The Brian Holdsworth Podcast

Interviews and commentaries from Brian Holdsworth. Topics include theology, philosophy, current events, culture, music, art, liturgy, tradition, education, and more - with an appreciation for the treasure of tradition.

The Church is Not Its Own Infection 02/04/2023

Stupid Things Protestants Say to Catholics 01/21/2023

Stupid Things Catholics Say About Protestants 01/14/2023

On The Death of Pope Benedict XVI 01/03/2023

Fake Hypocritical Christians 12/31/2022

Xmas & Christmas by C.S. Lewis 12/23/2022

They Want To Be Catholic In A Different Way 12/10/2022

Formal Prayer Vs. Unscripted Prayer 12/10/2022

Can Catholics Support Affirmative Action? 11/12/2022

Steer Clear of the Corporate Moral Creed 10/21/2022

Steer Clear of the Corporate Moral Creed Why is it that corporations today are so enthusiastic about punctuating the work they do with moral instruction when it really has nothing to do with who they are or what the purpose of their corporate enterprise is? For example, a major telecommunications company in Canada has assigned themselves to be the champion of mental health by encouraging conversation and destigmatization in their advertising content. But honestly, if I want to grow in my understanding of mental health and the afflictions of real people, I’m not going to turn to my cell phone carrier for advice – because, why would I? Coca-Cola, who needs no introduction, elaborates on the work they do in their mission and vision – where it’s all about love, sustainability, and our shared future. This from a company that has been accused of being the worst plastics polluter in the world by Ethical Consumer. If they were honest about their mission, it would be about selling as much poisonous and nutritionally vacuous soft drinks as they can with little regard of the health implications or the environment. So given the disparity, between what corporations actually do vs how they describe themselves and their incessant habit of lecturing everyone about their moral “values” which they seem to think we should adopt – doesn’t it make you wonder why they do this, why they spend obscene amounts of advertising dollars to perch themselves on a high horse and pontificate to the rest of us? Up until very recent times, we had our best people contemplating the big moral questions for the sake of educating the rest of us on how to live well. They would study these questions, read what others have contributed, and offer their own thoughts. And while they didn’t always agree or get things right, their motives were simple. They wanted to understand our ethical needs and gain insights to share with the rest of us. They weren’t simultaneously blending it with the objective of selling cars or something like that. /episode/index/show/brianholdsworth/id/24765021

Where Are the Young Catholics 10/14/2022

Where Are the Young Catholics My parents’ and grandparents’ generations did something unprecedented in the history of the Church. When their ancestors attempted to transmit the traditional culture of the faith to them, and which had been handed down with great care and diligence from their ancestors, my parents generations said, no thanks, we’re going to do it our way. We’re going to invent our own Catholic culture based on the contemporary fashions of the popular culture which we are so enamored with. And if that’s a legitimate process of cultural succession - to reject your ancestors’ culture in favour of perpetually reinventing the culture to whatever might fit your personal preferences in a given moment of time, then the thing that the Catholics from my parents’ generation need to realize is that their cultural and liturgical sensibilities are just as susceptible to that process as was their parents’ generation. In other words, what goes around comes around. But what I found in those early days of my faith when we were pushing the envelope was that we weren’t going to be given that same liberty as they themselves had seized upon. If you want young people to participate in the life of the Church today, and apparently this is a lamentation that has appeared in much of the listening sessions of the synod on synodality – that there are no young people attending mass – then baby boomers need to suppress their own cultural preferences in deference to those of successive generations like millennials in the same way that they expected their ancestors to embrace their cultural revolution. If there’s an unwillingness to do that, then maybe we need to admit that that isn’t a legitimate way for culture to progress from one generation to the next. Maybe it’s a bad idea to treat your parents’ and grandparents’ culture with contempt in the hopes that you can seize the reigns and make it all about your own generation. This cultural incoherence is the reason there is a lack of young people in the Church today. They are being told they can’t have a Catholic culture that reflects their own pop culture sensibilities, like their parents’ generation were allowed to do, but also, they aren’t allowed to embrace a tradition that is truly traditional. Instead, they have to inherit the anti-traditional tradition of the 1960s and treat it with the reverence and enthusiasm that the people of that time were unwilling to treat previous traditions with. /episode/index/show/brianholdsworth/id/24693405

The Despair of Sedevacantism 10/07/2022

The Despair of Sedevacantism In times of crisis, it’s easy to sympathize with those who are willing to consider extreme solutions to account for the extreme situation that they find themselves in. And if you’re a Catholic today and you’re paying attention, you can probably admit that the situation is extreme. Which is why I don’t sympathize with Catholics and especially prelates who are carrying on as if it’s just business as usual. The sheep of the flock are suffering and confused, they are disenchanted, and they need a voice of reassurance. And in the absence of such authoritative voices, there are those with easy answers that are more than happy to lead people astray. If I had started my channel 10 years ago, I think it would have been rare to see comments that say things like, “The Vatican 2 Church is false and you are a false prophet for supporting it.” Or simply, “Sedevacantism is true.” I mean, those voices would have existed, but you’d have to search for them, whereas now, those voices have conspicuously multiplied so that on almost every video I publish, I will see a comment like that pop up. And so, to reiterate, I sympathize with people who are struggling to make sense of things. Things are not as neat and tidy as they once were for Catholics and especially those who try to defend the Catholic position through apologetics. Now we have any number of scandals to contend with from which there has been a lot of lip service from the highest authorities, but their actions are at best complacent and at worst, and there’s a lot of at worst, perpetuating, nurturing, and even encouraging the same corruption that created the scandals. And among those same sectors of the Church, we find scandalous and incoherent teachings if not explicitly heretical. Which makes those of us who are trying to reconcile our beliefs with the historic tradition and the infallibility of the Church – anxiety inducing. More recently, there was a debate published online that discussed sedevacantism that has amplified that anxiety for many people. And because there have been responses from competent apologists and thinkers like Trent Horn and Michael Lofton, I’m not going to repeat what they said, but I would encourage you to check out their efforts with the same open-mindedness that you brought to that initial debate. And if you can’t do that, then ask yourself if you’re just looking for satisfaction and justification for your anger and indignation. It might be that you just want to give yourself excuses not to be meek and humble of heart as the reading from Ephesians at last Sunday’s Latin Mass implores us to do for the sake of unity in the Church. But the thing about indignation is that it is dependant upon anger and for anger to be sustained, it will compete with reason. Righteous anger and indignation are good when needed as a response to something like war or a grave injustice, but if they are sustained for too long, you will forfeit reason. Beware of that. So come, let us reason together. /episode/index/show/brianholdsworth/id/24624222

A Poor Excuse for Leaving the Church 09/30/2022

How Unforgiveness Leads to Self-Destruction 09/24/2022

How Unforgiveness Leads to Self-Destruction Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: Some highlights from the video: "More and more, such pragmatic thinkers are discovering that religion and certain religious practices… just work – even if we don’t understand how. Study after study concludes that religious people are generally more happy and at peace than their non-practicing pears. Which is why psychologists like Dr. Jordan Peterson are eager to embrace the idea that even if you don’t know if God exists, it’s a good idea to act like he does – because – it works. It works for all the kinds of afflictions someone like him is responsible for helping relieve. " "Unresolved conflict and forgiveness are related to important relationships in your life. I’m not talking about the guy who cut you off in traffic or the person who was rude to you at the coffee shop, because those things are easy to forget about and move on. I’m talking about important relationships because when people who you share some intimate aspect of your life with hurt you, it can be extremely hard not to resent them and almost impossible to forget them. And this presents you with a choice. Every time you think of that person, you can indulge your anger and resentment and even thoughts of revenge – or you can choose to forgive them. If you choose the former – think about what that entails and to help illustrate this, I’m going to amplify the principle with an example that probably a lot of people can relate to. Imagine a parent who has done something that has seriously hurt you – like, I don’t know, splitting up your family by getting divorced – not uncommon right, but also extremely hurtful for everyone involved. Now imagine one parent is more to blame, like they had an affair or something. Well, you’re going to be confronted with your own emotional anger over what they did, and that’s to be expected. We should be angered by that kind of wrong behaviour. But if you nurture that anger, as a habit, so that it doesn’t recede, if you regularly feed it so that it grows in intensity and becomes something like hatred for that person, then think about what that does to you. Because that person, is going to feature significantly in your life up until that point. You will have memories of all the most important events in your life that include that person. Think about holidays, family events, formative moments in your life, graduations, weddings, the birth of your children. In order to hate that person, you will simultaneously be training yourself to hate important aspects of your own life – IOW you will be training yourself to hate, yourself by hating important parts of yourself." /episode/index/show/brianholdsworth/id/24476907