197 - Same-Sex Attraction and Conversion w/ Andrew Comiskey & Marco Casanova
Release Date: 06/10/2025
198 - The Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen - Margot Fassler
The Catholic Culture Podcast
St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century abbess, mystic, polymath, and Doctor of the Church, is best known to non-Catholics for something else – her music. We have more pieces of music by Hildegard than by any other medieval composer whose name we know. Her chants are beautiful, otherworldly, virtuosic and ahead of their time. Some of them were written for her morality play, the Ordo virtutum, which is also the first of its kind. Musicologist Margot Fassler joins the podcast to discuss what makes St. Hildegard’s music so special. This episode is a crossover with Way of the Fathers, where Dr....
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197 - Same-Sex Attraction and Conversion w/ Andrew Comiskey & Marco Casanova
The Catholic Culture Podcast
We all know the secular world opposes the very idea of a person with same-sex attraction seeking any kind of therapy or spiritual counsel that might enable them to reach a state of healthy relations with the opposite sex. But what’s odd is that many Catholics seem to have bought into this. Many assume that if someone is not currently attracted to the opposite sex, this is a static, lifelong condition and therefore they must be called to celibacy. But this view involves multiple misunderstandings – of the SSA experience, of anthropology, of the power of God’s grace, and of the good of...
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196 - Theology of Hiking - Fr. John Nepil
The Catholic Culture Podcast
Fr. John Nepil, priest and mountaineer, joins the podcast to discuss his book To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. Topics discussed include: The modern view of "nature" vs. God's creation A morally responsible approach to risk-taking The modern origins of hiking as a secular activity "Wilderness" vs. "garden" - Catholic attitudes toward the wild places To Heights and Unto Depths DONATE to make this show possible! SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter:
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195 - The Most Influential Theology Book Nobody Reads - Philipp Rosemann
The Catholic Culture Podcast
The standard textbook of theology in medieval universities was the Sentences by Peter Lombard (1095-1160), bishop of Paris. This collection systematically arranged the theological judgments of Scripture and the Church Fathers on various topics. For almost four centuries, those seeking higher credentials in theology had to study, teach, and comment on Lombard’s Sentences. It was formative for the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. Over time, the genre of commentaries on the Sentences became its own vehicle for new developments in theology. The Sentences was not replaced by...
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194 - The Church’s Hour of Testing – Fr. Donald Haggerty
The Catholic Culture Podcast
A great spiritual master of our time, Fr. Donald Haggerty, joins the podcast to discuss his important new book, The Hour of Testing: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty. He offers profound reflections on the ongoing, and perhaps future, crisis within the Church, with an eye to arousing an appetite for the greater spiritual intensity God desires his faithful to live out in this time. It is essential that we see that our Lord Himself is reliving His Passion in His Mystical Body, when the Church suffers betrayal and humiliation at a high institutional level. It is...
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193 - On René Girard -Trevor Cribben Merrill
The Catholic Culture Podcast
Mimetic desire, scapegoating: if you've been hearing these terms thrown around lately, it's because the French Catholic philosopher René Girard (1923-2015) is having a renaissance, with powerful people like J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel citing his influence on their thought. Trevor Cribben Merrill, producer of the new documentary Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard, joins the podcast to discuss Girard's principal ideas, and reflect on aspects of his thought which seem difficult to reconcile with Catholic doctrine. Watch Things Hidden SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's...
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192 - Latin learning and classical Christian education w/ Ryan Hammill
The Catholic Culture Podcast
Ryan Hammill of the Ancient Language Institute joins Thomas for a practical discussion about how to learn Latin, as well as the central place of the classical languages (Latin and Greek) in classical Christian education, and the various schools of thought in today’s classical Christian education movement. Links Thomas’s article about learning Latin Ancient Language Institute New Humanists Podcast Jonathan Roberts, “Classical Schools Are Not Really Classical” Micah Meadowcroft, “Classical Education’s Aristocracy of Anyone” DONATE to make this show possible! ...
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191 - How the Church Invented Musical Notation - Christopher Page
The Catholic Culture Podcast
The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years, by the great English musicologist Christopher Page, covers the development of Christian liturgical music from its origins as an elaboration of the role of the lector to its flourishing in the monastic and cathedral singing schools of France, as Roman chant was spread across Europe. One of the most important developments was the gradual development of a system of notation in the late first millennium, culminating in Guido d'Arezzo's invention of the musical staff which allowed singers to learn melodies they had never heard before....
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190 - Fulton Sheen, Convert Maker - Cheryl C.D. Hughes
The Catholic Culture Podcast
A new biography of Ven. Fulton Sheen gives special attention to his high-profile converts, but reveals many other interesting facets of his life as well. Author Cheryl Hughes joins to discuss Sheen’s at times shockingly direct evangelization methods, his outstanding television presence, his lifelong struggle with vanity and ambition, and the mistreatment he suffered from his rival, Cardinal Spellman. Links Cheryl C.D. Hughes, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Convert Maker Thomas’s review of Cheryl’s biography of St. Katharine Drexel DONATE to make this show possible! SIGN UP for...
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189 - St. Boethius, Stoicism and Neoplatonism - Thomas Ward
The Catholic Culture Podcast
St. Anicius Manlius Severius Boethius's book The Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison while awaiting martyrdom around the year 524, is one of the single most influential works for medieval philosophy and theology. But Boethius also owed much to the pagan philosophy that came before him. Thomas Ward has just written a commentary on Boethius's dialogue for Word on Fire, entitled After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher. Topics discussed include: Boethius's debt to Stoic ethics and how he critiques the Stoic view of happiness The influence of neo-Platonist...
info_outlineWe all know the secular world opposes the very idea of a person with same-sex attraction seeking any kind of therapy or spiritual counsel that might enable them to reach a state of healthy relations with the opposite sex. But what’s odd is that many Catholics seem to have bought into this. Many assume that if someone is not currently attracted to the opposite sex, this is a static, lifelong condition and therefore they must be called to celibacy. But this view involves multiple misunderstandings – of the SSA experience, of anthropology, of the power of God’s grace, and of the good of celibacy itself.
Today’s guests know otherwise because they both have a background with same-sex attraction, and yet are each now married with children. Andrew Comiskey and Marco Casanova run Desert Stream and Living Waters Ministries, which for decades have offered help to Christians seeking healing from sexual disorders (including but not limited to SSA). This conversation offers solid, spiritually and psychologically sound, experience-based answers to some disputed questions about how the Church should be pastoring those with same-sex attraction.
It's not about “conversion therapy”. It’s about conversion in the Catholic sense – one day at a time.
--Can we really put a ceiling on God’s ability to heal us psychologically?
--Does any attempt at such healing amount to the secular bugbear of “conversion therapy”?
--What does life look like for a person with a “gay” past who is now married to the opposite sex?
--Is it legitimate for Christians to embrace a gay identity as long as they don’t act out sexually?
--Is there such a thing as a chaste same-sex romantic relationship?
Links
Thomas Mirus, “Your sexual pathology doesn’t make you special” https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/your-sexual-pathology-doesnt-make-you-special/
Andrew Comiskey, Rediscovering Our Lost Fullness: A Guide to Sexual Integration https://sophiainstitute.com/product/rediscovering-our-lost-fullness/
Desert Stream Ministries http://www.desertstream.org/
Desert Stream on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJVUJQREephvIkJWlTuwXBg
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