Almost Good Catholics

At age 22, Sydney’s Bennett’s brain stopped communicating with her body correctly; she was suffering from Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a condition in which the nervous system stops sending or interpreting signals the right way. Suddenly this bright, beautiful, college girl, recently married, was having seizures, numbness, difficulty moving. Soon she needed a cane, then a wheelchair. But...

Monica Snyder is the executive director of Secular Pro Life and makes the case for the value of human life from conception based on empirical biology and not on revealed religion. She’s also an atheist, statistically the demographic category most in favor of abortion. Abortion is about as contentious a political topic as we have. It’s also one where we often talk past each other. We don’t even agr...

When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some help. His uncle and aunt in Denver connected him with their pastor in Denver, Father Scott Bailey, who became an advisor to the project. He talks about the process and the big questions of this movie with me. (And I admit: I hated the beginning and sto...

As we move into Holy Week, the Triduum, Easter and its season, all Christians ask themselves ‘what is this all about?’ and why God created such and elaborate salvific economy that relies on our faith and His actions. Why? There’s a great Mystery here and the more we appreciate its size and depth, even if we don’t understand what we are seeing. Anne Blackwill and I have been talking about doing thi...

“The movie is a prayer,” says Brian Zahnd, about Terrence Mallick’s 2011 The Tree of Life, his favorite movie of all time. Brian has seen it forty times (I have seen it three times); Brian has taken his pastoral team from his Missouri Church to see it; he has shown it to his Congregation in Church. The film follows a family in Texas in the 1950s. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are the parents; the...

Following Pope Leo’s State of the World Address in January of 2026, the three American Cardinals who are also diocesan archbishops Cardinal Cupich (Archbishop of Chicago), Cardinal McElroy (Archbishop of Washington), and Cardinal Tobin (Archbishop of Newark)—in addition to Archbishop Broglio, the pastor of the US military—have been reminding the people of the United States that the American govern...

Father Ron Rolheiser’s new book Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years, which is about how to grow old well and be fruitful, first giving your life away and then your death so as to be a blessing. That’s a recipe for joy. We also talked about mysticism, St. John of the Cross, and some miraculous experiences in real people’s lives that reveal God abiding and deep love, mercy, and...

Before the Scientific Revolution, Western medicine was thought in terms of humors: cheerful people were sanguine and had a lot of blood, fiery cholerics had an excess of yellow bile, gloomy Melancholics had black bile, and mellow phlegmatics had phlegm of course. And the balancing of humors—hot and cold, wet and dry—was the key to a healthy life. It sounds medieval, it is, rooted in ancient Greeks...

Bishop Daniel talks like a Texas Protestant in terms of Church Planting and giving your heart to Christ, but actually he is a bishop in the Orthodox Church in India where his father was born. His native village close to where the Apostle Thomas landed almost two thousand years ago. But Bishop Daniel is not part of the old Malankar Syriac Church in India, but of the Believers Eastern Church founded...

Vatican journalist Colleen Dulle discusses her new book, Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter, a memoir of the last seven years. In 2018, she started for the Jesuit Review, America Magazine, and that was when all of the terrible revelations of sexual abuse scandals, lies and coverups, about [former cardinal, later defrocked] Theodore McCarrick became the main story,...

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows,” wrote King David in Psalm 23. The overflowing cup is the image that Gisela Kreglinger uses when talking about the abundance and extravagance of God’s provision for His children. Gisela Kreglinger is the daughter of winemakers and grew up on a vineyard and winery in Franconia, Germany, wher...

The authors and editors of a new edited volume, Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice: A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counselors, and Ministerial Leaders, represent a tremendous knowledge and experience in theology, philosophy, history, and social politics, and apply it to help us sort how to think about and talk about the recent wave of transgenderism in society and especially among young people...

Vatican Reporter Christopher White has just written book about Pope Leo XIV, our new Holy Father, an American, an Augustinian, from Chicago, from Perú; it’s a biography, but it also places Pope Leo in the Context of the Second Vatican Council, the legacy of Leo XIII and especially his predecessor Pope Francis and the synodal church of the last few years, and that was a show to which Chris White ha...

David Bonagura teaches classical languages and theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York and Catholic International University; he also teaches high school kids. He invited them to ask their questions about the faith, which led to some exciting classroom discussions and David’s new book—100 Tough Questions for Catholics—which we are talking about today. David Bonagura’s website. David Bonagura...

For the transcendental and numinous things, sometimes there are no words. But art—paintings, sculpture, music, film—can knock us sideways a little and help us see something, or understand a fleeting meaning, a dream we’ve woken from, that we try to hang onto. He was a successful Wall Street investment guy for decades, but he had a deep love of art and art history; after brush with death and a re-c...

“And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling [.…] And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” (Mk 4: 37-41) Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, has identified the chal...

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate scoffed at Jesus (Jn 18:38), and that’s how we think about matters today in our culture—subjectively: my truth, your truth, etc. To make the argument that there is a knowable Truth (with a capital T) that is written in the world and in our bones, theologians Deborah Savage and Robert Fastiggi examine a selection of autobiographical accounts of ‘lived experience.’ Th...

In his most recent book, Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (Georgetown UP, 2024), Jesuit scholar and Georgetown professor, Fr David Hollenbach explains the Judeo-Christian roots of our concept of human rights and the contributions of secular institutions like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). He explains further when it is right for a...

Cristofer Pereyra is the founder and CEO of the Tepeyac Leadership Initiative (TLI) and was a friend and follower of Bishop Thomas Olmsted (who was instrumental in restoring of Paul Zucarelli from the dead, the subject of our last two episodes). Cristofer talks about his collaboration with Bishop Olmsted, whom he considers a saint, and about the book he wrote about this holy man. He also talks abo...

This is my second conversation with Paul Zucarelli who died in 2017 and returned from the dead through the intercessory prayer of Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix and the faith of his family. Since his resurrection, he has been serving God as a lay evangelist. In the earlier interview, we talked about his new book, One Lord, One Faith, One Church: An Inconvenient Truth, in which he made a strong c...

Paul Zucarelli died in 2017 and returned from the dead through the intercessory prayer of Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix and the faith of his family. Since his resurrection, he has been serving God as a lay evangelist. His new book, One Lord, One Faith, One Church: An Inconvenient Truth, makes a strong apologetic case for the authority of the Roman Catholic church. He goes into supernatural evid...

Reanne Newquist tells me about her voyage on Mercy Ships bringing healthcare to some of the poorest people in the world, a mission started by Don Stephens in the 1970s and encouraged by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Reanne, her husband, and her kids left everything behind, sold their home and sailed off to adventure and service. Most people go back to normal life, but Reann stayed on with Mercy...

Dann Aungst was pretty far gone in his sexual addiction when Jesus grabbed him (figuratively) by the lapels and sent him (literally) messengers, a letter, and a locution during Adoration. He left the road of destruction and chaos and found himself on the road to purity. He then founded his apostolate (which he called The Road to Purity) after writing his inspired, From One Addict to Another. He ta...

Dale Ahlquist is the founder the of the Society of G. K. Chesterton and Chesterton Schools, of which there are currently 70 and number is rising. He is also the editor of the book we are talking about today, Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching, from Sophia Press, which explores the economic and social questions of how we should organize out society. It is a third way, I think, that d...

What would you do in the place of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter in 1943? Mumble your loyalty oath to Hitler like everyone else—or refuse and pay with your life? This martyr is a blessed in the Catholic Church and on the way to being canonized. He is also the subject of a transcendentally beautiful movie A Hidden life by Terrence Mallick in 2019. Pastor Brian Zahnd, author of the Wood Between...