Cancel Culture & False Idols

Below is a letter I wrote to families at my first Crown of Thorns Academy school. I’ve come under fire in the community for the same podcast appearance I was fired for 12 months ago… They can’t get me fired here, but they can try to dissuade families from joining us at our school. Unfortunately for them, it also gives us a chance to proclaim what we believe and what our values are! Deo Gratias!

Below you can read what I wrote—my approach to all forms of cancel culture going forward with my school as we strive to expand across the nation & beyond.

Dear families of Crown of Thorns Academy,

I’m writing a personal letter to you to strengthen you and encourage you against the latest round of attacks against Crown of Thorns circulating in the community that I’ve become aware of.

As you all know, I was fired from my last job as Principal. I believe I’ve had conversations with each of you about this at different times over the last few months. But I was fired for appearing on a podcast called “Dump Her” in November of 2023 with 4 other men where we gave advice to young men searching for wives and things to look out for when dating a woman. (For reference: There are many examples of women doing this about dating advice to women for what to look out for in men.)

The advice I offered was that men should look for women who have a capacity for suffering. Suffering maps on to the life of faith, the life of virtue, the cross of Christ, and everything in between. It’s the key to unlocking our faith in depth and in practice.

Here’s an excerpt of what I primarily said in the podcast episode, directly:

“What I would tell people to look out for—and I really think this is good advice (it’s advice I’ve given to other people)… What I think to look for is a person’s capacity for suffering. So, ‘how well do you think that person can suffer’?... I always make the joke, you know, in The Dark Knight, when Joker looks at the Asian dude who works for the big bank and he points at him, and he says, ‘I know a squealer when I see one, and that’s him.’ … That’s what you’re going for. When you’re in the presence of someone, you can say, ‘is that person capable of suffering’? No, they’re not going to be Padre Pio yet. I get that. I get that. They’re not going to be Mary Magdelene—perpetual penitent, or something. But the point is—and I would actually say this is a deeper distinction—the point is to say, ‘are they someone that hates suffering, or are they someone that kind of has the instinct to think that there’s something good that comes through it. Because those are the two poles: there are the people that hate it, they want nothing to do with it, they’re going to flee from it. And all these things that you’re talking about are going to be signs, especially if you go back to your early ones, Tim, related to them withoholding affection—you know, I call it a retaliatory boycott—so someone retaliates with a boycott. (Tim: “Oh, that’s good.”) That’s very spiritually immature. (Tim: “That’s good.”) Very spiritually immature. And it’s a root of a lot of other problems. And, um, so to me—if someone’s activating that, they—it’s not just that they’re not good at suffering yet—they hate suffering. And that’s a no-go. To me, that’s an actual no go. Whereas if someone, you’re like, alright, I feel like this person could suffer. Another way I put it is like, ‘how well could this person be Job’d. You know, if they were Job, how well could they handle it. No, they’re not going to handle it like Job. They’re not going to get every single thing—physical, spiritual, social—because that was by Divine Providence for that to take place [in that particular (and total) way at that one time]. But it’s a good image of it. How could that person be ‘Job’d’? How would they handle being Job’d?
[…]
You know, we talked earlier in this show, we talked about ‘where this starts?’ When you say, the woman, doesn’t really have an attraction toward the men they date. Tim, you guys mentioned, ‘well, this goes couple generations back with men.’ I really think the core of this, right, the deep core of this, is that when they had that crush and the person didn’t want them, and they started suffering that heartache—because when you want something and you don’t get it, you feel heartache; if you’re hungry and you don’t get the food, you feel disappointment; right, you can think of ‘Hell’ as a perpetual desire for finite goods that you can never have because you’re not in a finite place. So it’s just a perpetual agony of heartache; your hunger never wanes—when kids ask, ‘what are punishments in purgatory like’? That’s what I imagine: you now have this desire that feels this heartache and you can’t satisfy it—you can’t repress it; in no way can you satisfy it; and you know that you can never satisfy it—but it keeps going. So to me, when I look at the young woman who’s going, ‘I don’t have that sort of natural attraction to someone.’ What they need to do—what they need to do, is ask forgiveness for the sin that they committed when they were suffering and they tried to repress it. They were suffering because they lost someone. It’s not what someone else did to you—that sin, it always springs, as Christ said, it always springs from the heart outwards. What they need to do is they need to look at that time when those wounds came up in them and they fought back, and they repressed them, and there they incurred a sin. (Royce: ‘Mmm’) And they need to ask forgiveness for that. So that the Lord can re-open their heart to desire—to wanting things—to (Royce: ‘Wow’) this sort of natural and good vulnerability that comes with desiring. They need to get to that point. And it’s—it’s the same lesson for young men too. There’s some point where you took on a hardship, and where you erred is that you sinned in relation to that pain—because you didn’t want to suffer. And you need to go ask the Lord to forgive you for that. Be absolved of it—you’re probably already absolved from your previous confession—but bring that to the Lord, and now actually start that healing process, where you can now actually birth real desire.”

When I was fired, it was not because of anything I said, but it was because of things other men said on the podcast—things that were much more inflammatory in nature: “If she won’t move to where you live, dump her.” “If she’s interested in what her college major is, dump her.” “If she tells you how to dress, dump her.” Even, “if she doesn’t prepare you a plate of food when you’re at a party, dump her.”

It was these things that bothered people to hear. They universally acknowledged that what I said on the podcast was beautiful and there was nothing I said that caused anyone pain… When I refused to denounce the fellow Catholic men on the podcast, the priest fired me.

I’ve been informed that this same attack has now circulated in Waconia like it did in New Prague last fall. People are reaching out to Colin (my Crown of Thorns Academy cofounder) and Colin’s family about how hurt they are by things said on the podcast, how they can’t believe Colin is associated with me, who’s associated with them; etc., etc..

I was fired and left without an income for 12 months and that’s not enough for them. The reality is that this attack will likely come back many times, so long as Crown of Thorns exists and grows.

I’m writing you all, then, to arm you with how to understand why I did what I did, how I view it, and what our Crown of Thorns response is now, back when we started, and going forward. You can use these arguments yourself, if you’d like, or you can point them to this statement (I’ll post it to my substack).

For starters, this podcast was not something I “accidentally” or “mistakenly” did. I was honored for the chance to speak to men about what they can look for in a partner to try to form a beautiful marriage. Estimates place the number of divorces in the U.S. over the last 60 years at over 50 million. 50 Million marriages have failed in the last 3 generations. These divorces have destroyed lives and families and children. I see the state of our marriages as the most pressing issue facing us as a society. I knew what the personalities of the men joining me on the podcast were like—they are friends of mine, I deeply respect them, they are ardent in their pursuit of virtue and the Catholic faith, and I was happy to be present in the conversation with them. I still affirm all of this.

How, then, do we parse the fact that they said things that very easily trigger many people? What’s going on when they, or other people, say inflammatory things like they said?

In the last year I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this and Colin and I long ago established how we would approach this at Crown of Thorns as it came up over time, should people try to wage this attack against us.

The keys of the attack are two fold:

1. Guilt by association.

2. Force you (one associated with these phrases) to give an account of their views on them (a trap and an implicit pressure to disavow and distance yourself from the “guilty” ones).

The fact you guys are part of Crown of Thorns Academy means you will even face this yourselves. People will say—“how can YOU defend this?” “Do YOU think this is acceptable?” The point of it all is to guilt you by another degree of association to what they deem to be the inexcusable crime of ridiculing their worldview.

The gut reaction we always have is to say things like, “I, myself, didn’t say any of it… I don’t have to agree with everything someone says… I’m horrified by what was said… Etc., etc..”

All of these responses create distance between us and our fellow Christians/Catholics that are earnestly pursuing the Christian/Catholic life—we do NOT want to do this. It is 100% dangerous for the state of our soul. Charity requires justice and justice requires proportionality in our acts, and accurate appraisal of the objective right and wrong involved in a given thing. Hating evil is not evil; it is good. Loving, or permitting, evil is not good; it is evil. When we endorse the wickednesses of our modern evil world, we are not “tolerant” or “charitable”, as foreign as that feels to us growing up so psychologically manipulated by a modern atheistic worldview—we are participating in evil ourselves.

Our Lord dined with tax collectors and prostitutes, the Pharisees tried to hit him with the same thing—guilt by association. The Lord did not back down and denounce them, but leaned into them and the good in them.

Our approach to all of this, and the same approach I held as I faced firing, and was fired, is to do the same thing.

The false idols of our modern, secular world are the following, and we all know what they are: feminism, anti-white (european-ancestry) anti-Christian hatred, and LGBT-ism. These are the “sacred cows” of our modern Atheistic western world. In the Bible, from Moses to the Prophet Elijah to the Prophet Isaiah to Saint Paul, the false idols and sacred crows of the pagans are not “peacefully respected” or shown reverence. They are mocked and ridiculed… Moses doesn’t respect the Israelites’ wishes to worship a sacred cow; he has it torn down and pleads to God not to annihilate them, RECOGNIZING that if God were to do so, it would be totally right and just and good… The prophet Elijah is even more explicit against the false gods of Ba’al…

While I often lack the courage to mock the sacred cows of our modern age publicly, many of the men I know, and those men I podcasted with, have the courage to do so, and I hope to one day demonstrate the same strength and courage they do!

The message from Crown of Thorns Academy is clear: we will not pay homage to any of these sacred cows of the secular, Anti-Catholic / Anti-Christian, anti-white-european modern world. Not to feminism that has inculturated pride, disobedience, murder (abortion) and sexual degeneracy. Not anti-white ideology that has fostered and encouraged every manner of vice in our minority communities and explicit hatred toward white Christian men. Not LGBT-ism that has given over an entire generation to lust, pornography, contraception, adultery, divorce, and sexual objectification. We deride ALL of them. We love the Lord, we love virtue, we strive after virtue, we rebuke all forms of wickedness and vice. What we do worship is the True God and Him alone. We give everything in us to keep His commandments; confess immediately when we fail to keep HIs commandments, and continue to heap praise and worship on God. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Those men on the podcast I was on who mocked the evils of feminism, whether with hyperbole or even as literally held beliefs, were doing what the prophets do, what the saints did and counsel, what Our Lord did and counsels, and what is not only understandable, but actively good.

At Crown of Thorns Academy, we will worship the Lord and Him alone. We will hate what God hates (cf. Ps. 139:21), and we will love what He loves.

We are trying to form the minds of young men. Who at these other schools can connect with boys the way we can at Crown of Thorns Academy? Who can hear them out as they show irreverence for the false idols of our modern world and direct them toward devotion to the Lord the way we can? Who can inculturate true virtue and connection with boys the way we can? You must have authenticity to connect with boys—they are the ultimate litmus test of honesty and truth. If you connect with them, but don’t love the Lord, you give them nothing. But if you can connect with them, and love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul, you will see them transform in ways you couldn’t imagine. That is already happening at Crown of Thorns Academy, and you will see the glory of God to the degree we hold true to the virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how we got to this place in society where the things of Christ and the Catholic Church are so widely mocked and accepted? The enemies of the Lord did not venture to undermine the Christian faith by speaking respectfully of Christianity—they mocked it and ridiculed it. They made movies denigrating it. They made books lambasting it. They spit on Christian virtue. They derided chastity. They manipulated arguments in favor of divorce and abortion. They used political leverage to mock Christianity. They knew that the majority of people respond to the cultural norms of mockery more than they respond to intellectual arguments. They transformed a culture to hate God, hate having children, and hate one another.

Without Christ there is no love because love can never be separated from justice, nor justice separated from truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

If we try to lead boys by being respectful of false idols and do nothing when people attack Christianity, we implicitly tell them what we prioritize. We respect the false idols and we denigrate Christianity. When we see so many Christians that have left the faith, we don’t have to look any further than this to see why.

We chose the name CROWN OF THORNS for a reason: we knew if we were to be true to our mission we would face TONS of social and professional persecution/humiliation along the way. This is one of those trials, and we call on the Lord to help us through this.

Our Lord, Crowned with Thorns, have mercy on us! +

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