62: After utter devastation, a symbol of peace, hope and reconciliation

Episode 62: Jim, who is an American professor and a Catholic, tells the extraordinary story of uncovering his grandfather's connection to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This research took Jim to Nagasaki, 'the centre of Catholicism in Japan for centuries.' An awkward question from a Japanese Catholic there - a descendant of the 'hidden Christians' and whose father was a victim of the bomb - led to a beautiful project to restore 'the sound of the two bells ringing together' from the cathedral in Nagasaki, for the first time in 80 years. Jim says, 'It's really inspired a lot of people in terms of hope and peace and reconciliation.'

Find out more

Atomic Doctors Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age by James L. Nolan Jr

Nagasaki Bell Project

A new episode, a different conversation, every Wednesday!
Email me: theresa@KindsofCatholic.co.uk
Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and X/Twitter Give me a follow @KindsofCatholic
Find the transcript: https://kindsofcatholic.buzzsprout.com

The podcast is kindly supported by the Passionists of St Patrick's Province, Ireland & Britain and by CAFOD.

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

00:00:08 Theresa

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey. And Pope Leo, quoting Saint Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged now and then. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you.

Listeners, this episode coming up, the topic is a difficult one. I'm talking about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an American professor. And if that sounds like something that's not for you, I'd encourage you to try and stay with it because there is some real horror behind the details that Jim talks about. Stay with it because there is a beautiful, beautiful story here of hope and some kind of edge of redemption, which brings us right up to date with a wonderful thing that's going to happen in Nagasaki on the August 9, which is the eightieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. You'll hear Jim make reference to his book, Atomic Doctors, and there's a link to that in the episode notes. One more thing, if you didn't know, the Manhattan Project, which Jim talks about, is the research and development project where in America they built the first atomic bombs towards the end of the second world war. But let's get into this conversation now.

Listeners, I wanted to have a special episode going out for the August 6 because it's the eightieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Regular listeners will know that peace and speaking against nuclear weapons is really important to me. So I'm delighted and honoured to be joined by Jim, whose life and faith have led him to respond in a really powerful way to this anniversary. And we're gonna talk about the project that Jim has been working on now. So welcome, Jim.

00:02:39 Jim

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

00:02:41 Theresa

So you're speaking to us from America. And just tell us a little bit then about how all this began. Maybe something to do with the death of your grandfather led you into this amazing project?

00:02:53 Jim

So, actually, about thirteen years ago, my dad passed away. I inherited a box of materials that, belonged to my grandfather, so my dad's dad. I knew that my grandfather had been on the Manhattan Project. He was a doctor, an OB GYN with training in radiology. I knew my grandfather. I was 20 years old when he passed away. I didn't know the extent of his involvement in the Manhattan Project, and this box of materials that included correspondence with Robert Oppenheimer, photographs, his military papers, some of his own kind of reflections and notes, receipts. As it turns out, he had a pretty significant role. He was one of the very first recruits to the Manhattan Project. He moved there with his family in April of 1943 and moved to Los Alamos, a secret military site where they built the atom bomb. And his role was that of post surgeon. So he was the head of the hospital, and this was important to Oppenheimer because Oppenheimer felt that he needed to have all the resources and facilities in place in order to recruit the top physicists to be on the Manhattan Project. My grandfather built the hospital. And really, as a Ob/Gyn his main duties the first couple of years was simply delivering all the babies. In the first year alone in Los Alamos, 80 babies were born, and he delivered all of them, including his own daughter and including the Oppenheimer's daughter, Toni. But he was also part of the health group, the group in the lab that monitored issues related to radiation. They're working with these nuclear materials and what were the effects of radiation. Discovering this, my grandfather's role, I decided that I would write a book about the doctors on the Manhattan project. So I published a book called Atomic Doctors, came out in 2020 with Harvard University Press. It turns out that my grandfather had an amazing role, front row seat at the dawn of the nuclear age as it were. When he worked in the health group, one of his main roles was actually to set up the safety and evacuation procedures for the Trinity Test, the first ever nuclear bomb in human history. And there's a famous episode that's been captured in an opera called Doctor Atomic, where my grandfather actually goes to Oak Ridge and confronts Leslie Groves about the dangers of radiation. The doctors anticipated that there would be fallout, and then he went to warn Groves about that, and Groves was very dismissive. He said to him, what are you? Some kind of Hearst propagandist? And from my grandfather's perspective, all Groves cared about was security and secrecy and didn't care about radiation. Health issues related to radiation were just secondary and he didn't really take seriously the warnings the doctors were offering in terms of the effects of radiation from the atom bomb. Eventually, my grandfather, they were given some permission to set up safety and evacuation procedures, but my grandfather actually left Los Alamos before the Trinity Test because he was asked to carry the bomb. So he literally carried the uranium 235, the core of the Hiroshima bomb from Los Alamos to Tinian Island. He carried it aboard the USS Indianapolis, which is a story in its own right. Then my grandfather was now stationed on Tinian Island. When the Enola Gay came back from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. My grandfather was the doctor in residence, so he did the medical examination of the entire crew of the Enola Gay. He's also very concerned about a hazard, like the B29 taking off from Tinian Island, crashing, and that there would be radiation. He's very concerned about that and responsible for that. Now the role that becomes very important for what we're talking about today is immediately after the war ends. My grandfather goes into Japan with a group of doctors, physicists, and some military engineers, And they literally land in Japan 5th September 1945, so just a few days after the official surrender. He goes into Nagasaki and Hiroshima with this group. So it's the first official group of Americans to actually walk into the epicenter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he was there. And his role was to be part of a joint commission to examine the damage, both the structural damage as well as the damage on the Hibakusha, the victims of the bomb. And what he saw was horrifying. He literally saw people continuing to die. This is a month after the bombs are dropped. They would go to these makeshift hospitals around Hiroshima and Nagasaki, examine the Hibakusha, and they go back to the same hospital the next day, and many of them would have died. A number of these people were dying not from the blast effects or from fire, but from radiation exposure. And they witnessed firsthand the effects of radiation. And they also measured the extent to which residual radiation was still on the ground in these places. And so in writing Atomic Doctors, I followed his journey and I went into Hiroshima and Nagasaki and found evidence of his being there. In fact, at the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Museum, I got a whole bunch of pictures of him with the American and Japanese doctors going around to the different hospitals. And then I began to learn about Nagasaki, about the fact that when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, it literally landed on the centre of Catholicism in Japan that had been the centre for centuries. So basically the 250 years when the hidden Christians, the Kakure Kirishitanwere in hiding. Urakami, which is a northern suburb of Nagasaki, was a stronghold of a hidden Christian community and then remained even after there was more freedom given to the Catholics in the late nineteenth century. The largest cathedral in East Asia was in Nagasaki, and the bomb basically landed right on the centre of this community. It destroyed the largest church in East Asia. It killed 8500 Catholics out of a population of about 12,000. And then in looking at this community, I was struck by a couple of things. One is their response to the bomb was remarkable, and they were in many ways led by the influence of a radiologist named Takashi Nagai, who's a convert. He himself was also a radiologist practising and teaching at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital. When the bomb was dropped, his wife was killed. He had two children who had been taken out into the countryside, so they survived. And his response to the bomb was heroic. Even though he himself was injured, even though he himself had contracted leukaemia, he and what staff he was able to gather together cared for the victims of the bomb. He was asked to speak at the Requiem Mass for the victims of the bomb, which was held right next to the ruins of the cathedral. And in that, he uttered words that have continued to be discussed but also expressed and shaped the views of the Catholics and Nagasaki. And he emphasised that even something as horrific as the bomb could be understood within God's Providence, and therefore, the surviving Catholics in the community could offer thanks to God. They could even see it as a peace offering, a hansai is the Japanese word, or holocaust, and understand that within God's providence, they could still respond, and they could respond with prayer and with joy and with a commitment toward peace and hope and toward rebuilding their community. And he was enormously influential, and that's the narrative that helped to shape the response to the bomb. Now it's been much debated. I can get into some of that if you want.

00:10:01 Theresa

I haven't heard that part before. I'm struggling with it. I'm struggling with seeing it as providential. I'm sure that's the nub of what people have been thinking about. But at the same time, somebody who has been there and experienced something so horrific, you've got to engage with how they feel and what they're able to say, and you've characterised him as heroic in his practical efforts to help people afterwards. So you've got to hear those words, I suppose. But, yeah, I find that quite hard. 

00:10:28 Jim

Yeah. And other people did too, and people still do. But I would say a couple of things. One is that wasn't an idea that he came up with on his own. It was an attitude that others in the community held. In fact, I read a book by another doctor who treated some of the Hibakusha. Even as they're dying, they're saying these things: We can trust in God's providence. We can praise him and be thankful. He himself, not a Catholic, couldn't believe it, couldn't understand it, the attitude of forgiveness and so forth. And I would say two things. One is I also think in this part of my own I'm working on a book on Nagasaki, and and what I am arguing in the book is that you can't understand that response unless you understand their history of persecution and suffering. Because throughout their history, they were persecuted, they were tortured, they were killed, and they, throughout this history, had an attitude of trust in God's Providence and of forgiveness. I mean, all the way back to the very first major persecution which happened in 1597, you probably know about it. Paul Miki, the 26 martyrs of Japan who were crucified on Nishizaka Hill, and Paul Miki was just one of 26, but he was a leader of the group. He famously while he's on the cross, they literally crucified them on crosses, and Nishizaka Hill, I should point out, is not very far from the epicentre of the bomb. It's in the same area. And Paul Miki said, I forgive Hideyoshi Toyotomi - who was the daimyo responsible for the execution, and the others - and we put our trust in God. If you look at the history of the Japanese Catholics, that is the attitude. Even as they're tortured, they forgave the people who were torturing them, and they look to Christ on the cross as their example. So Nagai is not coming up with anything new. He was deeply aware of the history. He himself as a convert, and his conversion had in part to do with learning about this history and being inspired by the Catholic martyrs. And the other thing I would say is that sometimes the opposition or the people who have a hard time with what Nagai said at the Requiem Mass, his emphasis on setsuri, which is Providence, hansai, holocaust, is that it somehow exonerated the Americans and silenced the victims of the bomb. So these are some of the criticisms. And I would say in his defence, he was one of the very first people to actually give voice to the victims of the bomb. He published two edited volumes. In the very early years, he published a lot of books. His most famous is called The Bells of Nagasaki, was a bestseller, was made into a movie. He made tons of money off the books. He gave almost all of it to the city and to the church to help rebuild Nagasaki. So he was actually one of the very first people that gave voice to the Hibakusha. So he didn't silence people. That you accept God's Providence doesn't mean you’ve be quiet, and he actually facilitated people telling their stories. And the other thing I would say is there's a famous line that people still say in Japan that goes, ikari no Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki. Hiroshima rages, Nagasaki prays. That's still indicative of different responses that one finds in reaction to the bomb. There was an emphasis in Nagasaki about forgiveness, peace, rebuilding, acceptance of God's providence. I would also say that that attitude, perhaps counterintuitively, resulted in people feeling a deeper sense of responsibility for what they had done. So one of the things I did is I got letters from Americans to Nagai when I was in Nagasaki, and I read them. And some of the letters, people say things like this: They say, I read your book and for the first time felt a sense of responsibility for what we had done. So just because you're not angry doesn't mean you can't prick people's conscience about what has happened. And in fact, Nagai himself talked about this. He emphasised peace. He talked about peace all the time. He wrote a book to his children saying No more war. So he's very much against that. But he also observed that a lot of people in the quote unquote peace movement are angry. And he said you can't advocate peace if you yourself are not a peaceful person. So those are some of the defences I would offer for Nagai even while acknowledging and recognising the merit of some of the difficulties that people have had with this message. 

00:14:40 Theresa

Thank you for explaining that in more detail. I think that's really helpful. That's given me such a lot to think about. That's really insightful. I can certainly see something in the ‘Hiroshima rages, Nagasaki prays’ expression. That if your response is just anger, I think the person you're directing that towards can be tempted to just reflect back that anger and be angry back. 

00:15:01 Jim

Right.

00:15:02 Theresa

And then they haven't taken responsibility.

00:15:04 Jim

Right.

 00:15:05 Theresa

I can see in what you're saying, by having an attitude of forgiveness and prayer, actually, people can be more deeply affected who need to take some responsibility, I guess.

00:15:14 Jim

That proverb. Right? The proverb, a gentle answer turns away wrath, a harsh word stirs up anger. That was one of the things Nagai talked about. At some point, you have to forgive. And if you just keep being angry, it just accelerates and does not foster peace.

00:15:28 Theresa

Right.

00:15:29 Jim

So thus, this gets to the Bell Project. So I conducted a number of interviews while I was in Nagasaki for researching this book, and one of my very last interviews was with a man named Moriichi-san. Now Moriichi-san himself is a descendant of the hidden Christians. So his great great grandmother, for example, Teru Moriichi, was one of the women who, after two hundred and fifty years of hiding when the missionaries were first allowed to come back, snuck into a French church in Oura, southern part of Nagasaki. She and several others from Urakami. Now Urakami is where the cathedral is, and it was at one point a separate village. It's now a kind of suburb of Nagasaki. So these Catholics from Urakami snuck into the church and they introduced themselves to Father Petitjean, a French missionary priest, and they wanted to find out if this was in fact a church coming back to Japan after waiting for over two centuries. Over two centuries, they were in hiding without priests, without public Services, with Christianity being illegal. They present themselves to Father Petitjean, and they wanted to make sure that there was a devotion to Mary because their understanding was if this is the authentic Catholic church, there will be a devotion to Mary.  They said, Where's the statue of Mary? Father Petitjean showed them the statue of Mary, which is still in the Oura church. You can go see it today. And this is seen as this monumental moment in the history of Japanese Christianity. It's referred to as the Discovery of the Hidden Christians. So his great great grandmother was Teru Moriichi.  She was one of the women who went and talked to Father Petitjean. His father was Hibakusha. He was in Nagasaki the day of the bombing. So he is part of this history. And at the end of my interview, he said to me, What do American Catholics think about the bomb? I said, Oh, wow. That's a big question. And I gave an answer, including talking about how from the very early days, the Catholic Church was one of the institutions that spoke out against it. But that I said, Ideas vary from person to person, but that over time, attitudes about the necessity of the bomb have - views have changed. That is people have become more critical. Anyway, he said, Wouldn't it be great if some American Catholics gave us the bell from the left tower that to this day remains empty? Now, I didn't know that. The cathedral was rebuilt and the right tower, a bell that was dug up among the ruins was found to be basically intact. And when they rebuilt the cathedral, they put it in the right tower. He says, But to this day, the left tower has remained empty. He said, Wouldn't that be great if some American Catholics gave us that bell? And I said, That's a fantastic idea. And basically, ever since that interview, I've been working on it.

00:17:59 Theresa

That's just wonderful.

00:18:01 Jim

He said beautiful things like, his dad used to talk about how the bells would ring together. They were Angelus bells that would ring throughout the day to remind the community to pray and to beckon them to Mass. And he said the resonance of the sound of the two bells ringing together, he said, I'd like to hear that in my lifetime.

00:18:15 Theresa

Deeply moving.

00:18:16 Jim

So I went back to United States, found a foundry, began raising funds, got all the information on the old bell.  It's basically the same size, same shape, same design. On the bell, rather than Saint Martin of Tours, the French saint, it was given by the French before. It's from Americans, so we have Saint Kateri Tekakwitha on the bell. We have some of the original Latin that was on the first bell. I wrote to the archbishop of Nagasaki, Archbishop Nakamura, and said, We would like to do this. We will pay for the bell. We'll pay for the transportation, and we'll pay for the installation. And he wrote back enthusiastically saying, Thank you so much. We humbly accept your offer. So it's been a long process, designing it, having it built, transporting it. It's in Nagasaki, and it will be installed on July 17, which is the Canadian feast day of Saint Kateri. So that's kinda beautiful. And Moriichi-san, who invited us, will ring the bell in the dedication ceremony. It's actually a consecration. It's like a baptism, and it will be named the Saint Kateri Bell of Hope in this Jubilee Year of Hope. 

00:18:18 Theresa

That's wonderful. 

00:19:19 Jim

Moriichi-san thought that having hope in the name would be a good thing. A bell is often named after a saint, so we thought the Kateri Bell of Hope. It will be installed on July 17 or the day after, depending on the weather, and then it will remain silent until 11:02, August 9, exactly eighty years after the bomb was dropped. So that's the plan.

00:19:40 Theresa

It's just incredible how everything has come together to make that happen, your part in it, and also those Japanese people that you spoke to, for whom this is a huge part of their history. And with the history of Catholicism being so rich already in that place, it's just incredible to hear this all come together.

00:19:56 Jim

It really is. It's moved lots of people. So one of the things I did is I went around the country telling the story, telling the story of the hidden Christians, of Takashi Nagai, Teru Moriichi, the persecutions they endured, the 26 martyrs, the Yoban Kuzure which was kind of major last persecution that took place after the discovery of the hidden Christians. Tell the whole story - and literally people are in tears. And they said, I never knew about this. They didn't even know that the bomb was dropped on the centre of Christianity in Japan. And so people have been very generous, quite moved, and it's inspired people in various ways. So for example, there's a woman, a concert pianist, who was influenced by reading about the Japanese Catholics, who’s put together a concert on August 3 in California. They're gonna have a concert dedicated to the Bells of Nagasaki. They're having a commemorative Mass in Sydney, Australia. A poet in San Diego wrote a poem about the new bell and what that bell will be doing. So it's really inspired a lot of people in terms of hope and peace and reconciliation.

00:20:54 Theresa

Absolutely. I think listeners, I'm sure, will be amazed and I'm sure a lot of this will be new to listeners too. And it's something, you know, will stay with me forever, this amazing thing that is being done. And I think it's very, very poignant that it's American people who are so involved in it.

00:21:10 Jim

I agree. I think so.

00:21:11 Theresa

Deeply moving. And I wonder whether for you as a Catholic, is this something that feels monumental to you too?

00:21:19 Jim

I mean, I have to say that studying the history of the Japanese Catholics and what they endured, yeah, it's been very inspiring. So when people give, sometimes they'll write me notes, and there have been a variety of notes. But one of them, a person said, Everybody should learn about the history of the Japanese Catholics. That is so inspiring. It really is. I mean, they often cite Tertullian, ‘the blood of the martyrs are the seeds of the church,’ because they've lived that, and they're still a minority. They're 1% of the population in Japan. Their whole history is one of persecution and suffering and enduring in kind of supernatural ways. Literally, for seven generations, passed on the faith without priests, without the major sacraments of the church, saved baptism, and without public Services. They carried on, and that's just a deeply inspiring story. I have been inspired by them. And in a certain sense, their response to the bomb, a Jesuit priest in Japan who I interviewed said, They were prepared for it. Their theology, their understanding of suffering, and their history prepared them to respond the way that they did. And again, you know, you look at the history and there were people who apostatised and there were people who gave up the faith in the face of suffering, and you also have people who responded with bitterness and anger as a consequence of the bomb. So it's not as though this is kind of universal, but it is a dominant narrative and a dominant way in which people think. It also is reflective of, I would say, Catholic theology of suffering and death. And Pope John Paul II visited Nagasaki in 1981, the first pope ever in history to visit Japan, much less Nagasaki. And I think he was very taken by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he wrote his important apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, which was published in 1984, and he makes specific mention of the suffering that comes from nuclear war. And in his theology of suffering, he actually offers themes that are consistent with the kind of theology that Takashi Nagai offered. Now Takashi Nagai was not a theologian. He was a radiologist, but John Paul II’s reflections on suffering and death are very theologically informed and rich. And I think he had in particular in mind when he wrote it, his visit to Japan and what he saw there.

00:23:39 Theresa

It's really interesting that one person's lived experience brought them to this deeper understanding of suffering and reconciliation. And for Pope John Paul, it was theology, brought him to the same point while having been there as well and met those people, but it's interesting that those things converge.

00:23:55 Jim

Yeah. It is interesting.

00:23:56 Jim

And a further connection and, of course, John Paul II, you know, he lived under Nazi, Polish, occupation as well as communist occupation. He makes specific reference: He canonised Maximilian Kolbe, and Maximilian Kolbe actually lived in Japan in Nagasaki from 1930 to 1936, and Takashi Nagai knew Maximilian Kolbe. He actually treated him, as a doctor, because Kolbe had tuberculosis. And Maximilian Kolbe started a monastery in Nagasaki, the Hongochi monastery, which is still there, still active, all Japanese friars. And so there is a connection. Maximilian Kolbe left Japan, obviously, before World War II, and he returned to Poland. And he was actually running a monastery that was hiding Jews, and he was captured, taken to Auschwitz. You probably know the story where there was a man with a family who was about to be taken into the starvation bunker and cried out concerning his family, and Kolbe offered himself in his place and was martyred in Auschwitz. When Nagai was basically on his deathbed, dying from the injuries he received from the bomb - his right artery was cut open, and he was basically in a coma, had over a 104 degree temperature for a week. He'd been given last rites. Three doctors said he was dying, and his mother-in-law brought water from the Lourdes grotto at the Hongochi monastery and put it on his lips. He prayed to Kolbe and he was healed. He lived another five and a half years. And during that time, he gave of himself. He wrote a dozen books. He wrote poetry. He painted. He cared for his soon to be orphaned children and had this incredible impact on Nagasaki and frankly on Japan and the world. And so anyway, there's an interesting connection between the Pole, John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, and Takashi Nagai.

00:25:49 Theresa

Those are people who are truly living the gospel. What an example. Are you going to be in Nagasaki then on the August 9 for that ringing of the bell?

00:25:58 Jim

And I'll be there for the installation ceremony as well, and then I'll be in Hiroshima for the eightieth anniversary celebration on August 6, and then, yes, back in Nagasaki for the ringing of the bell on August 9. And in between that, I will be doing my own research, continuing to kinda follow-up on interviews.

00:26:19 Theresa

What an experience. That's incredible. And not something you've been able to share with your grandfather after all these years.

00:26:25 Jim

That's right.

00:26:26 Theresa

It's poignant, isn't it?

 00:26:27 Jim

Nor my father. For the Atomic Doctors book, I did interview quite a number of family members about my grandfather to get a sense of him and his story and what he was a part of. And he never talked about his experience in Japan. I never remember a single conversation with him about what he saw and experienced. He just didn't talk about it. And there are a number of reasons for that. I mean, that was just kind of the way people didn't talk about it. Also, you know, when he was part of the Manhattan Project, I found in his papers numerous times where he sworn to secrecy. I mean, it's basically seen as an act of treason for him to talk about it. Literally papers where he had to sign saying, I will never talk about this. So I think that's part of it as well. But I did have my dad's cousin once kinda said, Hey. You were in Japan. You know, what did you see there? And he said, I can't really talk about it. But then he kinda pressed him a little bit, and he finally said, It was utter devastation, the likes of which you cannot even imagine. That's what he said. So that's one of the few times you have him kind of express his views on it, and it was overwhelming to him. And I think that's another reason he didn't talk about it. I think it was just overwhelming. It was such complete horror and devastation that itwas just difficult to talk about.

00:27:41 Theresa

I'm overwhelmed too just hearing about these experiences. I mean, I feel our conversation is drawing to a close. I wish we could talk for longer. It seems not enough to just give it a few minutes. This is hard because there's so much in my mind now, but obviously, Jim, I want to really thank you for giving some time to talk today. This is such an amazing, amazing story. I haven't got the right adjectives or anything off the top of my head. I know listeners will find this episode very, very moving and really valuable and something that we can reflect on over time as everyone who hears about this project will feel, I'm sure. So thanks so much for spending some time with us.This has been a fitting episode for this important anniversary.

00:28:20 Jim

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

00:28:25 Theresa

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow all kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, @kindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.