Almost Good Catholics

Between 167 and 160 BC, Judas Maccabeus and his brothers led a revolt against the Greek tyrant who desecrated the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Miraculously victorious, the Jews rededicated the Temple in a festival of lights that became the first Hannukah. A bloody tale of oppression, war, and ancient diplomacy, these books (Maccabees 1 and 2) are a bridge between the Old and New Testaments and are...

Sister Mary Josefa of the Eucharist is a Benedictine nun in Missouri; she and the sisters of her community recently wrote a charming children’s book, Brides of Christ (Sophia Institute Press, 2023), which invites the reader into the rhythms of their contemplative life through the course of the day and cycle of the year. She talks about this life with me and also the discernment that drew her into...

Kevin Vallier is a philosophy professor and author of All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism (Oxford UP, 2023), a new book about Catholic Integralism, a mostly online intellectual movement that thinks the church should take over the state, something that made sense fifteen hundred years ago after the collapse of the Roman Empire, but not so much day in our p...

Father Chris Pietraszko has been thinking about sin and redemption for the last year and a half as he has been writing a series of articles that will become a book. Relying on the Gospel, Catholic Doctrine, Thomas Aquinas, and his experience in the confessional, Father Chris explains the mechanism of sin, how it works in our lives, and how it is to be defeated. He reflects on his experience as a c...

Philosophy professor Jacob Howland applies the lessons of Greek classics and Jewish scripture to this our curious moment at the inception of Artificial intelligence when computers are doing more and more work for us, and we humans—like miniature Gods—can make up new simulated realities and even identities for ourselves. There’s a word for when people worship the things they create: idolatry. Looki...

Jonathon Fessenden, theologian and editor of Missio Dei, invited me to talk about The Fourth Wise Man, the 1985 film based on the 1895 Henry van Dyke novella, The Other Wise Man. It was a tale I had known as a children’s story, but it was a delight to learn more about it, to watch this movie (a few times), and to share this discussion with Jonathon. Martin Sheen plays Artaban, a Persian astrologer...

The poor have always been with us, even in a rich country and a prosperous time. I ask Ben Metcalf, former Secretary of Housing and Community Development in California, about the challenges and successes of the government in providing shelter for its people. Our conversation recalls the question from Matthew 25:37-38, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? W...

Bishop Todd Hunter is an Anglican Bishop in Tennessee and author of What Jesus Intended: Finding Faith in the Rubble of Bad Religion (IVP, 2023). He argues that, despite the troubles of the world and the messes we make, we should embrace Jesus’s invitation to follow him and live in his friendship and in his Kingdom right now. The goal is “being the cooperative friend of Jesus, seeking to live a li...

Father Chris talks about his devotion to Our Lady, and what he has learned from St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska, the poor Polish country girl, whose visions of and friendship with Jesus gave us Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Chris calls it the “Extra Credit of Grace.” We also talk about suicide and intercessory prayer and why God choses to work with broken tools. Fr. Chris is Provincial Superior of the M...

Kimberly Bird is vice president of external relations of Live Action, an online media advocacy and education organization that works to shift public opinion on abortion and protect the lives of children between conception and birth. I ask her about the most effective ways she has found to change people’s minds, instead of just screaming at each other, or past each other. I also ask her who the wom...

Eduard Habsburg is Archduke of Austria and Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He’s also a husband, a dad, and a regular guy. He talks about Star Wars and Dune, Harry Potter and James Bond. He is probably the first member of the Order of the Golden Fleece to have written the screenplay for a zombie movie. I ask him about his family—both his happy marriage and six...

Jonathon Fessenden, theologian and editor of Missio Dei, and I discussed this ancient and supremely interesting book on his podcast. The Book of Job is one of the oldest poems in our tradition. It is a joy to read and a puzzle to wonder about: why does God allow—even provoke—the Accuser to destroy Job’s life and test his faith? What does it mean for us when things are not going the way we hope? Wh...

In his new book, Down Deep in My Soul: An African American Catholic Theology of Preaching (Orbis Books, 2023), Father Maurice Nutt, a doctor of preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology and a Redemptorist priest, teaches us about African American oratorical and homiletic tradition and shows how it can enrich preaching in every church. This is a discussion about history, cultural anthropolog...

Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization at Catholic Answers. His piece, “What Happens in Purgatory?” is the most read article on the entire website. I ask him to explain what the Catholic Church says (and doesn’t say) about purgatory. How does purgatory work? ...and how about heaven and hell? How should we think about these ‘places’ and about eternity? Tim Staple’s profile in Cat...

Sr Maria Catherine was looking for Truth in the wrong places when she started practicing witchcraft as girl. But she found her way out of the darkness and into the Dominican Order; today she teaches theology and literature at JSerra High School in California. We talk about that journey and about the challenges facing young people today, the generation we are both teaching. In the second half of th...

Quaker theologian Richard J. Foster and charismatic pastor Brenda Quinn talk with me about Foster’s new book (which Quinn worked on with him), Learning Humility: A Year of Searching for a Vanishing Virtue (InterVarsity Press, 2022). Foster explains why we should and how we can cultivate this greatest of virtues. He also tells me about his Quaker foundations, his investigation of Lakota history and...

Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, wrote a statement in his diocesan journal, the Madison Catholic Herald about the German Synodal Way. The German Bishops, in defiance of Pope Francis, have been promoting same sex unions and the ordination of women and transgender persons. I ask Bishop Hying what is going on and how these matters should be handled: is there a correct way for the brother bi...

Psychologist Paul Bloom and I talk about the human brain, morality, empathy, perversity, all the things—including Professor Bloom’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind (Ecco Press, 2023). Culturally Jewish but in practice an atheist, Paul Bloom comes at the recurring theological questions familiar to the Almost Good Catholics audience from the materialistic perspective of psychology. Paul...

I talk with a Muslim friend about the places that Islam and Christianity overlap, and also the places where they diverge. Of these subjects, none is more interesting than the role of Jesus Christ whom Muslims call the Prophet Issa (peace be upon him). Muslims hold him in high esteem but do not believe in his divinity or in the Trinity itself. Muslims believe in the Resurrection and Second Coming b...

Today I talked with Senator Joe Lieberman—who ran for Vice President in 2000 with Al Gore, and for President in 2004 in the Democratic primary—about his book, The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath (2011). Senator Lieberman is a devout Jew and talks with me about the Sabbath tradition, a custom rooted in God’s day of rest at the end of creation (Genesis 2) and the Mosaic Law and...

Jonathon Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Roland Joffé’s The Mission (1986) and Fred Zinneman’s A Man for All Seasons (1966), both written by Robert Bolt, and both about men of Faith facing persecution and a sudden reversal of political fortune. These are themes that we began in our first discussion, Episode 37: Catholic Movies, Pt. 1. Jonathon Fessenden is a Catholic writer, composer, and t...

For three weeks in February of 2023, a spontaneous ‘Outpouring’ at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, set the hearts of American Christians aflame, reviving their faith and our spiritual conversation. Fr Norman Fischer, pastor of nearby St. Peter Claver Catholic Church and the chaplain at Lexington Catholic High School, in Lexington Kentucky, went over to Asbury to check it out. He tells us a...

In 1941, Dorothy Sayers, Christian apologist, author of The Mind of the Maker, and even more famous for her Peter Whimsey mystery novels, wrote a cycle of plays on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was produced by the BBC for the radio and was a great success, though Sayers got flak for it from all directions—from secular voices calling it religious propaganda, from conservativ...

Gary Kulik was a Catholic Conscientious Objector (CO) during the Vietnam War, but when he was drafted he decided to go and serve as a medic. He tells me about this decision and how he arrived at it, about his journey to Vietnam, his experiences there, and his return. He also talks about how Americans often misrepresent the war in Hollywood and politics, which is the topic of his first book, War St...

Rich Meyer, president of JSerra High School—named for St. Junípero Serra, the ‘Apostle of California’—in Southern California, discusses what is working in Catholic education today. He and I are both fathers and teachers; and I ask him about his philosophy and his school’s approach about social media and some of the contentious cultural issues of our day. How do we help our children find sure footi...