G’day, my name is Matt Fradd. This is Ascension Presents and today I want to
respond to some of your questions. So over the last few weeks, as you know, I've been
asking you to send me your questions below in the comment section or by
tweeting at me and today we'll see how many questions we can get through. The
first question comes from Elizabeth Murray. She says, “Hey Matt, I have heard
you say that sexual desire is good but lust is not. I was wondering what the
difference between lust and sexual desire are, and how do you know when
sexual desire starts to turn into or cross over into lust?” It's a great
question Elizabeth. I think one of the reasons many people think it's
impossible to be sexually pure is because they think that sexual desire is
synonymous with lust. But it's not. Sexual desire is a God-given gift which ought
to propel us to make a gift of ourselves according to the demands of love and
chastity and prudence and so forth. Lust is the opposite. So, if sexual desire in
the proper context says ‘This is my body given up for you,’
lust says the opposite. Lust says, ‘This is your body taken by me.’ But we DO have to
realize that sexual desire is good. Like if you're listening to me today, watching
me today, and suppose you were to write to me and say, “I've been bathing in holy
water for weeks now and I no longer experience sexual desire,” that would be
weird. But that's not a sign that something's gone right with you. It's
actually a sign that you need help, alright? So sexual desire is good; it's
not the same thing as lust. Lust is disordered sexual desire. The next
question comes from Gino. He says, “Been a fan of yours for a while and was really
excited when I saw the video of you and Emma singing ‘Love Me More’ together. So my
question is why don't you sing more?” Thanks very much Gino. So yeah, my
sister Emma Fradd ... super talented musician. There's a video out there somewhere of
the two of us singing together at a coffee shop. I play guitar and I sing. Why don't
I sing more? I don't know, I'm just... I think ever since I had children my
guitar had to get put up high so they didn't destroy it and because I put it
out of the way I didn't grab it as frequently. But I'm beginning to pick it
up more often and sing to my kids at night, so who knows, maybe I'll begin to do it
more in the future. The next question comes from Zach, thanks Zach. You say, “How
did you get started in public speaking ministry?” So, I served with N.E.T. ministries —
N.E.T. stands for National Evangelization Team —
I was with N.E.T. in Canada and then in Ireland. So, in N.E.T. they break you up into
teams of men and women and then you travel the country and you run retreats
for high school students. It's a great ministry and that's how I began speaking,
I guess, publicly, and it just went from there. I was living in Canada when
Catholic Answers reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to join them and so
we moved to San Diego and I just started speaking from then on. So there
you go, that's how it happened. The next question comes from Delcy. You
say, “Are you a cradle Catholic or a convert? Either way I love how on fire
you are for the Lord.” I guess you might say I'm a ‘revert,’ and I might have to do
a whole other video on how that happened. But I was raised in the Catholic faith
but it wasn't until I went to World Youth Day at the age of 17 that I
encountered the person of Jesus Christ and experienced a profound
transformation in my own life. So yeah, I'm a revert. Thanks for the question.
The next question comes from Patrick McFadden, he says very simply, “Is guilt a
virtue?” Hmmm. I'm not sure I would say guilt is a virtue.
You know, Aristotle says that a virtue is the mean between two extremes. So courage,
for example, is virtuous and it lies between foolhardiness and cowardice-ness.
We might say that guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. So if you
never experienced pain ... if you could, you know, flick a magic switch and you never
experienced any kind of pain, you could see why that wouldn't be good. I actually
grew up with somebody who experienced very little pain because of a medical
condition, and so he would never know just how bad a particular wound or
bruise was. And so I think a properly ordered conscience will be able to
detect when he has sinned and needs to repent. I think it's helpful to
distinguish between guilt and shame. I like this distinction: guilt is perhaps
sorrow for what we have done — we recognize that we're guilty in that
sense — whereas shame is sort of feeling guilty for WHO WE ARE, which is a
negative thing. So I hope that helps. Next question comes from David who asks, “How
would you explain faith and reason, a Catholic notion heavily promoted by
Saint John Paul II. Thanks mate.” I would say not only championed by John Paul II,
although he did write that fantastic encyclical called “Fides et Retz” - eh,
“Fides et Ratio” which you ought to get. But of course, then Paul talks about
this when he says that, you know, all men can naturally come to know God, and Thomas
Aquinas talks about this. The First Vatican Council defined definitively
that we can know through reason alone that God exists. So you might think of it
this way: faith is to reason what a telescope is to the naked eye.
Okay? So, through our reason we can come to know certain things apart from faith.
So the church teaches that we can come to know that God exists, but then
there are certain things that we can't deduce from reason alone, and we need
divine revelation for. So, we cannot prove the existence of angels. We cannot prove —
Aquinas doesn't think that we can prove that the universe had a beginning
through philosophy, but of course, maybe through cosmology today we can prove
that. We can't prove the trinity, Aquinas says. And so Aquinas offers a few reasons
why we need divine revelation, because he says we are directed towards an end —
namely God — who surpasses our reason. And for that reason, God chose to reveal
certain truths to us so that we can know them, sort of as axioms, right? This is the
axiomatic truth from which we can now know other truths. So that's what
Aquinas says. So, of course, the Catholic Church is a big champion of faith and
reason, and again, if you haven't read Fides et Ratio, be sure to go check that
out — it's free online. Okay, we'll take one more question.
This comes... *quietly* ... oh bugger, I don't know who this comes from....
Question comes from Morgan Hawkins she says, “How did you get involved with
giving talks at Steubenville conferences? I've watched your Steubenville conferences on
YouTube and I think they're amazing.” That is so kind of you, thank you very much.
Oh gee, the reason I got started is, I was living up in Canada and Steubenville
gave me a call and asked me if I wanted to give talks at Steubenville, and I said
“What’s Steubenville?” And then I started doing it, so that's how it happened.
Thanks so much for watching! I hope you have enjoyed this ‘Question and Answers’
portion of these YouTube videos. If you'd like to ask me your question, just write
#askMattFradd below. Please subscribe, and if you want to cho ose to
follow me on Twitter and Instagram, my Twitter and Instagram handle are @Matt Fradd.
Thanks so much! Chat with you next week.