The Cordial Catholic

In this episode of The Cordial Catholic, I'm joined by Father Nathan Caswell, an Evangelical convert to Catholicism with an incredible conversion story to share. Father Nathan was raised Charismatic Evangelical, converted to Catholicism with his family on an Indigenous Reservation in Northern Canada, and spent the next several years wandering and soul-searching in the Canadian wilderness while he shrugged off religion – before ultimately becoming the Prodigal Son and returning home to his family, his faith, and eventually a vocation in the Catholic priesthood. It's an incredible story featuring mushroom hunting, treehouse living, and the discovery of God in the power of the ocean.To learn more about the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius visit their website. 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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 my good friend, YouTuber Austin Suggs from the wildly popular Gospel Simplicity channel to talk about why he isn't Catholic – after a year of asking questions about the Catholic faith. Austin stumbled into a world of digging deeply into questions of the ancient Christian faiths. From his experience of going to a Catholic Bible study, and then a Catholic Mass, he began to ask questions about Catholicism (and later, Orthodoxy). When I first had him on my show over a year ago, we talked about some of his misconceptions and misunderstandings – and questions he still had. Now, a year later, he's back, as a good friend, to unpack his journey so far. It's a fantastic conversation as we unpack liturgy, the papacy, apostolic succession, the Eucharist, and what exactly Austin is thinking after spending the last year asking some of the most brilliant minds in religion, some really great questions! For more from Austin visit his YouTube channel Gospel Simplicity.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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 author, and professor of Catholic history, and popular guest on this program Steve Weidenkopf. We talk about Steve's latest book Light from Darkness and discuss times when the Catholic Church was in complete turmoil, morally bankrupt, failing, and near collapse – and how each and every time it came back from the brink, stronger than before! We talk about this and what lessons we, Catholics living today, can take from the pages of history to carry out reform, renewal, and spur a move towards holiness in our own lives and communities. It's a great discussion; Steve is a wonderful storyteller!For more from Steve visit his website, and check out the Catholic Answers shop.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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 once again by renown patristics scholar Mike Aquilina to talk about how the Early Church – the very first Christians following the apostles – evangelized, how they spread the Christian faith. Through this conversation we dig into the early Christian sources like no one else can, expertly guided by Mike Aquilina, an author, podcaster, and popular guest on this show, we look into some incredible sources to undercover exactly how and why the faith spread – and, most importantly – what lessons we can learn for today. It's a fantastic conversation. Be sure to check out Mike's fantastic new book Friendship and the Fathers: How the Early Church Evangelized from the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and Emmaus Road Press.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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 re-joined by Father Blake Britton, the author of the fantastic new book Reclaiming Vatican II: What It (Really) Said, What It Means, and How It Calls Us to Renew the Church.Fr. Blake was a guest on this show exactly 100 episodes ago when we discussed Vatican II and what would, eventually, become this fantastic book. A book which has been sent, we learn, to every single bishop in the USA – it's really a mis-read book. Fr. Blake unpacks exactly what happened at the Second Vatican Council, how the agenda of the Council has been misunderstood and misapplied in the subsequent decades, and what we can do to truly live out the intentions of Vatican II as a movement of the Holy Spirit for the whole Church. It's an incredible conversation!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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 author, podcaster, and Catholic convert Tsh Oxenreider to unpack her incredible journey into the Catholic Church. Tsh and her husband Kyle met as missionary church planters, served and travelled with their family around the world, and eventually landed in the Anglican Church where they found the beauty and truth they were looking for in their Protestant Christianity. But, it wasn't enough. Questions of, "Says who?" and "By whose authority?" kept coming up and, after digging into the roots of their faith during the pandemic, they decided to come into full communion with the Catholic Church.It's a fantastic story!For more from Tsh visit her website.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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 Dr. Matthew J. Thomas, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology and the author of the incredible Paul's "Works of the Law" in the Perspective of Second Century Reception.Dr. Thomas joins us to look at the two perspectives on "Works of the Law" and what Paul may have meant – was he condemning all works meant to earn God's favour, or was there something else he was getting at?In his book, and this discussion, Dr. Thomas contrasts the perspective on "Works of the Law" from the Early Church Fathers (those closest to the apostles) to the theology of Luther and Calvin and the Reformation. And how the Catholic Church fits into it all.His conclusions, both personal and academic, are pretty incredible – and when we begin to explore how the Catholic Church shakes out in this debate, things get very interesting!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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 Dr. Denis McNamara, associate professor and Director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College to talk about Pope Francis's Motu Proprio on the celebration of the Mass, Traditionis Custodes  and how we can make the Mass great again. We dig into how to. understand the parallel forms of the Mass: the Extraordinary (Latin Mass) and Ordinary Forms, what the Popes intended when allowing (and then restricting) the celebration of both, and how each of these forms can inform and improve the other. This is a fantastic conversation all about how we can celebrate the Mass better – and exactly what that means – with one of my favourite liturgists and human beings of all time, Dr. Denis McNamara. 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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 missionary, church planter, and organizational leadership expert Dr. MaryJo Burchard to talk about her incredible journey into Catholicism. It's a wild one and really the title of this episode – and these show notes – just can't do justice to what brought her into the Catholic Church and her insights, but we'll try anyway!MaryJo was a pastor's kid, a fervent missionary, and the wife of a church-planting charismatic pastor who she served alongside of for many, many years before converting to Catholicism – a journey which paralleled her husband's. It began, in large part, through her study of Church Leadership while at an Evangelical Bible College – it was then that she found the writings of the earliest Christians and began to understand how they organized the churches, something that was critically missing from the churches that her and her husband had been a part of. It's a fantastic story, and don't miss her husband Kenny's story, we talked back in Episode 110: A Charismatic Pastor Hears God's Call to Catholicism.For more from Dr. MaryJo Burchard follow her on Twitter. Check out her new book I Can Be an Instrument of Peace from Neoteny Books coming October 1, 2021.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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support 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 author and columnist Eve Tushnet to talk about her writing, her journey into Catholicism, and navigating her the faith as a gay Catholic. Eve's insights – living and writing from the heart of the Catholic Church about some deeply personal, and challenging, issues – are flecked with her trademark humour and self-deprecation and provide some incredible places to begin to understand the Church's teaching, the role and place of gay Catholics within the Church, and how to discern an appropriate, kind, and deeply Catholic way forward for other gay Catholics. If you want to know what the Church teaches and what it actually takes to live out the faith as a gay Catholic, you'll find this episode deeply enriching. I'm so grateful to Eve for her time and so blessed to bring you this incredible conversation. Let's begin to understand one another better – in harmony with the magisterial teaching of the Church – and begin to get this right. For more from Eve check out her books,  Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, and Living My Faith and, due out in November, Tenderness: A Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love both from Ave Maria Press.Also read the article she recommended from America Magazine. 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!A very special thanks to our Patreon co-producers who make this show possible: Amanda, Elli and Tom, Fr. Larry, Gina, Heather, James, Jorg, Michelle, Noah, Robert, Shelby, Susanne and Victor, and William.Support the showFind and follow The Cordial Catholic on social media:Instagram: @cordialcatholicTwitter: @cordialcatholicYouTube: /thecordialcatholicFacebook: The Cordial CatholicTikTok: @cordialcatholic