For two decades, Maggie Gallagher was a leading voice writing about the importance of permanent, monogamous marriage to society. At first, that included pointing out the problems with divorce, feminism and single parenthood. Then as same-sex marriage became the predominant issue, Gallagher became the public face of the movement against it. A few years after the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal across the 50 states, Gallagher switched gears when Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francis...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 124
Carl Hostetter, editor of a new volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's unpublished notes, The Nature of Middle-earth , joins the show. Carl discusses: His collaboration with Christopher Tolkien leading to this new volume What other Tolkien writings we might expect to see published Why it may be good that Tolkien never finished the Silmarillion in his lifetime Tolkien's Thomistic reflections on elvish hylomorphism, and other revelations contained in the new book How Tolkien's obsession with consistency nearl...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 123
T.C. Merrill's debut novel, Minor Indignities , is an evocative portrayal of the vanity of undergraduate life at an Ivy League university. Its protagonist, a freshman consumed with what others think of him intellectually, socially and sexually, only makes a fool of himself the more he strains to impress. The novel ultimately becomes a richness of embarrassments whose final catastrophe illustrates the saying of St. Bernard: “Humiliation is the way to humility.” Merrill joins the show to talk abou...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 122
Originally published as episode 59 on December 21, 2019, this popular episode is being rerun in a slightly improved version. This is a love letter to the great English Christmas carols, from “There Is No Rose” to “The Boar’s Head”. Did you know that not just any Christmas song is a carol? The true carol, in all its earthy splendor, is a distinctive product of the Catholic middle ages. Yet our forefathers didn’t limit caroling to Christmas: they wrote carols for every season of the year covering ...
Dec 17, 2021•1 hr 54 min
Mary Lou Williams: one of the outstanding jazz pianists of all time, composer, Catholic convert, visionary, performer of works of mercy. Because Williams's career lasted and her style adapted through many changes in jazz from the swing era to the early 1970s, and because she mentored two of jazz's most influential figures (Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk), this episode is an opportunity not only to dive into her life and music, but to learn a little about jazz history more generally. Deanna Witko...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 121
This episode contains clips of highlights from episodes 45 and 47-49 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. Episode 45—Libertarianism vs. Natural Law on Private Property https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-45-libertarianism-vs-natural-law-on-private-property/ Episode 47—Our Lady’s Habit: Wearing and Loving the Brown Scapular—Fr. Justin Cinnante, O.Carm. https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-47-our-ladys-habit-wearing-and-loving-brown-scapular-fr-justin-cinnante-ocarm/ Episo...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Unlikely as it may sound, Catholic fiction has a certain amount of mainstream appeal in Japanese literature. Sono Ayako, one of Japan’s most famous novelists, wrote a novel about St. Maximilian Kolbe called Miracles , which has just been translated into English. Miracles is a semiautobiographical account of the author’s personal investigation into the miracles approved by the Vatican for Kolbe’s canonization. Her ambivalence towards her Catholic faith is challenged as she traces Kolbe’s steps fr...
Nov 18, 2021•50 min•Ep. 120
Etienne Gilson's Metamorphoses of the City of God traces the quest of philosophers for a universal human society, as it gradually degraded from the heavenly city of which Augustine wrote to modern-day secular humanist globalism. It began with well-intentioned medieval thinkers who were overconfident in the capability of natural reason to unite the whole world in the Catholic faith - but this led gradually to a turning away from the rationally irreducible Christian mysteries and the person of Jes...
Nov 04, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 119
Mark Christopher Brandt returns to the show to discuss his latest album, Joy , which is based on the structure of the Rosary. It features the family choir of Mark and his three daughters, accompanied by Mark on piano. Mark began composing this music in the mid-1990s, not knowing who would sing it, when only his first daughter had been born. On the eve of the new millenium, he decided to take a hiatus from his career as a jazz pianist in order to focus on his family and his spiritual life. In 202...
Oct 22, 2021•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 118
This is a crossover episode in which Thomas joins forces with Scott Hambrick and Karl Schudt from the Online Great Books Podcast, to discuss the classic essay Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain. This episode covers beauty as a transcendental and its role in the fine arts, and intuition as the way we experience artistic beauty. The beauty of a work does not depend on the emotional effects it produces, nor can it be proven by analysis. We experience beauty intellectually, but by intuition r...
Oct 13, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 117
This is a crossover episode in which Thomas joins forces with Scott Hambrick and Karl Schudt from the Online Great Books Podcast, to discuss the classic essay Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain. Maritain argues for an objective view of both art and the artist, bringing an orderly, scholastic, Thomistic approach to understanding aesthetics. Mirus says, "Maritain gets art better than any other philosopher who came before him in the Western Tradition." For Maritain, art is “a virtue of the p...
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 116
Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, recently issued “A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology”. The document takes a strong unequivocal stance against transgender ideology, down to practical specifics like telling the faithful we must not use transgender names and pronouns. Beyond that, it excels in showing how the Church’s whole anthropology and theology are at stake in the transgender issue. Today’s guest, Fr. Stephen Schultz, was one of the Bishop’s advisers in draftin...
Sep 29, 2021•58 min•Ep. 115
Writer Matthew Mehan returns to the show to discuss his new children's book co-authored with painter John Folley, The Handsome Little Cygnet . This lovely tale about a family of swans in Central Park is a much simpler book than their previous outing, but introduces children to the idea of accepting one's God-given nature. That is no small matter in a world which tantalizes the young with offers of a more exciting new identity just around the corner. But we need to know what we are in order to pr...
Sep 20, 2021•42 min•Ep. 114
In this outtake from episode 113, Thomas asks writer and editor Joshua Hren whether the turn to realism in modern fiction, a historical anomaly, is also a problem from a religious and philosophical point of view. Episode 113, Can a Novelist "Create" a Saint? https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/113-can-novelist-create-saint-joshua-hren/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio...
Sep 02, 2021•15 min
In his new book How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic , fiction writer and editor Joshua Hren lays out an approach to Catholic literature that spans all the way from St. John Henry Newman called “a record of man in rebellion” to the other end of the continuum, which is a representation of the Beatific Vision. Topics discussed include: How important is beauty to fiction? Will beauty save the world? The importance of particularity; Carmelite vs. Ignatian views of imagination Newman and Augustine...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 113
Thomas Mirus apologizes for and retracts some things he said in Episode 106 of the Catholic Culture Podcast, a discussion of the morality of COVID vaccines.
Aug 20, 2021•23 min
"Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?" So wonders Dr. Tom More, a descendant of the great English martyr, in the first sentence of Walker Percy's third novel, Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at Time near the End of the World . Written in 1971, this prophetic work presents a world st...
Aug 11, 2021•48 min•Ep. 112
Today we discuss one of the greatest Arthurian tales, told by one of the most virtuosic poets in the history of English, an anonymous priest of the 14th century. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells us a lot about courtesy, original sin, and grace, all bound up in an enormously entertaining story about a giant, decapitation-surviving green knight. Poet and critic Anthony Esolen joins the show to discuss the poem, its Middle English dialect, and the tradition of alliterative verse. Watch discuss...
Aug 02, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 111
This episode contains clips of highlights from episodes 38-41 and 44 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. 38 - Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sacred Monster of Thomism - Matthew Minerd https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-38-sacred-monster-matthew-k-minerd/ 39 - Composing Liturgical Music That's Noble, Accessible...and Sacred - Paul Jernberg https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-39-composing-liturgical-music-thats-noble-accessible-and-sacred-paul-jernberg/ 40 - Tolkien and Aquinas...
Jul 30, 2021•1 hr 30 min
In this interview originally from Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast, Thomas Mirus and James Majewski interview Sixtine Leon-Dufour, writer of the new Lourdes documentary, one of the best religious films in recent years. She discusses: -Her background caring for the sick at Lourdes -How she convinced the Lourdes authorities to give secular filmmakers unprecedented shooting access to this holy place -How a documentary about a Marian pilgrimage got the support of a large French secular film studi...
Jul 23, 2021•59 min
Noelle Mering joins the show to discuss her new book Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology . Topics discussed include: The core principles of woke ideology: group over person, will over reason, power over authority Proof that ideology is what really matters to the woke, more than membership in a victim group How Frankfurt School thinkers, who combined neo-Marxism with neo-Freudianism, influenced the training of American schoolteachers The feedback loop between...
Jul 15, 2021•48 min•Ep. 110
Claire Kretzschmar, a dancer and soloist with the New York City Ballet, joins the show to discuss her path to becoming a professional dancer, the challenges and joys of being a Catholic in the ballet world, and the spiritual value of dance. She also discusses a beautiful dance film which she choreographed for the NYC Ballet this year, and the Catholic arts community she founded in New York City, of which Thomas is a part. In the YouTube version of this interview, Claire's full dance film is show...
Jul 07, 2021•54 min•Ep. 109
Thomas is joined by Catholic filmmaker Nathan Douglas to discuss Walker Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer . They examine the malaise-ridden protagonist Binx Bolling's "search" for meaning, which he ultimately finds through responsibility: not the responsibility urged by respectable "values", but that urged by love. They also look at how Binx searches for a deeper connection with reality through his moviegoing habits. Percy has some interesting descriptions of his characters finding moments of t...
Jun 25, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 108
This episode features clips from episodes 34-37 of the Catholic Culture Podcast, including some personal stories from Thomas. Links The Memoirs of St. Peter w/ Michael Pakaluk https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-34-memoirs-st-peter-michael-pakaluk/ Moral Blindness and Abortion w/ Abby Johnson https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-35-moral-blindness-and-abortion-abby-johnson/ Bridges to Hell or Heaven: “Toxic Femininity” and the Spirit of Anti-Mary w/ Carrie Gress http...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 5 min
This is a discussion of an interesting little book from 1967 that has re-entered the discourse, Prayer as a Political Problem by Jean Danielou, SJ, recently reprinted by Cluny Media. In this book which seems confoundingly ahead of its time, before its time, and (irksomely) of its time, Danielou insists that prayer forms a constitutive part of the temporal common good. Governments, therefore, have a responsibility to create conditions making it easy for the common people to conduct a spiritual li...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 36 min
Michael Pakaluk and Jay Richards join host Thomas V. Mirus for a discussion of the moral issues involved with the production and testing of vaccines using illicitly-obtained fetal cell lines, and the reasons for freedom of conscience for those who do not wish to take them. Links Read a full transcript of this discussion: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=12522 Thomas Mirus's apology and retractions https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/apology-and-retractions-a...
May 26, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 106
Catholic Culture's own Phil Lawler has written a new book addressing what he sees as flaws in the response of Catholic leaders and laity to the pandemic and advocating a different approach - Contagious Faith: Why the Church Must Spread Hope, Not Fear, in a Pandemic. Topics covered in this interview include: How the Church's behavior in this pandemic differs from the oft-cited response of St. Charles Borromeo to plague Why a confrontation with civil authorities must be forced to ameliorate the ev...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 105
Michael Pakaluk joins the show to discuss his new translation and commentary on St. John's gospel, making the case that this loftiest of gospels echoes the voice of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the evangelist's adopted mother) in subtle but profound ways. Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/G0PDD5Qyfh0 Links Mary's Voice in the Gospel According to John https://www.regnery.com/9781684511198/marys-voice-in-the-gospel-according-to-john/ Episode 34 on Michael Pakaluk's translation of Mark's Go...
May 05, 2021•57 min•Ep. 104
This episode features highlight clips from episodes 26-30 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. Links Online Great Books opens a new enrollment period approximately once a month. Get in there using discount code “catholicculture” for 25% off your first three months! Or use this referral link: https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/ Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition book https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Maker-Middle-earth-Catherine-McIlwaine/dp/1851244859/ 29 - Catholic Feminism: Sho...
Apr 27, 2021•57 min
Did you know there's a hotel in NYC named after Pope Leo XIII? The Leo House was founded in the 1880s as a boarding house for German Catholic immigrants, at the behest of the Holy Father, and is still operating today as a Catholic hotel providing charitable hospitality at a discount. In this episode you'll learn from the Leo House's chairman and president, Michael Coneys, about the hotel's fascinating history. The story involves Pope Leo's special care for the Catholic Church in Germany as it wa...
Apr 20, 2021•41 min•Ep. 103
