The Catholic Culture Podcast

Dana Gioia is one of the greatest Catholic poets working today. In this interview he discusses how Catholic attitudes toward the arts have changed in recent generations, and the revival of interest in poetry in the culture as a whole. Dana reads a few of his poems, discusses how Catholicism has made his poetry “simpler, more emotionally direct, and more unabashedly musical,” and even gives poets some tips on collaboration with musicians and composers. Dana and Thomas wrap up by discussing the role of the critic and highlighting a modern Catholic poet Dana thinks should be better known. Links The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/c4/Wiseblood_Essays_.html 99 Poems, New and Selected https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/99-poems Dana Gioia’s website www.danagioia.com Dana reads his poems on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6dDuuRPo6HXxn69LMLrwyw Jazz pianist Helen Sung and Dana Gioia discuss their album Sung With Words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZWhKguBJGg This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals (M5) is a book of poems intended as an introduction to the liberal arts for children, helping them to grow in self-knowledge, virtue, and the art of charitable rhetoric. It is written in the ancient form of the beast fable, with each of Matthew Mehan’s twenty-six alphabetical poems accompanied by a beautiful oil painting by John Folley. In this interview Matthew discusses the book, the role of poetry in aesthetic, moral and spiritual education, and related topics such as the lost social art of memorizing and reciting poems. Links Sample and buy M5 https://www.mythicalmammals.com/ Online Great Books referral link (25% off first three months – use code catholicculture) https://hj424.isrefer.com/go/ogbmemberships/tmirus/ Episode 27 with OGB founder Scott Hambrick https://www.catholicculture.org/podcast/index.cfm?id=27 Learn more about OGB https://onlinegreatbooks.com/

Stephen Auth is a highly successful investment manager on Wall Street. In his spare time, he hails down strangers on the streets of Manhattan and convinces them to go to confession. Links Steve Auth, The Missionary of Wall Street: From Managing Money to Saving Souls on the Streets of New York https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/missionary-of-wall-street

Western governments and NGOs are pushing the Sexual Revolution on Africa, using strings-attached development aid. Of all the funds from Western nations going to “development” in Africa, the majority are for population control. Obianuju Ekeocha is raising awareness about this form of neo-colonialism in which rich Westerners force their anti-culture on African peoples, because for them a better Africa is one with fewer Africans. One organization, Marie Stopes International, is even performing abortions in countries where they are illegal. Links Watch Strings Attached https://www.amazon.com/Strings-Attached-Obianuju-Ekeocha/dp/B07N5DSSN7 Target Africa: Ideological Neo-Colonialism in the Twenty-First Century https://www.ignatius.com/Target-Africa-P2384.aspx Culture of Life Africa http://cultureoflifeafrica.com/ Connect the Dots With Obianuju https://www.youtube.com/user/COLAfrica https://twitter.com/obianuju

Tolkien is well known to have been concerned with the internal consistency of his fictional world, from geography to history to language. But he was also concerned with another sort of consistency: metaphysical consistency, not only within the work but between his work and reality (because he did not see the storyteller's task as providing an alternative to reality but an extension of it). Scholars have debated the nature of Tolkien's metaphysics; Jonathan S. McIntosh contends that the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas provides the most fruitful metaphysical lens with which to examine Middle-Earth. Links The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie https://angelicopress.org/product/the-flame-imperishable/ Jonathan's Flame Imperishable blog https://jonathansmcintosh.wordpress.com/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Paul Jernberg is a composer of sacred music and director of the Magnificat Institute, which offers education in the patrimony of Catholic liturgical music. He tells Thomas about his career, including an interesting digression about gospel music and its relation to Catholic liturgy, the criterion of “noble accessibility” in liturgical music, and what Roman Catholic composers can learn from the ancient Eastern chant traditions. This episode contains selections from Jernberg’s Mass of St. Philip Neri, used with permission. If you would like to hear more episodes with music throughout, please send Thomas feedback at podcast@catholicculture.org. Links http://www.pauljernberg.com/ Purchase the Mass of St. Philip Neri album http://www.pauljernberg.com/preview Magificat Institute of Sacred Music https://magnificatinstitute.org/ Paul Jernberg, “The Logos of Sacred Music” https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=535 Jernberg on David Clayton’s Way of Beauty Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5xpu6Ldr-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIAK-o5JIL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NxbTo4BO4Q

The name of Garrigou-Lagrange has long been a byword for a fusty, rigid Thomism of days gone by, allegedly more concerned with centuries of accretions built up by scholastic commentators than with the original teaching of the Angelic Doctor himself. Only in traditionalist circles was his name still spoken with respect. But recent years have seen a wider reevaluation of this French Dominican priest and theologian, and a new translation of his work The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life shows that Garrigou has been unfairly dismissed as a purveyor of airless theology. The translator of this work, Matthew K. Minerd, joins the podcast to discuss Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s legacy and some of the book’s central themes. These include mystery from on high and from below (not only spirit but also matter is mysterious), the importance of common sense for philosophy, the different senses in which we use the word “to be”, the supernaturality of faith, and the eminence of the Deity beyond any of His attributes insofar as we know and name them by reason. Through all these topics it becomes abundantly clear that only by preserving the distinction between natural and supernatural can theology remain itself. Links Buy The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life http://www.emmausacademic.com/publications/2018/5/18/sense-of-mystery An excellent article on chastity by Matthew https://www.hprweb.com/2017/10/on-the-lowly-yet-vital-importance-of-chastity/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

The young Italian sculptor Jago is best known to Catholics for his marble bust of Pope Benedict XVI, which the Pope himself awarded with a pontifical medal. Upon Benedict’s resignation, Jago radically reworked the piece into its current form, Habemus Hominem. In this episode Jago discusses the meaning of marble, how he had to teach himself because his art professors opposed studying the great masters of the past, and his innovative use of social media as a new, decentralized form of patronage. Links Jago on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jago.artist Video of Jago transforming his bust of Pope Benedict https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqVwRookYJ0 Article on Habemus Hominem https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/02/21/shirtless-statue-pope-benedict-causes-art-sensation-rome/

One of the core things that has gone wrong with our culture in the past several decades is the denigration of every virtue associated with the perfect woman, Mary. Gentleness, humility, (true) beauty and especially motherhood: these are all antithetical to the radical feminism that is now thoroughly mainstream. If modern women are rejecting the very model of womanhood, it’s no wonder the data tells us they’re miserable. What they have embraced instead is described by Carrie Gress as the spirit of anti-Mary. Carrie’s new book, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, details how Satan has used women’s malcontent as an entry point to completely devastate them and the culture they were meant to create and nurture. She dispels the illusion of the sisterhood, as early radical feminism was filled with backstabbing, mental illness, and unhappy women who hated not only men but each other. She argues that the misbehavior of so many women today is a defense mechanism due to the lack of unconditional love from their parents. Finally, she points women to Mary and her virtues as a way of finding contentment in the unconditional love of God the Father, and of rediscovering the feminine beauty that will be crucial to healing our culture’s wounds. Links The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/the-anti-mary-exposed.html Episode 4 – The Marian Option – Carrie Gress https://www.catholicculture.org/podcast/index.cfm?id=4 Carrie Gress http://www.carriegress.com/ Theology of Home (used to be Helena Daily) https://theologyofhome.com/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Abby Johnson was the youngest clinic director in Planned Parenthood history. After witnessing an abortion on ultrasound, she quit, became a Catholic, and founded And Then There Were None, an organization which has helped over 500 workers leave the abortion industry. We discuss the new film Unplanned, based on her memoir by the same name, and delve into the vicious cycle of moral blindness which enabled her to work in the abortion business. Links Unplanned movie https://www.unplannedfilm.com/ Unplanned book http://www.unplannedthebook.com/ Abby’s Twitter https://twitter.com/abbyjohnson And Then There Were None https://abortionworker.com/ This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like the show, please consider supporting us! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio