Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: How does a detective extract a confession from someone that that person knows might put them in jail for 20 years?
What does that have to do with good parenting? And how to extract confessions from your teenage children?
And what's it have to do with your personal spiritual life and the sins you deal with? All that today on the Chris Stefanik.
Welcome to the Chris Stefanik Show. We are here every week to give you the tools and inspiration that you need to live your everyday life with joy. If you want daily inspiration, click below this video. Sign up for the daily anchor. It's free. We just want to bless you. No strings attached. Shout out to our missionaries of joy, our monthly donors who make this work happen. You are changing lives with every episode. This show is sponsored in part by ewtn. You can catch this show and so much more on EWTN streaming. See the link in the show notes below.
So I met my friend who I'm going to interview today, Jeff Wrigley, years ago when I was filming our old show Real Life Catholic in Maine and our first encounter didn't go very well.
You know where I'm stopping you? I don't know, but I'm actually filming for this TV show, Real Life Catholic. I'm not sure if you've seen it. We're going to do a whole episode on Maine and Maine Catholics.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Why don't you come out of the car?
[00:01:23] Speaker A: We're filming a Franciscan hermit. I'm going to be with a tugboat captain. I'll be lobstering. There's a real life Catholic Maine cop that I'll actually be talking to. It's going to be amazing.
Welcome to Real Life Catholic. Thank you so many. Poked my bail. We got to finish this episode. We became great friends ever since then. Jeff has a long career in law enforcement. 34 years. Started as a K9 cop and he's going to share some stories about that today. They're going to blow your mind about dogs and law enforcement, but they're going to go into confessions. Jeff has an extremely high success rate in getting people to confess their crimes, to confess their sins, basically knowing full well that that confession will change their lives.
But you're going to be shocked by what he tells you about what happens after people confess.
He's also going to give great insights that will help you as a parent, which sometimes a parent is an interrogator, but also as a Christian who deals like every Christian does, with faults, failures, sins, that sometimes we just allow these things to burden our conscience when God is saying, hey, I want to set you free. It's not that complicated. Here's the way. I'm really excited for you to be part of this conversation today, guys. Thank you for watching, dude. Thanks for being back with me.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm happy to be here, man.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Hey, before we go into how as a senior detective, I made the great mistake once of just calling him a detective.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Kidding. Before we go into that, before that, life as a senior detective, You've told me a lot about your career in law enforcement as a cop and as a detective and 34 years.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah, 34.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Thank you for your sacrifice.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Thanks, man.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: It's a lot.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: But one part you always light up on, and I just want to veer into this for a minute because it's just purely fun. When you talk about canine.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Okay. We see guys walking around just with a dog and it almost looks like an accessory or something to make the cop a little more imposing when he needs to be sure. There's a lot more going on than that.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, there is.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Tell me what happens, what the role of a dog is in getting bad guys or finding someone who's missing.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Sure.
You know, to me, when I got into police work, I dreamed of being a canine handler.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Did you really?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: I did. I'd grown up with family dogs. I always had sort of a tilt toward animals.
And one of my best friends, a trooper that I rode along with a lot in high school, in my senior year, had a dog.
And to me it was the full flavor experience of law enforcement. It wasn't just your average tool belt, uniform and the kit you've got in the trunk of the car, you got this four legged furball with teeth, you know, that isn't just along for the ride. They're your 24, 7. Ride or die. Like for me, and in my era, I had a patrol dog that was also drug detection trained.
So what that meant was we were subject to call out on any given night. We had nights, we were called out two and three times.
It could be a missing person or it could be a car search for cocaine, but it allowed me, and it allowed this officer I was watching to get involved in all the best calls.
Right. And to have this like really specialized superpower in this German shepherd. And face it, as Americans, we love dogs.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: It was the greatest conversation. Started to be a K9 unit. I had that K9 insignia on my uniform.
People would immediately be like, you got a dog? Can I see the dog? And then doing dog demonstrations for Boy Scout troops or for you know, youth groups or whatever was always fun.
But to get back to the beginning, you can't just sign up day one and be like, well, I want to be a canine cop.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Give me a dog. Cool.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Yeah. No, you actually have to go out and do the job without the dog and prove yourself to be responsible, a good decision maker, and to be able to have this creature that is controllable and trainable but is lethal.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, but what's the. I mean, the lethal part I get right. If you're a bad guy and a dog's snarling at you, I'm way more likely to just. I'll drop the weapon. Right, yeah.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: I don't know why that is.
A cop can obviously do harm to a bad guy or subdue the bad guy, but I guess they're thinking, well, the dog doesn't have the same rationale. And I can't count on mercy here.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. She understands what we're doing. Whether we're doing a building search for a violent felon, we're doing a track for a baby that's wandered off from the back of the house, or Alzheimer's patient, she understands if we're doing an article search for a single bullet jacket or a bullet round that's on the side of the interstate and we're looking for anything that's non organic.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: How do you know? Like, is there a different level of amped up adrenaline in the dog? If it's like, I'm going for a bad guy or I'm finding a grandma who's wanted.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah. What's amazing, and I'd had older handlers tell me this is the dog's constantly reading you.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: So it knows you.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: It knows you. And so I can specifically remember a time going to a robbery and we had a chain of.
We'd had two or three bank robberies, and this was the third one. And I was on day off and I got the call and I was making time because time is of the essence. That track is getting older and colder, so you want to get there.
And she was so amped up the whole ride. And I had said nothing to her.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: That by the time we got there.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: It'S kind of moving. It's beautiful. God's given us an animal.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And she was. But she entirely was reading my level of anxiety and my stress. Wow. She could just sense it.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Okay, so the thrill of the chase, that's changed for you. Right? It's become more cerebral. Now you're. You're in. Now you're a detective. You're in white collar crimes, not constant action. Yeah. What. Describe some of the chases that you're involved in now. What are, what are the white collar crimes look like? You know, obviously can't reveal.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Specific names or anything.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: I think crime in general, a lot of the detective work itself, no matter the flavor is very consistent.
It contains a lot of the same elements and the same process.
Ultimately, I tell people all the time all I am is really a storyteller. I go out into the world, I interview people that saw things, I look at where it happened. I try to gather all of the evidence or really all of what the observations were from people, everything that is there so I can retell the story to a prosecutor and possibly bring charges.
And now I work in a sphere that is mostly contained to health care. So I do abuse, neglect and manslaughter, theft of narcotics and billing scheme thefts.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: When it's someone running after a hot crime, they're not surprised if someone tackles them, you know, Right.
When it's this kind of thing and they think they're smarter than the system and usually they are. Most people get away with white collar crimes. Most of the fraud with, in medical, in the, you know, with what do you call Medicaid fraud or whatever.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Most medical fraud, they're getting away with it for years and years.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: And they're going to die having got. Well, no one gets away with anything at the end.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Right.
Because everyone expects normal.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Right. I'm waiting for normal to happen because I'm normal.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: If you decide to be deviant, you're like, you're like in the upside down running around and no one even sees. Right. Right. But you're tracking these people down right. Now when you get them, when you get the people who think they're smarter than the whole system, what's the response? Are they usually shocked?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Nobody steps into the crime world in the six digit area of loss. Right. Quite often most people saw an opportunity or sometimes they fall into an opportunity that profits them and then they replicate it and they're not caught and they replicate it again. And before long it becomes part of their personal budget to have that money, if you're talking about money and they're not caught and it continues to grow and grow and there's a unique feature and it goes all the way back to a petty shoplifting, all the way ahead to a multimillion dollar theft. And it's sort of like a survival tactic in humans where there is a justification for their actions.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Rational lies.
Rational lies.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: It's very interesting. And again, it's a survival tactic because sometimes that rationalization happens before the crime sometimes, but it almost always does after because they have to sit with themselves in the quiet of their mind and in some way be able to find sleep and in some way not look over their shoulder constantly.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: But what's intriguing is when you get to the other end and you sit down with them in the interview setting and you start to work through this and explain to them you don't give them everything, but to give them some of what you have found and disclose a little, show them your hand a bit and to let them know they've basically been had.
Quite often there's a sense of relief.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Hey, friend, I want to invite you into something that's changing lives. Every single, single day, people all over the world are rediscovering their faith, finding real joy and learning how to share the gospel with confidence. And guess what? These lives are forever being transformed because of our Missionaries of Joy, our incredible monthly supporters.
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The way you just described how people fall into big sins. And that's what they are. They're sins. Not just crimes. They're sins.
Isn't that how the evil one works with all of us in every single sin in our lives?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: It's like you feel like the boa constrictor. Just get in there a little bit and you welcome it. Then they're just a little tighter, just a little tighter.
And then all of a sudden I'm in a place where I need this and I could justify it. I just need a little extra income. It's a little tighter and then I'm a couple years later, who am I?
It's all gone.
You bring them to that moment of interrogation and you try to get a confession.
I want to talk about that confession room.
Right, because there's a lot of spiritual overlaps between your confession room and the confessional.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Right, yes.
What's the psych? Is there a lot of. Well, first off, is what I see on TV accurate? Does it look like, you know, the guy comes in, turns, turns the light on and looking face to face, you're quiet for a minute, pretend to be kind of angry and good cop, bad cop. How much of that's real?
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Well, what I have found over time, I've been to many seminars on an interview and interrogation.
There are some methods that are even named for the guy who created it on how to get a good confession from somebody or even a decent confession. Some of them, I mean the old good cop, bad cop, the two man on one, the confinement in a room with a low hanging light. You see all those things, they're not real effective, to be honest.
For one, you feel like you're in power, but the person you're interviewing is sizing you up continuously, especially if they're a trained criminal.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Sure, sure.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: And they, we all are able to seek out and recognize sincerity and, you know, true interest in the subject matter and the person.
If you're, if you're just reading off a script and being someone you're not, then you come across as frail and unprepared and you're probably not going to get what you want.
For me, my approach has always been to avoid the captivity of a small white room, to avoid the pressure of I'm angry, you have to tell me what you know.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So some guys do use that approach.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: It happens. It happens. I wouldn't say it's real effective. Some agencies use that more than others.
It's not unheard of. I would tell you that it's not always effective.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Now sometimes there's, you know, some agencies, guys will work in teams.
A lot of times those rooms will have, you know, like a two way mirror with three guys taking notes and listening closely.
And that works. And there are places where that has to happen, especially if the person's under arrest and not free to leave.
But what I find is the far more organic setting of being able to talk to somebody, you know, in the front seat of my car or leaning up against the tailgate of a pickup. You know, I'm in Maine, right?
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: So to be able to be in a setting that actually doesn't put the person on defense so the arrest is.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Made, and now you're bringing them someplace where they could take a deep breath just to be.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Just to be on point. Sometimes this is before arrest, okay?
Sometimes, you know, I'm collecting evidence, I'm telling the story.
But now I've arrived at the center of the story, the suspect.
And I believe, you know, I know the nine tenths of it. I'm not going to go to that person unprepared.
But again, my approach would be far more to try to keep that person at ease and be able to talk to them in such a way that's very human.
Like, I don't show up and immediately start wagging my finger.
You got to know that guilt and shame are survival tactics. Right? They keep you alert, they keep you looking, they keep you wondering, when's the next shoe gonna drop? Cause I'm gonna get caught. There's a good chance is today the day?
And because of that, that person is prepared to go on the defensive. They're prepared like the turtle to slide right back in their shell when you show up and say, hey, my name's Detective Wrigley. I'd like to talk to you.
But I can disarm that quite often just by treating them like a human, just by having a conversation with them.
And what I often like to do is to talk to them about something other than the criminality. I'd rather take them to a place that was better in their life. A lot of times I recognize the things around their home or their property or I've done my background. I've studied them very much through social media or anything I can find before I walk up to them. I know their siblings, names, I try to know their parents names, try to know the year they graduated, what school it was, did they play football, what are these conversation pieces I can have with them?
And quite often, I'll announce myself. I'm here to talk to you. I want to hear your side of the story. I think you deserve the opportunity to talk.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: So they know. They know they better start talking at this point.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Well, they got a sense.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: They know the circle is closing a little bit.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah, the circle's closing. They know I'm here.
But then we don't stay there. I think we. I like to take a person into a space where they are human. We're of equal standing.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: You're on their side.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: You're starting to, well, humanize them.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Humanize them. Yeah. There's the word.
So how do you bring them on that you have a disproportionately high number of confessions. You're good at this.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: I've done well.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
And when everything is on the line, like, they confess, they might go to jail for 10, 20 years.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: It's on their record. Their whole life has changed.
Like, why would anyone give that information up to you?
What's the journey and the conversation? What's the arc of the conversation? So we have the setting that starts to humanize them. You start learning about their lives. Where else do you take them from there to. Yes, I stole $10 million from the government.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: It's interesting because if you look at the nature of humans, being raised a Protestant, I often heard the John Calvin references to filthy rags. Right?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: But at the same time, tell us.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: That, because most people want to know.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Well, the perception is we're born in sin and we are falling far short of grace.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: We're filthy rags.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: We're filthy rags. Right.
But at the same time, we're wonderfully and beautifully made.
And what is it Augustine says about rest?
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Our hearts are restless till they rest in you. Right. I mean, and you have Luther's model for salvation. We're a dung heap covered in snow.
Whereas the Catholic. And welcome to the Catholic Church, by the way. But the Catholic perception is you're not a dung heap. You're inherently good. You're beautiful and redeemable. God found you worth dying for. And then you're sanctified, though you're broken, you're changed from within. You're no longer a dung heap.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: No.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: You're one with the snow.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: We were made for companionship with our Creator. I think all of us had our hearts sickened and miss the Garden of Eden, where we could walk in the cool of the dew with our Creator. Right. And so there's a desire for contentment in every human right. And when you think about contentment is not to worry. Absence of worry. And just being present in the moment and just being able to breathe and see the beauty around you. Well, shame is the opposite. And thinking that the next shoe's gonna drop at any moment is far from contentment.
So the fact of the matter is having unfinished crimes and having these things you've done, it's like carrying this heavy knapsack.
And you're trudging through life. Every morning you get up and you slide that thing on even before you put on your shoes. And you carry it because you know you have fallen short you know, you went upstream for what exactly you should have been, you should have done.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: You're talking to unhappy people very much.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: And they have. For people that are perpetually in desire to be in a state of grace, you know, with their Lord, but also in life to be able to just live worry free, you're living at maximum concern all the time.
So there's an inertia.
There is a propulsion already in place for me before I pulled in the driveway.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: They're carrying this heavy sack. They're trudging it every day.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: They want to confess.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: So what I like to do, yeah, in a way, they may not realize it, but they want to be freed of it.
So for me, quite often what I like to do is in those early conversations, I want to talk about better days.
So I'll talk to them about the glory days of their football career. I'll talk to them about their graduation and how'd you feel? You must. Felt great under the lights on a Friday night. But, you know, some people, you know, with their certain disciplines or their education, I'll find out where they went to college. We'll talk about their desire for whatever degree they got, what they were going to do with their life, how they felt when their first child was born, and take them to those high peaks in their life.
And I'll just simply ask you, remind them who they are, who they were.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Who they were. Oh, yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: And then I'll ask them, where are you now?
How do you feel about life today?
And it rushes forward as a contrast.
And then quite often I'll say, listen, I know you did this.
Here's a little bit of the stuff I've learned along the way.
But this is heavy. This is heavy stuff. And I think you and I should probably talk through it for the sake of these victims that didn't ask for this. They did nothing to deserve this.
And today you carry that every day. And it's heavy. And you're justifying in your mind so you can sleep, but you're looking over your shoulder constantly. Let's deal with it today so you can pay your price.
So you can be freed of that heavy weight and return to a space of grace.
And in that there is hope.
Something they have not had because they shut all the lights off. It's just a dark future.
Either they have to continue to commit those crimes, or at the very least, they have to hide it.
And they're not sharing it with anyone. So here's their opportunity to share it with one person and be freed ever Heard of a process like that?
Confession, man. It's a confession.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: I love being a Catholic.
What's the moment like when they open their mouth and their worst secret crime comes out and they know they're going to jail?
[00:22:40] Speaker B: It's amazing, honestly, the physical posture. So a big part of interviewing is just. Just not words. You're watching.
You're always watching the physical posture. And sometimes you'll get close to something that's very detail oriented in what they're about to say and they're going to hang themselves and you'll see them cover their chest or they'll look or hedge their bets.
But when you get to a place of confession, you quite often watch the shoulders soften, the big exhales.
And then I've had people thank me.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: You're kidding me.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: No.
I've had them even verbalize. I've been waiting for this day.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: You're kidding me.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: I've even thought about turning myself in. This is heavier than I can carry. I've not had anybody give me the opportunity to just get rid of this.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: And quite often, that's incredibly beautiful. What you find is that in their own mind, they've already been paying penance. They're already serving their sentence because they're so broken and they're so recognizing and they know every detail and they hold it in the darkness of their mind.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Going to jail is better than the burden of being in an internal jail with their sin and their guilt.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Well, there's a process, right? You're paying back your debt in a way, you're able to close that circle, pay your debt and then move on.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Wow.
Wow. After 34 years, there's people you put away who probably, I'm sure, weren't happy, of course. And they get out too.
You always watching your back?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Well, like police work in itself, it makes you.
Makes you hyper vigilant. It makes you aware of circumstances and possibilities. And the fact of the matter is, every police officer has a family.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: So when I. I go to an event or I'm in a grocery store, I'm scanning. Oh, yeah, I'm watching.
Does it keep me up at night? No. I try to treat my suspects with as much respect as they're due.
I work with them through the process and quite often, again, they thank me and understand it. There are some that don't, and I worry about that at times.
There are people that I Google search now and then to see where they're living, but for the most part, that's no way for me to live. Or for my family to live.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: But I know you shared with me before how you actually ran into one guy who you put away, who wasn't happy but then thanked you after the prison sentence.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure. So there was a gentleman that in a drug case who is heavily involved in the drug world and had been using and dealing and using and dealing to a point that he couldn't break the cycle.
And prison itself is the greatest dry out there is.
It's a lengthy story, but the shorter version is he had many victims along the trail and he could not break this cycle. And even in confessing to me, it took three or four approaches with him and in the end he got a lengthy sentence.
And from jail, on pen and paper, he wrote me a letter and sent it to my office.
I've saved it. I have it at home. And essentially in that letter, he said, thank you, you have saved my life.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: From jail.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: From jail.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: I was actually thinking of a different story. That's profound.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And so doing that, you know, at the moment of his arrest and the moment of his prosecution, when the gavel dropped and he was walked away, he was not happy.
But months later, I get this letter in the mail and the last guy I ever thought I'd get it from and basically saying I needed to step out of my life.
And this process is exactly what I had to have.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: You converted to Catholicism when you were how old?
[00:26:30] Speaker B: 32.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: 32. So confession was something you didn't experience growing up, going to your own confession?
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Well, I wasn't. And to be honest, I had married a Catholic at 24, 25, and 7 years. I'd go to mass and I quite often would sit there like a lump. I'd watch him kneel, stand up, kneel, stand up, say these words. And I wasn't that interested. I was a good Christian, but it didn't draw me in yet. And it was honestly in sitting there and listening to the words of the creed.
And then, you know, as an investigative mind digging into the creed and how old it was, it blew my mind. I'm like, why have I never heard this? And it started this curiosity.
Well, that summer we had a new priest come into the parish and my wife had mentioned the fact that he was coming over to the family's house for a barbecue and that he's young. And so he's young. What is he, 70?
And I guess I was the only one that laughed.
I went over and this Father Paul is my age. We're the exact same age.
And we hit it off and that summer he called me one day and said, hey, would it be alright if I came out and rode with you? I'm like, yeah, sure.
Well, over that summer, he rode with me three or four times in his clerics.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: And the entire time we would play stump the chump. I had my top 10 reasons I didn't want to be Catholic and I thought he probably couldn't defend it. And we picked off that whole list.
And meanwhile, I'm meeting up with other cops.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Stephenville Grandfather Paul. Yes, yes, Good man.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: I would meet up with other cops to hand off paper or whatever, and they'd be like, why is there a priest in your car? Yeah. Doing a death notification.
Oh, it's my good friend Father Paul. So once we knocked off number 10, I mean, call no man, Father Mary, the Pope, confession. I had an issue with all of them.
They're not biblical. You can't prove that. Oh, he could.
So in the end, I had a hard decision to make.
Either I converted or I knew I was wrong.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: So I converted. Surprised everybody in my sphere to include my former Catholic co workers.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Oh, praise God. Okay, so you started going to confession well into your adult years. Did you, did you. Did you instantly see the correlation between your career?
[00:29:02] Speaker B: I did not. In fact, my first. You bring up something very interesting. In my first confession, we're coming up on Easter and I was coming into the church and Father Paul called me and said, hey, pal, you need to make your first confession. Like, well, here's the problem. I'm on shift.
He's like, oh, we can do it in your cruiser. I'm like, we can't. We can. I didn't. I can't picture it. I've never been to it.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: We gotta park somewhere. What do we gotta do? He's like, no, just. I'll ride shotgun, watch.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: To confess my sins to a person, even though it's my literal job to get people to confess their sins to me.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: So he's in my cruiser and I look over and he pulls out this little purple scarf and puts it around his neck. I'm like, what are you doing? It's like, we're gonna go to confession. And this is how we do it.
And driving through the country in my patrol area, I went to confession with him.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Man, that's awesome.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: It blew my mind.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: There's something.
The sacramental grace aside, but there's something so psychologically freeing about saying your sin out loud because it starts to feel like it's all that you are when it's locked up. This is the devil's oldest trick. Get that person isolated, locked up in a corner, put them in darkness. The first words of humanity to God. After getting the gift of being created, I was naked and ashamed and afraid. So I hid right well. Have you watched the devil gets you alone and just starts to destroy you?
[00:30:20] Speaker B: If you watch the behaviors of your children?
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: You know when they've done that one thing you told them not to do and you see them draw themselves away from you and they start to hedge their bets and you can tell there's something wrong as a parent.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: It's because they're out of you. They feel out of your grace.
They feel this, you know, this micro dose of shame which does tell us to hide.
And it's the last thing you want as a parent. You don't want your child to carry that weight.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Right. Our creator is no different. That's life fully lived is to be free of shame and to be in a place of grace with your creator.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It's the sacramental grace. And it's also just getting it out, it's so heavy. Then the psychological gift of getting it out and saying, that's not me and I'm giving it to you, Jesus, set me free.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Have you ever left confession?
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Even if I gotta go do a penance, whatever it is.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Have you ever left confession and wish you hadn't gone?
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Never once. Yeah, never once. I had one experience with one of my kids that came to mind as you were talking. Cause there's a lot of parenting tips coming to mind as you're talking right now. Sure. Right. You try to get your kid to confess something, the sure way to get them to not confess it is to knock down their door.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: I got you. You tell me right now, they start to lie just out of self protection. They feel like I have to defend my dignity and honor and personhood. So I will therefore lie.
Right.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: To say I'm going to remind you who you are as a starting point.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: That's right. And that you have value, that you again, you humanize them. But to recognize that you haven't always been this fallen, this wasn't necessarily your attempt, your intent out of the gate.
And now you find yourself in a place.
Now this isn't entirely universal. There are sociopaths and there's, you know, there are people that feel no shame when they commit crimes.
There's probably some depths into where you can go with that, with, you know, matters of hope. I mean, look at what Judas did. Right? He no longer had hope, so he went out and killed himself.
Hope is going to be there. Hope of redemption.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: And it exists.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: And it exists in some of the most hardened criminals. It is still alive.
Now, it might be back there a little bit, but when given the path, like with your children.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you literally apply this method to your kids?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: You gotta be careful, right? It's some ninja stuff.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: No, I hear you.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Right. But there's something elementary about being able to not wag your finger like, I know you did it and you're gonna tell me you did it.
In comparison to saying, I recognize who you are, and if you start with your kids, with I love you and I will always love you no matter what you have done.
And these are the things I have seen. And I want you to be back in a place that we can be free to talk and to love each other and not carrying some level of shame that separates us.
Right. To start in a place where they are comfortable to speak freely because they know you see them with value.
It's no different than the accused rapist, robber, theft, thief, whatever dread of society. And many of them never chose this life. Many of them were the victims of child abuse, alcoholic parents, absent fathers.
Some of them were born into a cycle they never asked for. And they're simply trying to survive, not justifying any of their actions.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Oh, I hear.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: But they haven't known grace throughout their existence, but they still feel like they there's hope for it.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: We're going to have dinner with Natalie after this. I'm excited for you to meet her.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Can't wait.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: One of my. The most beautiful moments in parenting I've ever seen in my entire life.
One of my kids had done something they felt horrible about and started telling us. I have a secret. You could tell it was weighing. It's so heavy.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: I'm like, well, tell us.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Tell us what the secret is.
And eventually wrote a note and sealed it up and then went in the closet and said, you guys read it. And then Natalie said, no, I want you to sit here in front of me so you could see that I still love you. While I read this note.
It's that reminder of the person's humanity, even the people you're busting, even the person who's through criminal neglect has allowed someone to die so they can make money. Even the sexual predator.
And there might be someone watching, thinking like, well, Chris, you don't know how big the thing I did was. And my response would be, I don't I do, however, know that what he did is bigger than what you did because he's bigger than you. And I just summed up Catholic math.
But it really comes down to, if you want the freedom, you have to confess your sin. Like the Lord, he can't redeem what you're not confessing. A doctor can't heal what you don't show him. And he loves. He loves to hear your praise, but way more than that, he loves to hear your worst sin. Because he died so he could take that one away.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I want you to. Honestly, I want to wrap up like this. I don't always do this, but I want to ask you to look at that camera right there. To someone watching right now who's. Who's. Who's carrying around some deep, dark secret that they think defines them and they need to unload from it. Whether it's a crime, that they need to literally go turn themselves in, or whether it's just that repeat sin that they've become convinced, well, that is me. There's no hope. That's who I am at my core.
What would you say to that person who's having a hard time letting go, confessing, and moving on?
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Well, there is a better life waiting for you every morning. Like I said before, if you wake up carrying a heavy burden, if you replay the events of this, if you're reaching out for a justification of your acts so you can live in some sort of small portion of peace, sort of seek out the truest form of peace and get this off your back.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Tell the tale.
Society is ready for you to make a better version of yourself through this process.
And ultimately, there's a fuller life to be lived than trying to escape and survive. Amen.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: And, dude, I love the sacrament of confession. Whether it's big or you're watching, thinking, well, I'm not a major criminal, even the small stuff, I don't have any room in my spirit for that burden of sin to be resting on me. I mean, God wants me to have full freedom. As you were talking, too, about reminding people who they are, reminding them of better days, one of my favorite confessors, I was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and he paraphrased something from Thessalonians. And every time I sit there feeling like a piece of garbage for what I had done the night before, he'd start confession with the words, you are a child of the light and of the day. You belong neither to darkness nor to night.
Every person who sat down in front of him in confession, he'd say that it's like, okay, let's hear your sins. Let's remind you who you are and what you're called to.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: You're amazing, right?
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Dude, I knew we'd get some great insights into the nature of confession and unburdening conscience. And just thanks so much for sharing it and for all that you are. I love you so much. Good to be with you again, man.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Thank you, man.
