The Catholic Culture Podcast

Latest Episodes:

114 - A Children's Book About Accepting Your Nature - Matthew Mehan Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

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 properly shape who we will become.

Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oxAQpGxduCw

Links

The Handsome Little Cygnet https://tanbooks.com/kids/elementary-school/the-handsome-little-cygnet/

Previous episode with Mehan: Teaching Children Self-Knowledge through the Liberal Arts https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-43-teaching-children-self-knowledge-through-liberal-arts-matthew-mehan/

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

Is realism in modern fiction an aberration? w/ Joshua Hren Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

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

113 - Can a Novelist "Create" a Saint? - Joshua Hren Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

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 on the uses, limitations, and dangers of indulging sentiments about fictional characters
Can the action of grace be dramatized? Can the life of holiness be fictionalized?
The depiction of repentance, conversion and the lasting effects of sin in authors like Balzac and O'Connor

Joshua Hren is the founder and editor of Wiseblood Books as well as, with James Matthew Wilson, founder of a new creative writing MFA program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, which is also discussed in the episode.

Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ump3CRZ6GRY

Links

How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic https://tanbooks.com/liberal-arts/literature-and-theology/how-to-read-and-write-like-a-catholic/

MFA program https://www.stthom.edu/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/

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

Listen to Newman's sermon "The Danger of Accomplishments" at Catholic Culture Audiobooks https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/st-john-henry-newman-danger-accomplishments/

Read "The Danger of Accomplishments" https://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume2/sermon30.html

Previous interview with Joshua Hren, "The Flannery-Haunted World" https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-70-reviving-catholic-literary-tradition-joshua-hren-john-emmet-clarke/

Follow this link to join the Online Great Books VIP waiting list and get 25% off your first 3 months: https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/

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

Apology and Retractions about the Vaccine Episode Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

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.

112 - Walker Percy's Angelic-Bestial Future - Jessica Hooten Wilson Aug 11, 2021

Show notes

"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 startlingly like our own. Today's guest, literary scholar Jessica Hooten Wilson, joins the show to give a general introduction to Percy and discuss aspects of what is for many his most beloved novel, Love in the Ruins, which she describes as a "panoramic satire" indicating that modernity's "lost sense of self makes it impossible to live the good life".

Topics include:

How Percy's Southernity informed his fiction
His keen and ruthless observation of race relations
His recurring commentary on the modern disjunction between mind and body, what protagonist Tom More calls oscillation between the angelic and the bestial
His use of apocalyptic themes
His treatment of love between men and women
The lasting significance of his work

Links

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins https://www.amazon.com/Love-Ruins-Walker-Percy/dp/0312243111

Jessica Hooten Wilson https://jessicahootenwilson.com/

JHW, Reading Walker Percy's Novels https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Walker-Percys-Novels-Jessica/dp/0807168777

JHW, Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence https://www.amazon.com/Dostoevsky-Influence-Literature-Religion-Postsecular/dp/0814213499

Follow this link to join the Online Great Books VIP waiting list and get 25% off your first 3 months: https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/

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

111 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Anthony Esolen Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

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 discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8YKmYkklcuU

Links

Marie Boroff's translation of the complete works of the Gawain-poet https://www.amazon.com/Gawain-Poet-Complete-Cleanness-Erkenwald/dp/0393912353

Simon Armitage's facing-page translation including the original Middle English https://www.amazon.com/Gawain-Green-Knight-Verse-Translation/dp/0393334155

Dana Gioia essay, "Accentual Verse" https://danagioia.com/essays/writing-and-reading/accentual-verse/

Magdalen College, where Esolen teaches, still has spaces open in its 2021 freshman class! https://magdalen.edu/

Anthony Esolen, The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord https://www.ignatius.com/The-Hundredfold-P3358.aspx

Esolen on his poem The Hundredfold https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-55-hundredfold-anthony-esolen/

Esolen discusses Stagecoach on Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/stagecoach-1939/

Follow this link to join the Online Great Books VIP waiting list and get 25% off your first 3 months: https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/

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

Highlights: Garrigou-Lagrange, Dana Gioia, Tolkien's metaphysics, and more Jul 30, 2021

Show notes

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 - Jonathan McIntosh https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-40-tolkien-and-aquinas-jonathan-s-mcintosh/

41 - The Neo-Colonial West Is Forcing Abortion on Africa - Obianuju Ekeocha https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-41-neo-colonial-west-is-forcing-abortion-on-africa-obianuju-ekeocha/

44 - Catholics Need Poetry. But Do We Want It? - Dana Gioia https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-44-catholics-need-poetry-but-do-we-want-it-dana-gioia/

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

BONUS: Interview with Lourdes documentary writer Sixtine Leon-Dufour Jul 23, 2021

Show notes

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 studio and became a big success

-Depicting the wide range of people at Lourdes

-How the filmmakers found sick people who would let them film intimate and painful parts of their life

-The role of the writer of a documentary

-Why people come to Lourdes even if they are not hoping for a miracle

Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Bywww0alMqw

Links

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

Watch our review of Lourdes: https://youtu.be/hEsxNbajQ_s

Check here to find out where Lourdes is playing (including upcoming virtual screenings): https://www.distribfilmsus.com/portfolio/lourdes/

Want to bring LOURDES to your town? Contact Distrib Films (in Brooklyn). The contact is François Scippa- Kohn, who can be reached by email at fsk@distribfilms.com. www.distribfilmsus.com

Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tGC8lQOZuw

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

110 - Woke Idols, Woke Pathologies - Noelle Mering Jul 15, 2021

Show notes

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 immorality, ensuing misery, and bad ideas
Why today's progressivism is driven to destroy innocence
Fundamental differences between woke ideology and Christianity
Self-knowledge and self-accusation, antidotes to the woke worldview

Links

Buy Awake, Not Woke https://tanbooks.com/contemporary-issues/social-issues/awake-not-woke-a-christian-response-to-the-cult-of-progressive-ideology/

Noelle Mering https://www.noellemering.com/

Theology of Home https://theologyofhome.com/

109 - A Catholic in the NYC Ballet - Claire Kretzschmar Jul 07, 2021

Show notes

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 shown at the 20:46 mark (used with permission of NYC Ballet). https://youtu.be/4jWhhAbS6pM

Links

Claire's dance film, "Rachmaninoff Suite" https://www.nycballet.com/discover/stories/from-the-nyci-marthas-vineyard-fall-2020/

New York Times profile of Claire, "Rehearse, Ice Feet, Repeat: The Life of a New York City Ballet Corps Dancer" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/arts/dance/rehearse-ice-feet-repeat-the-life-of-a-new-york-city-ballet-corps-dancer.html

Follow Claire on Instagram to keep up with her dance performances in NY and NC https://www.instagram.com/ckretz92/

Arthouse 2B - Catholic arts events in NYC https://www.instagram.com/arthouse2b/

Litany - ethical, modest Catholic fashion https://www.litanynyc.com/

This episode was filmed by Chris Amodio. https://www.amodiodop.com/

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