life in this world of confusion, what I mean by that is you get so many messages that are coming at people, particularly for kids. You could see through the fog, there's, we talk to a lot of people, sin as in if you're living in mortal sin or you're not going to confession, i.e. you're not living a sacramental life, you can't see things clearly. And I think that's the trouble, a driving issue with our society. People don't see things clearly. And it doesn't mean that you're super smart. In fact, there's some very common people that go to confession, live a sacramental life, pray regularly, and they see things as clear as a bell. And then you could have someone who I won't name any names who went to Harvard and Harvard Law School and can't tell you what a woman is. Now, I have an issue with that. You know, you're smarter than me. There's no question about that, but I could tell you what a woman is. I think that's why we have an advantage. And to your point, you're a mom. And if you can't see right, you're not going to raise your kids right. And I think that's what's going on. What do you think about that? - Yeah, so I've actually given a lot of thought to this. Before writing the book, and you know, since that the book was published in July, there are a lot of really interesting scripture passages that deal with spiritual blindness. And probably my favorite is in the book of Tobit. When Tobit is blind and he wants to regain his sight. So it's his son, Tobias, who puts medicine on his eyes. But what's really interesting is what he says to him right before he puts the medicine on his eyes. He doesn't say, "Dad, wait until you see clearly. "You're going to see all the colors "and your life is going to be amazing "once you are able to see." What he says is courage father. You know, courage, because it takes courage to see the world clearly. Why is that? Because Christ said that he didn't come to bring peace, but to bring division. He said, "Take up your cross and follow me." And so it does take courage to be out there in a world that mocks Christian belief, that as you said, does not see the world as it is, that sees only the physical world, but is unable to see the supernatural world that is out there, the spiritual world that surrounds us, the spiritual battle that we are all engaged in. So it does take courage, but one of the greatest secrets of living a Catholic and a sacramental life is this amazing inner peace that we get when we are uniting our will with God's will. And every single saint that we know about in the church, every single saint in my book had this inner peace in even the most difficult moments. You know, you can look at some of our martyrs, you know, little saint Jose Luis Sanchez Del Rio. He was 14 years old when he gave his life, refusing to denounce his faith in socialist Mexico in the 20th century, you can look at him and say, 14 years old, you know, where did he find that strength? Where did he find that courage? He had an inner peace to him. You know, even though parts of him were probably a little bit terrified, not in his core, you know, in his core, he knew that Christ was there. He considered Jesus to be his very best friend. He had this amazing devotion to Christ really present in the Blessed Sacrament. And so it strengthened him. So we can look at this crazy world, as you said, you know, one that confuses good and evil and vice and virtue and we can have fear because we don't like to not be liked, right? And Christ knew that we had this desire to be liked, which is why he's given us the church to guide us through and he's given us the sacraments. And we have wonderful sacred scripture. And we can try to let that fear prevent us from going out in the world and living courageously for Christ. But the truth is that when we know in our hearts the truth that is written on our hearts and that we are made for a higher purpose and that our destiny is to spend eternity in heaven with God and all of the angels and all of the saints, it's actually not that hard. And that's not to downplay, you know, the canceling that goes on out there. But the truth is there's a reason that the saints are able to do this. And yes, it's the strength of the Holy Spirit. And it's not just them acting out in the world. And it's the Holy Spirit giving them the courage, but it's also just knowing, you know, truly, truly knowing that you're made for a higher purpose. And that our lives on this earth are very short compared to eternity. - Kimberly Begg is joining us here at the Frontline with Jo and Jo. Please go out and buy her book. It's available at 10 books Unbreakable Saints who inspired saints to moral courage. I look at it this way. I just wanna comment on what both of you were saying about sight, all right, being able to see, okay? If you could see that's the majority of the battle that we're in. Problem is that people are either willfully blind, woefully blind, and those who would make them blind. Remember St. Paul said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The flesh and blood are the people that are willfully or woefully blind. The spiritual wickedness in high places, okay? That's who we're fighting against. That's what creates saints. Well, God raises up saints, okay? But that's usually what they're fighting. I always take a perpetual in felicity. To me, they're like the perfect example of two women who had their eyes wide open with the Holy Spirit, all right? Who would lay down their life if their eyes, for something they never encountered personally. Most of the people that were martyrs in the first three centuries, they never met Jesus. They never met the apostles. But do you see that's the sacrament of life, the prayerful life, okay? God raising up saints, the examples that they would have had early on. Their eyes were wide open. And that's where they got that courage that you write about in your book. What are your thoughts on that, Kimberly? - Yeah, you know, what's neat about the book, I think, is that the number of saints who were known to some of the most heroic saints in the church, but that are largely unknown to us, right? So we were just talking about St. Jose Sanchez Del Rio. And he was very inspired by St. Torcesias, who was an early Christian martyr, who was also a young boy, who's 12 years old. And he was martyred carrying, again, the blessed sacrament to prisoners and to Christians on behalf of a priest. And when he was discovered as a Christian, he was killed. Well, this is a saint that a lot of us really are not familiar with anymore. You know, also other saints, St. Margaret of Antioch, St. Catherine of Alexandria. Those are the saints who inspired St. Joan of Arc. And again, these are saints who were very, very well known in Jon's time in medieval France. In fact, they were so well known that most of the churches had statues of these women. And by the way, they were teenage martyrs too. I love this theme of just young people giving their lives throughout completely uniting their will with Christ. But they knew the stories of the saints. Along the way, as Catholics, we have forgotten some of these stories. And we have not always done the best job passing them on. I have noticed a resurgence, you know, a real renewed interest in liturgical living and in celebrating the lives of the saints, which has just been fantastic. And it's been really me, you know, just rediscovering as a church, some of these saints. But when we look back and think, you know, what gave these saints the courage that they needed at that time in their life to do God's will in the world? So much of it was the example of the saints and also the intercession of the saints. You know, we are, I think, I think as a society, very preoccupied with, you know, getting ahead in the world with material success. Even as a church, there are some of us who are a little bit embarrassed by the mysterious and the mystical aspects of the church. But I think it's really important to realize that, you know, there is so much more than what we actually see. And this divide between heaven and earth, prayers cross that divide. And Christ really did suffer and die for us. And we really do have free will to either cooperate with His grace or not. And the saints really are in heaven praying for us. So I think that's a really important message for all of us as Catholics. And especially those who are entrusted with the care of children, either teachers in Catholic schools or parents in the home, that our children, young Catholics know that the communion of saints is real. And it's a gift of the church, it's a gift of Christ, and that we can tap into that power in heaven anytime that we want. That's one of my, I'm gonna throw it over to Joe and I promise, Kimberly, I won't get you in too much trouble, okay? But let's say our Protestant brothers and sisters, that's what I don't get sometimes, especially evangelicals. They think it's just, oh, it's just me and Jesus, me and Jesus, me and Jesus. And it is, Jesus loves you. Of course, he died for you, no question. They miss out on the communion of saints. I don't know if they realize what we do when we're praying to the saints who they say are dead, but we know who are alive in heaven. I'm praying to a friend. I mean, that's gonna friend to pray for me. They're not dead, they're in heaven. Our blessed mother, all right? I'm praying to her because she's gonna help me. They miss out on that communion because we get to live forever, of course, with Jesus, but with the communion of saints. No, it's, and I think they shortchange themselves by not praying to saints because there's, because saints are so powerful. The church declares they're in heaven, all right? Therefore, they're in heaven. Therefore, I'm going to pray to them, to pray for me because I need help because I'm still stuck here. You know, you know, loving the front line with Jo and Jo and talking to Kimberly Beck, but in the meantime, we have to slog our way to all the, you know, to all the, you know, this battle that we're in, the spiritual battle that we're in. That's my two cents, Jo. - I'm glad you mentioned saints, Tarsis, 'cause in your book, I didn't know about him either. And as you know, and people should get the book and read it, you mentioned that St. Jose, Louise, Sanchez, Del Rio, the soldiers called him little Tarsis, which was interesting, you know, he reminded them, they knew who the saint was, and for those who don't know, as Kimberly mentioned, this was a time of Catholic persecution in Mexico, and there was a war going on. People were fighting for the rights to have religious freedom. We're not at that point yet, but our rights are being-- - I'm in close. - It's getting there, it's getting there. - We're almost in the, we're almost in the Vandy. We, we, we-- - And it's happened in history. It's happened in history, and why can't it happen here? We're taking steps in that direction. But in the book, you also talk about Joan of Arc, you talk about Blessed Jersey, Papalusco, and you talk about Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I wanna focus, you mentioned that St. Jose basically was a young boy. Well, Joan of Arc was 17, and Mark Twain wrote a famous book about Joan of Arc, and believe it or not, he considered that his opus, his masterpiece, you would think that it would be, you know, Huckleberry Finn. No, it was the book on Joan of Arc, and I'm gonna tell you why I think so. Because she, to this day, is the only woman that led an army. She was also 17. She led a major nation. Think about this for a second, just step back, pretend she's not Catholic, pretend she's not a saint. Let's just think about it historically speaking. She led France against England. The war went on for a hundred years. She was the general, she was 17, and she was illiterate. She did not know how to read. That, my friends, is something. Talk about Joan of Arc, because I'll be honest with you, amazing human being, whether you're religious or not. Mark Twain was not Catholic, and I think she blew him out of the water. What do you think? - I think that she is probably the most fascinating, fully human, non-divine person who has ever lived. I knew that Joan needed to be in this book because of the courage that it must have even taken for that very first step, when she was 16 years old outside of her house to begin this journey that sounded absolutely crazy. But I have to tell you, because of just the amount of information that we have about her, we actually know more about her than we know about any other person who lived before her, because we have all the trial testimony, all the witness testimony, her own words. And I knew she needed to be in this book, but I was terrified to write about her, because she is such a huge figure. And I knew I needed to get it right, but I'll tell you, she's so fascinating that my daughter, who was 13 at the time when I was writing the book, she kept stealing my resource material. So I kept looking around the house for the books and the trial testimony that I was using to write, her chapter, and my daughter kept stealing them, because she was so fascinated. That Joan even tried to command an army, even went into Orleone in the first place, ever convinced the Dofan, Charles the Seventh, to give her an army to command, ever convinced the commander of the local fortress to give her an escort to go meet Charles the Seventh. It was a 350 mile journey, that she even got that escort in the first place, because he was putting his reputation on the line. I mean, can you imagine Charles the Seventh receiving this teenage girl and thinking, I'm sorry, the commander of the fortress thought this was a good idea, to send me a teenage girl to command my army. The whole story is so fascinating and magnificent. The commander is the French army in Orleone when she went into the city. They all assumed they were days away from defeat. They were about to become English. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and then Joan shows up, and in a matter of days, ends up driving the English out of Orleone, continues on, ends up defeating the English, is a matter of months and years. The French end up winning the war, and it was because of Joan of Arc, and everybody knew it was because of Joan of Arc, and of course, the horrific trial that she had to endure, which was a sham trial that was designed wholly to convict her of heresy, even though she never did anything against the church, never engaged in any kind of wrongful conduct. The reason this happened in the first place was because of jealousy, and because she had ruined people's plans. So there was a bishop, Bishop Koshan, who eagerly wanted to be in control of this trial, and he was the one who made sure that Joan was going to stand trial and made sure that she was going to be convicted, and he had plans, because when France was under English control, he was going to be a very high-ranking official in the church controlled by England, and she messed up his plans. So it was completely a revenge move. She was also very much betrayed by her own countrymen, her king abandoned her after winning the army, for winning the battle, winning the war for France. Charles VII actually abandoned her and refused to try to save her, because he did have that opportunity to pay a sum of money to release her, and he ignored that request. And then at the end of her life, she had to so courageously submit to being burned at the stake. The whole story is just so fascinating and strange. And I wanna just talk just a minute about the strangeness of this story, because I think this is a really important part of the Catholic faith that some of us are a little bit embarrassed about. I think it is so clear that there was something bigger going on here, that as you said, Jo, that she was illiterate, she had no military experience, that everything sort of seemed to fall in line for her, and that she was victorious in this crazy plan. You know, this should give modern Catholics some confidence that there is more to the world than we can see. - I want you to just stress one thing with this, 'cause this blows me away. Here's a peasant, girl, can't read. She goes on trial, talk about the trial, you're a lawyer, talk about this trial, because these are the smart guys, all the bishops, they speak the ancient languages, they went to the Gregorian, I went to the Harvard on the Hudson Kim, just so you know, I didn't go to the Gregorian, but I have a PhD in common sense. Joan did too, but I didn't face these dudes, and this is the amazing thing. She never said a word that went against the church. She had no formal education. If that doesn't blow your mind, think about that for a minute. Again, step back, she's illiterate. She's talking to people who are the smartest people in every single room they walk into, they know everything about the church, quote, unquote, on paper. They try to corner her, and they cannot talk about that. - Well, and it's even more extraordinary, because it wasn't one day of a good interrogation for her. It was day after day after day. You know, the entire time of her captivity was about a year from when she was captured, and then she was executed, burned at the stake. But it was day after day, she was treated horribly, the physical conditions she was made to endure, very, very inhumane. She had this very teeny tiny little cell that she slept in, you know, she had chains on her, they tore her skin, and the interrogations were very, very lengthy. So, you know, she had the mental ability to answer these questions that you better believe they were pulling out all the stops to make sure that they were giving her trick questions that were going to stump her, as you said, that she was going to say something. You know, just use a word wrong here or there, the way that anyone, that I certainly would, the way that that Joe and Joe, you probably would too, if you were under those conditions at some point, you're going to say something a little bit wrong. She never did. She was asked a lot of, as I said, trick questions, and she always had the perfect answer. And those questions that she knew, they were going to twist, she refused to answer. So, there were many times that she was asked a question, and she just said, pass, I'm not going to answer that one, because she knew, you know, she knew that if she answered, you know, affirmative or the negative, there would be a twisting. And she would, they would have misrepresented what she had sent. But there's another really interesting part of this story, which goes to the heart of my book, which is the three saints who inspired her were St. Michael the Archangel, the commander-in-chief of God's holy army in heaven, right, as a soldier. And then the two teenage martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret of Antioch. And it was St. Catherine of Alexandria, who is known in the church as debating 50 theologians and philosophers successfully in front of a crowd, because that dioculation at the time and his officers were very much trying to get her to convert, to paganism, and to renounce her faith, and to win her over, decided, well, let's make you debate these 50 philosophers and theologians. And she was so persuasive that she converted all of them and converted all of the onlookers. But isn't it interesting, right, that it was St. Catherine of Alexandria who had this experience in the early fourth century, right, who started appearing to Joan very, very early on. And Joan at the time probably thought, okay, well, you know, if you're as a teenager with St. Margaret of Antioch, St. Michael the Archangel, this certainly makes sense. But at that time, she couldn't have even known the special inspiration and the special help, the intercession that St. Catherine of Alexandria, you know, had to have given her during those amazing interrogations. I mean, just the parallels there just have to blow your mind. You know, in all of the reading that I had done previously about St. Joan of Arc, again, I knew about St. Michael interceding for her and visiting her and inspiring her. But I didn't know anything about these teenage early Christian martyrs, but the parallels there in their lives is just fascinating, isn't it? - I agree, absolutely. Kimberly Beck's joining us here at the front line with Jo and Jo, her new book Unbreakable, Saints Who Inspired Saints Tomorrow Cards. I'm feeling inspired just from this conversation. I do want to make one quick comment that we're going to go to a break. But it shows me, and this is a problem, I think, that pertains in the world right now, particularly in the church. People get mad because there's corruption in the church or there are corrupt men in the church. And I think about, like, what you were describing about how St. Joan of Arc, it was people in the church that persecuted her, all right? I'm currently reading Faith of Our Fathers, Joseph Pierce's book on the history of true England. I'm on the chapter on St. John Fisher and St. Thomas Moore. But all the other bishops went along with Henry VIII. John Fisher lost his head. And what it tells me is this, people put too much trust in the men in the church. And what you're describing to me, and it seems to me what a saint does, and we'll talk about it on the other side of the break, is they trust the church, not the men in the church. 'Cause it seems like a lot of times, that's how people go wrong. And I think that's where we're going. And I want your comment on that, Kimberly, when we come back, all right? 'Cause we do have to take a break. We're at the front line with Jo and Jo on the Veritas Catholic Radio Network. Kimberly, real quick, ten books, and where else can people buy your book? It's on Amazon and my website, kimberlybag.com, where I have signed books and also a free study guide. Awesome. We're gonna come right back with Kimberly Bag. Don't go anywhere. Catholic Radio works, and now we have it here in Connecticut and New York. It's been seen around the country that there's no better tool for evangelization. Where there's Catholic Radio, the folks who listen deep in their faith, families are strengthened, parishes and communities flourish. So, let people know you're listening to Veritas, tell your friends to tune in, and let's make an impact here for Jesus and His Church. This is Steve Lee for Veritas Catholic Network. Welcome back, everyone, to the front line with Jo and Jo. Jo and Jo. Jo and Jo are in Elo away in the breach with Kimberly Bag. We're discussing her new book, Unbreakable Saints, Who Inspired Saints, Tomorrow Cards. So, Kimberly, before the break, I mentioned that I think that's one of our problems. Like, people need to scandalize that every little thing. Jesus said, when the tears were growing with the wheat, they said, "You want us to take out the tears?" He says, "Let them stay. Let them stay, 'cause we don't want to rip everything out, all right? And I'll take care of it at the end." See, I trust in that, all right? I trust in the Church to magisterium the tradition, Scripture, all right? And I think we go wrong, and saints seem to do that too, okay? Is that, I don't think Joan of Arc was shocked, maybe, that she might be betrayed by summoning the Church. I'm not shocked when I hear stories about some of the things that go on. It's part of our history. But here's my larger point, and I'm going to throw it over to you. Those men, cowardly men, they don't move history nor the Church. The saints do. What are your thoughts? I agree, you know, I know that there's a lot of despair among Catholics right now about a lot of that confusion in the Church. I don't share that despair, and I think one of the reasons is because I have immersed myself in the lives of these amazing saints. And I know that, you know, we have so many saints that the Church has preserved their stories, preserved their memories, passed on to us, because it is a part of the Catholic experience. You know, being Catholic doesn't just mean going to mass, and it doesn't just mean, you know, living a prayerful life, you know, with other Catholics in a Church. You know, it means being very different in the way that we do everything in our lives. You know, the way that we organize our home lives, the way that we raise our children, the way that we spend our leisure time. As you said, you're reading this great book right now about English saints. You know, it means looking at the world in a way to know that, you know, we're coming into this world 2,000 years after Christ walked the earth and knowing that our life was always part of the plan, you know, that we are, we're put in this earth. You know, if I was finding this fascinating to think, you know, at a particular time, born into a particular family, in a particular part of the world, and we're meant to interact with particular people in our lives. You know, and we have responsibilities there. And, you know, it is the month of November. And I began my month of November reading Father Sebastian White's wonderful letter at the beginning of Magnificat. And there's not a single day that has gone by that I haven't thought about the final judgment, you know, and what he points out that we all believe is Catholics, which is we will be judged at the end of our earthly life. And then we will all be judged at the final judgment at which time we will see the ripple effect of all the evil that we've done. Because most of us are out there doing evil. Hopefully, you know, we are going to confession. And we believe in God's mercy to get us beyond that and to grow spiritually. But also all of the good, you know, and when we as parents are interested with raising children, you better believe that at the final judgment, we are going to see what our children did when our children's children did, you know, other people we've been in contact with throughout our lives and the ripple effect there. And I think it's really, really important that we recognize that and not get so bogged down by the day to day politics of the church. Yeah, there's politics in the church. We're sinners. None of this should come to surprise the any of us. You know, stay focused. Stay focused on Christ. Keep our gaze focused on Christ. And goodness gracious, realize what those opportunities are every single day to evangelize. Absolutely. Kimberly, I'm just going to throw it over to Joe. I'm just going to say this, but ties back into what you guys were talking about earlier on about having that vision, having that site, okay, having your eyes wide open. You don't get bothered. Like you just described. I'm not bothered. Okay. Okay. I might throw something against the wall when I hear something outrageous. Okay. But I don't take it out of the house. I don't, I don't, I don't, it's not going to stay with me more than a few seconds. Okay. For the reasons you just said and what you were talking about. My eyes are open. I, I, you know, I read the book. Okay. I listen to what Jesus said. So, you know, again, that's, that's what that, that grace helps you to not get bogged down and some of this stuff. And like you said, I have enough struggles worrying about, you know, trying to get myself, my wife and my son to heaven, particularly me. Okay. Um, good. And I struggle with sin and everything like we all do. We're all sinners. Um, I can't get, I can't get bogged down on all this other stuff. I mean, and I, I think it's, it's very, uh, put it like this. Productive. What you said. Live the sacramental life. Focus on, focus on Jesus in the Eucharist. And continue confession, adoration, all of it. That'll keep you sane. Trust me. Uh, Joe Rasonello. Let's talk about blessed Jersey, Papaloosco. You focused on him in this book. A lot of people may not know who he is. Um, I did. I've watched a movie in Polish. I don't speak Polish. I don't even speak English well, Kimberly, but I do know about him in that, in this movie subtitle. I actually gave it to a woman I commute with who was from communist Romania, who was considering becoming Catholic because his life was so inspirational. This guy spoke truth to power. The person who comes to mind talk about other saints is Oscar Romero, very similar type of men who basically were under the thumb of communism, of oppression, of tyranny and didn't care. They just spoke truth to power, put their life and lives on the line and they lost their life. Talk about this man because he will become a saint. He's a blessed now. He's on his way. Uh, blessed Jersey Papaloosco was actually the inspiration for the book. So, um, he's somebody that I've been aware of, um, actually for kind of a long time. Uh, there's a dear friend of mine. I worked with who had visited his grave site in Warsaw. And, um, this is somebody who had gone to lords and Fatima and other pilgrimage sites. And he said that he had the most profound spiritual experience at Father Georgie's grave site. And that really piqued my interest. Um, I also have always been, uh, you mentioned my involvement with Young America's Foundation with the Clara Booth Lou Center for Conservative Women, always been, uh, very concerned about the overreach of government, um, into God given freedoms of the people. And so when I learned about Father Georgie's heroic, um, life in communist Poland after World War II and helping millions of people throughout Poland and throughout the Eastern Bloc and really throughout the world see through the lies of atheistic communism. Um, I just, I wanted to learn more about him and I was giving a presentation for Young America's Foundation and in doing my research. That's when I made this wonderful discovery that as a boy, Father Georgie learned about Saint Maximilian Colby. So I'm sure, you know, Saint Maximilian Colby, um, was the Franciscan Friar who gave his life at Auschwitz to save another prisoner, a family man with a wife and children. Um, but when I learned that Father Georgie as a young boy learned about Saint Maximilian Colby reading Knights of the Immaculata, which was Father Maximilian Colby's newspaper at his grandmother's house. And then throughout his life continued to be inspired by him. He considered him to be his favorite saint. Um, continued to read his writings throughout his life, continued to pray for him. It's like the whole rest of his life made sense to me. You know, it made so much sense. You know, why wasn't this, you know, rather frail, uh, man, this rather frail, uh, priest in his, in his thirties? Um, yours, he had always had some medical issues. He was a, a frail baby. His, his family was not even sure that he was going to make it um, alive very, very long. So they wanted to baptize him right away. But he always had health problems. And yet he showed absolutely no fear, you know, standing before crowds of sometimes 20,000 people who would come to mass. Um, in Poland, uh, in communist Poland. And the reason they would come to these masses for the father, the fatherland was to hear these homilies by Father Georgie. And what he would say was, guess what? As, as human beings made in the image and likeness of God, you have dignity. You have dignity. Um, and this communist government has no real power over you. And that, of course, was very threatening, uh, to the communists in power. Um, but you know, another part of this story in the parallel with Father, Maximilian Colby that I find very interesting is, you know, Father, Maximilian Colby was this, you know, media. Entrepreneur, you know, to evangelize. He had a newspaper that reached a circulation of one million. He was on the radio. He had this radio program. Well, Father, you're these homilies reached well beyond. Uh, just the people who came to hear him speak at mass and to hear him say, say mass because his friends would jot down, uh, what he was saying, and they would publish them in underground newspapers. And, um, they would also record him and they would broadcast it all through the Eastern block all through Poland. Um, on radio free Europe. So there's that other really just interesting parallel and you think, how is that happening? You know, um, you know, without that example of that prior saint. Um, and that really just goes to, you know, why it's so important for us to be sharing, you know, as many of these inspiring, you know, mysterious stories with the young people in our lives. Um, because we don't, we don't know. I don't know what God's plan is for my own children. Um, none of us knows, um, what God plan is, but there could be a saint there who is reaching out to one of our children and wants to inspire them in a certain way and wants to pray for them, intercede for them in a very special way. I want to just jump in real, real quick, Joe, because a couple of things you'd mentioned. He was a sickly person. I want to add this. He was forced to go into the army before he became a priest. He, his health, his bad health, because a lot of the reason why he was sick, not just because he wasn't a big man, he would pray the rosary when he was not supposed to and would have to suffer. The army punished him, make him stand out in the cold and he never recovered from that. And in a sense, I believe that's God forming us. See, God knows what he's doing. Even when things are bad, he's forming you to do what you're supposed to do. I think that was a building block. He was forming him through that suffering. Also, he was the priest to the solidarity movement. We all know about that. The solidarity movement was sparked by John Paul II and it freed Poland from the hands of their communist oppressors. He was the priest for the common man. And I'll be honest with you, just as a person, I come from very blue collar stock. So does Joe. Joe's dad was a teamster. My father was a barber. I love when like people get down with regular people. That's who Jesus was. He wasn't some fancy guy wearing cuffs. He was God who hung with regular people. And frankly, that's what it's all about. That's what he did. He went into the factories. He was on the ground. He ate with his people. He served his people. That's what we're supposed to do. You know, we're all blessed. The three of us were educated. You know, here we are. Joe and I, we have a platform for now. They haven't put us in jail yet. They will. I was going to say they haven't dropped the hammer on us yet. But, you know, that doesn't make us better than anybody else. He was educated. He was a priest. He went down with the people. Talk about that. Because frankly, that's what it's all about. And I'll tell you what, that's how you win hearts and minds. I'm going to tell you that right now. It's easy to just go downstairs, feed somebody and then go back up stairs and eat filet mignon. He stayed downstairs. Talk about that. Because that's what this guy was about. Yeah, I want to share one of my favorite stories about father Yurji. So, you know, yes, he was helping out the families of the Solidarity movement and spending time with them. He was offering masks for them. And also just offering friendship to them. But when the leaders of Solidarity started to be arrested. And then they had these sham trials. Father Yurji went to every single one of these trials. And he stood there with the family members. You know, he, like you said, he could have been going off doing his thing and just popping in for mass and popping out. But he went to all of these trials. And when the judge would read out the verdict, convicting, you know, falsely convicting the Solidarity members of crimes against the state, he would turn his back to the judge in the courtroom and start singing in the Polish national anthem. I mean, this was a guy who just wanted. God's children to know the truth. You know, he so badly wanted them to see through the lies of atheistic communism. We live in a world right now where the lies are everywhere. And they are told to kids beginning with the time they first enter school. You know, we have all heard the stories of the kindergartners being exposed to this really disturbing material in school. Being told that you may be a boy. You may be a girl. We really don't know. That is for you to decide. And the confusion that young people are having to endure today the rates of anxiety and depression and suicide are just absolutely through the roof. It is just heartbreaking. Right. The lies that are out there. Well, in communist Poland, you know, the lies were a little bit different. But the lies were still there and they were very damaging. And people, you know, before Yurji and before Pope John Paul the second, they really did have a hard time seeing the truth because all they knew was the oppression of the state. Where they were not allowed to worship freely and where they were told to work at a job and where their wages were too low for them to be able to support a family in any real meaningful way. And where they didn't have the freedom to flourish as human beings. And so father, Yurji comes along and says you're made for more than this, which is what made him such a threat. You know, if I may, it's why what you're both doing is so important. You know, on the air and constantly bringing this message of truth and that were made for something so much greater than all of the confusion and all of the lies that are out there. You know, one thing that's always fascinated me about sacred scripture. First of all, I love that the church gives us readings every day and I just always find that that very fascinating how, you know, the perfect reading on a certain day that the church gave us sometimes seems to apply to my life. But in multiple places in scripture, you know, Christ refers to Satan as the ruler of the world. You know, so when we look out at the world and we think, wow, there's a lot of confusion out there. Should we really be surprised? You know, this is a dictatorship by the father of lies, but we are all free if we are able to use our free will to worship correctly, to serve God and to evangelize to others as we are all called to do. Absolutely. Unbreakable Saints who inspired Saints. Tomorrow courage. It's available at 10 books and we're with the author. If you're just joining us, Kimberly Begg. A couple of comments based on what you said and talking about, you know, papalusco, your Jersey papalusco. They knew he knew what he was fighting against, which is basically evil. Going from Nero. You mentioned Diocletian, right? The wonderful philosopher Emperor Marcus Aurelius killed a lot of Christians himself. Okay. I like to break it to all the atheists out there. Yeah, he wasn't so great. All right. And all the tyrants that thought that they could stop out the French revolutionaries. Okay. But at least those Saints knew what they were facing. All right. I'm going somewhere with this Kimberly and I want your comments. Okay, I promise. I'm going to talk about the fact that there's a lot of people who are in bed, whether they realize they're not with Satan, who does because God allows him to run the world. Right now he rules the world and he has in human history. But you knew what you were fighting against. Okay. Men who embrace that idea. Stalin comes to mind. Hitler comes to mind. Mal comes to mind. We know the cast of characters. This stuff now is insane because how do you because you mentioned the fact that you're fighting against people. Now boys and girls and the destructive lives are being encouraged to lead. Okay. And their destructive life, which ends many times in suicide, is being blamed on people like you and Joe and me because we're simply speaking out against it because we want to defend the truth. This is not only fighting evil. This is fighting insanity. And I'm not I'm not just being hyperbolic here. When you are actually trying to convince people that a boy is trying to convince people that he's trying to convince people that he's trying to convince them. You are insane. And also evil. I love your comment. I know that was a bit of a rant. I love your comments on that because the saint that steps up against this stuff. This is going to require something in my mind. I think even more courage than some of the saints were talking about. Yeah. Actually, that's a great question. I liked the rant. I agree. You know, GK Chesterton made a really interesting observation about madness. We need a healthy balance between reason and imagination to protect against madness for our mental health and for our spiritual health because he said without imagination, if all we have is reason, and we are, you know, like a circle able to, you know, able to use words and create a narrative that we feel like fits some kind of scheme of logic without imagination. That is how a man goes mad and falls for some of these beliefs. So, you know, we touched on some of that miraculous and some of the mystical aspects of the same stories. I am convinced now more than ever that it is not, you know, it's not the social science research that is going to save the church. As fascinating as I find that, by the way, it always fascinates me that the social science research always validates, always confirms that, you know, living a good and holy life and following the moral law and the natural law is what makes a person, you know, flourish, having a family staying in a marriage, having marriage within a family. But it's not the social science research that is going to convert hearts and is going to, you know, that is going to compel people to respond to a higher power and to proactively help others see the madness in the culture. It is, it is the imagination. It is that place that where we go in our minds when we start thinking about, wow, you know, St. John of Arc, when this very skilled executioner, when they burned her at the stake, her body burned, but her heart was so close to the sacred heart of Jesus that her heart was fully intact and blood was fully inside of her heart when she died in the executioner could not. In fact, he ran away, he was terrified, absolutely terrified when he realized he couldn't burn her heart. We think about, you know, the story of Fatima, you know, the story of Fatima has been really important to my family. I'm actually named our youngest daughter, Lucia, because the story of our lady appearing and being seen by 70,000 people in Portugal, not all Catholics, obviously. But that story was so well documented. And that's a modern day story. And our Lady of Fatima has converted the hearts of so many people. I use Fatima just to cut you off. I use Fatima to argue with atheists and Protestants. I see why. Because they make the same arguments. They make the same arguments. But go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, but I think, but you know, but when it comes to madness, you know, I think we're answering the world's objections using the using the world's questions and then trying to conform our answers to their worldly materialist questions, right? We need to break through that. You know, we need to use our freedom, you know, to see the supernatural, to see the mystical, to see that Christ really did become human in order to suffer at the hands of men and die and rise for us. And that the church really is there to guide us and that the saints really are in heaven to intercede for us. And that is how we are going to cut through the insanity, not in the world's terms, not going back, not going around and around in the circle of logic and these strange narratives that they can come up with. No, absolutely. I'm going to hand it over to Joe for the last couple minutes, Kimberly. But I would say this. If we, if we used our imagination to understand that what we're, and you mentioned order, you know, if we would think about that Jesus is logos made flesh. Okay. The eternal word is the eternal logos. Then we are, it will, it will open our imagination to understand that what we're fighting against at the end of the day is anti-logos, which is obviously anti-Christ. Okay. Cause we know the logos is Christ. And, and your book is about having the courage to simply say that. Um, and that's where we're happy that you wrote your book Unbreakable Saints who inspired Saints tomorrow courage. Please go out and buy it at 10 books. We have the author, Kimberly, and we only have about five minutes. So Joe, I'm going to throw it over to you. I'll be real brief. Um, the fourth thing that you spoke about was Mother Teresa. I think people on the surface may say, Mother Teresa, she fed the poor. Why is she in this book? No. Mother Teresa was crazy, crazy brave quick story. And then I'll turn it over to you. I'm very intimately close with their sisters. I've been to Calcutta. The first time I went, I went to where they took care of the lepers. She went with one sister to the outskirts of the city to take care of people who were dying on the railroad tracks. No fear of her catching leprosy. And from that encounter of taking care of people under a tree, a community got developed, and I watched it. And to this day, lepers make the saris of every single sister all over the world. This is this woman. I can go on and on. You go on and on though. Tell the people about this woman because she wasn't just feeding the poor. She did that. She was crazy brave. And that's why she's in this book. Yeah. And Mother Teresa, I believe, wanted to be in this book. Um, I originally had a table of contents of 12 saints. Um, but I'd seen this novina. Um, to Mother Teresa in Catholic bookstore at the Basilica in D.C. and I kind of grabbed it and just very much felt like she was kind of calling me to write about her next. So hers was the third chapter that I wrote. Um, and I think there's a really important reason for that. I think that she wanted to be known as a courageous Catholic faithful woman who was willing to put her, um, her popularity. Um, and her reputation and the good opinion of the important people in society for Christ. Because I think you're right, Joe. I think that, you know, we do tend to think of Mother Teresa as the safe saint, don't we? So she's the one who fed the poor. She took care of people. She had this amazing, amazing love for humanity. And she met their physical needs and we tend to stop at that. And you know what, the secularist, the atheist, even they can agree. She was a good woman, you know, and they can even believe, you know, say that she also had a beautiful smile and she made people feel good, but Mother Teresa was so much more than about making people feel good and about healing their, their, their physical ailments. She was about converting souls and she was about praying for and, and, and, and hoping, you know, having that, that, that Christian hope for the salvation of all souls. And she considered the poorest of the poor, not only to be the defenseless little babies in their mother's wombs, um, who were susceptible to being killed, um, by, by their mothers, uh, in countries, uh, who allow for the slaughter of innocent life in a womb, she also considered those nations that allow abortion and the doctors who were performing the abortions and, and the women and the men who support abortion. She considered them to be among the poorest of the poor. So, you know, she looked out at the slums of Calcutta and she saw people in just awful poverty, people who were sick and hungry and who needed shelter and clothing and she helped them physically. And she saw those who would, um, actively, you know, support through, through, through laws, um, and also through, uh, medical instruments, um, the killing of these innocent little babies. She wanted to save all souls. And that took a lot of courage. Um, and I think she wanted courage to be a part of her legacy. Kimberly, I'm sorry. I have to cut you up there because we're at the end of the show, but I want to give you a minute just to let our audience know. What do you got going on? Where can they buy the book, uh, working on any projects, social media, all that fun stuff, hit it. Yeah. So, um, I'm doing, I'm doing a little bit of speaking now, which I have to say, I've really been enjoying and anybody who wants to get in contact with me can find me on my website at Kimberly bag.com. Um, I have books on my website that are, I can send out signed. Um, and I have a study guide on my website. Um, but the book is also available on Amazon and on tan books. All right. And we encourage everybody to support our Catholic publishers. So if you have to buy it from Amazon, go ahead. But if you could help it buy it from tan book, Kimberly bag. This has been a great conversation. Um, you, I needless to say you are back. Welcome back at the front line with Joe and Joe. Anytime if you would come on again. Uh, I don't need to assume anything, but, uh, but God bless you, sister. And thank you so much. God bless you. Thank you so much for having me on. You guys are the best. Absolutely. And thank you for joining us at the Veritas Catholic radio network. 1350 on your AM dial 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faith. Did a New York City metropolitan area download the app, share it with your friends, wherever you see Joe and my ugly mug on social media, YouTube, uh, Twitter, Facebook, rumble, particularly Twitter and rumble help us out there. Uh, we'd really appreciate it. And remember until the next time that our conversation is your conversation and that conversation is going on everywhere. We'll talk to you soon. [MUSIC]
