Controversies in Church History

Hello friends! The latest episode episode of Controversies in Church History is a replay of what was originally a patron-only episode for patrons on Patreon, which I now make available to everyone. In it, I take a look at a work of history written nearly a hundred years ago, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, by Lucien Febvre, a French historian who published his book during the dar...

The latest episode of Controversies in Church History is an interview with James Green, a Catholic teacher and writer. James has penned a series of articles at his Substack taking a closer look at the data on vocations, church attendance and other data on key indicators in the Catholic Church before and since the Second Vatican Council. In our discussion, which is a long one, we look at the impact...

Originally a bonus episode for patrons of the podcast, this episode takes a look at some of Charles De Gaulle's recorded opinions concerning the Second Vatican Council. De Gaulle led the Free French forces during WWII and served ten years as president of France (1958-1968). De Gaulle had a keen political sense and his comments on Vatican II are both interesting but also prescient. Enjoy.

The latest episode is a walk-through of what yours truly has been the past year (or so), and gives an update on upcoming episodes and their content (hint: there will be new episodes and they will be awesome). Cheers!

Hello everyone! Controversies in Church History is back after a long hiatus, and we are bringing you an episode about two popes: Pius IX and Francis. We dive into the question of whether the centralization of power in the papacy that began under Pius IX (1848-1878) led to the reign of the late Pope Francis (2013-2025), and whether Pius IX can be said to be responsible for it. Also, I update the st...

Hello everyone. The 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea is upon us, and we are pleased to present you with an interview on the subject. Ben Wyatt is an author, podcaster, and Episcopal priest, who has recently published his first book, Christ and the Council: Conflict, Politics, Theology, and the Outrageous, Extraordinary Story of the Church’s First Creed. In the course of our interv...

In the latest episode, I take a deeper look at a recent controversy. Two Catholic scholars recent wrote an article in Commonweal Magazine comparing Traditionalist Catholics--those who attend the Latin Mass--to a heresy known as "Jansenism." In this short episode, I talk about why this comparison does not hold, but is actually a polemical use of history designed to smear Traditionalists....

In the late 2nd century AD, a Christian convert from Phrygia (modern Turkey) named Montanus began experiencing visions and speaking in tongues, which he believed were the Holy Spirit speaking through him. Soon he was joined by two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, who experienced the same ecstatic episodes. Montanus and his followers believed he was a prophet, called to lead Christians back to their...

With the election of Pope Leo XIV, we move into a new papal reign, and in this brief episode, I share a few thoughts about the new pontiff, the challenges he will face, and musings on the larger historical context of those challenges. Cheers!

Our latest episode continues our discussion on the cult of the saints, but this time focusing on one of its more controversial aspects: the veneration of relics. In this episode, I talk about what the veneration of relics entails, how it emerged from the cult of the martyrs, and the evidence for its practice among early Christians. I also describe how by the sixth century, belief in the powers of...

Controversies in Church History is back! This time, I interview the husband and wife team of Joseph and Monique Gonzalez about their book, Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy: How God Prepared the Americas for Conversion Before the Lady Appeared. In our interview, they discuss the history and culture of the peoples of Mexico prior to the Spanish conquest, and how certain aspects of their cultu...

Hello! This is just a brief update on what's cooking for Controversies in Church History. Please take a listen, I have some good things in store for my followers. Cheers!

When did the early Christians begin to seek the intercession of particularly holy people, such as the martyrs? Was this something they copied from Greco-Roman society? In the latest episode of Controversies in Church History, we take a look at the origins of the cult of the saints. In it, I discuss when and how the early Christians began to venerate Christian martyrs, and the evidence of this prac...

Hello! I thought I would drop a short, unscripted episode about something that has been on my mind recently, namely, elites. Inspired by an embarrassing situation in the Catholic Church in England, I muse on the theory of "elite overproduction" and how it might apply to the Protestant Reformation. Which means I geek out over the numbers of universities founded in late medieval Europe. If...

In this episode of Controversies in Church History, we tackle the subject of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors waged a campaign against the veneration of sacred images, destroying them and persecuting their defenders. Despite this, the practice persisted, and eventually supporters of icons proved victorious and the veneration of images was en...

Controversies in Church History returns to its ongoing series on the Latinization of the Eastern Churches. The tenth installment deals with the trials of the Armenian Catholic Church, which faced persecution within the Ottoman Empire but also suspicion from Rome, which led to a brief schism in the 1870s. Along the way we discuss the wider context of the Ottoman Empire, Vatican I and the calamity o...

Controversies in Church History is back! The first episode of 2025 is a review of the books I've been reading the past year, featuring some interesting works on theology and liturgy with a side dollop of nothing-to-do-with-Catholicism-in-particular. If you like hearing someone's else's opinions about books you've never read, this is the episode for you. Also, I preview upcoming epi...

This episode is a special one, as I present you with a Controversies in Church History interview, normally reserved for patrons of the podcast. Here is our interview author and apologist Erick Ybarra. We discuss his book The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox, the state of the evidence for papal claims in the first millennium and much more. Enjoy!

Just a brief preview of some upcoming events I am involved in the next month or so, including the next Controversies in Church History interview. Cheers!

The latest episode of Controversies in Church History takes a look at the early 19th century writer and apologist Francois Rene Chateaubriand (1768-1848), and his work, The Genius of Christianity. Often considered one of the first "Romantic" authors, we will take a look at Chateaubriand's life and background and how it shaped his approach to arguing for the truth of the Catholic fait...

Hello! The latest episode in our series on the Latinization of the Eastern Catholic Churches is now available. In this episode, we take a broad look at the policy of the papacy toward the Eastern Churches--both Catholic and Orthodox--from the reign of Pius IX to the death of Pius XII. The episode discusses how the centralization of authority in the Vatican during the 19th century affected the East...

The latest episode of Controversies in Church History covers a curious topic and debate among academics. Why are modern Western societies so different from other civilizations? Why are they WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) when so much of the world is not? In this episode, we take a look at the thesis that the medieval Church's prohibitions on marriage paved the way...

Hello everyone! The latest installment in our series on the Latinization of the Eastern Churches is now available to all of our listeners. In it, we discuss the conflict between the Latin rite bishops of the United States in the late nineteenth century and the immigrant clergy of the Ruthenian Catholic Church, which resulted in the defection of tens of thousands of Ruthenian Catholics to Orthodoxy...

The latest Catholic Lives episode, in which we look at notable non-saints in Catholic history, delves into the brief life of Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (1174-1185). Famous for contracting leprosy when he was a child, he fought multiple battles with the Muslim emir Saladin, and successfully protected the kingdom while he lived. Face with particularly difficult personal, political and diplomatic...

Hello! The latest episode of the podcast is now available. Last year I did a "what I've been reading episode" and the feedback was in favor of a repeat, so here we go. In this episode, I recount the ten best books I have read this year, from poetry to history and liturgy. Enjoy! Books Covered: 1. John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Poetry   2. Byung Chul-Han, The Disappeara...