007 Silence
A Quiet Catechism
Episode 007 (“Silence”) reframes silence as something charged and revealing, not empty: when noise stops, what’s true in us and around us becomes audible. The episode moves through silence’s good forms—recollection, deep listening, truthfulness before God, freedom from the last word, prayer, and wonder—showing how silence can gather the scattered self and make room for real encounter. It also names silence’s shadow side: complicity, avoidance, isolation, control (the silent treatment), and suppression within communities that prize “peace” over truth. From there, the script...
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006 Attention
A Quiet Catechism
This episode of A Quiet Catechism (Human Foundations #6) reframes attention as more than focus: it’s the daily act of giving your inner life away to what you repeatedly behold—until it shapes who you become. Doug diagnoses modern life as an economy built to monetize and fracture attention through novelty, outrage, comparison, and performance, leaving prayer and love thin because the soul is untrained in stillness. The Catholic response is formation, not panic: practices like recollection, detachment, silence, leisure-as-contemplation, and the liturgy steadily reorder attention...
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005 Memory
A Quiet Catechism
In this episode of A Quiet Catechism, we sit with the word Memory and discover why it is both a gift and a battleground of the soul. Memory is more than recall. It shapes identity, love, responsibility, and even temptation, especially when wounded by trauma, shame, resentment, or habitual sin. Through the wisdom of the Catholic tradition and the steady rhythm of the liturgical year, we learn that Christianity does not ask us to forget, but to remember rightly with truth and mercy braided together. From the Examen to Confession, and finally to the Eucharist, we explore the Church’s radical...
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004 Conscience
A Quiet Catechism
In this episode of A Quiet Catechism, we step gently into one of the most intimate rooms of the human soul: conscience. Not as a vague “follow your heart” slogan, but as the mysterious interior witness that says, this matters… choose the good. We explore how conscience reveals the dignity of the human person, how it can become warped by fear, tribalism, media noise, scrupulosity, or moral numbness, and why modern culture often tries to outsource it to crowds, platforms, and ideologies. Along the way, we draw wisdom from lesser-cited Catholic giants like John Henry Newman, Catherine of...
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003 Reason
A Quiet Catechism
Episode 003 — “Reason” (A Quiet Catechism | Human Foundations Series) In Episode 003 of A Quiet Catechism, Doug Tooke explores the Catholic understanding of reason not as cold calculation, but as a light meant to help us read reality with humility, wonder, and love. Beginning with the idea that the world is knowable and meaningful, the episode reflects on Christ as the Logos and the human mind as a true participation in truth. Along the way, Doug warns how reason can shrink into weaponized argument, control, or mere rationalization in an age of information overload. Drawing on thinkers...
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002 Desire
A Quiet Catechism
Episode 002 — “Desire” (A Quiet Catechism | Human Foundations Series) In Episode 002 of A Quiet Catechism, Doug Tooke reflects on desire as the deep current beneath every human life—our longing for love, meaning, beauty, peace, and home. Rather than treating desire as something to repress or indulge, the episode presents the Catholic view that desire is a signpost: a hopeful reminder that we are not self-contained, but made for more. Doug explores how modern culture manipulates desire into endless appetite, and why the Church insists desire must be educated and formed, not shamed or...
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001 Freedom
A Quiet Catechism
Episode 001 — “Freedom” (A Quiet Catechism) In Episode 001 of A Quiet Catechism, Doug Tooke explores freedom as one of the most celebrated—and most misunderstood—words in modern life. Rather than treating freedom as limitless choice or emotional self-expression, the episode asks what happens when cultures and souls live without shared definitions of the good. Doug contrasts the exhausting modern ideal of constant self-invention with a Catholic vision of freedom as formation: the slow, disciplined shaping of desire until choosing the good becomes natural—even joyful. Drawing on...
info_outlineEpisode 001 — “Freedom” (A Quiet Catechism)
In Episode 001 of A Quiet Catechism, Doug Tooke explores freedom as one of the most celebrated—and most misunderstood—words in modern life. Rather than treating freedom as limitless choice or emotional self-expression, the episode asks what happens when cultures and souls live without shared definitions of the good. Doug contrasts the exhausting modern ideal of constant self-invention with a Catholic vision of freedom as formation: the slow, disciplined shaping of desire until choosing the good becomes natural—even joyful. Drawing on Robert Barron, Josef Pieper, Servais Pinckaers, and John Paul II, the episode argues that limits are not insults but invitations, and that true freedom is not doing whatever we want, but learning to want what is worth doing—until virtue feels like breathing.