The Catholic Culture Podcast

Today's guest is a man with two names and two careers. For decades he has been a distinguished poet and translator under the name of A.M. Juster. This is an acronym for his Christian name, Michael J. Astrue, who for many years was a lawyer, biotech executive, and public servant, most notably serving as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2007 to 2013. During this time, his poli...

Gregory Roper, a professor of literature at the University of Dallas, joins the podcast to discuss medieval "mystery plays" (also called "miracle plays"). In England these plays, often grouped together in cycles spanning all of salvation history, were performed by town guilds for the festival of Corpus Christi. This tradition, which developed out of the liturgy, could be said to represent the revi...

Erik Varden, bishop of Trondheim, Norway as well as Trappist monk, joins the podcast to discuss his new book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses. Topics discussed include: Recovering the true meaning of the word "chastity" Continence and chastity are not the same thing What the Desert Fathers can teach us about chastity Why we need to meditate on the original vocation of man before the Fall rat...

The renowned English theologian Fr. John Saward makes his podcast debut to discuss his new book on angels, the role of art and beauty in his theological work, and his turn away from the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar after years of studying and translating his works. Fr. Saward's books named in this episode: World Invisible: The Catholic Doctrine of the Angels https://angelicopress.com/product...

Is Jesus Christ God? Is he a man? Is he both? Spoiler alert: the mainstream Church answered with the both/and, but the factions on the fringes tended to choose one or the other. For our first heresy, we take a look at the Ebionites, and their New Testament-era predecessors, the so-called Judaizers. These concluded that Jesus Christ was a mere human. A human who became a prophet perhaps, but just a...

This episode collects highlights from episodes 74-76 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. Links to full episodes: Ep. 74—What Is Classical Christian Education?—Andrew Kern  https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-74-what-is-classical-christian-education-andrew-kern/ Ep. 75—Don't Scapegoat the Nouvelle Théologie—Richard DeClue https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-75-dont-scapegoat-nouvel...

A new collection of letters shows the tender side of St. Jerome, as he writes to console various friends on the death of their loved ones. Translator and editor David G. Bonagura, Jr., joins the podcast to discuss  Jerome's Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning . Topics include: Jerome's Christian twist on the "consolatory epistle" genre practiced by many great pagan writers before him The network...

Fr. Bradley Elliott, a professional drummer turned Dominican friar, joins the podcast to discuss his book, The Shape of the Artistic Mind: A Search for the Metaphysical Link Between Art and Morals in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas . Themes include: Man's capacity to participate in God's creative activity and governance of the world How human artistic activity not only imitates but enhance nature Th...

Daniel McInerny joins the podcast to discuss his novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair , the modern cult of authenticity, the desire for control that tempts people to euthanasia, and what it truly means to accept your death. Publisher's description for the novel: Kate Montclair is dying. She has arrived at late middle age loveless, childless, and having failed to achieve the career dreams of her...

6:51 Franciscan Eyes 14:33 Forbearance 15:52 The Mourners 20:19 Spiritual Combat 25:56 Passage Compositions and piano by Thomas Mirus; recorded spring 2018, Brooklyn. Listen to this music on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/CVqC2ZukI9o Download these tracks as lossless .wav files here: https://www.catholicculture.org/multimedia/thomas_mirus_2018.zip DONATE to help CatholicCulture.org continue its mi...

Holly Ordway continues to break new ground in Tolkien scholarship with her latest book, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography. This work sheds important light on the experience of Catholics like Tolkien and his mother in the hostile Anglican establishment of their time, on the crucial influence of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri on the young Tolkien, and more. Holly returns to the podcast to discu...

Looking back at highlights from past episodes of the Catholic Culture Podcast and Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast. Full episodes below: Catholic Culture Podcast Ep. 65—Reason with Stories, Philosophize with Your Life (Vision of the Soul Pt. III)—James Matthew Wilson https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-64-reason-with-stories-philosophize-with-your-life-vision-soul-pt-iii-james-matthew...

Catholic critics of feminism often start with the assumption that the "first wave" of feminism, led by 19th-century figures such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was basically a good thing and compatible with Catholic teachings; only later in the 1960s and 70s, according to this narrative, was the movement "hijacked" by "radical feminists". The only problem is that when one actually...

St. John of the Cross is not only one of the Church's greatest mystics, but also one of the most important figures in the Spanish poetic tradition. A new book of translations of St. John's poems, brought into English by contemporary bilingual poet Rhina Espaillat, gives us a chance to discover or rediscover this singular spiritual and artistic master. Carla Galdo joins the podcast to discuss Espai...

Anyone who went through confirmation prep at some point learned the list of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. But most would struggle to define the gifts, especially the ones that sound a bit similar, like wisdom, knowledge, and understanding? The great 17th-century Thomistic commentator John of St. Thomas discoursed on the gifts of the Holy Spirit with not only technical precision, but spiritua...

Today it's taken for granted that we as Christians are called to "engage the culture" in order to evangelize. Often "engaging the culture" means paying an inordinate amount of attention to popular commercial entertainment in order to show unbelievers how hip we are, straining to find a "Christ-figure" in every comic book movie, and making worship music as repetitive, melodically banal, and emotion...

Looking back at highlights from past episodes of the Catholic Culture Podcast and Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast. Full episodes below: CCP Ep. 63—Beauty Revealing Being (Vision of the Soul Pt. II)—James Matthew Wilson  https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-63-beauty-revealing-being-vision-soul-pt-2-james-matthew-wilson/ CCP Ep. 69 - The Poetry of the English Martyrs - Benedict Whalen ...

Distributism, the social-political-economic philosophy advanced by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc under the influence of Catholic social teaching, offers intriguing ways of rethinking the modern social-political-economic order. But distributists have often been found lacking in serious practical plans to bring about their ideal social order, and in the economic fallacies they commit when criti...

Kimberly Begg joins the podcast to discuss her new book,  Unbreakable: Saints Who Inspired Saints to Moral Courage . The book tells the story of four saints - St. Joan of Arc, St. José Luis Sánchez del Río, Bl. Jerzy Popiełuszko, and St. Teresa of Calcutta - and for each of those saints, includes the stories of the saints who influenced him or her. The book is intended in particular to convince pa...

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844-1889) is one of the poets best loved by Catholics. Immediately accessible in its abundant musical qualities, Hopkins's poetry can still puzzle us with its idiosyncratic syntax, elliptical phrasing, and even invented words. Thus the need for an annotated collection of his poems, which, surprisingly, did not exist until the recent publication (by Word on Fire) of As...

This episode features highlights from episodes 61 and 67 of the Catholic Culture Podcast, and from an early episode of Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast. Ep. 61—Liberal Anti-Culture vs. the Western Vision of the Soul (Pt I)—James Matthew Wilson  https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-61-liberal-anti-culture-vs-western-vision-soul-pt-i-james-matthew-wilson/ Ep. 67—"Why I'm No Longer A Cath...

Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P.'s definitive scholarly biography of St. Thomas Aquinas has recently received its third edition. Translator Matthew Minerd returns to the Catholic Culture Podcast to discuss what we can learn from Fr. Torrell about the life of St. Thomas and the context in which works like the Summa theologiae were written. This episode is a deep dive into Thomas's vocation in a number of...

In the last of the YouTube livestreams related to Catholic Culture's May fundraising campaign, Jeff Mirus and Phil Lawler discuss their approach to writing responsible, sober commentary during a time of crisis in the Church: that is, when the news is crazy, how can we talk about it sanely? We're a week into CatholicCulture.org's May fundraising campaign. Generous donors have offered a $50,000 matc...

In this livestream, James Majewski and Thomas Mirus we discussed errors artists can fall into in pushing back against a moralistic approach to art found within the Church. Rather than reacting away from rigidity to excessive openness, the mature Catholic artist has to get over himself and be a servant. Also discussed: The relation between order and surprise in beauty, morality and culture. Note: t...

For those who missed the YouTube livestream Q&A with Mike Aquilina on May 8th, 2023, here is the audio. It was a lively conversation where Mike fielded viewer questions about important cities of the early Church, early evidence for papal primacy, the role of charity in the early Church, Origen, the providential role of easy travel for the spread of the Gospel in the first centuries, and more. We'r...