Faith & Culture
262 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 59 ratingsJoseph Pearce, Editor of Faith & Culture magazine, has weekly interviews with well-known Catholic authors, speakers, and academics on a variety of topics related to Catholicism.
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Episodes
Ask Great Things of Him
February 08, 2021 11:00“’All these things shall be added unto you’ ‘He knoweth that ye have need of these things.’ St. Teresa of Avila says we should not trouble our Lord with such petty trifles. We should ask great things of Him. So I pray for Russia, for our own country, for our fellow men, our fellow workers, for the sick, the starving, the dying, the dead.” These words from Dorothy Day’s On Pilgrimage (a collection of her writings from the Catholic Worker) follow a list of her everyday struggles and needs. ...
Piety and Criticism
February 04, 2021 16:28In the present time of trial, Catholics need examples of piety and of the critical exercise of reason. These two complementary excellences are on display in the late Fr. Marvin R. O’Connell’s Telling Stories That Matter: Memoirs and Essays (St. Augustine’s Press, 2020). O’Connell (1930-2016) is best-known for his narrative histories, among which loom large The Oxford Conspirators (1969), John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (1988), and Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catho...
A Holy Kiss
November 23, 2020 11:00Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God (1616) as part of its ongoing reflection on the nobility of the human face. In a delightful and admirable way, Solomon describes the love of the Savior and the devout soul in that divine work called the Song of Songs. And so that we might more easily consider the spiritual love brought about between God and us when the movements of our hearts correspond with the inspirations of his divine majesty, So...
Male and Female
October 22, 2020 10:00Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. John Paul II’s Letter to Families (1994) in homage to the incomparable gift that was his pontificate. The universe, immense and diverse as it is, the world of all living beings, is inscribed in God’s fatherhood, which is its source. This can be said, of course, on the basis of an analogy, thanks to which we can discern, at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, the reality of fatherhood and motherhood and consequently of the human family. The...
Soporific Power
September 17, 2020 10:00“Why does opium make us sleep? Because of its soporific power.” So ran Molière’s send-up of self-important Parisian physicians. Sohrab Ahmari’s “The Trouble with Christian Leftism” invites a similar question-and-answer. By taxing progressive Christians with having succumbed to the opium of the intellectuals—Marxism in its various forms—Ahmari invites us to ask what is its hidden power. Why are we so prone to be always looking for the next social-scientific solution to our problems? Because w...
The Angelic Salutation
September 10, 2020 18:42Ave, gratia plena. Hail, full of grace. Luke 1:28 Throughout the whole world, the ancient Church was of one mind, always addressing the Mother of God in the words of the angel: Ave Maria, gratia plena. Our immediate ancestors, joining their elders in devout harmony, sang the Ave Maria always and everywhere, thinking themselves to be pleasing the King of Heaven by reverently honoring his Mother, and not seeing a more proper way to honor her than by imitating the respect that God himself h...
Mark 3:13 with St. Thérèse of Lisieux
August 28, 2020 10:00“And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.” St. Thérèse opens her Story of a Soul with a reflection on this verse. She says that the verse contains the mystery of her own vocation, meditating on the words “those whom he desired.” It seemed to Thérèse that Jesus had simply chosen her out of desire for her, not because she was worthy, but simply because it pleased him to do so. This fact troubled Thérèse: “I wondered for a long time why God ...
Matthew 25:40 with St. Teresa of Calcutta
August 21, 2020 13:16“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Mother Teresa became well known for speaking about “the Gospel on five fingers,” or “the five-finger Gospel.” With her ever luminous smile, she would hold up her hand and count off each word with a finger: “You. Did. It. To. Me.” It can seem like a radical oversimplification of the Christian faith, but the saint, with her graced wisdom, is on to something here. I...
Augustine as Patron of the New Evangelization
August 12, 2020 12:45As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the Augustine Institute, it might well occur to readers of Faith and Culture to ask: why is St. Augustine the patron of an Institute dedicated to the New Evangelization? St. John Paul II, after all, is the man who coined the phrase “the New Evangelization” and there are many other saints who are known for their evangelical work more than St. Augustine. Nevertheless, to the founders of the Institute, St. Augustine was the obvious choice. The August...
Luke 14:10 with St. Teresa of Ávila
August 10, 2020 20:25“But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.” Luke 14:10 is a verse taken from the end of one of Jesus’ parables about a wedding feast. He warns us against coming into a wedding feast and taking a spot at the head table (so to speak), because we may suffer public disgrace when we are asked to move. Rather, Jesus recommends taking ...
Luke 16:19–20 with St. Bonaventure
August 03, 2020 18:53“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores.” In this powerful parable, Jesus draws a distressing contrast between an unnamed rich man and the poor Lazarus, who sat by the rich man’s gate begging daily. St. Bonaventure, who himself lived out the practice of poverty in his Franciscan vocation, meditates on this scene to reveal its spiritual lessons: that in possessi...
The Revelation of God’s Face
July 31, 2020 10:00Faith&Culture offers this selection from Benedict XVI’s General Audience Address of January 16, 2013 as part of its ongoing reflection on the nobility of the human face.[*] I would like to dwell on the phrase: “reveals God’s face”. In this regard St. John records for us a significant event. When he was approaching the Passion, Jesus reassured his disciples, asking them not to be afraid and to have faith; he then begins a conversation with them in which he talks about God the Father (cf. ...
Matthew 17:19–20 with St. Thérèse of Lisieux
July 29, 2020 10:00“Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’” St. Thérèse of Lisieux interprets this saying of the Lord in a surprising way. In the gospel, the disciples have just failed to perform a healing, and they are asking Jes...
Luke 10:2 with St. Bonaventure
July 27, 2020 10:00“And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” Jesus launches his disciples on a mission with an encouragement to pray that even more laborers be sent out to reap the harvest of souls. It is telling that the harvest begins with prayer, not work, because prayer is the foundation of the harvest. In commenting on this verse, St. Bonaventure highlights the need not just for l...
A Face to Contemplate
July 24, 2020 10:00Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (January 6, 2001) as part of its ongoing reflection on the nobility of the human face. “Your face, O Lord, I seek” (Ps 27:8). The ancient longing of the Psalmist could receive no fulfilment greater and more surprising than the contemplation of the face of Christ. God has truly blessed us in him and has made “his face to shine upon us” (Ps 67:1). At the same time, God and man that he is, he...
Luke 2:25–29 with Origen of Alexandria
July 22, 2020 10:00“Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord now you ...
Americanism and America
July 20, 2020 10:00In 1899, Pope Leo XIII issued an apostolic letter, Testem benevolentiae, in which he expressed concern regarding the development of “those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some ‘Americanism.’”[1] The issue was complicated, but at its root was Leo’s concern that certain American cultural norms—in particular the Protestant privileging of the authority of private judgment and of equality over hierarchy—were infiltrating and corrupting the Church in America. The recent celeb...
I am a Christian
July 17, 2020 10:00Our earliest literary record of Christianity in North Africa is a court record. It is very short and straightforward. On July 17, 180, Publius Vigellius Saturninus, the proconsul of Africa, was saddled with the irksome duty of interrogating a group of seven men and five women from the obscure town of Scilli. They stood before him in Carthage accused of “living as Christians”—literally, “living by the Christian rite” (ritu Christiano…vivere). According to policy set by the Emperor Trajan in 1...
Courtesy
July 16, 2020 10:00With this lovely poem by Belloc in honor of Our Lady, Faith&Culture begins a series of reflections upon the nobility of the human face. Of Courtesy, it is much less Than Courage of Heart or Holiness, Yet in my Walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in Courtesy. On Monks I did in Storrington fall, They took me straight into their Hall; I saw Three Pictures on a wall, And Courtesy was in them all. The first the Annunciation; The second the Visitation; The third the Con...
Luke 1:28–29 with St. Bonaventure
July 15, 2020 10:00“And he came to her and said, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” In reflecting on Gabriel’s salutation to the Virgin Mary, St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan Doctor of the Church, explains how the angel’s message reveals her “threefold excellence” and how her response displays her commendable nature. First, the angel’s greeting shows her “dignity, virtue and charity.” Bonavent...
The Life of St. Benedict
July 13, 2020 15:23This selection is taken from chapters 33-34 of The Life of Saint Benedict by Gregory the Great. St. Benedict (d. 547) is considered the founder of Western monasticism, and many forms of religious life find their root in The Rule of St. Benedict. In this beloved story from near the end of his life, Benedict’s sister Scholastica shows him (and us) that charity is the end of the rule, and sometimes even trumps the letter of the rule. GREGORY: What man is there, Peter, in this world, that is h...
Luke 12:32 with St. Thérèse of Lisieux
July 10, 2020 10:00“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” St. Thérèse of Lisieux uses this gospel passage to help her interpret one of the most dramatic events in her young life. In her The Story of a Soul she tells of how she went to Rome at the age of fifteen and was granted an audience with pope Leo XIII. While there, she begged the pope that he would allow her to enter religious life with the Carmelites despite her young age. Because Luke 12:32 had been th...
True and False Progress
July 08, 2020 13:24In 1864, Frédéric Le Play published his magnum opus, Social Reform in France, which offered a comprehensive response to the progressive social theories of the Enlightenment rooted in his extensive sociological studies of multi-generational families in Eastern Europe. The following selection is reprinted from Critics of the Enlightenment (ISI Books, 2004), which is due to be released later this year in a second edition by Cluny Media. I shall refute two theories—mutually opposed and equally...
Stones
July 06, 2020 10:00The life of St. Francis of Assisi has produced some of the most colorful and inspiring stories in the Catholic tradition. One of the most famous recounts his mystical experience at the chapel of San Damiano. As he had looked for Christ among the ruined humanity of lepers, so he looked for Christ among the ruined structure of an abandoned chapel. Asking for guidance on how best to serve the Lord, Francis heard Jesus speak to him from a tattered, Byzantine-style crucifix: “Francis, do you not ...
Luke 8:24–25 with St. Augustine
July 03, 2020 10:00“And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?” In this scene from the Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are in a boat crossing the lake of Gennesaret. On the journey, the Lord falls asleep. Luk...
Mark 10:29–30 with St. Teresa of Ávila
July 01, 2020 10:00“Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.’” This saying of Jesus about forsaking the world for his sake and receiving great rewards in return appears in three of the gospels (see also Matt. 19:...
Mark 12:14–17 with St. Augustine
June 29, 2020 10:00“And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.’ And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?’ They said to him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Je...
From the Pre-History of Twitter
June 26, 2020 10:00In 1817, Louis de Bonald published a slim volume written in imitation of Blaise Pascal, Pensées Divers, or Thoughts on Various Subjects. The following selection from Bonald’s Thoughts is reprinted from Critics of the Enlightenment (ISI Books, 2004), which is due to be released later this year in a second edition by Cluny Media. The cry “Liberty, equality, fraternity or death!” was much in vogue during the Revolution. Liberty ended by covering France with prisons, equality by multiplying tit...
John 1:23 with St. Augustine
June 24, 2020 10:00He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” In the first scene of the fourth gospel, John the Baptist is questioned by the priests and Levites as to his identity and his mission. To answer them he employs an image from an important prophecy from the book of Isaiah (cf. Isa. 40:3): he is the voice preparing the way of the Lord. This passage declares the good news that Israel has been longing to hear. A messen...
Reading Sociology for the Sake of the Gospel
June 22, 2020 10:00Could it be part of a Catholic’s duty to read works of sociology? As a professor of theology most of whose students work as evangelists and catechists, I believe that I should. As St. Paul taught, it belongs to the work of the evangelist to “become all things to all people” and to “do it all for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor 9:22–23). It is as true today as it was in the thirteenth century that quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur—“whatever is received, is received after the ma...
Aquinas on True Happiness
June 19, 2020 10:00Now, one should note that many things are set down here about the beatitudes. . . Yet one should know that all complete happiness is included in these words: for all men desire happiness, but they differ in their judgments about happiness, and for this reason some men desire this, others desire that. But we find four opinions about happiness. For some believe that it consists only in exterior things: namely, in an abundance of temporal things; “they have called the people happy, that have t...
Luke 7:6–9 with St. Thomas Aquinas
June 17, 2020 10:00“And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come,” and he comes; and to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it. When Jesus heard these things...
The Manna and Coriander Seed
June 15, 2020 10:00Recently, while reading through the book of Exodus, I came to the passage that describes the Israelites receiving the manna from heaven during their desert wanderings. I must have read this verse a hundred times before, but something new caught my eye: Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey (Ex. 16:31). As a novice gardener, the detail that the manna was like coriander seed suddenly stood out to...
The Marvel of the Eucharist
June 12, 2020 10:00We need to understand the marvel of the Eucharist—what it is, why it was given, and what is the profit of its celebration: we become one Body, and members of His flesh and of His bones. Let those initiated into the Sacraments follow what I say. In order then that we may become one Body not only in love but in lived reality, let us be blended into that flesh. This blending is accomplished by the Food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love He has for us. On this account He h...
The Eucharist and True Sacrifice
June 10, 2020 10:00A true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And, therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, although made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrificium meant to indicate.[1] Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice...
Matthew 26:26–27 with St. Irenaeus of Lyons
June 08, 2020 10:00“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.’” In his famous work, Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus wrote against the heresy of Gnosticism, which denied the goodness of the material creation. To demonstrate...
An Interview with Fr. Daniel P. Moloney
June 04, 2020 10:00Faith & Culture presents an interview with Fr. Daniel P. Moloney, Ph.D., chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know (Augustine Institute & Ignatius Press, 2020). FAITH & CULTURE: This book seems wonderfully timed given the Coronavirus crisis. What led you to write it? FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY: I wrote the book because I’m convinced that most people don’t understand the concept of mercy. Since mercy is basically the virtue we t...
John 5:13 with St. Thomas Aquinas
June 03, 2020 10:00“Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.” In John 5, Jesus heals a man who is unable to walk and then quickly slips away, disappearing into the crowd of people in Jerusalem. Why does Jesus so quickly vanish from the scene? In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Thomas Aquinas offers two sets of reasons for Jesus’ actions. He begins by offering an explanation based on the literal meaning of Scripture. He says tha...
Paganism with Father Longenecker
June 01, 2020 10:00 - 16 minutes - 22.6 MBPaganism: Fr. Dwight Longenecker and Joseph Pearce discuss paganism, what it is and what it isn't.
St. Joan of Arc
May 29, 2020 10:00The story of Joan of Arc is preposterous. In what reality could a teenage girl approach the would-be king of her country with an account of angelic and saintly visitations and persuade him to give her troops to fight against a vastly superior army – and, after he agrees, she wins? It’s the stuff of myth and legends, but not history. Except that it is history. In fact, it is one of the most well-documented cases of its time, with detailed eyewitness accounts of everything that happened with,...
On the Holy Spirit
May 28, 2020 10:00This excerpt is taken from the ninth chapter of St. Basil the Great’s (c. 330-379) On the Holy Spirit. St. Basil is a doctor of the Church and this work is one of the first to meditate at length on the third person of the Trinity. It was written partly in defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which was denied by some in Basil’s time. Let us now investigate our common ideas concerning the Spirit, those which have been gathered from Holy Scripture concerning him, as well as those whi...
John 14:23 with St. Gregory the Great
May 27, 2020 10:00“Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’” John 14:23 is short and sweet. St. Gregory the Great explains this sweetness in more detail: “the Holy Spirit is love, and so John says ‘God is love’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4:16). A person who desires God with his whole heart already possess the one he loves; no one could love God unless he possesses the one he loves.” Gregory expounds on the beauty of this ...
The Mission of St. Philip Neri
May 26, 2020 10:00His times were such as the Church has never seen before nor since, and such as the world must last long for her to see again; nor peculiar only in themselves but involving a singular and most severe trial of the faith and love of her children. It was a time of sifting and peril, and of “the fall and resurrection of many in Israel.” He had been fifteen years in Rome before he was ordained; and then at length, on his receiving faculties for hearing confessions, he began, at the age of thirty-...
Father Longenecker's Favourite Poems
May 25, 2020 10:00 - 16 minutes - 23.1 MBFavourite Poems: In the fourth and final part of a series on a few of Fr. Dwight Longenecker's favourite things, Joseph Pearce asks him about his favourite poems.
Matthew 19:16–17, 20–21 with St. John Paul II
May 22, 2020 10:00“And behold, a man came up to him, saying, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’ …The young man said to him, ‘All these I have kept. What do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’” When the rich young man ap...
The Work of God
May 20, 2020 18:37Froh erfülle deine Pflicht. It was twenty years ago that I saw this German phrase in needlepoint in an antique shop in the Shenandoah Valley. “Do your duty cheerfully” is close enough to its literal meaning. I remember thinking at the time that it was a charming relic of Pennsylvania Dutch Lutheran culture. As is true of many in my generation, my thinking about the moral and spiritual life has been shaped by the teaching of the late Servais Pinckaers, O.P., who did so much to recover a synt...
Father Longenecker's Favourite Novels
May 18, 2020 10:00 - 18 minutes - 26 MBFavourite Novels: In the third of a series on a few of Fr. Dwight Longenecker's favourite things, Joseph Pearce asks him about his favourite novels.
Saving Knowledge
May 15, 2020 10:00“Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 Jn 2:3). To know God and Christ seems to mean to live under the conviction of His presence, who is to our bodily eyes unseen. It is, in fact, to have faith, according to St. Paul’s account of faith, as the substance and evidence of what is invisible. It is faith, but not faith such as a Heathen might have, but Gospel faith; for only in the Gospel has God so revealed Himself, as to allow of that kind of faith which may be c...
Jesus through Mary
May 13, 2020 10:00In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Having resolved from all eternity to give us Jesus through Mary, God was not content to make use of her as an instrument. Rather, he wished her to cooperate in this great work. This is why he sent his angel to her to propose the mystery. The great work of the Incarnation could not be achieved until Mary’s consent had been given. It was necessary for mankind that she desire our salvation. God calls us, justifies us, and...
A Happy Death
May 12, 2020 10:00In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Nature and grace together establish an immutable necessity of dying. It is a law of nature that all mortal things owe their tribute to death, and grace has not exempted mankind from this common necessity. The Son of God, having resolved to defeat death by dying, promulgated this law for us, so that we must pass through the hands of death in order to escape its grasp, we must enter the tomb in order to be reborn, and we m...