The Catholic Culture Podcast

The Western liberal democratic order is in crisis. If it collapses or significantly wanes in power, what will replace it? A long period of chaos and massive human suffering? Regressive authoritarianism? Or, reading the signs of the times, could we arrive at a synthesis which learns from liberalism's mistakes while preserving its best features? Today's guest is Jonah Bennett, editor-in-chief of a f...

John-Mark Miravalle is the author of a rather good popular introduction to the topic beauty,  Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters . He and Thomas converse on our moral obligation to delight in beauty, why we are moved by the combination of order and surprise, and the proper way to delight in the beauty of the human body. John-Mark closes the discussion with a moving reflection on the relationshi...

In the new off-Broadway play  Heroes of the Fourth Turning , playwright Will Arbery (son of two Wyoming Catholic College professors) offers a nuanced, accurate portrayal of the way conservatives talk to each other when progressives aren't around. The characters are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time among well-educated Catholic conservatives. The play has attracted positive attent...

Indie rock trio The Duskwhales formed almost 10 years ago at a small Catholic high school in Virginia. Over that decade, four albums and three EPs, they have forged a distinctly melodic sound in contrast to today's joyless pop milieu. Their vocal harmonies hearken back to The Beatles and The Beach Boys, while their organ-heavy instrumentation (no bass player in their live shows) sets them apart fr...

One of England's greatest composers, William Byrd is a fascinating and complicated figure of Catholic musical history. A musician in the Royal Chapel of Queen Elizabeth, he associated with the highest ranks of the Anglican establishment while writing music on the side for secret Catholic masses. In part two of this interview, singer and scholar Kerry McCarthy discusses the high level of amateur mu...

One of England's greatest composers, William Byrd is a fascinating and complicated figure of Catholic musical history. A musician in the Royal Chapel of Queen Elizabeth, he associated with the highest ranks of the Anglican establishment while writing music on the side for secret Catholic masses. In this first of two episodes on Byrd, singer and scholar Kerry McCarthy sets Byrd in the context of th...

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands." These words of St. Paul in Ephesians 5 have been a continual source of discomfort to modern Catholics, and most priests would rather e...

Many Catholics have worn the Brown Scapular at some point in their lives. Some of those people stopped wearing it for one reason or another. Others have continued to wear it but perhaps don't appreciate its true depth as a sign of consecration to Mary. Even less known is the fact that the Scapular is a miniature version of the Carmelite habit (which is itself Our Lady's habit); those who wear it a...

Emma and Cecilia Black grew up in a large family that sang together constantly. Now these two sisters from Grand Rapids, Michigan, have made an album of folk songs for children. They want people to know that any family can start singing together, without special training or equipment. Here Emma and Cecilia, who record under the name Roundabout, discuss the ethos of folk music, which is about parti...

Thomas discusses his libertarian past, explains why he abandoned that political philosophy, and summarizes an article on the topic by the Catholic philosopher Edward Feser. Feser, himself an ex-libertarian who has written books on Hayek, Nozick and Locke, argues that the libertarian view of self-ownership and private property rights cannot be reconciled with classical natural law theory, and lays...

Dana Gioia is one of the greatest Catholic poets working today. In this interview he discusses how Catholic attitudes toward the arts have changed in recent generations, and the revival of interest in poetry in the culture as a whole. Dana reads a few of his poems, discusses how Catholicism has made his poetry "simpler, more emotionally direct, and more unabashedly musical," and even gives poets s...

Mr. Mehan's Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals ( M5 ) is a book of poems intended as an introduction to the liberal arts for children, helping them to grow in self-knowledge, virtue, and the art of charitable rhetoric. It is written in the ancient form of the beast fable, with each of Matthew Mehan's twenty-six alphabetical poems accompanied by a beautiful oil painting by John Folley. In this intervi...

Stephen Auth is a highly successful investment manager on Wall Street. In his spare time, he hails down strangers on the streets of Manhattan and convinces them to go to confession. Links Steve Auth, The Missionary of Wall Street: From Managing Money to Saving Souls on the Streets of New York https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/missionary-of-wall-street

Western governments and NGOs are pushing the Sexual Revolution on Africa, using strings-attached development aid. Of all the funds from Western nations going to "development" in Africa, the majority are for population control. Obianuju Ekeocha is raising awareness about this form of neo-colonialism in which rich Westerners force their anti-culture on African peoples, because for them a better Afri...

Tolkien is well known to have been concerned with the internal consistency of his fictional world, from geography to history to language. But he was also concerned with another sort of consistency: metaphysical consistency, not only within the work but between his work and reality (because he did not see the storyteller's task as providing an alternative to reality but an extension of it). Scholar...

Paul Jernberg is a composer of sacred music and director of the Magnificat Institute, which offers education in the patrimony of Catholic liturgical music. He tells Thomas about his career, including an interesting digression about gospel music and its relation to Catholic liturgy, the criterion of "noble accessibility" in liturgical music, and what Roman Catholic composers can learn from the anci...

The name of Garrigou-Lagrange has long been a byword for a fusty, rigid Thomism of days gone by, allegedly more concerned with centuries of accretions built up by scholastic commentators than with the original teaching of the Angelic Doctor himself. Only in traditionalist circles was his name still spoken with respect. But recent years have seen a wider reevaluation of this French Dominican priest...

The young Italian sculptor Jago is best known to Catholics for his marble bust of Pope Benedict XVI, which the Pope himself awarded with a pontifical medal. Upon Benedict's resignation, Jago radically reworked the piece into its current form, Habemus Hominem . In this episode Jago discusses the meaning of marble, how he had to teach himself because his art professors opposed studying the great mas...

One of the core things that has gone wrong with our culture in the past several decades is the denigration of every virtue associated with the perfect woman, Mary. Gentleness, humility, (true) beauty and especially motherhood: these are all antithetical to the radical feminism that is now thoroughly mainstream. If modern women are rejecting the very model of womanhood, it's no wonder the data tell...

Abby Johnson was the youngest clinic director in Planned Parenthood history. After witnessing an abortion on ultrasound, she quit, became a Catholic, and founded And Then There Were None, an organization which has helped over 500 workers leave the abortion industry. We discuss the new film Unplanned , based on her memoir by the same name, and delve into the vicious cycle of moral blindness which e...

Michael Pakaluk has written a new translation and commentary of Mark's Gospel. Mark was relating very recent events, with details only an eyewitness (most likely Peter) would have mentioned. This earliest Gospel set the standard for what words and deeds of Christ would be included by the other evangelists, and reflected on by Christians until the end of the age. If these are indeed the memoirs of...

The quest for freedom in structure is fundamental to Catholic spiritual life (particularly during this season of Lent). It's also fundamental to musical improvisation. How can you be free and spontaneous without giving way to anarchy and sin, which lead to death?  How can you be organized and disciplined without succumbing to the living death of rigidity? How can you make new music in the moment,...

For many people who have never been to Spain, their only image of the country may be the strange spires of Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudí. It is certainly the best-known building in Spain, despite still not being finished—and construction began in 1882! Indeed, Gaudí knew the building would not be completed in his lifetime, but was at peace with this, saying, "My client i...

You may or may not know that I have a background in jazz piano (I wrote and performed the intro and outro music for this show, for example). In this album I introduce you to about ten of my very favorite jazz albums. This is an experimental solo episode, but don't worry, we'll be back to interviews next week.   Links The main list: Charlie Parker, "Parker's Mood" (1948) (listen to this original ve...

While Tolkien's brilliance as a world-builder and storyteller is well-established, fewer people are aware of just how unique (and obsessive) his creative process was, or that he was a gifted visual artist. That is changing thanks to an unprecedented exhibition of Tolkien's personal items, manuscripts and artworks, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth , currently on display at the Morgan Library in Manha...