A Resounding Yes!

Belle Meade sits down with Haley Stewart, Catholic convert and author of The Sister Seraphina Mysteries, to talk about the fourth book in the series, The Secret of the Starkworthing Rubies. Haley shares how saying yes to openness to life led her into the Church, and why she believes children deserve beautiful images and vocabulary that stretches them. Along the way, she explains why every book in...

Belle Meade welcomes Dr. John Cuddeback, who has taught philosophy at Christendom College for 30 years, to discuss his newest book, The Intentional Household. The ordinary activities that once filled the home have left it, Dr. John argues, and families have to bring them back on purpose. He also makes the case for drawing grandparents back into family life. What We Talk About: Why Dr. John points...

Belle Meade welcomes Michele Sagarino, president of Cross Catholic Outreach, a Catholic relief and development ministry that works through the local Church to serve the world’s poorest communities. Michele tells the story of the mission trip that set her on this path, and of the 2013 dinner conversation that became Box of Joy. That program is now closing in on its millionth Christmas gift. What We...

Belle Meade sits down with Knox Thames, a human rights lawyer who spent twenty years advocating for religious freedom in the U.S. government and now leads the Everett Center for Global Religious Freedom at Dallas Baptist University. Their conversation centers on Blood and Water, the graphic novel Knox produced about his late friend Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic cabinet minister in Pakistan who was...

Belle Meade welcomes Thomas Curry, a mostly retired physician from Port St. Joe, Florida, to talk about his faith journey and his novel Miss Sally's Son. Raised Methodist, Thomas shares how his wife led him into the Catholic Church and how questions about Thomas Merton's life became the seed of a story about a lawyer searching for his father and his lost faith. It took him thirty years,...

Belle Meade welcomes Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress, O.P. back to A Resounding Yes to talk about the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage on Saturday, September 26, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. Fr. Joseph-Anthony is the Promoter of the Holy Rosary for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph.  In this episode, he explains why the rosary is the Dominican patri...

Belle Meade talks with Corinna Turner, a Catholic novelist and lay Dominican who has been writing since she was fourteen and now has more than thirty books behind her, including the Carnegie Medal–nominated I Am Margaret series. The conversation covers why she trusts a story to carry truth further than an argument will, and how she writes danger and violence without ever making them graphic. She a...

Belle Meade sits down with Jenny duBay, an author and trauma-informed Catholic coach, to talk about her debut novel World Between Worlds, a fictional retelling of the early life of St. Catherine of Siena. Jenny traces how a passing reference to Catherine in a secular history book pulled her back into the Catholic faith after years away from the Church, and shares stories from years of research and...

Belle Meade sits down with Sister Betty Ann McNeil, D.C., a Daughter of Charity and former provincial archivist who edited the second edition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Spiritual Portrait . Sister Betty Ann has been telling Elizabeth Seton's story for fifty years, since winning a place as one of the youngest Daughters of Charity sent to Rome for the canonization in 1975. What We Talk Abo...

Christina Sabo and co-host Fr. John Johnson welcome veteran astronaut and planetary scientist Dr. Tom Jones, who flew four space shuttle missions and made three spacewalks helping build the International Space Station. Tom traces the yeses that carried a fourth grader's dream all the way to the launch pad, and tells the story of the Sunday in April 1994 when three Catholic astronauts received...

Christina Sabo talks with writer, editor, and publicist Brian O'Neel about SaintsTombs.com, the twenty-three-year project that maps where servants of God, venerables, blesseds, and saints are buried across 133 countries. Brian traces it back to a 2003 trip to Rome, where he visited the tomb of Saint Monica without knowing that Venerable Giuseppe Minocchio lay beneath a small square of black m...

Steve Walton is an author, former Army Ranger, father of four, and grandfather of five. Steve joins Belle Meade to talk about converting to Catholicism at fifteen, a career built on writing, and his new board book, Loving God: A Mass Book for Little Hands .  Steve describes finding illustrator Claudia Corrales in Savannah, why he set out to make the Mass book he never found as a young parent, and...

Belle Meade welcomes Fr. Carter Griffin for a conversation about chastity as the power to love well rather than a list of restrictions. Fr. Carter is a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, a former Navy line officer, and the author of Reclaimed: Win the War of Freedom, Self-Mastery, and Holy Purity .  Fr. Carter recounts his conversion at Princeton, the four years at sea that shaped how he und...

Christina Sabo is joined by co-hosts Fr. Kevin Braski and Belle Meade for a conversation with Catholic evangelist, author, and speaker Tanner Kalina about his new book, All Your Heart: How to Live for Christ Without Holding Back . Tanner traces the yes that took him from chasing acting and comedy in Los Angeles to campus ministry in Colorado, then opens the question at the center of his book: what...

Guest host Belle Meade welcomes Catholic author, speaker, and Notre Dame campus minister Meg Hunter-Kilmer to talk about her own everyday yes and her new twelve-week Bible study, Who Is Jesus? Discovering Christ in the Gospels , published by Ave Maria Press. Along the way she shares the moment a familiar parable broke her open in the middle of Mass and why she thinks fifteen minutes a day of silen...

Guest host Kaylee Stoll sits down with Father Tony Stephens, CPM, rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, for a conversation about his own yes to God and the only Church-approved Marian apparition in the United States. From a farm in western Kansas to the Fathers of Mercy, Father Tony traces the series of yeses that shaped his vocation, then tells the story of Adele Brice, the 1859...

This episode is a re-air. Jeff Cavins never planned any of it. A confirmation Bible at thirteen, a stack of colored markers and a sheet of butcher paper at twenty-six, and a habit of walking through whatever door opened. That is how the Great Adventure Bible Timeline was born and how a former Protestant pastor became one of the most recognized voices in Catholic media. In this conversation, Jeff t...

Father Augustine Wetta, O.S.B. —Benedictine monk, teacher, surfer, and former professional juggler—joins the show to talk about Georges Bernanos's classic novel Diary of a Country Priest and the new unabridged translation that restores it to its full power.  Along the way he traces his own half-hearted, failure-strewn "yes" to God : riding waves at the beach that inspired Jaws, bles...

Lisa Hendey, founder of CatholicMom.com and bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction for adults and children, joins the show to share her own yes to the Lord and discuss Chime Travelers — the animated children's series based on her beloved books. Geared toward ages six to eleven, the series follows twins Katie and Patrick as they travel back in time to walk alongside saints like Saint Pat...

Steve Hemler traded a 33-year engineering career —including 13 years living inside a gated oil compound in Saudi Arabia— for full-time Catholic ministry , and the journey shaped everything he now teaches. In this conversation with Kaylee, he unpacks the apologetics gap in how most Catholics were formed, explains the "stages of faith" research behind his work, and shares how his newest bo...

Michael Iskander plays David in Prime Video's House of David—but his real story begins with a restless search for truth that led him, step by step, to a breakfast with a priest and an answer he couldn't give lightly: yes. Christina is joined by co-host Fr. John R. Johnson, STL to walk through Michael's conversion, his calling to play David, and what his journey reveals about the kin...

E.P. Cowley is a retired homeschooling mother and author living in southern British Columbia whose debut novel, Tales from Wakken Wood , published by Ignatius Press, draws on the folklore of the Isle of Man to tell an enchanted story of courage, virtue, and wonder. In this conversation with Kaylee Stoll—part of the Tolkien and Lewis series—E.P. shares how entering the Catholic Church transformed h...

Andrew Swafford, professor of theology at Benedictine College and author of Next Stop: The Afterlife , joins us to explore how C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce illuminates the reality of heaven, hell, and purgatory and why every ordinary choice we make is quietly shaping our eternal destiny. Andrew also shares the pivotal yes that changed his own life: a football scholarship to Benedictine Coll...

Kaitlyn Facista is the founder of Tea with Tolkien , an online community celebrating the life, writings, and Catholic faith of J.R.R. Tolkien and the author of Into the Heart of Middle-earth , published by Ave Maria Press. In this episode, she shares her journey from Protestant roots to Catholicism , how Tolkien's fiction was woven into her conversion story, and why the spiritual depth of Mid...

In this episode of A Resounding Yes!, Christina Sabo and co-host Franci Revel Eckensberger welcome back the internationally acclaimed Catholic author and literary biographer Joseph Pearce for a rich conversation on imagination, conversion, and the Marian threads woven through the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  What We Talk About: How Joseph Pearce's journey from neo-Nazi politics to...