Paradise and Utopia

In his conclusion to this reflection, Fr. John discusses the Roman Catholic theological principle of "doctrinal development," and traces the origins of four new doctrines that arose in the west after the Great Schism.

In the latest episode of his reflection on the new Christendom of the medieval west, Fr. John discusses the new approach to theology fostered by scholasticism, contrasting it with traditional Christian theology.

Fr. John discusses the Christian statecraft of early Christian Russia.

In this episode, Fr. John describes the revolutionary changes that came to characterize western monasticism after the Great Schism, leading to the rise of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Templars.

In this episode of his reflection on the new Christendom of the middle ages, Fr. John discusses the new ecclesiology of Roman Catholicism, contrasting it to Orthodoxy and concluding with a reference to its most notorious statement, the papal bull Unum Sanctum of Boniface VIII.

In this opening anecdote of a new reflection in the podcast, Fr. John examines a famous account of a medieval English knight's pilgrimage to Ireland and vision of purgatory there, relating how it documents the rise of a new type of piety in western Christendom.

In this final episode of Reflection 15, Fr. John discusses the thirteenth-century popes Innocent III and Gregory IX, showing the close connection between their efforts to advance papal supremacy on the one hand and direct crusades against the Orthodox on the other. He concludes the reflection by noting the recent meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew and placing it within the context of centuries of cultural division between east and west.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the coming of the crusades and the decisive role played by Pope Gregory VII.

Fr. John concludes his account of the influence of the Franks by returning to the question of the filioque and how the papacy's resistance to its insertion in the Creed finally came to an end on the eve of the Great Schism.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the immediate aftermath of the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the ways in which papal supremacy emerged as the main point of continued division between the east and the west.