Adam Minihan and David Niles hosted a conversation this week on The Catholic Man Show that went places most podcast interviews don't. Vocational discernment. The order of prayer that Bishop Thomas Paprocki stressed for me. Building a Catholic company while a corporate paycheck was still coming in. A back-pew moment before Mass. And the pillar of fatherhood that most men never learn to name.
The episode ran deep because Adam and Dave went deep.
Bishop Paprocki's order
Early in the conversation, Adam asked how a man knows when to take a real vocational leap. The answer came from our bishop.
Pray for clarity first. Then pray for courage. Keep them in that order.
Most men flip the order. They pray for courage before they have clarity, charge into a decision without knowing whether it's the right one, and end up brave about the wrong thing.
Bishop Paprocki's counsel is simpler and harder. Do the discernment first. Sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Ask the Lord to make the direction clear. Only then ask for courage - because courage without clarity is recklessness.
That order shaped the years leading up to the leap into Domus Formation. Not one dramatic moment. Years of clarity-seeking, nights and weekends of building, and a conviction that eventually became strong enough to act on.
The board of directors
When the clarity finally landed, the next step wasn't announcing it. It was taking the plan to the household.
Domus Formation had a business plan before it had a launch. A real one - runway, revenue model, timing. And the plan went to the board of directors: my wife and our sons. They asked questions. They weighed in. They gave the yes together.
That's not corporate language forced onto family life. That's the domestic church actually functioning as governance. A husband doesn't decide alone. A father doesn't decide alone. The household decides together, and the head of the household is responsible for making sure the decision serves the household.
Adam and Dave named this as one of the parts of the conversation they wanted men to hear. Because most men skip this step and pay for it later.
The back pew
But the moment underneath everything was one that happened in a back pew before a Mass.
I had prayed the calculations - the runway, the timeline, the risks. I had asked the Lord for reassurance that if I made the leap I could keep providing for my family. That was the ask. Please still let me be the provider.
The answer came back plainly:
"You've never been the one who provided. I've always been the one who provided."
Adam called it the whole episode in one line. And he was right. Every man who has ever calculated whether he can afford to serve the Lord has calculated wrong, because the calculation was based on a lie the man was telling himself about who was actually providing.
Matthew 6 tells us that if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all we need will be provided. Not that we should figure out our provision first and then serve. That we should serve first, and trust the provision to the One who is actually providing.
The back pew question was answered by Jesus in a way I didn't know I was really asking. And the leap into Domus Formation followed.
The Establish pillar
The back half of the conversation was fatherhood - and specifically, the pillar of fatherhood that most men can name least clearly.
Every Catholic father knows Protect. Every Catholic father knows Provide. Those two, we teach and we understand.
Establish is the hard one.
Establish is the pillar of raising a son or daughter to be able to walk on their own. It's the pillar of teaching him to stand as a Catholic man in a world that doesn't want him to. It's the pillar of preparing him for the moment when he leaves your home and becomes what you have been raising him to be.
And it's the pillar that most of us have to learn without an example, because our own fathers didn't know how to do it. The father wound is real, and it isn't self-pity - it's the accumulated cost of generations of men trying to be good fathers with no template to copy.
Our son Matthew is at Air Force basic training right now. He's our second son who has "moved away", but the first so far and without as much contact. I'm learning what Establish actually feels like in real time. Every letter I write him is an Establish letter. Every prayer is an Establish prayer. The office of fatherhood doesn't end when a son leaves; it changes.
Please pray for Matthew.
The way through
Adam asked, near the end, what men can do who never had a father to copy.
Be a good husband first. The father will follow.
Every good father is a good husband first. Every man who loves his wife well is teaching his sons how a Catholic man loves. Every man who honors his wife is teaching his sons what to expect from themselves. The domestic church is not primarily built through fathering - it's built through marriage, and fathering flows from that.
For men who didn't have that example - the way in is the same. Love your wife. Be present to your household. Pray with your family daily. Show up in the ordinary moments. The rest is inheritance you can leave your sons, whether or not you inherited it yourself.
Grateful
Adam and Dave gave two hours of real space to a real conversation. I'm grateful for both of them, for the audience of Catholic men The Catholic Man Show has built, and for the Minihans' hospitality in Tulsa this week (including gooey butter bars that Suzanne sent out with me).
Listen to the full episode on The Catholic Man Show website, or in your favorite podcast app.
In fieri. Ad alta.
Deacon Michael Halbrook
Founder, Domus Formation
Please pray for our son Matthew, currently at Air Force basic training.