The Catholic Herald Podcast: Merely Catholic with Gavin Ashenden

John Pontifex of Aid to the Church in Need, the international Catholic charity helping persecuted Christians, is the guest on this 43rd episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald. He tells Dr Gavin Ashenden of how the charity began with one priest reaching out in solidarity to Christians behind the Iron Curtain before enlarging and spreading to more than 130 countries. He describes the work undertaken by Aid to the Church in Need and he sets out how Christians are being persecuted today, including a shocking report from a recent visit to Pakistan, a country in which the Christian minority continues to live in fear of relentless harassment, discrimination and Islamist violence.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP for North East Somerset, discusses his strong Catholic faith with Dr Gavin Ashenden in this 42nd episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald. They also talk about such issues as the relationship of religion to politics, the “continual trajectory for anti-Christian values” present in public life, the campaign to decriminalise abortion and the ban on prayer near to clinics, as well as cancel culture, Covid, the family and child care, and the indoctrination of small children by increasingly lurid sex education. Throughout their conversation, Mr Rees-Mogg refuses to succumb to pessimism, saying he sees signs of hope both within the Church and in wider society – and he also reveals his wishes to be made a cardinal.

Dr Gavin Ashenden this week talks to Eduard Habsburg, Hungary’s Ambassador to the Holy See, a member of the former ruling family of Austria-Hungary and a man still known today by his traditional title of Archduke Eduard of Austria. They talk about the remarkable family which ruled over the Holy Roman Empire, shaping European politics for 800 years; about contemporary European politics, and perhaps most currently, about the archduke’s new book, The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times. Such principles include getting married, being Catholic, being brave in battle, standing for law and justice, and dying well. Archduke Eduard explains how these values can be implemented in the lives of people today.

The Rev. Dr Patrick Pullicino returns to “Merely Catholic”, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald, to talk about the presence of science in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel. Fr Pullicino, a retired NHS consultant neurologist who now serves as a priest for the Archdiocese of Southwark, speaks to Dr Gavin Ashenden, in this 40th episode, about his 218-page thesis on “The Science of Ezekiel’s Chariot of YHWH Vision as a Synthesis of Reason and Spirit”. He reveals that “Fuzzy Epistemology”, a concept formulated by a 20th century philosopher and used today in digital household devices like Alexa and Siri, is present in one of the most puzzling and cryptic books of the Old Testament, reinforcing his view of the compatibility of science with religion, and faith with reason.

The guest for this 39th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, is Dr Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society and a former member of the Philosophy faculty at Oxford University. He tells Dr Gavin Ashenden that the reasons offered for the ongoing suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass just 15 years after its liberation were largely spurious and ideologically-motivated and are probably driven by actors not yet clearly in view. They also discuss the recent ‘rescript’ issued by the Holy See that prevents parish churches celebrating the Old Rite Mass without a dispensation from Rome and they reflect on the reaction to such measures throughout the world.

Sherry Anne Weddell, the pioneering American Catholic evangeliser, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden for the 38th episode of “Merely Catholic”, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, to discuss the renewal of the Catholic Church in an age of unbelief. Weddell, a convert to the faith from a Southern Baptist background, is co-founder and co-director of the Catherine of Siena Institute and the creator of the first charism-discernment process designed for Catholics. She trains and leads an international team of teachers who have worked with more than 100,000 ordained, religious and lay Catholics in more than 120 dioceses in five continents and one of her books, Forming Intentional Disciples, has sold more than 100,000 copies. She talks to Dr Ashenden about her journey of faith, the New Evangelisation and what the Church in the West must do to recover its missionary zeal.

Andrew Doyle, the comedian, broadcaster and writer, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden for the 37th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, to discuss the rise of new ideologies broadly described as “wokery”. Doyle, author of the 2022 book The New Puritans, compares the followers of destructive new ideologies with old school religious fundamentalists, particularly of the 17th century, noting such shared characteristics as social hysteria, uncompromising moral self-righteousness and the total refusal to tolerate any dissent. He tells of how “vicious” activists, who “lack human empathy”, routinely use fear, intimidation, threats and the cancel culture to impose their world view and to gradually dismantle the apparatus of liberal democracy and Christian civilisation.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is the guest on this week’s episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald. The pro-life counsellor was arrested and charged by police in December after she admitted to them that she “might be” praying silently in her head outside a closed abortion facility in Birmingham. The Crown Prosecution Services have since dropped the charges but Miss Vaughan-Spruce intends to apply for a court verdict on whether she was breaking any laws. She talks to Dr Gavin Ashenden about her experience and about the chilling implications for such human rights as freedom of speech, expression, conscience, association and religion under new regulations which brook no public dissent from the culture of death.

In this 35th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, Dr Gavin Ashenden talks to Simon Johnson, the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral and a man described as “one of the most versatile musicians of his generation”. Mr Johnson is a virtuoso organist with extensive work in choral direction, composition and arrangement and for 13 years he also served as the Organist and Assistant Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral. Together they explore what liturgical music is and what it does ahead of preparations by the world-famous Westminster Cathedral Choir and Orchester, for which Mr Johnson is responsible, for a mesmerising performance of St John Passion by J.S. Bach in the cathedral on Thursday March 16.

This week Dr Gavin Ashenden talks to Steve Ray, the acclaimed American author of Crossing The Tiber and Upon This Rock, among other titles, and a man hailed as one of the most effective Catholic apologists of the present generation. In this 34th episode of the Merely Catholic podcast series for the Catholic Herald, Mr Ray recalls how he left the Baptist faith of his youth to become a dedicated and highly-motivated Catholic after, like St John Henry Newman, he studied the writings of such Fathers as Ss Irenaeus of Lyon, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna and recognised that their sub-Apostolic faith was the same as that professed by the Church. Mr Ray also offers some insight into new and emerging contemporary crises in the history of the Church and shares some opinions about what the future may hold.