The You Project#1582 The Son Of A Priest & A Nun - Brendan Watkins
After decades of searching, Brendan Watkins discovered that his birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun. To say that his story is fascinating is like saying that the ocean's a bit damp and Antarctica can get chilly. As someone who grew up in a Catholic bubble, this conversation was totally gripping for me. Deception, corruption, denial, pathological lying, neglect, coercion and devastating secrets; this story has it all. Amazingly, Brendan has come out the other side a compassionate, wise and beautiful soul. Enjoy.
I get a you bloody champions. It's the you project, Tiffany and Cook and Brendon. I'm going to go. Brendan's probably a probably a vow. Brendan Andrew Brennan, Andrew what cains? He'll tell us in a minute if I fucked that up. I'm sure I did. What are the odds? Tiffy? You're good, I'm very good.
Thanks. Happy Friday, Oh.
Happy Friday to you. You're still looking glamorous. What have you done? You keep saying you haven't done anything? A bit of bloody. It's Loncesston's blue ice eyeliner.
Just been putting a grown up jumper on over my muscletop for the You know, I'm being a grown up.
We can't recognize you when you're not in a crop top. What's the difference between a crop top and a boob tube is.
That boobtube doesn't have straps on the arms. Boobtube just goes around under your armpits with no straps.
There you go. Do they still exist?
Am I?
Is that even a term that we're allowed to use in twenty twenty four? I'll just point out I didn't invent the term, so don't you yell at me.
You're asking them wrong person. I've been wearing blokes muscletops for the last five or six years straight.
Well, there's I could say so many things. Hi, Brendan, how are you?
I'm good, Thanks, Craig, I'm I'm absolutely fine, enjoying my Friday afternoon.
Well, gid you up. Thanks for joining us on the new project. So what's the middle name?
Son?
Does it start with a vow? Let me out ask that first.
Well, I've got two and yeah, they're very Catholic names. So one is Michael, you know, maybe the ultimate Mick name. Of course, I've also got Francis, which they're all very Catholic.
Bro's middle names. Francis.
Oh really, Well my mum's brother's name was Francis rip uncle Frank. And is that is that? Because the second of those two names is a confirmation name.
Michael is the confirmation name.
Yeah, yeah, do you know what that is?
Tiff?
Do you know what a confirmation name is?
A name?
But I was confirmed. I don't really pay attention to the whole thing though.
Did you grow up in a Catholic church? How did I not know this? Were you?
Like?
Are you the worst Catholic in the history of Catholics.
Second to you, bro, Why did you know every word of the Bible doesn't mean you're good Catholic?
No, I know that I'm a shit Catholic. In fact, what I loved I ripped something off Brendan's site. I can't find it now, but it was something like Gandhi said something like I like your Christ, but not your Christians. Your Christians are nothing like your Christ. Did I get that somewhat right? Brendan, Yeah, it's close. That's buried a way somewhere rather in the socials page. But yeah, you're close. Yeah, yeah, Well did you go to Sorry Brendan, this should really be about you, but let me just catch up on ten years of tiff that did you go to Catholic schools?
I went to a Catholic primary school.
Did you pray to Sweet Baby Jesus? Yeah I did. Yeah, we walk down to the chap Wow, I did not know anyway, enough about enough about our history. Let's talk to our guests, Brenda. Did you only go to Catholic schools as well? Or did you actually well, you were adopted, so mate, were your parents even Catholic? Was your family Catholic.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in the sixties, so I was born and adopted in sixty one, the church went to huge pains to ensure all of the children, all of the Catholic children born went to Catholic families, right right, And so you know, the families that didn't have kids, they were very very keen to I'm sure that they were going to continue the community and to adopt them into childless families. And particularly it's like me that had the background that I had, so that the birth parents that I had always ended up with Catholic adopt for parents.
Well, and was that I mean, obviously not common, but obviously not completely rare, because you say, when people who came from situations like you, So you're not Robinson Crusoe in.
This No, there's well, depending on who you believe, there are no firm statistics, but it's been estimated that there's well over one hundred thousand children who have been fathered by Catholic priests.
Oh my goodness, I'm writing them down. One hundred thousand. That is well, obviously, I mean, people have already read the intro and the synopsis of this show by the time they're hearing us, So they're going to know that your dad was a priest, or your biological father was a priest, and your biological mother was a nun. I bet that's a great conversation starter at dinners.
Well, it makes it never good, no, no, no, it It is a sort of a microdrop moment. But it's probably the only advantage is you know your elevate a pitch when you're talking to publishers.
Well, I'm sure that's going to get a few doors open and a few years open when you decided to. So your book is called Tell No One. When did you come up with the idea to, you know, kind of put your story, your life into something that we could all read and connect with.
I've always been a journaler, so I've always written extensively because my story is very complicated, and what is contained in the book, or the majority of it, at least covers thirty years. So I at nearly thirty years of age, I discovered the identity of my mother when I got my original birth certificate, and it took me another nearly thirty years to find out who my birth father was. And there are all sorts of issues that obstacles that occurred in my path that I needed clear to find out that answer. I journaled as much as anything else, to record the things that happened, but equally to try and work out how I felt about it, you know, to unpack the complexities of the journey I was taking. When I found out my father was a Catholic priest, so that was two thousand and eighteen, I ended up quitting my job and thought I would spend twelve months working out who this man was because he had a very larger he had a huge life, and I wanted to research him, record it as much as anything else for my kids. I was job where I've been there for thirteen and a half years. I was over it. It was time to move on. I could afford to take a year off work, and the more I discovered and learned about my family, and more so the more I discovered about the children of priests, the more research that led to, and the more angry I became, and the more determined I became to turn what I was recording into a book to make public the reality of what the Catholic Church has done in silencing the children of prests, and indeed our mothers.
Can I say, and I'm not blowing smoke. Brilliant book, so everyone should go and buy that. I bought it on audible after I first met Brendan, so good tell no.
One is the name of the book. Brendan Watkins is the author. So I mean, I'm sure we could do an hour just on what the Catholic Church has done and not done. But give us a snapshot, just open the door a little bit in kind of enlightening us as to what the Catholic Church's response reaction is to you know, all of these kids.
Well, look, I suppose to encapsulate the size of the issue. The church, you know today has something like four hundred thousand Catholic priests, and the church is very foggy around its definition of celibacy. And in surveys that have been done and Sipe is the most commonly quoted, half the Catholic priests are not celibate. And when you think about the Church's.
View around what's hang on? Really yeah half.
So it goes back to, you know, the Church has put vasiline over the lens of what the definition of celibacy is and it's not really all that old. The notion of the introduction of celibacy. It's only three or four hundred years old. The church was financially damaged by priests having children and their estate ending up in the hands of their family and not the church. Church introduced in the eleventh century are rules about preventing married men becoming priests, right, It didn't say you can't have sex, and so surveys of priests still received a foggy notion about what celibacy means. And in recent years surveys of priests have found that anonymously conducted that half of them is still having sex of one sort or another.
That is, that is, But I mean the Bible talks about sex outside of marriage pretty clear, and lolls isn't based on the Bible, isn't It isn't that isn't it considered a sin within the church? Yeah?
Indeed, And so I suppose in many ways, the press that have had children this is an extension of the abuse of minus in many ways. So it's a part of that story. So I think everyone's been aware. In Australia, the Royal Commission and largely what's happened is price have fathered children and as has happened with child abuse. The priest very often, if this becomes known, is moved on to another parish or another state or even another country, and he has no recognition of the child. Very often the women are honorable, very often. So you know, I know a huge number of children of priest personally and anecdotally through different groups, and the stereotype of my mother is the most common. So usually they're vulnerable single women. They're believers, so they're parishioners, and very often are very devout. Yes, and quite often they're the housekeeper or a woman that's come to the priest and she's been experiencing domestic violence or the husband's being killed, or the husband's run off. They're extremely vulnerable to spiritual abuse and in quite a number of cases physical abuse. Wow. So she becomes pregnant, the priest moves on and the church will more often than not deny, but in most cases might put a roof over the head of the woman. In extreme cases, they might reward her with some money, essentially to buy her silence, but that's always in exchange, or nearly always in exchange for a confidentiality ran WOW. In twenty and fourteen, the United Nation United Nations under the Rights of the Child Investigation recommended to the Vatican that it has to stop silencing the children of priests. This is a huge international phenomena and the Church has been incredibly successful in silencing the mothers and the children. Wow.
So I mean this is an in your opinion question.
This is not.
An analytical or a database question. In your opinion. Are these priests more opportunists or predators, I'm sure or something else? Maybe?
Yeah, I'm sure every case is unique, that they're all different, but they're Again, there aren't firm stats on this, but generally speaking, the priests that have had children very often have other children, and so it's not a once off, you know what I'm talking about, And the numbers I spoke about the priests that remain priests and deny recognition of their child. There are instances, and they're quite rare of the priest you know, having you know the thorn Bird's moment. You know, it's a love story. And in some of those instances they leave the priesthood and they marry the woman and they have the family. That's the rarity. That's not the that's not the story that I'm talking about. There are well over one hundred thousand people who have pessentially been gagged by the church because the priests won't recognize their child. And in many cases, you know, all the sort of foundation documents, birth certificates, details about the press, access to the priest's estate are all denied by the church.
Have you had any blowback, either by the church or people within the church. There's probably a double question. I probably should have said how much?
Well, not really, not really officially, no, not really. Yeah, there's been a huge way of response from mainly parishioners and mainly people in a similar vote to me. Wow, But look, officially no. I was with Alan and Nunwen. The book is published by Alan and so we had a lot of high level barristers working on my book to ensure that everything was able to be verified. But now look, the church, you know, treated me like it does every other child of a priest and mother that comes forward. Basically, they pull down the shutters and you hear nothing.
And what can you? What can you or what are you comfortable to tell us Brennan about your biological mother and father that you can I know, we can read the book, don't forget everybody read the book tell no one.
Sure. Well, most importantly, I feel a great sympathy for my mother. I believe my mother was a victim of my father, even though they spent many, many years of their lives together and she actually nursed him for the last eight or ten years of his life. They lived together under the same roof Wow. However, when they met, there was a thirty year age gap when she was around fifteen, and he was a much older man, and she was a vulnerable girl. And that's a stereotype. And he was the man, the spiritual leader, He was the hands and feet of God on earth. You can't say no to that if you are a vulnerable young woman, and that's the stereotypes. So that's the most important thing to remember. And you know, I believe my mother has not treated me well at all in the last thirty years, and she is still alive. But I absolutely understand it and empathize with her response. So, long story short, I got access to my birth certificate when I was nearly thirty because Kate, my partner, and I were about to have a family. Our story was a little complicated because I was always curious. I always wanted to know who my birth parents were. I have an adopted brother, he's a little older, we're super close, and he wanted nothing to do with it, had no interest. He thought it was bizarre that I was so keen to know these things. And I spent the last thirty years, you know, banging my head against a brick wall with no success, and he just keeps standing back, shaking his head. So I got my birth certificate, and I thought it had additional justification to find out who my birth parents were because Kate had a health issue called malignant hyperperrexia, which essentially means sure you can't have anesthetics, and it had killed a number of people within her family. And as we're about to have kids, I'm thinking, well, hang on, I know nothing about what's in my lurking in my DNA soup. What are the things that our kids might be vulnerable to? And you know, we were making plans how she was going to have anesthetic. It was needed, you know, when the birth occurred, and all those sorts of things, and when you have kids, it just makes you think about genetics. So I got my airth certificate. The Catholic Church arranged the adoption and they sat me down. I looked at my mother's name and it wasn't the stereotype that I expected. Normally, it's a teenager in those days, and passion had got the better of them and they were too young to have a child, and the babies put up for adoption. This was the woman who was twenty seven. Wow, she didn't have an Anglo name. I thought she'd have an Anglo name like ours, and it was something odd. She was in South Australia, so I desperately wanted to know more. And for all the reasons such as said, I really wanted to at least find out the biological history healthy shies. Cutting to the chase. They sat me down a few weeks later. They insisted, or not insisted. They were very persuasive in having me consent to then make contact with her on my behalf. And they sat me down and said, we're spoken to Maggie, your mother, and you'll never see her, you'll never talk to her, you'll never meet her. You need to go home and forget about it forever. And you know that's that's a blow that you know is reverberated through me for decades. And I didn't realize quite at the time the significance of it, and I tried to but I couldn't. And the further we went down the path of you know, getting pregnant and having kids, I couldn't let go of it. And again it's you know, some chapters in the book. But Kate, we were doing sleuthing, and so it was before the Year of Google. We were doing some sleuthing and retraced a sister in law who was in South Australia, and Kate rang the sister in law, making out she was, you know, a long lost friend. And I had a conversation with his sister in law and said, I'm trying to track down Maggie Beckett and this is a pseudonym. That's not everyone. And the woman replied, oh, you mean Maggie Vennune. M wow, And all of a sudden, the penny dropped. Ah, that's why she can't see me. That's why she won't expect to me. It made sense, and it was just so bizarre because I was raised him, you know, an indoctrination a school you know, not at all dissimilar to yours. Correct, And so I sort of let it go for some period of time, and eventually a year or two later wrote to her and she replied, and there was essentially thirty years of me discovering that she wasn't actually a nun when I was conceived or born, which is a very pertinent point to her. And she's still alive, and she finds that offensive that people might think that's the case, which I totally understand. She had been in an order, she had joined but not completed her term in the convent she left was outside of the convent. For my estimation is around three years I was conceived, born, and to pay her penance to atone she joined another convent and stayed for twenty five years, and very close to the period of her leaving that convent, twenty five years later. I made contact around nineteen ninety, so, just when she thought she'd done her penance, she'd paid the price, I show up and little did I know that when I made contact, she was living with my birth father. She was living with father, Vincent Shield, and for thirty years I tried to discover his identity and was told many different stories. I was told it was a short relationship, it was a long relationship. It was a man who had a family, a man that she rang a number of times until he had his phone disconnected, and eventually, many years after first contact, she told me, no, well I told you his name. I don't know why you keep nagging about his name's Paul Hayes. So I hired a private detective to run aroun around Sydney trying to find this Paul Haze where she used to live with my father, and spent a whole lot of money trying to find him. And eventually he came back and said, look, I've done a lot of these cases adoptions. I know a lot about this that I spoke to just about every Paul Haste that is in the age that could be your father. He doesn't exist. It's invented. I went back to my birth mother and her response is, well, you were lied to, and so as I and agreed, so she made out it it invented the name when she knew him. But of course he was still alive and they were still living together.
In so that was thirty plus years ago. And so you and your mum have never really connected, No.
It's all yeah, it's always been very arms length. And look we're mainly communicated by a letter. And in those thirty years it might only be six or eight letters. We've met face to face. She's met our Capan, my two kids. She and I look uncannily similar when I met her. She's the age I am now at sixty three or thereabouts. She's never wanted anything to do with her only two grandchildren. I mean, I feel enormous sympathy for her because this is the great trauma I am, the great trauma of her life. And she's been warmer to Kate, my partner, and her story is one of horrendous experience experiences with men, including my father. And again, you know origin I'm prepared to tell this story is because this is the stereotype. The reason people aren't coming forward, the reason people aren't talking is this is the stereotype. And my mother, my birth mother, has lied to me my entire life. And the relationship very often where a child raised by their birth mother is very common, where the priest is the father and the child discovers that everything that their mother has told them about their father has been alive, and it's destroyed families. It's irreparably damaged families. I didn't have a relationship with my birth mother at all. On the thirty years of knockbacks and prostration is not common, but this is something that the Church has perpetuated ongoing. And I didn't find out the identity of my father until I did my DNA in Well. I did it in twenty and fifteen. It was a complicated case which Kate sold, which I didn't have the patient sold wherewith all to solve And it took three years and I found out his name in twenty and eighteen. And the point that's important to know is that it's only now that people are doing ancestry DNA and the other DNA services that they're finding these things out. You know, since my books come out I had I don't know if it's hundreds, but it's dozens and dozens and dozens of people come to me saying I thought the DNA was wrong because my father. It's at my father was a Catholic creed. And it's now that the Church is being confronted with this reality, and it's now that people are coming forward and telling their stories and it's horrific. You know. There was a woman in London called Sarah Thomas, who's the daughter of a priest, who started a PhD and spoke to one hundred children of Press, and she found that fifty six percent of the children of Press, fifty six percent had attempted suicide or had suicidal ideation.
Wow, how does it feel like when you say to me, and you say to our audience that you were the great trauma of your biological, your birth mum's life, Like you seem inexplicably okay with that. I have such admiration for you, that is, like you so have got your shit together or you're the best actor ever. But I feel like it's the former. Why Firstly, it's amazing, and I'm it's going to say I'm proud of you, that's silly, but I'm so respectful of you, Like there seems to be so much compassionate understanding, And I don't know. Forgiveness is that the am I on the money? There?
Is that? What I'm absolutely it is forgiveness. I'm like a dog with a bone and I haven't been able to let go of it. And I don't know how healthy it is to be looking in the rearview era for so long. I have spent five years on this and I'm going to leave it alone very soon and work on another book that's about looking up, not looking down, or looking forward not looking back. Look, I've spoken to her quite a number of the mothers of press children, like my mother, who have some couple in America in particular, but deal with other mothers of children's Chris, and they have been to Helen back. And I feel very strongly that I've been in a position where my life was at a stage where I was established professionally financially, I had, you know, I've had a fantastic life, and I've had everything going for me. I had wonderful, wonderful adoptive parents and a partner and family, kids, friends and people have flocked to me that have been in the same boat and they're enormously damaged. So I felt as though I've had an obligation because I've been in a position a time of life, to be able to speak up when others can't. You know, very often the children of priests end up in orphanage's foster care, unsuccessful adoptions. They're in that fifty six percent that attempted suicide or had suicidal ideation, And by the skin of my teeth, missed that and the church. So look, I want to be an advocate, you know, the church silenced the damaged, and there are people who would come forward that an'tswer damaged and are prepared to speak up, but there's very few of us. So I felt as though I had an obligation, and I you know, I forgive my birth mother. Absolutely.
I could be wrong here too. I'm just reading between the lines. It feels like having a purpose bigger than you has also been therapeutic for you. Yeah right, yep, yeah, like being able to serve and help and love others and understand others, and for them to be able to just the fact that you are as as mentally, emotionally and healthy and physically healthy as you are. I'm sure there's peaks and troughs like all of us, but that you can talk to them like you talking to them is way better than most people talking to them, even if it's a compassionate person or a psych or a you know you who have been through it. I guess that for them is a different kind of connection.
Yeah. Look, I suppose it's trite, but you know the old if you get lemons and make lemonade, you know, I think it applies. You're trying to find a good We all want to feel useful, and you know, there were waves and waves of communications from people in the same boat that have been enormously damaged, and that's encouraged me to speak up because I you know, I've had so much communication with people that have benefited from what I've written and what I've said, and yeah, you feel useful. And it's not healthy to stay in this space. It's not easy to talk about. But I know it's good. I know it does good, and so you know, in some ways it's I think also an acknowledgment or but it's gratitude or you know, the good luck I've had. How old are your kids, Brendan, One is twenty seven and one is thirty. How did they respond to this news where they're like, my granddad was a priest, All right, coffee anyone? Well, look, it's interesting. You know, they had nothing to do with the church their entire lives, and even though their grandparents, my parents were devout, they didn't get me till quite late, and so they didn't really have anything to do with the church through their grandparents. On my side and on Kate's side, they were incredibly cynical about the church. So they don't have all the sort of hang ups about priests and what they're supposed to be like. And Nun's been right, So yeah, I think they just thought it was one of my little obsessions. I didn't talk about it much to that and my son is very literate and he was really helpful with the book. And my daughter didn't want to know anything about it until it was finished and published and it came out of a box that had a cover on it and she read it and she was absolutely knocked out. And it's had a real I think it's had a real impact on her. So but yeah, look that the whole you know, priests having sex thing's that's really an old person thing, you know. It was interesting. Part of the book is going out to the desert because my father spent most of his time in the South Australian desert and going out there to his parishes and going to churches and going to masses and meeting people that knew him really well. I thought that I'll be dead because he died ninety years of asi in ninety ninety two, because he was thirty years older than my mother, but he was from a generation before mine adoptive parents. But he was still remembered, and eventually it came out. You know, I thought i'd be up all the cover it in saying, you know, I can't tell them the truth. I said, oh, look, I've done my DNA and my father's this guy, sorry, not my father, a relative, a distant relative. Is this guy who used to be a priest. And you know, I'd be standing there, you know, with my hand and my chin sort of with one foot forward and back and talking as I am. And they said he used to always do that. He used to always stand with his hand like exactly your voice now and I think about your voice is exactly like And a number of them picked it pretty quickly.
Wow.
And the point I'm trying to make is the parishioners, the people that were the most accepting of the reality of children of priests and the most aware of the fact that policts had sexual appetites and lives actively are the parishioners, the people that are in constant denial. You know, I've spoken to a number of groups, and you know, the first thing I say is I love Catholics. I love the parishioners. I have no problem with the Catholics. The most accepting compassionate people that I've ever met dealing with this subject are Catholics. The people I have problems with the hierarchy within the churches, the priests, and the further up the totem pole you go, the more in denial they are, so bishops and cardinals.
On your website, it's got this thing said, I was given my father's rosary beads, my birth father's rosary beads. Recently. It got me thinking, how many prayers does a priest recite for deserting his son or daughter for his own sins? Did my father confess and if so, to who? When did you write that?
Yeah? Maybe, but towards the end. Actually, yeah, I was given those rosary beads by a woman who was his assistant right in his presbytery in the desert in South Australia, which he'd had for many years. And yeah, I think she picked up very very quickly who I was and was not at all surprised, right, But yeah, look at it, it's a questioned many children of priests have, you know, do they confess who? Do they tell? Who knows?
Tell us about tell us about your adoptive parents?
Brennan, Yeah, Royan Bette Watkins. They got me late Damien. My brother is older and interestingly so we're a Richmond family. And sad Ignatius in Church Street was dead Parish church. And my old man was very heavily involved with the Richmond football club. He actually volunteered fifty years service. So he did a whole bunch of things. But most of what he did and what he's known for his being the timekeeper for the Puddy club amazing. And they couldn't have kids and were he was out walking their dash hounds one after and the local priest tapped him on the shoulder and said, you know Roy, you and Bette, you know you you're in your thirties year you don't have children. What's going on? Good Catholic man like you should have children? What say you adopt? And that was my brother and Roy agreed and he put his name on the list as you do. It's an application for adoption. And fifteen months later they actually got a phone call and said, and my mother was thirty nine at this stage, get older than Roy, and they said we have another child for you. It's a boy. You need to come tomorrow. So they hadn't applied. They hadn't gone through any of the processes and they had no notice, and they didn't really have any say that's the norm. The children of chress. People are selected, families are selected, and so they had me, you know, so they're relatively old parents. They were fabulous people. We lived in Richmond. We had a sort of a delicate tests and sandwich shop in Bridge Road, Richmond, which you know, I'm incredibly fond of that part of the world. And you know, by chance, my son's brought house and moved to Richmond. And they were mad about the football, they were mad about sport. They were devout Catholics in that way where really they didn't know anything about the Bible or how the church went. But they were at church come Wayne High or shine every Sunday and they were absolutely locked on and observed lantern whatever it might be till the day they died. They both got to around eighty. So they were absolutely supportive for Damien and my entire lives went to the sport, did everything that parents do and birth children couldn't have a closer relationship too to their offspring that Damien and I enjoyed with Ryan Bett. And they would have given their lives for us. Wow, And that's how we felt, you know, that's how we grew up. There was absolutely no difference. And probably, you know, with them and many many, many adoptive kids, you think I think the family tries a bit harder. It was weird that Damien and I and Roy and Bett couldn't for four people couldn't look more un alike, and our interests were so different. You know, everything Damien is he's like this computer scientist and he's sci fi and doctor who and he's facts and he's directed. Is a nerd absolutely, yeah, he's a PhD. He's very very successful in there. And I'm the opposite. I'm humanities and books and totally different person. And our parents were different again, And you know, I always thought, why the hell didn't the church make some effort to try and at least adopt kids into families where there'd be some sort of physical resemblance at least.
Good luck with that. They probably just went, you know what, they're really good people, and these kids need some really good people.
Yeah, yeah, well I think that's it. But I do know that they made a really significant effort in trying to place the children of priest and or nuns, but you know some Vincent's Private in Melbourne. Melbourne was sort of the epicenter of the children of priests in Australia and St Vincent's Private is where the majority of priests children were born and the adoptions were arranged from mother Fabian, who's a well known sister within the church, arranged those and then destroyed the records of the children.
Here's a weird question, but I'm just curious about your thoughts about this is a big question, but the future of the Catholic Church. Like, since I was a kid, it seemed to be flourishing. And I was a kid pretty much when you were a kid, And I remember going to Mass and there'd be two three, four hundred people on a Sunday morning. It was just and my mum and dad are still My mom and dad are eighty five. They still go to Mass on Sunday mornings and there's about fifteen old people that are pretty much all the same as them. You know, I don't think there's anyone there under seventy. What are your thoughts. I know this is not specific to your story, but I'm just curious as two blokes who grew up or in fact, two blokes and a woman who grew up in Catholicism that I just discovered. If what are your thoughts.
Well, look, I know expert, but my observation is, you know, in the last forty years me being in a church, funerals and weddings that you know, that was it, Yes, And so it was a distorted view of the numbers of people that were there. But since I found out my father was priest, I went to a lot of churches and a number of services in parishes where he was, and those numbers have really sinned out, and so you'd go to the services. You know, there used to be three or four services on a Sunday morning and there was only one and usually there's the front two or three rows that are occupied, and that was it. And they were occupied by people who were very old, so people like your parents great and there weren't any young people are all older. And one of the things in the outback, and one of the things that the parishioners complained to me about was that most of the treets were either from well in South Australia, from Malaysia, Indonesia and Africa. And though they loved the priests. They had a really hard time understanding, and it's evident that when they die out, those churches will no longer operate. And that's quite a number of churches. But I think the Catholic Church is booming in the Third World. There's a huge number of children of priests in the Children of Priests social media groups that are from Africa, and they're young men and women. So the church is doing incredibly well, as it always has. It's a missionary it's in the hope and shame business, and it does incredibly well in areas where people are undergoing extreme poverty. The Catholic Church also is very successful at business, and what it succeeds in the Western world is education. And so you know, particularly in Australia, the funding of the Catholic institutions is very strong and it's not going to go away overnight. But I think in the Western world it's got the hell of a lot of competition.
Wow, I love chatting with you. So interesting, so interesting. So the book is called Tell No One. Brendan Watkins is the man. He's a gun, He's a fucking treasure. He probably I probably shouldn't swear because I feel like he doesn't swear.
How do people I swear plenty, but when I talk about the god stuff.
Yeah, he probably yeah, he probably needs to contrived. I can imagine how you go for your life. But if only I had that self restraint, You're a better man than I youngered in as my mum would say. How do people apart from your book? Is there any way that people can connect with you? Do you want to be connected with email, social media, home address, personal phone number? Just kidding and.
Look, everything hangs off my website, so Brendan Watkins dot com. There's a fair bit of information there. A lot of people want information about academic research that have backed things up, or where to go for help or who to speak to, and a lot of social media content is there, and of course a lot of people want to go there to find links to buy the book, and there's there's media there. So the ID Day at ABC Compass program, which in eight or nine months ago has gone up on YouTube and gone international. So the combination of I view and the episode about children are prest I did with Compasses somewhere around two and a half million views, So you know, I'm getting a lot of contact from people all over the world. But yeah, everything, if people want to follow things is through Brendan. What cans stock com on? Are you?
And if you're a Catholic priest and you want Brendan to come and talk at your church, just give us your shout out. I'm sure you'll be super welcome. Make hey, thank you so much. We'll say goodbye, affair, but appreciate you so much for being on the You project. And Tiff, thanks for hooking us up. What a good get that.
He's pretty a legend, isn't he?
He s he goes all right, doesn't he? I thought it'd be more damaged. I'm more damaged than him. That's fucking disappointing. Thanks Brandon, good on you.
Thanks great, Thanks Ti, thank you
