Matt Fradd

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Mark Cobuzzi@AquinasPupilMC73

November 10, 2024

Pop-Cultured Catholic #18: Playing One’s Given Role in God’s Theo-Drama… Or OwlKitty’s Mashups

Halloween season has been a prime opportunity for my series to delve into dark, complex, and macabre subject matter, and now it is over. To provide a 180-degree shift away from that tone, I have decided to focus on something simple, silly, and adorable for today… a popular cat named Lizzy… better known by her YouTube stage name, OwlKitty.

The story begins with Licorice, a stray cat taken into foster care, after she was found flea-bitten, malnourished… and pregnant with kittens. While rehabilitating, Licorice soon got the attention of one particular couple, Tibo Charroppin and Olivia Boone, who have already owned a cat and were ready to adopt another one. And on March 3rd, 2017, Licorice had finally given birth to a litter of six kittens. The couple especially took interest in one of her kittens, the black-colored one named Lizzy. While Licorice was adopted by another household, Tibo and Olivia got to bring home Lizzy, who eventually formed a mutual bond with their current cat named Juliette. Soon, Tibo would put his video recording and editing skills to good use, creating a library of videos starring Lizzy.

The turning point began when the owners of Licorice’s kitten, Lizzy, got the idea to make a video mashup, where Lizzy replaces one of the Velociraptors in the “Jurassic Park” film’s iconic kitchen scene. Using a combination of green screens, video editing, and cat toys to coach Lizzy, the “Purrassic Park” mashup was made. Due to Lizzy’s appearance, she was also given the nickname of “OwlKitty”. Soon, the 14-second parody went viral.

From that one brief “Jurassic Park” parody video starring Lizzy, a whole series of OwlKitty videos spawned. The repertoire grew from adding Lizzy to short clips of films, shows, and video games into making full parody trailers starring her, complete with supplementary “Behind the Scenes” videos. The production value grew to the point of Tibo sometimes inserting dubbed dialogue, clips of himself, other props, and even a “stunt double” for Lizzy. OwlKitty soon got to fight alongside the Avengers against Thanos, board the Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio, clash with Godzilla as a kaiju-sized version of herself, snatch the fly buzzing around Mike Pence’s head, terrorize Amity Island in “Jaws”, pilot fighter jets with Tom Cruise, become the true culprit of “Paranormal Activity”, face down Gandalf as he commands she shall not pass, join the roster of a Super Smash Bros. game, and so on. She even got to revisit “Jurassic Park” and get promoted to the role of the Tyrannosaurus rex. As of now, the OwlKitty channel has 2.53 million subscribers.

While reading the comment sections for these videos, there has been one recurring comment I can paraphrase, which caused a silly theological analogy to cross my mind: “That cat is a superstar and she doesn’t even know it”. As far as Lizzy understands, all she is doing is just being a cat, playing with various toys, hanging out in front of a green blanket, and following her owner’s coaching. It is Lizzy’s owner, Tibo, who takes the actions he coaches out of her, then uses his knowledge, his abilities, and other collaborating “actors” far beyond her understanding to yield a bigger picture. That is, one more amazing than she can possibly comprehend… yet starring exactly her. Yet, if these OwlKitty videos were also being written, casted, directed, and produced by the cat herself, with no input from her owner, then they would be not only vastly inferior, but utterly nonexistent.

Over the years of watching Bishop Robert Barron’s videos, one of the recurring motifs I have seen is his distinction between God’s “theo-drama” versus an individual person’s “ego-drama”. Bishop Barron has used the latter words to describe the common tendency of many people to approach life as a play they are not only starring in, but also writing, casting, directing, and producing all on their own. People like Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar have coined the term “theo-drama”, to illustrate the potential roles each person can act out in the bigger play that God is writing, casting, directing, and producing. If one thinks the difference in knowledge, intellect, creative vision, and resources between Lizzy the cat and her owners is vast, then imagine the difference in such qualities between God and regular humans. In a way, one can state that each person is still being offered their own unique starring role, which God can work into the broader “cinematic universe” he envisions. And the “genres” that God is enabling us to star in include countless others besides parodic comedy shorts. Yet in our limited knowledge and perception, all we can see around us are the mere “green screens”, “props”, “laser pointers” coaxing our actions, etc. We see those with no ability to fully comprehend how it will all look, once God brings together the other cast members' performances, the visual effects in post-production, and so on. Perhaps a human clinging to his own “ego-drama”, with a presumption that it will automatically be the greatest work for him to star in, would be partly akin to Lizzy the cat trying to be a better YouTube superstar by her own ideas and skills, without any of her owner’s direction, creativity, abilities, and resources.

Finally, I have always liked Bishop Barron’s take on the meaning of Matthew 18 Verses 1-5. That excerpt from the Gospels read: “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’”. Granted, we are not meant to specifically be like children, in the sense that we keep our intellectual capacity low and underdeveloped compared to an adult's. Rather, Bishop Barron has offered this as one of the potential explanations: “Children are like plants, rocks, and flowers in this sense: they don’t know how to be something that they are not. They haven’t yet learned to lie, dissemble, pretend, or to seek to be someone they are not meant to be. We are all, right now, being created by God for God’s purposes. Childlike joy returns to us the moment we put aside all our games of self-promotion and self-deception and live in accord with God’s deepest desire for us”. For that matter, I guess the Bishop could just as easily liken children to Lizzy the cat. She just behaves as the creator naturally made her to behave, remains receptive to the creative guidance of someone higher than her, and can let said someone fill in the rest to create a very good show, far better than any that she could envision purely on her own.

The first two supplementary videos will feature the adoption story of Lizzy, who would become the OwlKitty, as well as one of Bishop Barron's talk on the ego-drama versus theo-drama. Following that, I will include links to a large sample of OwlKitty mashups and "Behind the Scenes" videos which entertained me...

1.) "OwlKitty: The Adoption Story"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E-8DsGrpb0

2.) "Give Up the Ego-Drama! — Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x_blFDePJY

20 OwlKitty Mashups and "Behind the Scenes" videos...

1.) "Jurassic Park - Starring my cat" (debut video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYZ6YNg_1OQ

2.) "Making Purrassic Park!" (debut video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An5-RXCHTJ8

3.) "Jurassic Park but with a Cat" (T-Rex Breakout)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W85oD8FEF78

4.) "Jurassic Park with a Cat — Behind the Scenes" (T-Rex Breakout)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIoMT1WX4U

5.) "Titanic with a Cat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEPfM3jSoBw

6.) "Titanic with a Cat (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONgEvIuyVtE

7.) "Godzilla vs. Cat (OwlKitty Parody)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7GsKFepDg

8.) "Godzilla vs. OwlKitty (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V29BO4UR2mc

9.) "CLAWS! (Jaws OwlKitty parody)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmKfpKM8bw

10.) "Jaws + Cat (OwlKitty Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAa0XYLCKXA

11.) "Avengers Endgame with my cat OwlKitty"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYr0hGFzU2I

12.) "The Shining + My cat (HD)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIkxDXyNgAU

13.) "Lord of the Rings + My Cat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mf06IwdpVM

14.) "Lord of the Rings + OwlKitty (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDer-LnEOXA

15.) "Top Gun with a Cat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3rQ3328Tok

16.) "Top Gun with a Cat (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kO8z5fyr8U

17.) "Smash Bros with a Cat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35MNFLkSyf0

18.) "Super Smash Bros. + ‪@OwlKitty‬ (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9ZqJVXcrY

19.) "Purranormal Activity (with my cat OwlKitty)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEqJjzN4J7s

20.) "Cat vs. Debate Fly (Behind the Scenes)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrjLIytek6o

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In their eagerness to proclaim the unity of God and man in Christ, some heretics went to the opposite extreme and taught that not only was there one person, but also a single nature, in God and man. This error took its rise from Arius. To defend his position that those scriptural passages where Christ is represented as being inferior to the Father, must refer to the Son of God Himself, regarded in His assuming nature, Arius taught that in Christ there is no other soul than the Word of God who, he maintained, took the place of the soul in Christ’s body. Thus when Christ says, in John 14:28, “The Father is greater than I,” or when He is introduced as praying or as being sad, such matters are to be referred to the very nature of the Son of God. If this were so, the union of God’s Son with man would be effected not only in the person, but also in the nature. For, as we know, the unity of human nature arises from the union of soul and body.

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RESTORATION OF MAN BY GOD THROUGH THE INCARNATION

We indicated above that the reparation of human nature could not be effected either by Adam or by any other purely human being. For no individual man ever occupied a position of pre-eminence over the whole of nature; nor can any mere man be the cause of grace. The same reasoning shows that not even an angel could be the author of man’s restoration. An angel cannot be the cause of grace, just as he cannot be man’s recompense with regard to the ultimate perfection of beatitude, to which man was to be recalled. In this matter of beatitude angels and men are on a footing of equality. Nothing remains, therefore, but that such restoration could be effected by God alone.

But if God had decided to restore man solely by an act of His will and power, the order of divine justice would not have been observed. justice demands satisfaction for sin. But God cannot render satisfaction, just as He cannot merit. Such a service pertains to one who ...

Matt Fradd@Matt_Fradd

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Meme Monday!

Go! Go! Go!

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sherrilynn78@sherrilynn78

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Matt Fradd@Matt_Fradd

March 27, 2025

Big Chesterton Cigars Event! (Fri 25 April - Sun 27 April)

Join us for an unforgettable weekend of cigars, conversation, music, and meaningful reflection at Chesterton’s Cigars, April 25–27 in Steubenville, OH. From live bands and inspiring lectures to a guided cigar tasting, this event will be a celebration of friendship, faith, and relaxation. I’ll be there, along with Dr. Scott Hahn and other special guests. Whether you come for the theology, the tobacco, or the camaraderie, there’ll be something for everyone. Come raise a glass—and a cigar—with us.

Friday, April 25th, 2025

6:00 PM – Evening Opening Prayer
Fr. Damian Ference will begin the evening with an opening prayer.

6:15 PM – Kickoff Speech by John Walker
John Walker will officially open the event with a speech, reflecting on the spirit of Chesterton’s and the significance of this cigar launch.

6:45 PM - 8:00 PM – Mingling & Cigars
Enjoy an evening of conversation, cigars, and great company as we kick off the weekend.

8:00 PM - 10:00 PM – Jazz Night
A performance by Chesterton’s “House” Jazz Band that performs here on a weekly basis for our popular Jazz Nights. Comprised of all local musicians

10:00 PM - 11:00 PM – Live Music by Emma & David Kruise
A live performance from Emma and David Kruise

11:00 PM - 1:00 AM – open mic/mingling until close

Saturday, April 26th, 2025

8:00 AM – Mass at St. Peter’s
425 N 4th St, Steubenville, OH

9:00 AM – Breakfast, Coffee & Cigars
Featuring the Chesterton Cigar and Coffee from Leonardo’s Coffee House in Steubenville

11:30 AM – Pipe Tobacco & Tin Fish Luncheon
Tins and tins! Enjoy conversation over a pipe and some tinned fish w/ accoutrements

12:30 PM - 3:00 PM - lectures and discussion
Lectures and readings from special guests of Chesterton’s including Joe Grabowski, VP of Evangelization and Mission at the Chesterton Society, John Walker

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM - break

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM – Dinner
Dine at one of Steubenville’s local favorites before the evening’s festivities.

7:00 PM – Evening Prayer and kick-off

7:15 PM - Special guest appearance

7:30 PM – Panel & Tasting Event
A slot dedicated to the story of Chesterton’s founding, the inspiration behind the Pints with Aquinas and Chesterton’s Cigar, and a guided cigar tasting.

Sunday, April 27th, 2025

10:00 AM – Mass at St. Peter’s
Close the weekend with Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Catholic Church.

11:00 AM - 3:00 PM – Brunch & Farewell Gathering
A grand finale to the weekend—join us for raw oysters, Bloody Marys, and other delectable brunch offerings to wrap up the weekend.

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Matt Fradd@Matt_Fradd

March 29, 2025

The Queen and The Witch (A Fairy Tale)

I read fairy tales to my kids all the time, so I figured I’d try writing one myself. I’m a bit embarrassed to share it—I really want it to be good (or at least decent), but I’m not sure it is.

Here’s what I do know: if I don’t post it now, it’ll probably sit in my drafts until I forget it even exists. But if I share it publicly, I’ll have to own it—and that makes it way more likely I’ll keep editing until I’m happy with it, maybe even write more.

So if you’re up for it, I’d love your feedback. Critiques, suggestions, or just letting me know what you liked—it all helps. Thanks for reading.

In a certain kingdom, in a certain land, there lived a boy named Peter. Though the world called him a prince, he cared more for mud puddles and beetles than for gold or grandeur. Each day, he wandered the royal gardens, collecting feathers, following ant trails, and speaking with birds in a language that only he and they knew.

One morning, his mother—the Queen—kissed his brow and knelt to look him in the eyes. She wore her cloak of sapphire and silver, and her voice was steady but kind. “I must go away for three days, my love,” she said. “There are matters in the outer provinces that need my attention. While I’m gone, stay within the garden walls. Speak only with the wind, the birds, and those who belong here. Everything you need is here at home. And above all, do not wander into the dark wood.”

Then she rose, mounted her horse, and rode out through the castle gates, her cloak trailing like a ribbon of blue light.

That first morning, after the Queen had left, Peter found himself near the edge of the royal gardens. The trees of the dark woods stood just beyond the wall, tall and still, their trunks fading into shadow.

He knew he shouldn’t. He could almost hear his mother’s voice: Stay within the garden walls, my love... But the air felt different—cooler, quieter. And then, on the breeze, he heard it: a female voice, low and lilting, like a lullaby she was singing to herself, not meant for anyone to hear.

“Give me your eyes, and I’ll show you the stars.
Give me your heart, and I’ll sing you to sleep.
Give me your name, and you’ll never be hungry again.”

Peter stopped. The voice was soft, but close.

“Who’s there?” he whispered. No one answered. Only the leaves stirred.

His feet moved before he realized—one step, then another, as if the trees were pulling him forward. The garden wall faded behind him. The light dimmed. Shadows thickened. And then, between two trunks, he saw her. Cloaked in sapphire and silver, her face just visible in the dappled gloom. It was her—it had to be. His mother.

“Mother?” he called, relief blooming in his chest. He ran toward her.

She turned and smiled. Her voice was soft and sweet, but it clung to him, sticky and strange.

“Dearest,” she said, bending low, “give me your eyes, and I’ll show you the stars. The world is so dark, and you deserve to see its wonders as I do.”

For a moment, Peter wanted to believe her. But something in her face didn’t sit right, like a song played with one wrong note. Her shadow stretched the wrong way, and her breath smelled of rust.

He froze. The warmth draining from his body.

“You are not my Mother,” he said slowly. “And my Father is the King”

Her face began to blur, like the surface of a pond just after something moved through it. The blue of her cloak faded to dull gray, and her eyes lost their shine, darkening to something flat and cold. Then, without a word, she turned and slipped away into the wind, as if she had never been there at all.

The next morning, Peter sat beneath the old maple tree at the center of the garden, staring at the grass, twisting a fallen leaf between his fingers. “Did I dream it?” he asked aloud. “Did I imagine the woods? The Woman? The song?” The garden made no reply. Maybe he had fallen asleep by the wall. Maybe it had all been a strange sort of dream. He was just starting to believe that—when he heard it again. The same strange tune, drifting from the trees.

“Give me your eyes, and I’ll show you the stars.
Give me your heart, and I’ll sing you to sleep.
Give me your name, and you’ll never be hungry again.”

Before he realized it, Peter had stepped beyond the garden wall, drawn deep into the dark wood—as though his feet belonged to someone else, as though another will entirely guided his steps—until he found himself standing beneath the crooked elm, where she waited. Her silver robe hung limp and wet, her hair tangled with leaf and moss. Her hands were folded, and her voice, when she spoke, was barely more than a breath.

“Poor boy,” she murmured, not looking at him. “Give me your heart, and I’ll sing you to sleep.”

Peter felt drowsiness wash over him, tempting him to surrender—but then he shook himself awake, eyes clearing.

“You are not my mother,” he said firmly, “and my Father is the King.”

The witch's gentle expression twisted into a disappointed frown, and without another word, she faded into the shadows, leaving only silence behind.

On the third day, the witch returned, her enchanting song luring Peter back into the dark forest.

“Give me your eyes, and I’ll show you the stars.
Give me your heart, and I’ll sing you to sleep.
Give me your name, and you’ll never be hungry again.”

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Matt Fradd@Matt_Fradd

March 18, 2025

What the Heck Is Antisemitism, Anyway?

(A Socratic Dialogue)

I recently posted this quotation from Pope Paul VI to Youtube:

“Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

And, oh man, was the feedback fun. Within minutes, I was accused of everything from cozying up to The Daily Wire to desperately chasing subscribers to—and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised—being under the influence of Jewish money.

But one question kept coming up: What is antisemitism? One commenter put it this way:

“How about having a clear definition of what the word means? Is that too much to ask? Because quite frankly, every time I look it up, it's never really clear. Words have meaning. Or at least they should. If the M word for taking a life was used, and someone is accused of it, everyone knows what it means. But imagine it's not clear what it means. And someone out of nowhere accused someone of it, but the definition keeps changing or is not clear—what then?”

Fair enough. So, to help clarify, I’ve written a Socratic dialogue exploring what I antisemitism is—and what it isn’t.

One quick note before you read on—I assure you, I’m writing this in good faith. I know this topic is deeply important to many people, including my fellow Catholics. This article is simply my attempt to articulate what seems obvious to me, not a middle finger at those who disagree.

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