In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined once again by one of my favourite guests and yours, my good friend Rod Bennett. Rod is a Catholic convert with a unique way of looking at the faith and a penchant for asking some of the most penetrating questions about what connects as divides us as Protestants and Catholics. On this episode, we talk about the question of Christian unity and how can Protestants, ever, accomplish what Jesus prayed for in John 17? It's an utterly fascinating conversation with some of the best insights Rod has ever brought us including how do Protestants find a Bible-believing church when they first become Protestant and don't know their Bible yet? How Protestants agree to disagree and still have unity?What are the essentials that Protestant Christians agree on? And more... With charity and his trademark cordial, down-home demeanour, Rod challenges our non-Catholic Christian listeners to think hard about these tough questions and our Catholic listeners to humbly, in charity, have answers at hand.For more from Rod Bennett, check out his numerous previous appearances in the archives of the show including conversations about Catholic Witnesses to the Early Church (Episode 141) and Were the Early Christians Catholic? (Episode 089).And check out These Twelve, Rod's latest book from Catholic Answers Press and his many, many other fantastic books available everywhere.For more, visit The Cordial Catholic. Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests! To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by celebrated Catholic author and convert (or, revert) to the Catholic faith Emily Stimpson Chapman to talk about all things Catholic. We dig into her own conversion story as someone who was raised Catholic during the "Father Ted in leotards" era of post-Vatican II Catholicism, her rediscovering Christianity in Protestant denominations while working in Washington, DC, and her eventual wrestling and return to the Catholic faith. We also discuss the sacraments, the Catholic imagination, and becoming Catholic in a time of scandal. All of this and more this week on the show. Check out all of Emily Chapman and Scott Hahn's wonderful children's books here.For more from Emily Chapman visit her website and be sure to find her podcast The Visitation Sessions everywhere podcasts are found.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this special episode from our archives, I'm joined by Dr. Michael Foley, renown author, professor of theology, and one of the best storytellers out there to explain some of the incredibly weird and terribly wonderful Christian roots of our favourite Christmas traditions. Dr. Foley unpacks the dating of Christmas, the roots of Santa Claus, the incredibly weird world of "Mutant Christmas Saints," and much, much more as we sit down for a glass of egg nog and stir up some Christmas cheer. Listen, enjoy, and impress your family around the Christmas table with the most incredibly strange facts about the origin of the Christmas traditions we know and love. I guarantee you you'll learn something new – and have a ton of fun listening! To find more from Dr. Foley check out his website. And find his latest book "Why We Kiss Under the Mistletoe" from Regency Press and everywhere books are found.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by Nathan Smith, the  Director of Ecumenism for Glenmary Home Missioners, a Catholic religious community, and as a consultant for the USCCB’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and one of the authors behind The Gift of Being Christian Together, a new document seeking to build a bridge between Catholic and Evangelical communities.In this amazing conversation, Nathan shares the heart of ecumenism: how we can reach out to our separated brethren – other non-Catholic Christian communities – to successfully find common ground and work towards a closer relationship. We talk about Christ's vision in John 17, how to understand non-Catholic Christian communities especially for converts, and how to reconcile the truth found only in the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ, broken and separated, in other Christian communities. This is a profound conversation! For more visit The Gift of Being Christian Together.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by the inestimable Kenny Burchard. A convert to the Catholic faith, Kenny joins us to tell the remarkable story of his encounter with purgatory while preaching and studying the Bible. It was in his preparation work for a sermon series that Kenny first encountered the idea of purgatory – and it changed his life!Listen and learn, in this episode, about the deep biblical roots of purgatory in the Bible. Kenny takes us through verses, through some of the logical problems of a Christian worldview without purgatory, and then tackles some of the most pressing objections that he himself would've held as an Evangelical – now debunked!Find Kenny and Dave Armstrong's fantastic book God of Love, Fire, and Light: A Biblical Defence of Purgatory. Also find a follow Kenny's YouTube channel Bible Highlights and, as always, his work with the Coming Home Network International.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by Wendy and Zoe, from the Instagram page Catechumemes, to talk about their absolutely remarkable conversions to Catholicism – as two best friends on a wild theological and spiritual journey!Wendy and Zoe are truly amazing. As two Christians taking their faith seriously they dug deep into every theological topic imaginable, sharing late night conversations and days long debates on everything from baptism to communion to the nature of the Church. But, when topic after topic began coming up Catholic these two ardent Calvinists – serious about Reformed theology and the Baptist tradition – had to ask some tough questions about what they thought they knew about Catholicism. Man, what a conversation this was! We cover everything from the Early Church Fathers to the Sacraments to apostolic succession and the papacy and, in Wendy and Zoe's own words, what they felt had been "robbed" from them in Protestantism – and what they discovered in the Catholic Church!For more from Wendy and Zoe check out their Instagram page.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by Catholic convert, or revert from non-denominational Evangelical Christianity, Austin Habbish. Austin is the founder of Think Catholic, the host of the podcast Summa in a Year, and the heart and mind behind Sent Evangelization. In this episode Austin shares some of his experiences, as a Catholic, evangelizing door-to-door in his parish neighbourhoods. We talk about the obligation as baptized believers to evangelize, the importance of taking care of everyone (not just the Catholics) in our parish neighbourhoods, and how to evangelize in a world that's increasingly unfriendly, un-churched, and where religion is a foreign language. Austin's an awesome guy with a huge heart for evangelization. This is a great conversation. For more from Austin check out Sent Evangelization and Think Catholic and look up Summa in a Year wherever you find podcasts.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by one of my all-time favourite guests Steve Weidenkopf. Steve is a lecturer, author, renown speaker, and an absolute expert on the subject of Church history and he brings his knowledge to bear on today's fascinating topic: the greatest myths of the Reformation. We tackle the underlying philosophy of the Reformation – what is a reformation or a revolution? – and what was the original intentions of the Reformers? We also dig into what led up to the Reformation and the corruption in the Catholic Church, the problem with indulgences, and the idea of the "unchaining" of the Gospel by the Protestant Reformers. This and much more as we look at the history of Christianity leading up to (and beyond) the Reformation through a critical lens – trying to get at what was really going on. For more from Steve visit his website.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by Evangelical convert to Catholicism Brandon Forschino to talk about his journey into the Catholic faith.Brandon was a zealous evangelist for Christ who went to Evangelical seminary to deepen his understanding of the faith, evangelism, and apologetics and after encountering crippling divisions in the faith he began to investigate other Christian denominations – and discovered Catholicism!It was in his unpacking of the things he thought he knew about Catholics that he realized he was mistaken on so many things and, instead, began to be compelled to look deeper in the Catholic faith. The rest is history! Please find and follow Brandon on his fantastic YouTube channel for more content.Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!Theme Music: "Splendor (Intro)" by Former Ruins. Learn more at formerruins.com or listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by the wonderful Sam Nunnally. Sam spent two decades as a charismatic, evangelical pastor before leaving to pursue the truth of Catholicism – a journey which took him many more years to confront, understand, and finally embrace... and it's all on his story, this week on the show!Sam's story is a phenomenal one – clocking in at one of the longest – including a serious examination of Sola Scriptura in an approach and context which we've never heard before on the show, a deep study of charismatic gifts in the Early Church, and some seriously heart-wrenching moments of confronting and accepting the truth claims of Catholicism. This is a fantastic story of someone absolutely in pursuit of Christ, coming up Catholic! For more from Sam check out his Instagram account (one of my favourites).Send your feedback to cordialcatholic@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter for my reflections on  episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive contests.To watch this and other episodes please visit (and subscribe to!) our YouTube channel.Please consider financially supporting this show! For more information visit the Patreon page.  All patrons receive access to exclusive content and if you can give $5/mo or more you'll also be entered into monthly draws for fantastic books hand-picked by me.If you'd like to give a one-time donation to The Cordial Catholic, you can visit the PayPal page.Thank you to those already supporting the show!This show is brought to you in a special way by our Patreon Co-Producers. Thank you to Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William. Beyond The BeaconJoin Bishop Kevin Sweeney for inspired interviews with Christians living out their faith!Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic