The Catholic Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

141 - Libertarianism, Jazz & Critical Race Theory - Edward Feser Sep 05, 2022

Show notes

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser joins the podcast to discuss his new book, All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory. But before getting to that, he and Thomas discuss their similar paths away from libertarianism, and their shared appreciation for the music of Thelonious Monk.

Timestamps

1:50 Libertarianism

14:57 Jazz

38:24 Critical race theory

Links

All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory https://ignatius.com/all-one-in-christ-aocp

Ep. 45, on Feser's critique of the libertarian theory of property rights https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-45-libertarianism-vs-natural-law-on-private-property

Collection of Feser's blog posts on libertarianism http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-road-from-libertarianism.html

Feser, "The Metaphysics of Monk" https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/08/metaphysics-of-monk.html

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

140 - Let's Get Real - Joshua Hren Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

Joshua Hren, author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, editor-in-chief of Wiseblood Books, and co-founder of a new Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, returns to the podcast to discuss his recent essay, Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto:

As ever, but especially in our present age of raging post-truth unreality, we ought to heed Pope Benedict XVI's summons to "ask rather more carefully what 'the real' actually is." So-called "realism," when relegated to material tangibilities, can blind us—instead of binding us—to things as they are. "Are we not interested in the cosmos anymore?" Benedict asks. "Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? Is it not important, precisely today, to pray with the whole of creation?" If this preeminent mind of our time is not wrong, and "the man who puts to one side the reality of God is a realist only in appearance," then we ought to ask with unflinching intensity and openness: what is real? Like liturgy, literature asks this question with a range of forms that answer it very differently. At times, both art and worship seem to devolve into the manners and mood of self-referential and inconsequential play, gestures without meaning, or "bank notes" (says Benedict) "without funds to cover them." These too-closed circles of communication wall off transcendence. In living cruciform liturgy—on the contrary—"the congregation does not offer its own thoughts or poetry but is taken out of itself and given the privilege of sharing in the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and seraphim." In living contemplative literature something analogous happens: we suffer and praise with the whole of creation; the prose cultivates a grateful disposition, prompting us to yearn for a vision of the whole.

But this manifesto on behalf of a "contemplative realism" makes no claims to create, ex nihilo, a new aesthetical species. Nor does it advance this rough school of literary fish as some preeminent or sole "way forward" for fiction in our time. Rather, it seeks to articulate a literary approach that exists already in diffuse books as well as in the potencies of living artists. It seeks to gather and galvanize those souls. More than anything, it yearns to quicken a contemplative realist disposition among as many comers as possible—literary chops or no. For, in a very bad way (to borrow from Josef Pieper), "man's ability to see is in decline." (Publisher's description)

Links

Read a short version of the manifesto https://benedictinstitute.org/manifesto/

Buy the full version of Contemplative Realism https://www.amazon.com/Contemplative-Realism-Theological-Aesthetical-Joshua-Hren/dp/1951319567

Wiseblood Books https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/

MFA program in creative writing at UST https://www.stthom.edu/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf?Aquifer_Source_URL=%2FMFA&PNF_Check=1

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

139 - Response to Fr. Gregory Pine: Movies, Music & Contemplation Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

In a recent video on the Pints with Aquinas channel, Gregory Pine, O.P. voiced his concern that mass entertainment, particularly music and movies, is often an obstacle to achieving the heavenly end of contemplation for which we are made. What is noteworthy is that unlike the typical Catholic commentary on pop culture, Fr. Pine does not focus so much on the moral content of music and movies as how their very form affects us bodily, psychologically and spiritually.

In this discussion inspired by Fr. Pine's points, host Thomas Mirus and filmmaker Nathan Douglas specify some elements of music and film which are obstacles to the contemplative life, but also suggest how, rather than simply eschewing music and movies, we can engage with better art in a deeper way which serves the contemplative end of man.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

6:31 Fr. Pine video recap

11:08 Risks of treating media as "junk food" rather than demanding better media

14:44 Cultivating openness to more artistic films

17:31 Discursive reasoning is not the highest mode of contemplation

20:26 Music is the most simply contemplative art form

22:58 The relation of film to reality

25:13 Advertising and glossiness in modern cinema

29:38 Problem with putting Catholic content into Hollywood forms

31:28 A film's editing rhythm can hinder contemplation

38:24 Learning intuitively to tell hackwork from good craft

42:15 Rhythmic excitement doesn't equal mediocrity

46:23 Conclusion of film discussion

48:02 Applying Augustine's theory of evil as privation to art

49:34 The necessity of both lower and higher forms of music

55:46 In what sense should Catholics "engage with pop culture"?

59:33 Pop music dominated by computers, focused on lyrics, lack of melody

1:07:53 The personal element in art

1:12:08 Music, the senses, and contemplation beyond words

1:18:22 Music's stimulation of the body

1:22:45 Using music to indulge emotions

1:27:09 Can music be "immoral"?

1:32:06 Mistaking slow for good in film

1:34:11 Educating the faithful for artistic depth

1:43:50 Can sense images serve the spiritual life?

1:49:18 What music communicates about reality

1:56:20 There's no formula for beauty

2:01:08 Simple receptivity to God's beauty

2:03:54 Recommended resources

Resources:

Fr. Gregory Pine, "I stopped listening to music." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVh4rHubNOc

Elizabeth-Paule Labat, The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music https://litpress.org/Products/MW040P/The-Song-That-I-Am

Etienne Gilson, The Arts of the Beautiful https://www.amazon.com/Arts-Beautiful-Scholarly-Etienne-Gilson/dp/1564782506

Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/category/criteria

CCP #126: How Charlie Parker's Music Changed My Life https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/126-how-charlie-parker-changed-my-life

CCP #28: An Introduction to Maritain's Poetic Philosophy w/ Samuel Hazo https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-28-introduction-to-maritains-poetic-philosophy-samuel-hazo

Nathan Douglas, The Vocation of Cinema https://vocationofcinema.substack.com

Fr. Pine's lecture on literature referenced by Nathan https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/literature-as-philosophy-fr-gregory-pine-op

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

138 - Drawing in Clay - Christopher Alles Jul 27, 2022

Show notes

Catholic sculptor Christopher Alles joins the podcast for an introduction to the art of sculpture, especially in its formal qualities. Alles mostly does commission work for the Church, and the theoretical points in this conversation are illuminated by references to some of his recent works, including a work-in-progress Pieta and his monumental sculpture of St. Joseph, Patron of a Happy Death.

Topics include:

Collaboration with patrons in commissioned work
The iconographic tradition in sculpture vs painting
Drawing as the root of both sculpting and painting
The challenges of modeling form based on anatomy without being enslaved to literal accuracy
The decorative and the illustrative aspects of visual art

Links

Watch this interview on YouTube https://youtu.be/7LnWSNQKfqc

http://christopheralles.com

https://www.instagram.com/christtalles

Thomas Mirus, "'A Peering' at the Sheen Center" https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/a-peering-at-the-sheen-center

137 - The Poetics of John the Evangelist - Anthony Esolen Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

Poet, translator and cultural critic Anthony Esolen joins the podcast to discuss his book, In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John.

'In this extended meditation, Anthony Esolen looks, phrase by phrase, at the majestic Prologue to the Gospel of John, which with good reason he calls "the most influential paragraph in the history of man." He unfolds its theological richness by showing how the Apostle John has in mind, not only what he saw Jesus do and heard him say, but also the whole witness of Scripture before the time of Jesus, and the way the young Church proclaimed him. A unique feature of this remarkable work is how Esolen "hears" (and we with him) the Hebrew/Aramaic underlying John's Greek (which was not his mother tongue), echoing those languages in such a way that, all at once, what we thought could never be more profoundly expressed bursts forth in a renewed poetic splendor that brings into ever keener relief the whole panorama of the theology of the God-Man. Esolen's decades-long immersion in Christian poetry and Scripture uniquely positions him as a guide to the astonishing and life-changing "poem" of the Prologue. He says it best: "My hope is not only to illuminate what John wishes us to hear, but to show that, when it comes to this poetry, John is not the originator; he is, rather, the beloved disciple who caught the habit from the Lord Himself."' (Publisher's description)

Links

Anthony Esolen, In the Beginning Was the Word https://www.angelicopress.org/in-the-beginning-was-the-word-anthony-esolen

Esolen's new newsletter, Word & Song https://anthonyesolen.substack.com

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

136 - The Novel Against Self-Destruction - Joshua Hren Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

Joshua Hren returns to discuss his debut novel, Infinite Regress.

"In the years since his graduation from St. Marquis University, Blake Yourrick has fled his family and Milwaukee, rotating from job to dead-end job—working the Bakken oilfields in Dakota and even signing on as the night caretaker of a rural abbey graveyard. Deep in student debt and estranged from his misanthropic, alcoholic father, Blake is haunted by the memory of his mother's death—and by his relationship with his college mentor, a defrocked priest named Theo Hape, who is known for his adventurous theological ideas as well as for the uncanny, seductive power he wields over his students. When Hape, learning of his former charge's desperate straits, proposes a perverse exchange of services, Blake finds himself tempted to test the professor's radical theories in real life. What follows is a metaphysical duel reminiscent of the novels of Dostoevsky and Bernanos, pitting a modern-day anti-Christ against a reckless but resilient young man and his well-meaning, dysfunctional kin." (Publisher's description)

The book is particularly timely in its philosophical themes, as it touches on the subject of metaphysical deconstruction used as cover for sexual grooming in the world of education.

Thomas and Joshua discuss the novel's defrocked Jesuit villain, the protagonists' escape from a philosophy which makes good dependent on evil and so eliminates the boundaries between the two, the book's themes of monetary and metaphysical debt, its comic tone, and Hren's unusual associative prose style.

Links

Joshua Hren, Infinite Regress https://www.angelicopress.org/infinite-regress-joshua-hren

Wiseblood Books https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/

Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas https://www.stthom.edu/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf?Aquifer_Source_URL=%2FMFA&PNF_Check=1

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate

135 - The Cardinal vs. the Communists - Arpad von Klimo Jun 21, 2022

Show notes

Historian Árpád von Klimó joins the podcast to give an introduction to József Cardinal Mindszenty (1892-1975), prince primate of Hungary. Mindszenty was not only the face of Hungarian resistance to fascism and communism, but ultimately a symbol Catholic resistance to communism worldwide. From 1948 to 1956 he was in a communist prison, from 1956 to 1971 he was isolated from the world as a refuge in the U.S. Legation in Hungary. He then spent the last 4 years of his life in exile from his country and in increasing tension with the Vatican's more conciliatory approach to diplomacy with Soviet nations.

Links

Victim of History: Cardinal Mindszenty, a Biography https://www.cuapress.org/9780813234991/victim-of-history/

Árpád von Klimó https://history.catholic.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-profiles/von-klimo-arpad/index.html

134 - The Political Form of Evil - D. C. Schindler Jun 13, 2022

Show notes

D. C. Schindler's book The Politics of the Real: The Church between Liberalism and Integralism is one of the richest entries in the ongoing Catholic debate over liberalism, political authority, the common good, and the relation between Church and State.

Schindler offers subtle, convincing arguments as to why liberalism is "the political form of evil", specifically consisting of a rejection of the Christian form - specifically, the Jewish-Greek-Roman synthesis embodied in the Catholic Church.

Liberalism creates a situation like that described by comedian Stephen Wright: "Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates." It adopts aspects of the Western tradition but only on radically different grounds, with a fragmented vision of reality. Even when liberalism claims to make room for religious tradition, it does so only by reconceiving religion as a mere object of individual choice - that is, precisely as non-traditional.

But Schindler goes beyond criticizing liberalism, offering a profound and beautiful ontology of the social order and a somewhat different model of the relation between Church and State from the one proposed by Catholic integralists.

Schindler joins the podcast to discuss the book, including topics such as:

Why objecting to non-liberal philosophy as "impractical" is a rejection of man as a rational creature
Liberalism's false claim of neutrality (or non-confessionalism)
The "Christian form" and its fragmentation
Why liberalism is "the political form of evil"
The roots of liberalism in medieval nominalism
The anti-Catholic meaning of the Declaration of Independence's "laws of nature and of nature's God"
How the "neutral public square" subverts every tradition it "makes room for"
The problem with distinguishing "civil society" from the state
Why property is central to understanding the relation between individuals and society

Links

The Politics of the Real https://newpolity.com/new-polity-press-titles/the-politics-of-the-real

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

133 - Think Like a Poet - Ryan Wilson May 25, 2022

Show notes

In a wide-ranging and erudite interview, poet and translator Ryan Wilson joins the podcast to discuss how the poet makes use of the classical virtue of xenia or hospitality, what poets can learn from the work of translation, the "romantic turn" (inner vision) and the "classical turn" (communication/craft) in poetry, the great Latin poet Horace, and more. Ryan performs, in his dynamic style, classic poems by Horace and others, as well as his own poems.

Ryan Wilson is an adjunct professor of English at the Catholic University of America, editor of the journal Literary Matters, and a visiting professor of poetry in the MFA program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He is the author of three books: The Stranger World, a collection of original poems; How to Think Like a Poet; and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020. Forthcoming are his anthology of contemporary Catholic poetry from Paraclete Press (spring 2023), and another book of original poems, The Ghostlight.

Timestamps

0:00 - Proteus Bound

13:09 - Hospitality as fundamental principle of community, thought, and poetry

28:05 - The romantic turn and the classical turn

46:22 - Ryan Wilson, "Xenia"

53:39 - Proteus, Hermes, and Orpheus as figures of the poet

1:03:35 - Translation as training for the poet

1:17:47 - The Latin poetry of Horace

2:07:55 - Charles Baudelaire, "The Voice"

2:20:00 - How Ryan relates as a Catholic to classical literature

2:27:10 - Ryan Wilson, "Philoctetes"

Links

Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020 https://www.cuapress.org/9781736656129/proteus-bound/

How to Think Like a Poet https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p97/How_to_Think_Like_a_Poet%2C_by_Ryan_Wilson.html

The Stranger World http://www.measurepress.com/measure/index.php/catalog/books/stranger-world/

Literary Matters https://www.literarymatters.org/

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

132 - Technology and the Artist: Glenn Gould in the Studio May 13, 2022

Show notes

"The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." - Glenn Gould

One of the greatest classical pianists of the 20th century, Glenn Gould, shocked the world at age thirty-one when he announced his permanent retirement from public performance. Denouncing the concert hall as a relative of the Roman Colosseum and audiences as a "force of evil", for the sake of his artistic integrity and personal sanity he committed the rest of his musical life to recording in the studio.

Gould's brilliant and sometimes provocative performances of classical masterworks are well known, especially his unequaled recordings of Bach. But he was also a prolific, articulate, and no less provocative critic. In essays like "The Prospects of Recording", he laid out his philosophy of performance, of the relation between technology and music.

He described his own experimentation with unconventional recording techniques, and made bold and often accurate predictions about how recording technology would change how the average person would relate to music. And he outright rejected many of the stagnant conventions of contemporary classical performance.

In this episode, Thomas discusses Gould's fascinating (and often entertaining) views on music and technology, and plays a number of his recordings. If you've never heard Gould play, you're missing out. If you have, you'll find this episode all the more interesting.

Pieces played in this episode (all performed by Glenn Gould):

J. S. Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I: Prelude and Fugue no. 3 in C-sharp major, Fugue no. 20 in A major, Prelude no. 21 in B-flat major

Bach, Two- and Three-Part Inventions: Invention no. 12 in A major, Sinfonia no. 5 in E-flat major, Sinfonia no. 9 in F minor

Brahms, Intermezzo No. 2 in A major, op. 118

Beethoven, Symphony No. 5, IV. Allegro, piano transcription by Franz Liszt

Thomas Mirus's 2011 essay "Glenn Gould in the Studio" https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YJhWSaNsTdS30F0veUe1XAsL-In-0S-k/view?usp=sharing

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio