Keep The Faith's Podcast

Dr. John Rao discusses the sealing of the Papal-Frankish Alliance. The years around 750 A.D. were crucial ones for the final sealing of the alliance of Rome and the Carolingian Family. Rome needed a protection from the Lombards which iconoclast emperors in the East could not give. Pippin wanted to be named King of the Franks. St. Isidore of Seville had already provided the argument for what came n...

Father Richard Munkelt discusses the Third and Fourth Century Neo-Platonic environment. The great formative thinker for western Christianity was St. Augustine. Still, St. Augustine did not appear from out of nowhere. Here, Father Richard Munkelt discusses the Third and Fourth Century Neo-Platonic environment, that of Plotinus and his followers in particular, which exercised such a great influence...

Father Richard Munkelt tackles the great issues that moved St. Augustine to conversion and shaped his thinking. Father Richard Munkelt, in the second of three talks, tackles the great issues that moved St. Augustine to conversion and shaped his thinking. Here he discusses the African Doctor's theology of Sin, Grace and Redemption. 

Father Richard Munkelt tackles the great issues that moved St. Augustine to conversion and shaped his thinking. In this third talk on St. Augustine, Father Richard Munkelt develops some of the arguments made in the preceding lecture and answers several of the questions emerging from it. 

Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro speaks on the greatest of Spanish thinkers, St. Isidore of Seville and the glory of the Christian Visigoths. The influence of Visigothic Spain in Ireland, Britain and Gaul was enormous and central to an understanding of how the West could break with submission to the emperors in Constantinople. Hispano-Romans had a great appreciation for Classical Culture, both secular a...

Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro discusses the beginning of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro, who worked in Rome for Human Life International, was an on-the-scene observer of developments in the Vatican. In this talk, he takes a break from historical subjects in order to explore the hopes emerging from the first year of Pope Benedict's reign.

Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro describes the Liturgy in the Early Middle Ages. The liturgy held an enormous appeal for the newly Christian Germans of the Early Middle Ages. Here, Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro discusses developments in liturgical life in the period under discussion.

John Rao speaks of Purification as a Popular Theme, 1914 Onwards. The first of these four talks by Dr. Rao deals with the theme of purification of the social order. That theme was one that became popular in the secular world with the outbreak of the First World War, as though somehow the "beauty" of conflict would purge a decadent society of all its evils. The Papacy also felt that a purification...

John Rao addresses the subject of Competition in the Call for Purification, 1919-1939. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church was not the only voice offering a purification message competing with that of the warmongers. Three others came onto the scene. One of these was that of Soviet Communism, which argued that the victory of the proletariat would cleanse the world of the evils represented in the la...

John Rao discusses how Church Theory is Often Defeated by Church Practice. Papal teaching in the interwar period theoretically confirmed the message of the nineteenth century revival movement regarding how to build the Social Kingship of Christ. This required the recognition of the value of all of nature's "spaces"--that is to say, all of nature's activities--but purgation of their evil use and th...

John Rao talks about the Tendencies Leading to the Abandonment of The Theory of Christ the King. Many Catholics in the interwar period were in practice devoted to Liberalism, Americanism, Fascism, and even Soviet Communist ideas. Others were concerned to understand why the new forces of Fascism and Soviet Communism should be so popularly appealing. At least one form of what became known as Persona...

Jamie Bogle talks about an Example of Social Doctrine in Practice. Salazar, an economist at the University of Coimbra, was called in by the army that took power in Portugal from a virulently anti-Catholic government in the late 1920's in order to put the nation on an even keel once again. Perhaps the most intelligent, far-seeing, and prudent representative of the Catholic social movement from the...

Thomas Cattoi discusses – Two Different Theories Regarding the Mystical Body of Christ. Jacques Maritain was one of the most formative figures of the interwar period, with enormous influence over what came after the Second World War through Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council. Maximus the Confessor was one of the greatest defenders of the Roman Primacy and Catholic doctrine at the time of...

Clemens Cavallin talks about – An Interwar Demonstration of the Postwar Problems of Ecumenism. Nathan Söderblom, the Archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden, was one of the main promoters of Christian ecumenism in the interwar period. This movement, stimulated by battling of missionaries over territories throughout the globe, and horror over the divisions of fellow-believers in the First World War, sought...

Chris Ferrara talks about – The Connection of the Interwar Period with the Reign of Paul VI. G.B. Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was influenced by a number of the pro-democratic and personalist themes discussed by other lecturers, and most especially by Jacques Maritain. He was also interested in liturgical reforms, and his work with FUCI (the Italian Catholic university organization) indicated...

Michael Matt talks about – The Anglican Church's Abandonment of the Moral High Ground and Rome. Despite opposition from its more believing elements, the Anglican Church very clearly began to cede the moral high ground to modernism at the bishops' Lambeth Conference of 1930. Here, the necessary liberal opening to artificial birth control was granted. This then became a major stimulus to the publica...

David Hughes discusses – Music and the Rediscovery of the Real. This talk by David Hughes considers Stravinsky's compositional activity just prior to and just after World I, and examines two things in particular: one, how Stravinsky came to be the most prominent exponent of neoclassical composition in the 1920s and 30s, when he was just a few years beforehand something of a revolutionary enfant te...

Father John Hunwicke talks about the Horror and Hubris of the interwar years that led directly to the evils that are still with us today. The glamorous images of the inter-War period conceal a hubris that feeds directly into a horror which is still with us. The Anglican Modern Churchman's Union advocated Eugenics and the 1930 Lambeth Conference opened the door to an era of ever-expanding sexual im...

Dr. Thomas Pink uses Wilfred Owen's poem 'The Parable of the Old Man and the Young' with its adaptation of the account of Abraham and Isaac to examine how authority has been seen in the twentieth century - looking at various conceptions of authority both ecclesial and secular, especially in the period following WWI, and at the idea of the patriarch (an idea often appealed to in certain political c...

Joe Shaw discusses the seriously destructive consequences of Feminizing the Practice of the Faith. The nineteenth century witnessed one of the greatest of Catholic religious revivals in history, with an impact that was still very strong in the interwar period. This revival was of enormous value in the realm of doctrinal and moral teaching. On the other hand, there were notable aspects of devotiona...

Thomas Stark talks about a distinct Catholic philosopher of the Interwar Period. Aside from being a unique philosopher, Theodor Haecker was a a great translator of both the Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard and of Cardinal John Henry Newman, both of him had a deep impact on his work. It was perhaps his translation of Newman's Grammar of Assent that most assisted his conversion to Catholicism in 19...

Dr. John Rao discusses the idea that modernity can seriously be critiqued in and of itself as opposed to being chastised merely for failure to live up to its supposedly obvious truths was contested by the great revival of the Roman Catholic Church after the French Revolution in the nineteenth century. Dr. Rao discusses this substantive critique, demonstrating how an apologetic rooted in a deepened...

Dr. Clemens Cavallin shows that of all the foundation myths of late modernity, that which rejects the need for foundations all together is perhaps the most formidable opponent of traditional Christianity. Of all the foundation myths of late modernity, that which rejects the need for foundations all together is perhaps the most formidable opponent of traditional Christianity. The earlier attempts o...

Dr. Thomas Pink explains that religion worth the name requires both an object of worship and a conception of humans as worshipers. It has been suggested that secular liberalism is a secularized form of religion, that posits its own form of God as a kind of invisible hand that providentially guarantees good outcomes, a guarantee for which liberalism has no naturalistic or 'secular' explanation. But...

Rev. John Hunwicke discusses the mythical character of liberal ideas first developed in Britain and some of thier rather dubious historical associations and claims for moral respectability. Much of the apologetic of modernity is based upon liberal ideas first developed in Britain. Fr. Hunwicke discusses the mythical character of this apologetic.