The Patrick Coffin Show | Interviews with influencers | Commentary about culture | Tools for transformation

Get your C.S. Lewis on! Lovers of the works of Clive Staples Lewis (+1963), especially The Chronicles of Narnia septet will not want to miss this interview with Lewis scholar and Catholic convert, Dr. Michael Ward of Oxford and Houston Baptist University. The Narnia series has been one of the most critically analyzed book series in history since it was penned over 60 years ago. My guest in this ep...

The last couple of shows have been on the intellectual-nerd side. Here's another one! Father Thomas J. White, OP, of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, has distilled the essential of Catholicism into a single volume, The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism . I devoured the book (insofar as you can devour a work that relies on Thomas Aquinas's methods and language) in a f...

Arguments for God's existence are all the rage, as Ed Feser exemplified well in the last two episodes. But what about us? What's our nature as humans? Do we have a soul? How can we know that the soul is immortal and not just a few pounds of electric meat between our ears that produces cool experiences like a mythical God? Very few modern thinkers are devoting a lot of time to the question of the s...

This episode continues the energetic exchange of last week's live interview with philosopher Ed Feser. After the show proper, we turned the mikes over to the audience. This week's special Part II show is the result! Remember, Dr. Feser is the man that professor emeritus of Oxford, Dr. Richard Dawkins, does not want to debate. You can see why in this lively Q&A session, held at St. John the Baptist...

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that the number of atheists has doubled in the United States. Atheism is definitely in the rise. Is God's existence a matter of faith only? Is there a way we can come to a certain knowledge of God apart from the Bible or the Church's teaching? If you have friends or family who say they stopped believing in God, this is the interview to share with them. Philo...

As a long time reader of GetReligion.org, I know you'll understand why I know you'll appreciate this interview with journalist Terry Mattingly, the "GetReligionista in Chief." Terry is a Russian Orthodox Christian with great sympathy for the worldview of Catholics and other Christians of the small-o orthodox stripe. We can't seem to get a fair hearing in the media, and Terry is the best commentato...

This interview with counter-terrorism expert and former international FBI Special Agent Tim Clemente provides unique insights into the mass murder perpetrated by Stephen Paddock last Sunday. Clemente has been a SWAT team sniper, a firearms expert, and was one of the first FBI agents on the scene after American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. He is now a Hollywood writer and producer...

The news media invariably give a skewed version of Islam as a world of tolerance and open-minded toward the differently-minded. Derya Little can tell you otherwise from growing up in Turkey in a 99% Muslim milieux. Her dramatic, at times, harrowing story is told in her spiritual autobiography From Islam to Christ: One Woman's Path Through the Riddles of God .  As you'll learn from the interview, D...

There's a new high priestly caste in the cultural worship space whose function is to spout a new ideology, replacing what was once called "science." The new ideology is a form of propaganda and political control, and you deviate from it at your peril. From the statistics relating to the proportion of homosexuals in society, to the "facts" about global warming (rebranded as "climate change" when th...

 Venerable Pope Pius XII was the pope from 1939 to his death in 1958, straddling an extremely dangerous and unstable time in modern history. He was universally lauded as a hero after World War II for his brave and often risky strategy to counter the reckless Reich machine controlled by Adolph Hitler. Many Jews in particular wrote glowing tributes to this Pope, born Eugenio Pacelli. But a funny thi...

Joseph Sciambra says porn made him gay. At least, it was a major causal factor in his dark journey from shy Catholic kid to appearing in amateur gay porn and doing degrading things in leather bars. Joseph has told his story to anyone, any media outlet, willing to listen. Including Howard Stern, on whose raunchy show Joseph appeared as a guest in 2013. But Catholic media? Not so much. Perhaps that...

You would never know it from listening to him lecture or watch him on EWTN, by literary scholar and biographer Joseph Pearce did two stints in the British prison system for his involvement in a violent Aryan-nation style group called the National Front. The news footage of the recent violent riots at Charlottesville, VA, gave Pearce a serious case of deja vu , and i this remarkable interview, he t...

Ever see a bully and want to stand up to him, but couldn't quite do it? Maybe fear got in the way, or you figured the net result wouldn't be worth it. Obianuju ("Uju" for short) Ekeocha has mastered the art of standing up to bullies in the form of those who push the culture of death onto her beloved Africa. In 2012, Uju had had enough of well-meaning First World leaders injecting contraception and...

His 15-year-old hands were shaky on the steering wheel of the family van. Not old enough to legally drive, he stepped on the gas and gained speed. He heart raced, too, but more from dread than excitement, his eyes narrowed with dark zeal. He felt part zombie, part ghost, as though watching from outside himself as the nearest object loomed ahead, rushing toward him – an oncoming car. He yanked the...

Most people are unaware of the mutual admiration and friendship John Paul the Great had with President Reagan. With differing on Christian teachings, they were acutely aware they had the same Teacher. Both survived close-up attempts at assassination, both immediately forgave their attackers, and both were passionate about bringing down the godless Soviet Communist leviathan that Reagan tagged, "th...

Fog of confusion has settled over the Catholic Church on a number of fundamental teachings in the last 50 years. This is the certainly the case with capital punishment. Countless Catholics have been led to believe that "the death penalty" is morally equivalent to abortion, and many documents from the episcopal level have appeared urging Catholics to vote against laws supporting it. The late Joseph...

The question mark is facetious. More and more men of good will around the world are waking up to what happened on June 2017. That was the day Bill C-16 got Royal assent and became law in Canada. It adds "gender expression" and "gender identity" as a protected ground to the Canadian Human Rights Act and to the Criminal Code provisions dealing with hate propaganda, incitement to genocide, and aggrav...

British historian, journalist, and broadcaster Tim Stanley sees connections among ideas and movements. Take the modern conservative movement, for instance. He produced a documentary for the BBC titled How Marx Made the Right  in which he credits Karl Marx as a major causal factor in the rise of the Right in the 20th century. In this interview, you'll gain insight into life as a Catholic convert wo...

It's the moral law written in your heart. It's thing you can't not know . And it underpins civil law and morality. It's the natural law. Starting with the Greeks, and "baptized" by St. Thomas Aquinas, natural law is the fundamental way that we operate morally. Rooted in God's eternal law, natural law has to do with what rational beings must do, and avoid doing, to perfect themselves. This can get...

It's the third rail of both the world and the Church. Anyone who touches it risks social electrocution in the form of the argument-stopping (?) accusation of bigotry and hatred. It's homosexuality. Regarding homosexual behavior, the teaching of the Catholic Church, following the Bible, is abundantly clear. Implementing it in a human and pastoral way, however, can be a challenge. Dan Mattson's up f...

Fake vs. Real News from "the Vatican" with Edward Pentin The mainstream media love to quote "Vatican sources," or "the Vatican," or "the Holy See today said…" What is "the Vatican" and who speaks for it? I sat down with, to my mind, the best Vaticanista journalist writing today, Edward Pentin, the British-born Rome correspondent for The National Catholic Register, and author of  The Rigging of a V...

Iranian-born atheist Sohrab Ahmari has had an unlikely path to the Catholic Church, He announced his intentions to convert upon learning that Father Jacques Hamel was murdered on the altar of his quiet Normandy parish church in July 2016, and was received into the Church some months later. Ahmari is a London-based editorial writer and editor for the  Wall Street Journal , and he has a new book tha...

Marcus speaks with a quiet authority, with the air of a contemplative craftsman. Founder of Marian Caskets, his avocation in life is now his family business. He makes beautiful wooden caskets. Moved by the funeral rites of Pope John Paul II in 2005, particularly the plain wooden casket of the late great Holy Father, Marcus took on a life of service to the bereaved and, by his intercession as he wo...

We live in an age of divorce parties, Hallmark Cards that celebrate divorce, and sit-com plots that revolve around the "hilarious" hi jinx that ensue when the ex comes over. The necessary premise for this age is the notion that kids don't really suffer because of divorce, not really, right? The kiddos are resilient, right? Mommy and daddy were so unhappy, until that boo boo was fixed, right? Wrong...

Dana Gioia is a poet, a librettist, the Judge Widney Professor at the University of Southern California. As the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana was unanimously confirmed twice by the Senate to lead the NEA from 2003 through 2009. He has been given ten honorary degrees and won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University. In 2015, Gioia was name...