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Truly Yours, But Not Merely Yours | The Catholic Man Show

The Catholic Man Show

Dave came to Adam's house to record and brought a host, a co-host, a topic, and a bottle of whiskey. No laptop. No microphones. No headphones. No headphone amp. Second time he has pulled that off. In his defense, he already hauled a computer over there for a permanent setup so he would not have to schlep gear across town every week, and in Adam's defense, that computer is still sitting there unplugged. So they went home, came back the next night, and recorded anyway. Second night in a row. For such a time as this. Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave went looking for help leading their first pilgrimage, every person they asked gave them the same name. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, whether you are leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and look at what they have ready for you. First, the Wiffle Ball tournament. There is a tradition in the Catholic Tulsa community on Labor Day, admittedly a niche corner of it, where the Hanisch family turns their entire backyard into a real Wiffle Ball field. Scoreboard. Foul poles. Pitching mound. Dirt. Bases. Bleachers. Concession stand. Instant replay. A bubble machine that fires when somebody goes deep. Eight teams, double elimination. Adam and Dave play with Adam's brother-in-law Holden, Mark Gabriel, and Brandon Bargus under the name Wiffle While You Work. Roughly ten years of this, and they had never won it. This year they made the championship game and lost by a run, 6 to 5. Ten years ago the wives played and it was a hang. Now teams recruit former ballplayers, one of whom had a family thing come up, which Adam called lucky out loud. Shout out to Chris and Carrie Hanisch, who carry the whole ordeal, and to Mark Gabriel, who sponsored it this year. This is what it looks like when a family says we have something to offer and then offers it, every year, on purpose. Which got Dave onto something he has been chewing on since they were all at Brandon Sheard's place for a rock put. Heaviest rock, longest throw, get the men in a line. Everybody looked at the guy who was obviously going to win, and he won, and it did not matter. The women and kids watched the men compete, and Dave watched what it did to the community. So here is the idea: whenever your friends gather, have a men's competition. Every time. Croquet, a heavy rock, flipping a quarter closest to a line, it does not matter what it is. What matters is that it is only for men, because the boys need to see it. A boy needs to look at that line and understand that he is a boy and those are men, and then he needs to be summoned across. Not by his own father. By another man in the community who calls him up and gives him the right to stand and compete. That is a rite of passage, and American culture has almost none left. It is also cheap, easy, and a lot more fun than standing around. There were zero women in the Wiffle Ball tournament this year, and there were young boys playing next to the men, faster than the men, and considerably less sore the next day. The campout is in a couple of weeks, last weekend of September like always, and it is more than full. Brandon Sheard will be there. Tomas from Ultimo Cigar will be there. Get away, pray with the monks, see all the men. If you missed it, put next year on the calendar now. The pour is Octomore 16.2 from Bruichladdich, a super peated Islay scotch aged five years in wine and sherry casks at 58.1 percent. A 2025 limited release. If you like peat, start with Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg, then understand that Octomore was the first distillery to put out something genuinely insane on the peat scale. Others have since gone higher in parts per million, and most of those were gimmicks that came and went. Dave's honest rule on expensive bottles is that a $200 bottle is almost never $100 better than a $100 bottle. Octomore was the first time he thought it actually was. A whiskey after his own heart. Then the topic: the universal destination of goods, Catechism 2402, which sits under the Seventh Commandment. Thou shalt not steal. That placement tells you something. God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind, to care for it, master it by labor, and enjoy its fruits, and the goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. Not for you specifically. All of it, the oceans on planets nobody has found yet down to the bacteria underfoot, aimed at the good of mankind. Adam gave the line the whole episode hangs on. The five acres you own are truly yours. But not merely yours. So why private property at all? Aquinas gives three reasons, and they hold up. Industriousness, because a man tends his own garden harder than he tends the community garden, not from selfishness but because shared duty spreads thin and nobody owns the outcome. Order, because affairs run more smoothly when each man is responsible for a specific thing. And peace, because quarrels multiply when property is held in common without distinction. Buy a boat with four families and find out. Somebody leaves trash in it, somebody scrapes the hull, somebody drives it hard and it breaks down, and now you are all negotiating who pays. Adam gave the other side its due: shared ownership lowers the cost of entry, and if every man is limited to a suburban backyard there is simply no beef, because a cow needs more land than that. Four families together can afford ground that feeds all four. There is a place for each. Every community has to find the order. The two ditches are individualism and collectivism, and this is the road between them. Private property is not a concession to greed. It flows out of what a family is. Sacred means set apart, and a family is set apart from the community by its nature, so it makes sense that a piece of creation gets set apart to match. A man needs somewhere he can say what is inside here is exclusive to my family, because the family itself is exclusive by nature. Raising your children on your own ground is not a detour from the good of mankind. It is how you serve it. Dave put it plainly: he is raising four daughters and three boys, and he needs the Minihan family raising strong holy young men, and Adam needs the same from him. Families are not sufficient to themselves. That is the debt. All of which is stewardship. This is God's house and you are managing it, and the King is coming back to see how it was kept, and eventually He wants all of it back. Your children most of all. Their souls were handed to you to tend so that they flourish into who they were made to be, and the fruit of that gets shared with everybody. St. John Chrysostom says surplus has to be counted as stolen goods when the wealthy ignore the destitute in front of them. Dave admitted the part that is actually hard. When he has extra eggs, he knows it instantly and gives them away gladly, no friction. Natural goods are easy to read. Man made goods are not. He cannot tell when he has a surplus of the things he bought, and he is worse at parting with them, even though they are of a lower order than food. He has too many T-shirts. He knows he has too many T-shirts. He pulls one out that has not been worn in fifteen years and hears himself say but what if. He is also fair about the old quotes on the unworn shoes in your closet belonging to the barefoot, which come from a world where a man owned one pair of shoes, not work boots and dress shoes and tennis shoes. Owning a few pairs is not theft. But if you can afford the next pair and cannot afford to give in proportion to your station, that is worth an honest look, because self love is pernicious and easy to feed. Adam brought it back to the ground. Haylee was in Oklahoma City, he finally got the kids down, he was not feeling well, and he was in bed when he remembered the chickens were not up and the pigs had no water. He laid there a long time talking himself out of it. What he learned about himself is how easily he can do that, and how good the excuses sound. Six months ago these were the responsibilities he was praying for. Everybody does this. You want the promotion, you get the promotion, and then you resent the people and problems that came with it, when the problems were the thing you asked for. That is where virtue lives: doing the thing when nobody is watching and your appetites are voting against it. Protect what you were given. Provide for it. Establish your children so they can stand without you, because you do not want to be a helicopter dad when they are 28. And the man who buries his talent in the yard was not evil. He was just tired. Francis de Sales, in Introduction to the Devout Life, lands it. A man may possess wealth. He must not let wealth possess his heart. Detachment is what keeps money a servant to the family first and then to the poor, in that order, because subsidiarity is real and you do not take food off your children's plates to be generous elsewhere. God does call men to wealth. The virtue of magnificence needs them. St. Peter's does not get built without them, and neither does your parish church. The question to keep asking is whether a thing gives you comfort or gives you happiness, because those are not the same and one of them will quietly own you. Truly yours. Not merely yours. Raise your glass.TOPICS COVERED * Showing up to record a podcast with a topic, a bottle of whiskey, and none of the recording equipment * The permanently installed computer that nobody has plugged in * The Labor Day Wiffle Ball tournament in the Catholic Tulsa community, and the Hanisch backyard field with foul poles, instant replay, and a bubble machine * Ten years of Wiffle While You Work, a first trip to the championship, and losing 6 to 5 * How a backyard tournament escalated from wives playing to teams recruiting former big leaguers * A family that decides it has something to offer the community and then offers it every year * The rock put at Brandon Sheard's house and what competition does to a gathering of men * Why every community gathering should include a men's competition, and why it should be men only * Rites of passage, and being summoned into manhood by a man who is not your father * The campout, last weekend of September, full, with Brandon Sheard and Tomas from Ultimo Cigar * Whiskey of the week: Octomore 16.2, super peated Islay scotch, five years, 58.1 percent * Whether a $200 bottle is ever actually $100 better than a $100 bottle * The universal destination of goods, Catechism 2402, and why it sits under Thou shalt not steal * All of creation ordered to the good of mankind, not the good of one man * "The five acres you own are truly yours, but not merely yours" * Aquinas on private property: industriousness, order, and peace * Why a man works his own garden harder than the community garden, and it is not selfishness * The shared boat problem, and who pays when it breaks on somebody else's weekend * The real advantages of common property, and why a backyard cannot hold a cow * Individualism and collectivism as the two ditches, and the Catholic road between them * Why the family being sacred, meaning set apart, requires property that is set apart * Raising your own children on your own ground as service to all mankind, not a retreat from it * Why no family is sufficient to itself, and the debt each family owes the next * Stewardship, the King who comes back to inspect the house, and wanting all of it returned * St. John Chrysostom on surplus as stolen goods when the destitute are ignored * Why extra eggs are easy to give away and extra T-shirts are not * Reading the old quotes about unworn shoes honestly, in a world with work boots and dress shoes * Buying the next thing while telling yourself you cannot afford to give * The night the chickens did not get put up, and how easily a man talks himself out of duty * Praying for a responsibility and then resenting it once you have it * Protect, provide, establish, and not being a helicopter dad to a 28 year old * St. Francis de Sales: a man may possess wealth, but wealth must not possess his heart * Wealth as a servant to the family first and then to the poor, and why that order is right * The virtue of magnificence, and why St. Peter's needed wealthy men * Comfort versus happiness, and knowing which one you are actually buying REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE Church documents: * Catechism of the Catholic Church 2402, the universal destination of goods and the right to private property, under the Seventh Commandment * CCC 2403, the right to private property acquired in a just way does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind * CCC 2404, on regarding the goods you legitimately own not merely as exclusive to yourself but as common to others also * CCC 2446 quotes the St. John Chrysostom line the guys were working from: "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them" People and saints: * St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q.66 a.2, the three reasons for private property * St. John Chrysostom, on surplus and the destitute * St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life * Wendell Berry, carried over from the previous episode on land held in trust * Note for accuracy: the "bread you hold back belongs to the hungry, the coat in your closet belongs to the naked, the shoes rotting belong to the barefoot" passage the guys paraphrased is St. Basil the Great, from his homily on "I Will Tear Down My Barns," not Chrysostom Scripture: * Luke 6, the blessings and the woes: "Blessed are you who are poor" and "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation" * The parable of the talents, and the servant who buried his Books: * Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales * Living Beyond Sunday: Making Your Home a Holy Place by Adam Minihan and David Niles (Ascension Press) * Divine Mercy in My Soul by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (free on the Amen app) * True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort (free on the Amen app) Whiskey: * Octomore 16.2 (Bruichladdich), super peated Islay single malt, aged five years in wine and sherry casks, 58.1 percent ABV, 2025 limited release * Also mentioned: Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg Community: * Chris and Carrie Hanisch, hosts of the Labor Day Wiffle Ball tournament * Mark Gabriel, teammate and tournament sponsor * Holden and Brandon Bargus, teammates on Wiffle While You Work * Brandon Sheard, host of the rock put, and attending the campout * Tomas of Ultimo Cigar, attending the campout * The TCMS campout, last weekend of September, currently full Hosts: * Adam Minihan (host; Lady Haylee, Porter and Prairie Farms, M6 Marketing, The Grounded Builder on Substack) * Dave Niles (host; Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farms, Lady Pamela)