The Catholic Culture Podcast

Etienne Gilson's Metamorphoses of the City of God traces the quest of philosophers for a universal human society, as it gradually degraded from the heavenly city of which Augustine wrote to modern-day secular humanist globalism. It began with well-intentioned medieval thinkers who were overconfident in the capability of natural reason to unite the whole world in the Catholic faith - but this led gradually to a turning away from the rationally irreducible Christian mysteries and the person of Jesus Christ. Writing in 1952 as the European Union was beginning to emerge, Gilson also offered a critical assessment of various attempts to define Europe. Peter Redpath, co-founder of the International Etienne Gilson Society, joins the podcast to discuss this newly translated work. Links The Metamorphoses of the City of God https://www.cuapress.org/9780813233253/the-metamorphoses-of-the-city-of-god/ Aquinas School of Leadership https://www.aquinasschoolofleadership.com/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Mark Christopher Brandt returns to the show to discuss his latest album, Joy, which is based on the structure of the Rosary. It features the family choir of Mark and his three daughters, accompanied by Mark on piano. Mark began composing this music in the mid-1990s, not knowing who would sing it, when only his first daughter had been born. On the eve of the new millenium, he decided to take a hiatus from his career as a jazz pianist in order to focus on his family and his spiritual life. In 2021, by the most marvelous and unexpected Providence, Mark's selfless fidelity to God and family has been rewarded a hundredfold in making an album with his children! In addition to the album itself (pieces of which you will hear in the episode), topics discussed include: Why artists should give credit to God for inspiration How Mark taught his daughters to be discerning about music Using music to reverence the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary A spiritual perspective on “artist’s block” Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qjJz41Kdv60 Links Buy CD copy of Joy (with free book of rosary meditations) and learn more about Mark https://markchristopherbrandt.com/ Buy Joy on Qobuz (CD-quality digital purchase) https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/joy-mark-christopher-brandt/l26w0ostksrca Buy Joy on Amazon Music https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09J1Z534K/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp Buy Joy on Apple Music https://music.apple.com/us/album/joy/1589547700 Thomas and Mark talk about working together on his album The Butterfly https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-68-what-i-learned-from-making-music-with-mark-christopher-brandt/

This is a crossover episode in which Thomas joins forces with Scott Hambrick and Karl Schudt from the Online Great Books Podcast,  to discuss the classic essay Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain. This episode covers beauty as a transcendental and its role in the fine arts, and intuition as the way we experience artistic beauty. The beauty of a work does not depend on the emotional effects it produces, nor can it be proven by analysis. We experience beauty intellectually, but by intuition rather than by thought. The hosts also digress into arguments over photography as a fine art, Glenn Gould, and craft beers. Links Pt. 1 of this discussion https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/116-maritains-art-and-scholasticism-pt-1/ Buy Art and Scholasticism https://clunymedia.com/products/art-and-scholasticism Read Art and Scholasticism for free online (inferior translation) https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/art.htm Learn more about Online Great Books https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-27-always-wanted-to-study-great-books-heres-how-youll-actually-follow-through-scott-hambrick/ Join Online Great Books with 25% off your first three months via this link 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

This is a crossover episode in which Thomas joins forces with Scott Hambrick and Karl Schudt from the Online Great Books Podcast,  to discuss the classic essay Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain. Maritain argues for an objective view of both art and the artist, bringing an orderly, scholastic, Thomistic approach to understanding aesthetics. Mirus says, "Maritain gets art better than any other philosopher who came before him in the Western Tradition." For Maritain, art is “a virtue of the practical intellect that aims at making." The virtue or habitus of art, Maritain writes, is not simply an “interior growth of spontaneous life”, but has an intellectual character and involves cultivation and practice. The trio also talks about how fine arts and practical arts have been cloven off. How can we hold them both in esteem without denigrating the other? Scott says, "If we really know what art is then we will be more connected to honest work— that will be a refuge from this intellectual confusion, this metaphysical disgustingness, around us." Links Buy Art and Scholasticism https://clunymedia.com/products/art-and-scholasticism Read Art and Scholasticism for free online (inferior translation) https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/art.htm Learn more about Online Great Books https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-27-always-wanted-to-study-great-books-heres-how-youll-actually-follow-through-scott-hambrick/ Join Online Great Books with 25% off your first three months via this link 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

Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, recently issued “A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology”. The document takes a strong unequivocal stance against transgender ideology, down to practical specifics like telling the faithful we must not use transgender names and pronouns. Beyond that, it excels in showing how the Church’s whole anthropology and theology are at stake in the transgender issue. Today’s guest, Fr. Stephen Schultz, was one of the Bishop’s advisers in drafting the document. Fr. Schultz is the director of the EnCourage apostolate in the Diocese of Arlington, and chaplain at St. Paul VI Catholic High School. Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Sf83zKx3XeI Links “A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology” https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=12554 EnCourage https://couragerc.org/encourage/ David Crawford and Michael Hanby, “The Abolition of Man and Woman” https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-abolition-of-man-and-woman-11593017500 Acedia episode mentioned https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-18-acedia-forgotten-capital-sin-rj-snell/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

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

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

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

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.  

"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