Highlights: America's medieval roots; Rock band with 3 Orthodox priests; Are heist movies moral?
Release Date: 10/16/2025
The Catholic Culture Podcast
Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., joins the podcast to talk about his new book Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech. He answers Thomas's questions about small talk, cheekiness, oversharing, the use of humor to avoid vulnerability, Millennial vs. Gen-Z irony, correcting others, and openness to pursuing truth. Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech DONATE to make this show possible! SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter:
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
This interview with Prof. Thomas Pink, originally published in 2020, is being republished as part of Thomas Mirus’s ongoing series covering the major encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, begins by noting that its discussion of religious liberty “has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society” and so “leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” This episode is about discovering what that traditional doctrine was...
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Lives of the Popes on Apple Podcasts: Lives of the Popes on CatholicCulture.org:
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
The darkest, and perhaps most underrated, story J.R.R. Tolkien ever wrote was the tale of Túrin Turambar, a great man of the First Age of Middle-Earth, whose life was ruined by the curse of Morgoth (Tolkien's Satan-figure) and by his own pride. The tale, which resembles a Greek tragedy, was given its longest and most satisfying version in the posthumously published book The Children of Hurin. Aaron Irber, host of a podcast "about stories, myths, and Catholicism", joins Thomas to discuss this underappreciated work by Tolkien. Aaron's podcast, I Might Believe in Faeries DONATE to make this...
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Pope Leo XIII's 1884 encyclical Humanum Genus is the Church's most comprehensive explanation of why, ever since 1738, she has forbidden Catholics to become Freemasons. Reading the encyclical today, one has the thought that its continued relevance has less to do with the present-day activities of Masonic organizations, and more to do with the fact that Masonic ideas have already come to pervade Western society. Thomas's article about Humanum Genus Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus DONATE to make this show possible! SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter:
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Actor, writer, and director David Henrie (Wizards of Waverly Place, How I Met Your Mother) joins the podcast to talk about his new EWTN travel series, Seeking Beauty with David Henrie - season 1 is a journey through Italy. David and Thomas discuss what it is so many travelers still find so alluring about the heritage of Catholic Europe. They focus especially on Florence's Dominican convent of San Marco filled with masterpieces by Fra Angelico, how cities used to be built as dwelling places for men made in the image of God, and how David's show features Catholic artists and craftsmen working in...
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Veteran Catholic journalist Phil Lawler recently retired as the editor of Catholic World News at CatholicCulture.org. Phil was the first lay editor of Boston's archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot, but negative experiences trying to do real journalism while financially dependent on the Church hierarchy prompted him to move on to a career in independent Catholic journalism, with stints as editor of Crisis, Catholic World Report, and finally founding Catholic World News, which in 1995 was the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the internet. In the early 2000s, CWN merged with...
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Ida Friederieke Görres is little-known to English-speaking Catholics (except perhaps for her biography of St. Therese of Lisieux), but she was a major voice of the orthodox Catholic laity in mid-20th-century Germany, with Joseph Ratzinger giving her eulogy. Jennifer Bryson has translated Görres’s 1970 essay collection, Bread Grows in Winter, which is a response to the crisis in the Church immediately following Vatican II. Görres’s beautiful and profound writing gives a sense of what it was like to live in those troubling times, and how we (perhaps especially the laity) should respond to...
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
Thomas Mirus discusses Leo XIII's 1880 encyclical Arcanum, on Christian marriage. This was “the first formal and synoptic teaching on marriage since the Council of Trent” – a gap of four centuries. Arcanum is focused on what the Church has done to uplift and protect marriage throughout history. Leo argues at length that the state has no right to usurp the Church’s governance of marriage. LINKS Thomas's article on Arcanum Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum Audiobook of Pius XI's Casti Connubii DONATE to make this show possible! SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter:
info_outlineThe Catholic Culture Podcast
For the past century or more, the left has put a high value on moral provocation, deliberately transgressing what they see as society's hypocritical or puritanical moral norms, whether in religion, sexuality, or public decorum in general. Now the right, too, is getting in on the fun, performatively violating the speech norms held sacred by liberals - which is sometimes good, but sometimes itself violates traditional morality, not just leftist ideology. Matthew Schmitz joins the podcast to discuss his First Things article "Taming the Tongue", about the psychology of edginess, the problem with...
info_outlineHighlight clips from two episodes of the Catholic Culture Podcast and one episode of Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast – links to full episodes below.
83 The American Founding’s Medieval Roots – Robert Reilly https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-83-american-foundings-medieval-roots-robert-reilly/
85 Three-Fifths of Our Band Got Ordained - Luxury https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/85-three-fifths-our-band-got-ordained-luxury/
Are Heist Films Moral? The Lavender Hill Mob https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/lavender-hill-mob-1951/
SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/
newsletters DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio