What is the point of Lenten fasting for Catholics? The practice has come to be so intertwined with wellness culture that if you do an internet search for “fasting,” you’re likely to get a lot of advice associated with dieting and weight loss. While there are legitimate fasting practices that can help people become more physically healthy, much of the discourse around wellness and weight is potentially harmful, associated with eating disorders and a fatphobic approach to the person. And losing we...
Mar 24, 2023•18 min•Season 2Ep. 4
The Catholic Church has a vast panoply of canonized saints, some obscure, others well-known, others so popular they have claimed a space in non-Catholic or secular traditions as well. Perhaps the most familiar of these in the United States, is St. Patrick, the primary patron saint of Ireland. Celebrations associated with St. Patrick’s feast day, in this country, include parades, wearing green, eating corned beef, drinking green beer, and sometimes even dyeing whole rivers green. Plenty of people...
Mar 17, 2023•13 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Eating fish on Fridays, especially during Lent, is a well-known Catholic tradition that has been practiced for centuries. The custom takes different forms from one culture to the next and has generated fascinating conversations about what counts as fish and whether religiously oriented eating customs need to take into account such issues as food accessibility and geographic or economic privilege. And because how people eat is connected with their work, their economic transactions, and their fami...
Mar 10, 2023•13 min•Season 2Ep. 2
The idea of life–especially intelligent life–on other planets has long captured the contemporary imagination. Despite the fact that there is no solid scientific evidence suggesting the existence of alien life forms, speculation about extraterrestrial activity inspires movies, television, novels, and popular music. But is there a particular Catholic view on aliens? Does the church have an official teaching about extraterrestrial beings? And, if alien life is out there, what does this mean for Cat...
Mar 03, 2023•22 min•Season 2Ep. 1
A common misunderstanding about Catholicism is that the church has preset answers to every possible moral or theological question, and that discussion about the church’s teachings or traditions is limited to apologetics. In reality, the Catholic Church does not have a ready answer to every question, and many of its magisterial teachings have evolved and changed over time. So while memorizing definitions from a religious education class can be helpful for an elementary grasp of Catholic thought, ...
Feb 24, 2023•3 min
Catholics often have to explain to their Protestant friends that no, we don’t worship Mary. We do venerate her, though, because she freely chose to say “yes” when God asked her to bring Jesus into the world. And we ask her to intercede for us because of her closeness to Jesus. Catholics have a set of doctrines about Mary, and a whole branch of theology called Mariology. This doesn’t mean every question about who she was and her role in salvation history is set in stone, however. For centuries, t...
Dec 02, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Most people in the United States probably remember learning the story of the first Thanksgiving back in elementary school. The pilgrims, as the story goes, made the arduous journey to the Americas on a quest for religious liberty. There they encountered Indigenous people who kindly helped them settle in and get through the first harsh winter. The next year, following a successful first harvest, the pilgrims and their Indigenous friends got together and had a celebratory feast. However, as many n...
Nov 18, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 12
For the first few centuries of the church, Christians were pacifists. Jesus’ teachings about turning the other cheek, forgiving your enemies, and being peacemakers were taken seriously and literally. But over time, as Christianity became the official religion of the empire rather than a marginal and persecuted sect, the church began to edge out of pacifism and into what is today called “just war theory.” Today, advanced military technologies and weapons of mass destruction pose new challenges fo...
Nov 11, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 11
When we talk about the global history of Catholicism, we may be tempted to portray the church as the unequivocal moral hero in every story. But our factual history is far more complicated than hagiographies and triumphalist narratives would have us believe. Different people at different times have experienced the impact of the church on their culture and personal lives in diverse ways, not always purely benign. Today's Glad You Asked question, appropriate for Black Catholic History Month, is abo...
Nov 04, 2022•22 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Some Catholic saints, like Mary Magdalene or Francis of Assisi, are widely known even in secular culture. Other saints, like Anthony of Padua or Thérèse of Lisieux, may not be as familiar to non-Catholics but have devoted followers within the church and are associated with particular prayers or devotions. Then there are many more saints who most people, even practicing Catholics, have probably never heard of. How many people are familiar with St. Drogo, patron saint of bodily ailments, coffee ho...
Oct 28, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 9
The mandate to welcome the stranger predates Christianity and has been both a moral obligation and a sacred trust in many cultures in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and beyond. Hebrew scripture depicts righteous men such as Abraham welcoming and caring for strangers from afar. It also tells how God punishes those in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah who seek to do violence to guests and strangers. Similarly, in ancient Greek and Roman stories, anyone harming a guest was in danger of provokin...
Oct 21, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 8
The question of whether a priest should ever withhold communion from a Catholic has become the subject of heated debate in recent years. Some believe that priests should deny communion to prominent politicians due to their stance on certain issues, especially the legality of abortion. Others argue that no one who is baptized into the faith should ever be denied communion, since the sacraments should not be weaponized, and humans should not attempt to control divine grace. Catholics believe that ...
Oct 14, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Many similarities and common threads can be found between Christian and Muslim faith traditions. Both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic. Both believe in an afterlife. And while Christianity and Islam have different sacred texts, the Bible and the Quran, some central figures—including Abraham, Moses, Mary, and Jesus—appear in both. The Quran depicts Jesus as a teacher, healer, and even a miracle worker. But Muslims do not believe that Jesus is also God, the second person of the Trinity, sin...
Oct 06, 2022•24 min•Season 1Ep. 6
One of the best-known of Jesus’ parables is the story commonly referred to as the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” The story is intended to teach the disciples what loving your neighbor really means, but we can’t fully appreciate the moral without recognizing that Jesus’ audience would not have expected the Samaritan to be the moral hero. Contemporary audiences might not know exactly who or what a “Samaritan” was but might envision someone socially outcast, even morally dubious. This isn’t the f...
Sep 30, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Different Christian denominations have different ways of interpreting and honoring Jesus’ actions and words at the Last Supper. The Last Supper itself, according to the synoptic gospels, was a Passover meal and would have been celebrated according to specific rubrics within the Jewish tradition. Today, denominational groups have developed their own rubrics, some more specific than others. Some churches celebrate communion casually and infrequently, whereas for others this ritual is at the heart ...
Sep 23, 2022•13 min•Season 1Ep. 4
“As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.” Probably every Christian woman is familiar with this verse from 1 Corinthians. Or perhaps with a similar verse from 1 Timothy, which states that no woman can teach or have authority over men but must instead keep silent. These and other verses have been used as the basis for countless arguments that women can’t be leaders in faith c...
Sep 16, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In 2016, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick ignited controversy when he knelt during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and racism. In 2015, Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach in Washington, was fired for kneeling after games in prayer (and encouraging others to join him). In both cases, kneeling is a way of demonstrating these men’s heartfelt beliefs and of literally embodying their moral and spiritual commitments. As Catholics, we are very familiar with the act of kneeling ...
Sep 09, 2022•13 min
Unions were once an essential component of the U.S. economy. For generations, unions safeguarded the rights of workers and ensured a better way of life for working-class families. Although not everyone regarded unions with uncritical approval, many families were proud of their union affiliation. But in recent decades, things have changed. Unions have less influence than they once did, fewer workers are union members, and even working-class citizens often eye unions with distrust. Many Catholics,...
Sep 02, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Have you ever had a question about Catholicism that you couldn’t find an easy answer to? Or a question about a teaching or tradition that seemed to have five different answers, none of them satisfactory? Or maybe you even had a question you felt you weren’t allowed to ask. The new podcast from U.S. Catholic , Glad You Asked , may be just what you are looking for. Join U.S. Catholic editors Emily Sanna and Rebecca Bratten Weiss as they explore the questions about Catholicism that don't have easy ...
Aug 02, 2022•2 min
