The Catholic Culture Podcast

Michael Pakaluk joins the show to discuss his new translation and commentary on St. John's gospel, making the case that this loftiest of gospels echoes the voice of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the evangelist's adopted mother) in subtle but profound ways. Watch discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/G0PDD5Qyfh0 Links Mary's Voice in the Gospel According to John https://www.regnery.com/9781684511198/marys-voice-in-the-gospel-according-to-john/ Episode 34 on Michael Pakaluk's translation of Mark's Gospel https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-34-memoirs-st-peter-michael-pakaluk/ Donate to support the show: www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio

This episode features highlight clips from episodes 26-30 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. Links Online Great Books opens a new enrollment period approximately once a month. Get in there using discount code “catholicculture” for 25% off your first three months! Or use this referral link: https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/ Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition book https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Maker-Middle-earth-Catherine-McIlwaine/dp/1851244859/ 29 - Catholic Feminism: Should We? - Abigail Rine Favale https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-29-catholic-feminism-should-we-abigail-rine-favale/ 28 - An Introduction to Maritain's Poetic Philosophy - Samuel Hazo https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-28-introduction-to-maritains-poetic-philosophy-samuel-hazo/ 26 - The Arts, Contemplation and Virtue - Basil Cole, OP https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-26-arts-contemplation-and-virtue-basil-cole-op/ 27 - Always Wanted to Study the Great Books? Here's How You'll Actually Follow Through - Scott Hambrick https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-27-always-wanted-to-study-great-books-heres-how-youll-actually-follow-through-scott-hambrick/ 30 - What Tolkien's Visual Art Tells Us About His Creative Mind - John McQuillen, Holly Ordway https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-30-what-tolkiens-visual-art-tells-us-about-his-creative-mind-john-mcquillen-and-holly-ordway/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Did you know there's a hotel in NYC named after Pope Leo XIII? The Leo House was founded in the 1880s as a boarding house for German Catholic immigrants, at the behest of the Holy Father, and is still operating today as a Catholic hotel providing charitable hospitality at a discount. In this episode you'll learn from the Leo House's chairman and president, Michael Coneys, about the hotel's fascinating history. The story involves Pope Leo's special care for the Catholic Church in Germany as it was struggling under Protestant Prussian rule; as well as the St. Raphael Society, which helped political dissidents to escape Nazi Germany. It also involves a very providential visit from Mother Teresa! But this is also a very contemporary story story of one of many Catholic nonprofits struggling to survive the past year's lockdowns. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8888Qu0oonc Links Learn more: https://leohousenyc.com/ Donate to the Leo House: https://leohousenyc.com/donate/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Poet-philosopher James Matthew Wilson returns to the show to read poems from his new collection, The Strangeness of the Good, including his "Quarantine Notebook" series, and to discuss the decay and renewal of Catholic intellectual life. Topics discussed include: The present narrowing of Catholic intellectual life in conservative/traditional circles How do you become cultured, in an authentic and non-pretentious way, when you’re not participating in a culture? His ideal approach to reciting poetry The poets we most need to be reading now What needs to be done to build on the work in Catholic aesthetics done by figures like Maritain, Hildebrand, and Gilson What it's like to be an orthodox Catholic teaching at a merely nominally Catholic university Trying to get through to college freshmen who think they already know that there’s no value in the Western patrimony, there’s no truth, and life is meaningless Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ip02uvHlvck Note: This interview was recorded before James Matthew Wilson announced his appointment as founding director of a new MFA in Creative Writing, at the University of St. Thomas, Houston (in collaboration with multiple past Catholic Culture Podcast guests, particularly Joshua Hren of Wiseblood Books). Learn about the program here: https://www.stthom.edu/public/index.asp?AQ_Action=getPageByURL&AQ_URL=/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf Links The Strangeness of the Good https://www.amazon.com/Strangeness-Good-Including-Quarantine-Notebook/dp/1621386325/ All interviews with James Matthew Wilson https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-tePYzIXOsQ2OgM0Bh-Nq1LUpYF2877q

J.R.R. Tolkien is commonly perceived as a reactionary who totally rejected the modern world, and whose literary influences began and ended with the Middle Ages. Holly Ordway's new book, Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, debunks that view of Tolkien's life and work. Ordway begins with an invaluable critique of the sources of this misconception, especially the official biography written by Humphrey Carpenter, who admitted his own bias and desire to portray Tolkien as an uptight fuddy-duddy. She then proceeds to examine the works of modern literature we know Tolkien read, gleaning insights about how he may have been influenced either by acceptance or rejection of what he found in those works. In this interview we focus on Tolkien's reading of the father of modern fantasy, William Morris, the adventure writer H. Rider Haggard, the now-unknown religious romance John Inglesant, and even literary modernists like James Joyce and Roy Campbell, and realists like Sinclair Lewis. Watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0_J46A7QhhQ Links Tolkien’s Modern Reading https://store.wordonfire.org/products/tmr Daphne Castell interview with Tolkien https://fantasticmetropolis.com/i/tolkien Diana Glyer’s books on the Inklings: The Company They Keep https://www.amazon.com/Company-They-Keep-Tolkien-Community/dp/0873389913 Bandersnatch https://www.amazon.com/Bandersnatch-Tolkien-Creative-Collaboration-Inklings/dp/1606352768   Some of the many books enjoyed by Tolkien mentioned in this episode: William Morris, The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains H. Rider Haggard, She Joseph Henry Shorthouse, John Inglesant Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Andrew Lang’s fairy tale collections Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit books E.A. Wyke-Smith, The Marvellous Land of Snergs John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps and the other Richard Hannay books This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

We celebrate our 100th episode with the return of a favorite Catholic Culture Podcast guest, former Pennsylvania Poet Laureate Samuel Hazo. At 92, Sam is still writing books, most recently a new collection of poems and a novel, published by Wiseblood Books. In this episode Sam reads and discusses poems from his new collection, The Next Time We Saw Paris, a recurring theme of which is how each experience in time passes away, yet in passing away it becomes a singular whole which remains present as such in memory. He discusses his founding of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, which hosted public readings by many of the greatest contemporary poets, including W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, and Czeslaw Milosz. Other topics include the importance of hearing poetry read aloud, the development of Sam's poetic voice into something very like natural speech, and the hidden power of women. Watch this discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mg4Ao-eTIwI Links The Next Time We Saw Paris https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p108/The-Next-Time-We-Saw-Paris.html If Nobody Calls, I'm Not Home https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p98/If_Nobody_Calls%2C_I%27m_Not_Home%3A_The_Open_Letters_of_Bim_Nakely%2C_by_Samuel_Hazo.html Sam Hazo's website https://www.samhazopoet.com Catholic Culture Podcast interview with Hazo on Maritain https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-28-introduction-to-maritains-poetic-philosophy-samuel-hazo/ The Daily Poem podcast https://shows.acast.com/the-daily-poem This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

To celebrate the approach of Episode 100 of the Catholic Culture Podcast, here is the interview that started it all. Originally published on August 4, 2017, this interview turned out so well that we decided to launch a whole series of interviews on Catholic arts and culture. The podcast launched several months later, on May 1, 2018. Catholic composer and pianist Mark Christopher Brandt joined Thomas Mirus to discuss his classical album and suite The Nightingale, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Emperor and the Nightingale". The discussion was a double delight as it covered not only the album itself, but also an extended exploration of the spiritual themes of Andersen's classic fairy tale, especially what it conveys about the true meaning of freedom. Mark has been a guest on the Catholic Culture Podcast twice since this first interview. (Since then, too, Thomas has played on Mark's classical album The Butterfly, along with Katherine Colburn, the cellist whose skills are so highly praised in the Nightingale interview.) All music used with permission from Mark Christopher Brandt and Lionheart Music East. Links Read: Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Nightingale” http://hca.gilead.org.il/nighting.html Mark Christopher Brandt’s The Nightingale: Physical CD https://markchristopherbrandt.com/the-nightingale-album.html iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-nightingale/id1253776983 Amazon MP3 https://www.amazon.com/Nightingale-Katherine-Colburn-Christopher-Brandt/dp/B073LJ96LV/ Score: The Nightingale sheet music https://markchristopherbrandt.com/the-nightingale-scores-and-parts-store.html The artists: Pianist and composer Mark Christopher Brandt http://markchristopherbrandt.com/ Flutist Yana Nikol http://yananikol.com/ Cellist Katherine Colburn at Prince William String Academy https://pwstringacademy.com/ Engineer Bill McElroy at Slipped Disc Audio https://www.slippeddiscaudio.com/billbio.htm More: Round Trip: The Making of an Artist documentary https://markchristopherbrandt.com/round-trip-the-making-of-an-artist-dvd---store.html Mark's appearances on the Catholic Culture Podcast: 33 - Structure and Freedom in Music and in Christ https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-33-structure-and-freedom-in-music-and-in-christ-mark-christopher-brandt/ 68 - What I Learned From Making Music with Mark Christopher Brandt https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-68-what-i-learned-from-making-music-with-mark-christopher-brandt/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

This Ash Wednesday, following a note from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, many American parishes did not distribute ashes in the customary way of smudging a cross on the forehead and saying one of two possible formulas to each recipient. Instead, as an ostensible anti-COVID precaution, they sprinkled ashes on the top of the head and said the formula once to the whole congregation. Today’s guest, Gail Finke, wrote a thought-provoking article, not so much on the appropriateness of changing the usual practice this year because of the pandemic, but on an attitude so often taken in discussing Ash Wednesday every year. There is a certain spiritual elitism which regards concern for the external rite, including the rare opportunity to explicitly witness to the faith in a public way, as the province of those of little or superficial faith, or even of the vain. If someone objects to a seemingly unnecessary change, he is said to be overly concerned with the inessential. Yet the experience of the past several decades has shown us definitively that the elimination of “inessential” devotions has had catastrophic effects on the faith of Catholics. External expressions of devotion are important. The little things which set Catholics apart are important. Constant change and disorientation are not good for the people of God. The assumption that those who object to it must have little faith is arrogant. The indifference to the reality that the large number who do have weak faith will easily fall away when denied the rites of the Church—“you don’t need to go to Mass, just make a spiritual communion”—is callous and legalistic. Links Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LYkXheSxHXs Gail Finke, “Are We Going to Throw Out Ash Wednesday Too?” https://www.crisismagazine.com/2021/are-we-going-to-throw-out-ash-wednesday-too Thomas Humphries, “The Case of the Great Pandemic Liturgical Flip-Flop” https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-case-of-the-great-pandemic-liturgical-flip-flop/ Driving Home the Faith radio show produced by Gail www.sacredheartradio.com Ep. 84, Disobey Lockdown Now w/ Douglas Farrow and Andrew Busch https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/84-disobey-lockdown-now-douglas-farrow-andrew-busch/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Famous for his chanted performances of Beowulf in the original Old English, Benjamin Bagby is the closest thing you'll find today to an Anglo-Saxon bard. Bagby joins the show to describe how he reconstructed Beowulf as a sung tale, giving a demonstration of his Anglo-Saxon harp which is modeled on harps found in burial sites from over a millennium ago. He also discusses the recordings of the complete works of St. Hildegard of Bingen made by his ensemble, Sequentia. All music and video by Bagby and Sequentia used with permission.    Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uZLEM75RO_w   LINKS   Bagby's Beowulf site and DVD https://www.bagbybeowulf.com   Video of Bagby's full performance at 92Y https://youtu.be/2WcIK_8f7oQ    Sequentia https://www.sequentia.org   Featured piece by St. Hildegard, O Vis Aeternitatis, recorded by Sequentia from their album Canticles of Ecstasy https://youtu.be/_Vcv2HdApcs   This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BatWN05pP1I Catholic geneticist Daniel Toma is the author of Vestige of Eden, Image of Eternity: Common Experience, the Hierarchy of Being, and Modern Science. He joins the podcast to discuss what natural science, including the fossil record, can teach us about the hierarchy of being and the liturgical structure of all creation, with deified man as rational head of the physical cosmos bringing all material creation into union with God. Links Daniel Toma, Vestige of Eden, Image of Eternity https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/vestige-of-eden-image-of-eternity-toma/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio