Transcript of CS#91: Matt Pinto Freedom

Transcript of Interview with Matt Pinto about Freedom. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Freedom is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004072/Freedom-12-Lives-Transformed-by-Theology-Body

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Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m Chris Cash, your host, director of E-commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs, and today in the spotlight we have Matt Pinto, who is the… what is your title at Ascension?

Matt Pinto: Everything from President to Janitor.

Chris Cash: Hey, I understand that feeling alright. Mostly the janitor it seems like often times though.

Matt Pinto: Actually now that I think about it my wife comes in every two weeks and does the cleaning so technically I guess she would be. But no, I’m the founder and president we’re by God’s grace, you know, growing very, very fast in these recent years. So, we got a good number of staff all who are deeply committed to the Lord and to passing on the faith. So, it’s exciting work, great work but not without its challenges.

Chris Cash: Absolutely. But, you know, one of the great things that I find personally about Ascension is that you have such good quality in every product that rolls out the door and I know that you don’t have a lot of products roll out the door every year but the ones that do are always very eye-opening, always have great graphic design on them and always have excellent content. So, you know, that’s just the best of all the worlds I think in terms of the publishing house.

Matt Pinto: Well, thank you for that. By design Chris and this has really been our philosophy over the past let’s say four of five years we’re full-time a little bit more than seven years and our philosophy really has been to do just a few projects in a given year. We get approached with about a 150 or so projects any given year but we really only choose about a dozen to maybe 15. And so, you know, I’m glad you’re seeing what we’re attempting to do and that is a few products and projects for the church but God-willing doing them well.

Chris Cash: And on that note you will be hearing more about not just the product we’re talking about today but about all of these excellent products over the next few weeks as we try to line up several of the Ascension authors and creators to come on the show and talk about some of these really neat things. So, I’m not going to give away the thunder for the coming weeks but I am very excited about several things that are coming out.

Matt Pinto: Oh, thank you very much. As we are.

Chris Cash: In fact, tomorrow I’m talking with Jeff Cavins about The Great Adventure for kids, which I just think I saw that and I nearly fell out of my chair. We’ve been waiting for that and expecting that for so long.

Matt Pinto: Well, and thank you for that. We, too, have been waiting and I got to share all our hopes Chris and you’ll hear this more with Jeff, all our hopes really have been realized. We were hoping to create resources that after kids play these various games and interactive realities maybe two dozen times if that and as you know when kids get playing a game they can play it a dozen times in one sitting. We believe that they will actually know the overview of the salvation history story unfortunately better than potentially 95% of Catholic adults after just playing these games, you know, maybe two dozen times because we use the color-coded *** [00:03:59] devices and really try and make learning easy.

Chris Cash: Well, I guarantee you will be making sure that a copy of that gets over to my son’s school, so.

Matt Pinto: Great, very good, very good.

Chris Cash: Alright. Well, today we’re going to talk about your book Freedom, which is about the 12 lives that have been transformed by Theology of the Body and of course there are many, many more than just 12 that have been…

Matt Pinto: Because I’m one of them and I’m not in the book.

Chris Cash: Absolutely. I know so many people personally who have had very outstanding and transformative experiences with the theology of the body. And in fact I think back one of my wife’s long time friends in college roommates they were married about a year ago to a nice young man. They had been doing things that were kind of not within God’s plan for themselves sexually and they got a hold of the Theology of the Body and they completely reset their relationship to square one and amazed many of their friends by going into their marriage abstaining again. So, you know.

Matt Pinto: Wow, yeah. We hear stories like that over and over again. In fact, unfortunately there are times that I think they don’t impact us in the manner that we should be impacted again because we hear them so often. Working closely with Christopher West and others with the Theology of the Body he’s out there on a couple time a week basis and just law of average you’re going to get lives changed. He’s particularly good, which means the lives that are changed is amplified. Well, this is a book of 12 lives transformed by the Theology of the Body and it wasn’t difficult, Chris, finding 12 stories in fairly short order. In fact, our plans were to come out with a website called mytobstory.com where people from all facets of life whether it’s the housewife who really didn’t run into the bumps and bruises from various choices in one’s earlier life but simply has come to revel in the dignity in being a mom. So, the sublime to the dramatic. And so, because there are many, many stories out there that people will want to share. So, we found 12 stories. We’re delighted with the ones that we ultimately choose and our hopes, Chris, are that great good comes from this and the one reason why is that the Theology of the Body frees. It’s still somewhat of an abstraction and we believe that witness stories like this will really begin to bridge the gap for a large number of people who may have a certain cognitive *** [00:07:14] when they first hear those words Theology of the Body wondering well, what is that all about? When you read the stories you begin to see oh, okay. Now, I can see the practical application of this great gift to the church.

Chris Cash: Well, you know, any phrase that starts with theology is immediately going to turn some people off.

Matt Pinto: True. True. True. And we’re actually, you know, addressing that in a separate but certainly related issue here. We’re planning to have a branding session of sorts to see if there’s another manifestation that will appeal to the secularist or the kind of semi-converted Christian.

Chris Cash: Interesting. Now, what got you started on this project in the first place? Was it just the preponderance of stories that were coming in?

Matt Pinto: Yeah, I actually have to think back as to what the genesis of this is. And so, I may have a better answer for you later. You know, I don’t fully know. I think maybe just because of the busyness of life and number of projects flying in and out. I’m not exactly sure what the origin was. It probably came just a general brainstorming question here at the office or, you know, at some point maybe I was at an event and I just connected the dots and realized that stories were out there. I think I started this about two years ago or so. And so, you know, I actually have to plead the fifth on that. I don’t fully know what the genesis was. Probably just my daily or six day a week exposure to these things and just realized that a witness book would be powerful.

Chris Cash: Right. And you’ve had such good success with some of your other witness books in terms of the Amazing Grace series, so.

Matt Pinto: Yes. Yeah, and that actually could have been in fact I’m beginning to think that that maybe have been part of the genesis as well.

Chris Cash: Well, that would make sense.

Matt Pinto: No doubt.

Chris Cash: So, what kind of stories are we going to find when we open this book up?

Matt Pinto: Well, we wanted to have a variety and it’s just prudent to try and reach as many people at different stages of their lives. We started the book out we choose the order carefully and the first story is one that really is near and dear to my heart because at initial hearing, you know, we Catholics at times we kind of more conservative Christians can often slip into judgementalism and I know it’s been something that I’ve brought to confession more than a few times. And in the case of this particular woman I can just kind of hear perhaps some of us on the conservative side of the fence in advance kind of lambasting, you know, anyone associated with this woman. This woman was three times divorced and yet one thing that I come to see, Chris, is that well this is precisely what the Theology of the Body is about. We shouldn’t necessarily focus on the fact that she was three times divorced as much as the fact that she is now home with Christ in terms of reconciled to the Church in a big way. And it would be sort of like us just staying focused on Mary Magdalene’s let’s say sins and not focusing on the fact that she’s now Saint Mary Magdalene and has made that transformation two thousand years ago.

So, this initial story is called Longing for the One. It’s by a woman named Rose *** [00:10:48] and Rose now is full-time Catholic Ministry. And again three times divorced and when you read the story you can begin to understand why those divorces would have happened because really the crux of this story, Chris, is one that really everyone can relate to. It’s called Longing for the One and just like when *** [00:11:10] said many years ago, “The man who knocks on the door of a brothel is actually seeking God at its deepest core. That yearning that he has, that longing that he has for sexual union is actually a kind of somewhat distorted longing for the union that alone will satisfy i.e. union with God in eternity.” So, one reason why this story resonated with me is that all of us have this longing. It just so happens that this particular woman at a young age probably without a certain amount of direction in the family life just went in the direction of where that longing was. So, you know, into the arms of a man, someone who was wrong for her and then in a graspiness of wanting to have children and wanting to have that love she really made mistake upon mistake. But eventually now came to see that the one that alone will satisfy is Jesus Christ. And it’s just a powerful story of witness and longing and the graspiness that we all fall prey too. And then throughout the rest of the book there are stories from some Catholic luminaries, people we may know, Katrina Zeno, Jesse Romero, *** [00:12:31] the person who translated the body for us, the most recent translation. And there are stories of conversion to the Catholic faith. There stories of conversion of *** [00:12:44]. There is a story of a Protestant man who didn’t convert but really his worldview transformed from a kind of one and two dimensional worldview to the kind of *** [00:12:57] color worldview that Catholicism offers and it’s really a powerful story.

Chris Cash: Okay. Well, we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor but when we come back we’ll be speaking more with Matt Pinto about Freedom: The 12 Lives Transformed by the Theology of the Body. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Matt Pinto talking about Freedom. Goes along well with the book of Exodus, huh?

Matt Pinto: It does. And be assured that the connections not necessarily in the book but in God’s mind are there. Freedom comes from when we break free from those self-chosen habits that really ultimately wound us, not free us and they form a certain slavery. A slavery that ultimately Christ sets us free from.

Chris Cash: Now, does this book have a lot of tie ins specifically with other things, such as the Bible or the Catechism other than just the Theology of the Body?

Matt Pinto: It does. Now, for those richly familiar with the Theology of the Body, John Paul’s original work, there is something like 1,300 I don’t know the exact number but it’s well above a thousand, thirteen hundred bible verses. And really Christopher would contend—Christopher West would contend that they’re not individual verses in the Bible that kind of teach the Theology of the Body, but all of scripture ultimately is about the Theology of the Body because God because man. We’re an incarnational and fleshed faith and so, the short answer to the question is yes, all these stories are ultimately referencing or explicitly referencing various scripture verses or implicitly the whole message of the story is one that clearly would correspond with the scriptures. And no necessarily explicit references to the Catechism but Catholic teaching is throughout. If we actually in the form of testimony using direct connections to the Catechism would actually maybe stilt the stories or stiffen them up a little bit. So, but it is Catholicism through and through and ultimately everything the truth is connected to truth. So, ultimately everything is connected.

Chris Cash: Now, excuse me. I know that when Surprised by Truth came out and I know that’s not Ascension but one of the things that the testimonies in Surprised by Truth made such a connection with people on the personal level, but they were just so chock full of apologetics that you couldn’t read that book without learning so much about the church itself. How much about the Theology of the Body are people going to come away knowing after having read Freedom?

Matt Pinto: Yeah, that’s a good question. They’re going to come away knowing a lot and now, granted the *** [00:17:10] was many years in fact, a 130 different talks by the Pope. So, you can only focus on it so much, but there must be 50 gems, 50 nuggets of the teaching. You know, which 50 nuggets means multiple paragraphs on each one. And so, someone will clearly come away from these stories, some stories more so than others with a good, solid understanding of the *** [00:17:40] or at least enough tantalizing aspects of it so want to go more. And then in the back of the book in the appendix we have Christopher West do a, you know, a couple thousand word exposé of what the Theology of the Body is. But even within the stories and this is how we wrote the book. This is how I wrote the book and edit the stories, Chris, to really create a substantial appetizer for the reader to intrigue them to want to know more about this teaching. We use really the lever of the story, which is the primordial in its effectiveness. We’re all hardwired for stories I believe because we are living a story salvation history. So, we use the lever of stories, some dramatic, some more sublime to really introduce the *** [00:18:33] in bit size manners, in seamless manners for the purpose of leading people to the larger text.

Chris Cash: And have you seen evidence of it working yet?

Matt Pinto: We have. I mean, we’re only about two weeks into the book and but I’m already getting the e-mails and the calls of one person sending me an e-mail that this is just the work that they were looking for to begin kind of sharing the message. They’ve already been an evangelist for a number of years but sort of implied that a safer entrée, a safer introduction was needed. And that stories are really a great way to pull people in without them even knowing they’re getting pulled in because again stories are compelling. I also heard last week from a particular person at a Diocese out west who in the past couple of weeks has run a Theology of the Body conference but he *** [00:19:32] and we sat down for lunch in another regard about a week ago and he said, “You know, the one thing that was missing from our conference was testimony.” And so, in other words he was connecting the dots saying, this is really what is going to be needed to help take Theology of the Body to the next level because your first level will always be populated by the richly Catholic, deeply committed *** [00:19:58]. And then also another first *** [00:20:01] person, who has been substantially wounded or confused or curious about issues related to sexuality but what do we do about the next tier of people? Because as you likely know, Chris, from being exposed to the Theology of the Body George *** [00:20:16] biographer contends that the Theology of the Body although it’s preeminently about the one flesh union, the sexual union of man and woman and what it means to be a human person made in God’s image and likeness and how that all sheds the light on who God is. He says it’s going to effect every major theme of the Creed. We are going to understand fasting differently because of the Theology of the Body. We’re going to understand sports differently because of the Theology of the Body. We’re going to understand even dining and eating and *** [00:20:51] and a whole array of things because of the Theology of the Body because it’s a Christian teaching about integration of body and spirit and all of us are made up body and spirit. So, anything that is about the business of helping us be more fully human, you know, really is a preeminent theology that’s going to effect everything in the world.

Chris Cash: Okay. So, for someone who picks up this book what is your biggest hope for the single biggest takeaway that any of your readers are going to have?

Matt Pinto: Probably at least two things and my guess is that there would be multiple dozen if I thought about it but at least two things. One my hope is that we strike a cord with them in their own or his or her own life. And based on the 12 stories that are within the book I really that we’re likely going to do that. In other words, someone’s going to read a story and they’re going to say, “Wow, that speaks to me. I’ve experienced that personally.” And it’s going to then do number two, which would be the goal and that is in earnest going to open up their hearts and minds to really what many say is John Paul the second’s master work. In other words, you know, one of the Pope’s probably known as “The Great” one of the most prolific writers that the church has ever known and that they will open themselves up to the endless treasures that is the Theology of the Body and they will experience whether they’re a deeply committed Catholic in a wonderful marriage or a semi-committed Catholic who is single and wandering they will see in this work that yes, this contains the answers that I’m longing for. Now, you and I know as committed Catholics that Christ is the answer but Christopher West says it very well. He says, “If Christ is the stone that brings down Goliath,” he believes and I believe that the Theology of the Body is uniquely qualified to be the sling shot, the thing that slings the stone because the Theology of the Body really will speak to this age that is narcissistic, what’s in it for me and also *** [00:23:21], your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. The Theology of the Body addresses both of those in a powerful way.

Chris Cash: You know I’ve as I was looking through this material one thing that caught my mind is that if you think of the sexual revolution as the reformation then the Theology of the Body is somewhat of a counter reformation within the church just as the Protestant reformation and the counter reformation were in history, so.

Matt Pinto: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a good analogy. I love the phrase that I’ve heard often in regards to the Theology of the Body. That God gives His church what it needs when it needs it. It’s not in accord with the nature of God to try and vex us, to try and trip us up. God is a loving God. He wants nothing but the best for us, far greater than we even want for ourselves. So, it’s in accord with the nature of God, for Him to give the church what it needs precisely when it needs it. And I think in this age where it’s an anti-authoritian age where the phrase because the church said so really, you know, have very little pretence with the average person because of the radical individualism that we’ve grown up in combined with the incredible wounds that exist out there, combined as I said earlier with this relativistic mind set where, you know, truth is subjective the Theology of the Body does an end run around all of that because it appeals to the human experience. It says, “Okay, Matt Pinto let’s not worry about whether something is objectively true. Let’s talk about your own life and look at your good and bad choices in your own life and see if those good and bad choices echo with those deepest yearnings that you have in your heart.” And so, in other words, Chris, it looks to the human experience what the Pope called both *** [00:25:24] and it says let’s look at the phenomena in your life and see if they correspond with the objective truth. The Pope believes that it would and that’s why Theology of the Body is so effective and as a short answer to your question I think yes, this is a counter response to the sexual revolution in particular it but also to the relativism and that it exists in our culture.

Chris Cash: And where do you see this as taking us into the future of the church?

Matt Pinto: Yeah. Well, I believe and I think all these statements are defensible. I believe that the Theology of the Body within the next 10 to 20 years will maybe a little bit longer but within the next 10 to 20 years we will certainly see certain portions of this, will become kind of a foundational work from which *** [00:26:24] are made, from which a whole *** [00:26:27] of Catholic ministry derives its *** [00:26:32] and theological and evangelist punch from. We’re already seeing this in the realm for example of marriage preparation. We’re working with about 60 of the 180 Diocese already with marriage preparation programs. One that we publish in particular for their marriage preparation and a good number of the 250,000 marriages that take place right now in the United States, in the church in any given year are now infused with the Theology of the Body. It’s probably about let’s say of the 250,000 probably about 15% moving in the direction of 20% by the end of this year and that’s a good sign. So, where I see this all heading is that the church will view the world and herself through the lens of Theology of the Body and it will have that trickle down economics effect of eventually seeping its way into all aspects of ministry. And by the way of finishing the point for example there’s one Diocese where in the Cardinal in that Diocese asks about 20 different offices and ministries *** [00:27:46] for basically a monthly meeting to figure out how they can infuse the Theology of the Body into all aspects of *** [00:27:54]. So, that’s where I think we’re headed.

Chris Cash: Well, we’re about out of time today. Were there any final thoughts you wanted to leave our listeners with?

Matt Pinto: Well, I would say if you’ve heard the phrase Theology of the Body before but have not delved into it this is certainly a safe and easy and inviting onramp of the book Freedom. If you are a *** [00:28:19] of the Theology of the Body and have wondered, you know, how can I share this with my cousin Bill and my, you know, sister Joan? This book also is an effective way to do that. It really gives them bit size theology but really does so in a manner that is inviting because of the story. So, I would say, you know, read this for yourself. You will experience a certain transformation yourself and then consider passing this on. I believe good things are going to happen. In fact, I believe great things are going to happen if you take that bold step and be a witness for the Lord in this regard.

Chris Cash: So, everybody you’re gonna run out and pick up your copy of Freedom available from Ascension Press Catholic Company as well as any of your local Catholic bookstores around the country. And also, be certain to check out our shows over the next few weeks as we check out some of the other excellent new products from Ascension this late Winter I guess. I was going to say Spring, but, you know, this isn’t even the Spring lineup yet. And for most companies we’re still on the Winter lineup and I think everybody’s going to be very impressed by all of these new titles.

Matt Pinto: Well, thank you, Chris.

Chris Cash: Thank you very much, Matt, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Matt Pinto: Very good. God bless.

Chris Cash: God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Matt Pinto about Freedom. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Freedom is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004072/Freedom-12-Lives-Transformed-by-Theology-Body