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The home of the free because of the brave is filled with many terrific people, who live a life (for the most part—the poor, Jesus said, will always be with us) of comfort and convenience.
America also comes with particular challenges for Christians who are engaged in evangelization. This week, I talked to one of the best in the biz, Peter Herbeck, vice president of Renewal Ministries and its director of mission. He has been speaking about the lordship of Jesus for over 30 years in scores of countries all over the world and he has special insights into the “isms” here at home that make it a challenge for missionaries. I loved this conversation!
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Michael J. Knowles the a Yale-bred host of two-thirds of The Daily Wire platform begun by Ben Shapiro. He “wrote” a clever “book” titled Reasons To Vote Democrat: A Comprehensive Guide
Very few commentators anywhere in the mediasphere are out of the closet Catholics who actually accept all the teachings of the Church, which is why Mr. Knowles caught my attention. (Everyone reading this can list a dozen faux Catholics in media.) His show is much more politically geared than mine, but his infectious enthusiasm for slaying liberal arguments and his no-apologies support for President Trump couched in millennial-speak, and his frequent references to his unabashed Catholicism, make him very watchable as a host.
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Ireland was once known and loved as the land of saints and scholars. Stout in its Catholicism and justly proud of its traditions of literature, of art and of Guinness—along with a veritable factory of holy missionaries to places like Africa—Ireland has taken a slow tumble into chaos.
The Irish have fled the church pews like rats from the Titanic in the last 30 years; Catholic leadership on the old sod has been badly hobbled by scandal and tepid leadership; and, corporately, the Irish media have been crafting an aggressively secularist narrative about the nature of the country and its venerable past.
Very few people understand the “before and after” better than John Waters, my guest this week. He’s an author, playwright, rock journalist, and social critic who has decades of observational experience of his homeland—the recent history of which is less than encouraging, with its historic redefinition of marriage in 2015, and now, with the May 25, 2018 Referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which guarantees the rights of all Irish citizens, including “the right to life of the unborn.”
If this Article is repealed, the Ireland of old, marked with the glories I mention above, is over. Done for.
I’m airing this interview to make it available to as many Irish listeners before the Referendum. Pray for Ireland.
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Question of the week:
What is one concrete thing I can do to be an ambassador of hope for someone in my life who may be suffering depression or otherwise feeling despair?
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Ours is an age of social disruption, isolation, and atomization. Rates of suicide among young people, rich and poor, along with instances of clinical depression are on the sharp rise since 1999. A dark ennui—call it despair, or melancholia, or depression—has settled into the lives of millions of people.
Sources of community support that used to provide a bullwark against all this “apartness,” such as a vibrant parish at the center of family life and vice versa, mens’ and womens’ social clubs, and a culture that supported the ideals of monogamy, have withered or vanished.
Psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty deals with the fall-out of these disruptions every day in his clinical practice and as an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine where he is also director of the bioethics program.
This is a fascinating exchange of ideas—from social science data, to poetry, to the life witness of the saints to the truths of Scripture—related to helping those suffering maladies that seem to cruelly evacuate hope from the human heart. Very few doctors see the interconnectedness between the order of nature (and nurture) and the order of grace. Aaron Kheriaty is one of them, and he’s downright evangelical about getting the word out about the urgently needed, good old-fashioned hope. He’s also a fine writer who is attuned to the mystery of suffering in a way that is wise and accessible.
The Hail Holy Queen prayer describes the location of our sojourn as “this vale of tears” for good reasons. If you or someone you know has had serious vicissitudes, trials, or setbacks in his or her life, this is a “don’t miss” interview.
You may have heard of 40 Days For Life, and you may have heard of its founder and former CEO David Bereit. This interview dives into his story, what inspired him to get directly involved in pro-life activism, and into the reasons why he entered the Catholic Church this past Easter. Bereit is a pro at communicating the pro-life message with reason, balance, and passion.
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You may have seen Father Mike in one of his popular Ascension Presents video commentaries. His topics—delivered in his energetic and telegenic style—tend toward what’s currently trending but he always anchors his subject (living together, chastity, celebrity culture, movie and TV examples, etc.) in the timeless teachings of the Church. From what I can see, there is no topic territory that is off limits, including the teaching on homosexuality—the forbidden topic par excellence in today’s climate of political correctness and confusion.
Which brings me to this week’s episode, in which Father Mike and I talk about his new book, Made For Love: Same-Sex Attractions and the Catholic Church https://amzn.to/2J8Ikxj. It’s all about balance, understanding, and having the courage to put the focus where it belongs: on compassion that is yet unafraid to speak the truth.
The issue of homosexuality has been massively co-opted by the secular media and by so-called pro-gay factions with Christianity. The result is widespread confusion: what exactly is the Catholic teaching? Where is it in the Bible? How to respond to family members and friends who “come out”? Is it possible to be biblically faithful and pastorally attuned to peoples’ real needs?
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Are atheists uniformly dedicated to truth and evidence, to rational thought and logic? Might there be a hidden causal factor at play in more cases than one would imagine? Psychologist and researcher Dr. Paul Vitz thinks so. It’s fatherlessness.
His latest book, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, sets forth the case that abusive, absent, or weak fathers very often provide the psychological soil from which atheist weeds are more likely to fester. Using example after example of leading atheists (start the list with Nietzsche, Hume, Sartre, Russell, Camus, Freud, and the so-called New Atheists Dennett, Dawkins, and Hitchens), Vitz reviews the basic life biography and finds a “father wound” in one degree or another.
Are atheists uniformly dedicated to truth and evidence, to rational thought and logic? Might there be a hidden causal factor at play in more cases than one would imagine? Psychologist and researcher Dr. Paul Vitz thinks so. It’s fatherlessness.
His latest book, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, sets forth the case that abusive, absent, or weak fathers very often provide the psychological soil from which atheist weeds are more likely to fester. Using example after example of leading atheists (start the list with Nietzsche, Hume, Sartre, Russell, Camus, Freud, and the so-called New Atheists Dennett, Dawkins, and Hitchens), Vitz reviews the basic life biography and finds a “father wound” in one degree or another.
He doesn’t reduce atheism to a pop psych theory (not all atheists share the same experience of an abusive father, and, besides, human beings are complex) but he carefully traces the atheists own words and the ways in which their respective intellectual journies led them to reject God—the Father.
It’s a fascinating read. And, as you’ll soon find out, Dr. Vitz is a fascinating guest.
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I have been reading Rev. Dalbey’s books with great profit since the mid-90s. One of the first Christian leaders to address the crisis of masculinity, Dalbey has laid his hand on an urgent and increasingly obvious problem: men don’t know how to be men.
The source of the problem is multiform: the throwaway divorce culture, the failed Sexual Revolution, the epidemic of pornography, bad or non-existent modeling from one’s own father, and a sense of shame that gets covered over by excessive pride.
What is your relationship like with your father? How has it contributed to the man you are, for better or worse? Did your dad teach you how to pray? Talk to you about sex in a healthy way?
Do you struggle to be real—in all that that implies? How has a rules-based approach to religion insinuated itself into your relationship with Christ our Savior?
Gordon Dalbey has your back, and most probably understands your heart.
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The emotional, some say spiritual, effect music has on us is notoriously difficult to put into words. It’s sort of like analyzing why something is funny. The reality ever exceeds our verbal grasp.
Why are minor chords sad and majors happy? Why, when you hear a song from your childhood is there a superglue of emotion attached, bringing you instantly to those moments long ago?
This week’s guest is one of the greats in the choral music world. If you enjoy music with a lush, cinematic sound created for multiple voices on the exquisite side, Morten Lauridsen is your man.
The most frequently performed American composer of choral music, Lauridsen is a National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001), and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 50 years. His work has been recorded on over 200 CDs including five with Grammy nominations.
We’re talking serious musical gravitas here.
On November 11, 2018, a massive concert for international television is being held at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany to mark the centenary of the end of World War One. In addition to Welsh composer Karl Jenkins’ Mass for Peace, the other piece selected is Lauridsen’s beautiful Lux Aeterna. I predict not a dry eye on that night.
You can imagine my surprise when, during the interview, the great man spontaneously began playing a portion of his classic O Magnum Mysterium to explain why the notes for the word “Virgo” ground the piece in a special way!
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Question of the week:
With only one life to live, if you feel like you have something to create, musically or otherwise, what is stopping you?
Christopher West has devoted his adult life to communicating the beauty of the Catholic Faith, particularly through the insights of what’s known everywhere as the Theology of the Body.
First in archdiocesan religious education, then with the Theology of the Body Institute, and now with The Cor Project, West has been out in front, pointing out the Source of Beauty, making connections between superficially disperate dots, and, of course, being the world’s most famous expositor of the thought of St. John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body.
His life work of explaining and interpreting the five years’ worth of the great Pope’s General Audiences (1979-1984) has launched a whole cottage industry of books, DVDs, and seminars.
I have interviewed Christopher West more than once, but this conversation with him is my favorite. We talked films that fairly vibrate with low-density gospel ideas, pop music lyrics that point Upward, the sad misalignment that leads to giving into the siren song of porn (he calls it “aiming too low”), and why he thinks the Sexual Revolution is on its last lap.
You’ll find this conversation bracing, and maybe challenging, if I had to guess. West pulls insights whole cloth from unexpected places. I’m grateful for his endorsement of the upcoming revised and expanded edition of my first book, Sex Au Naturel. (More about that exciting development down the road.)
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Question of the week:
Do I believe I have a human (body and soul) and not just a spiritual, nature?
She didn’t want to do it.
No way, no how.
Not becoming Catholic.
Lizzie was an established and very popular presence in the “young Protestant dispenses advice to the like-minded” space on YouTube; she grew up in the Church of Christ and imbibed the standard myths about Catholicism. She might pray for Catholics, but become one? Riiiiiight.
Attending Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, Lizzie began to run into fellow Protestants who were either intensely interested in the Faith or had converted to full membership. Meanwhile, her YouTube channel began to really grow wings. (As of this writing, she has 34,808,077 total views.)
Perhaps wanting to be kind and informative, Lizzie ended up shooting some video commentaries with titles like “Seven Lies Protestants Believe About Catholicism,” and “Questions Protestants Have For Catholics.”
Then she discovered the Church fathers, and, in her revelatory video called (wait for it) “Why I Am Becoming Catholic,” she goes one to explain how the book Upon This Rock by Steve Ray was instrumental in her decision. I grinned audibly. My buddy Steve!
My interview with her, as you’ll see, was a delight. She is direct, candid, and very open about her diagnosis with bipolar disorder. Her journey is about to take a profound leap forward when she enters full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter, 2018.
Pray for this young leader. As an evangelist and content creator for Christ, Lizzie Estella Reezay is going places.
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Is art just a luxury for the wealthy? Can there even be a definition for it? How did the Incarnation of the Logos change the world? What did Dostoyevsky mean by having one of his characters in The Idiot say, “in the future, man will be saved by beauty?”
Jonathan Pageau possesses a unique combination of gifts. He is an extraordinary artist, chiefly in the area of carving and iconography (feast your eyes and soul on his stunning work at www.pageaucarvings.com), and he is an articulate social critic, making important connections between the zeitgeist and trends in the world of art and public images. He is also a convert to Orthodoxy from a Protestant background, and serves as the editor of the Orthodox Arts Journal (www.orthodoxartsjournal.org).
Hire this man to speak at your next conference. You’re welcome.
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I keep having the same exchange with my seriously Catholic friends whenever Pope Francis comes up in conversation. It goes something like this: we were enthused about the initial days of the election (he was saying things about evangelization that needed saying, he encouraged us to get out of “mindset ruts” and bring the gospel to the peripheries since the periphery dwellers aren’t knocking on the church door) and then….something happened to the enthusiasm.
Troubling things were said during airplane interviews (which have become more frequent), homilies began to sound more and more political, then official documents began to contain ambiguities and it became increasingly hard to domesticate the problem by blaming “the media” for “misquoting the Pope again.”
Enter Philip Lawler. Lawler is known for his incisive, non-nonsense journalism. But Lawler is no muck-raking, axe-grinding ideologue. His work epitomizes the term, “seasoned veteran.” He was the first layman to edit The Pilot, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston; he’s a Harvard alumnus, and has covered Catholic affairs for 30 years. The year Pope Francis was elected, Lawler co-wrote a warm tribute book to the new Pontiff, A Call to Serve: Pope Francis and the Catholic Future http://amzn.to/2HhAroh
That was five years back.
A number of years ago, he wrote a book about a difficult topic—what happened to the Catholic Church in Boston before and after the 2002 scandals exploded—titled The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture http://amzn.to/2FpXuwm
He has a new book on an even more difficult topic: an extended attempt at contextualizing and understanding the doctrinal confusions have seeped into the way in which the Holy Father leads, teaches, promotes, and demotes. How to discuss them without disrespecting the person and the office of the Sovereign Pontiff? Of course, there are plenty of “rad Trads” who despise Pope Francis and have devoted themselves to attacking him since his election on March 13, 2013. That’s both unfortunate and predictable, since Pope Francis’s three predecessors didn’t pass muster with the (mercifully small) clique of anti-Vatican II activists, either.
Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis Is Misleading His Flock http://amzn.to/2tpGS6D, despite its provocative title, is a well-researched account of a papacy that, five years after it began, has untold numbers of orthodox Catholics scratching their heads.
In case you’re wondering, no, Lawler is not accusing the Pope of heresy nor does he think the Holy Father is an anti-pope. Like all serious Catholics, he prays daily for the pope and earnestly wants him to succeed as a teacher and spiritual leader. It’s not a book Lawler even wanted to write.
A recent Pew Center poll http://www.pewforum.org/2018/03/06/pope-francis-still-highly-regarded-in-u-s-but-signs-of-disenchantment-emerge/ reflect a troubling drop in favorability among Catholics polled since he was first elected. Not that the barque of Peter is sinking, at least not yet, but the winds have gotten stiffer and the waves bigger. Seems to be more like rudder damage.
In the past few months, there has been a sea change in Catholic media regarding coverage of the Pope’s personnel decisions and the ambiguities within certain documents such as, perhaps the highest-profile example, the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, (“The Joy of Love”) the fruit of a seemingly rigged Synod.
The sense of unease is growing, and despite the lingering fear to even bring it up, mainstream outlets in the Catholic media world, from EWTN to the UK’s Catholic Herald, Catholic World Report, The Catholic Thing, and others have begun to speak up about this with greater boldness. As long as the tone and content is respectful, Catholics have the right and duty under Canon 212.3 to speak honestly about matters of leadership involving the good of the Church.
Interestingly, Catholics almost relish castigating popes of the past (start the list with the Borgia and Medici Popes) as “scoundrels” or worse. This is done to emphasize that the Holy Spirit protects the universal Church in a particular way through the office of the Successor of Peter, who is protected against teaching something contrary to faith and morals.
Today, there is an unhealthy papalolatry in the air that takes the form of taboo against saying even mildly critical things about what a modern pope has said or done, things, of course, that don’t rise to the level of infallibility. A kind of ultramontane loyalty is attached to everything a pope does no matter how troublesome or controversial.
It’s not helpful. Neither is staying silent.
You don’t have to agree with all of Lawler’s interpretations or conclusions to see that there is a massive amount of discord in the Church today and that her visible head on earth is not doing much to “confirm the faith of the brethren” as the invisible Head said to His first Vicar in Luke 22:32.
In this week’s interview—in a spirit of genuine concern for clarity and filial respect for the person and the office of the Pontiff, who is ever in our prayers—we “go there.”
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Dr. Ryan Anderson rounds out the final episode in our four-part series on transgenderism. I have been an admirer of Dr. Anderson for a few years now, since the appearance of his two previous books on marriage (What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense and Truth Overruled ).
In this no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Anderson gets specific about the origins of the “trans movement,” the medical and social ills brought about by the gender reassignment surgery, and what ordinary people can do when asked for their opinion. The social pressure to simply agree with the aims of the ideologues is quite strong today.
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Michelle Cretella, M.D., is president of the American College of Pediatricians, a national organization of pediatricians and other health care professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children. She is also fed up with the nonstop lies perpetuated by the “trans community” on the world of medical professionals. Big Medicine has become as politicized as Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
As a pediatrician, Dr. Cretella has seen the New Normal up close and personal in the lives of young patients being put into gender transition protocols as early as toddler age. Yes, crazy. I spoke with her about what doctors, especially pediatricians, are facing when it comes to politicized peer pressure to go along with patients’ deep-seated gender confusions.
Very few doctors are willing to step out of the comfort zone and challenge the status quo, even when vulnerable lives are at put at risk. Dr. Cretella and her colleagues at the American College of Pediatricians deserve our support and our prayers.
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Hudson lived through a long, dark season of shame and sexual confusion. Early exposure to pornography and often feeling inferior to his older brother, led Byblow along a path toward homosexuality, gender confusion, an ingrained porn habit, and self-loathing.
Years of drifting brought him to a moment of truth, a fundamental choice: to choose love and its demands, or give in to the lawlessness of lust?
In response, God poured out His grace and Byblow was restored to the peace and lasting joy that chastity brings. In this courageously transparent interview, he recalls the sorrow and shame that kept him in invisible chains, but pointing also to the insistent way Christ began to move in his heart and mind.
Today, Hudson Byblow is a sought-after speaker and consultant. His approach to same-sex attraction is fully in line with the teachings of the Church but it emphasizes the dimension of personal testimony and the importance of the lost art of listening.
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Question of the week: Why do we need to begin and end with kindness when it comes to speaking with people mired in gender confusion?
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Walt Heyer lived for seven years “with” a female identity named Laura Jensen, having undergone the full gender reassignment surgery as an adult male in his late 30s.
Full mutilation, hormone treatments, driver’s licence with legal name change. In other words, all in.
It took a few years, but the “Laura” persona cracked under the pressure of the real man beneath the mountain of lies, which induced alcoholism, and a suicide attempt. Walt underwent his second reassignment surgery over 15 years ago and has a profound cautionary tale and hard won wisdom to dispense for those with ears to hear.
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Jordan Peterson has been called “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now” by the New York Times, “the world’s most sought after psychologist” by Psychology Today, and “rock star” by most every other pundit—admiringly by fans, sarcastically by critics.
Whatever he is, Jordan Bernd Peterson is crushing it. As of this writing, his YouTube channel has close to 800,000 subscribers; his videoed lectures on the interface between psychology and the biblical narrative are virally shared; his Patreon account snags over $70,000 per month; and his live lectures and debates sell out everywhere.
But what recently supercharged his notoriety (?) was his patient take-down of England’s Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman during a contentious interview about the so-called gender pay gap. If you missed that slow-motion car wreck, it’s here. As of this writing, it generated over six million views and pushed a worldwide audience in his direction very quickly—and providentially, just in time for the release of his new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
In this interview (my fourth with him, the first in person), I get into some of the questions I many of my listeners have had about his worldview. Is he a Christian? Agnostic seeker? Lapsed Catholic academic trying to climb back home? We go there.
Peterson’s Bible exegesis approaches the sacred text from surprising angles, mainly drawn from Jungian insights into archetypes and mythopoetic interpretations of the events and players of salvation history. He is a gifted storyteller with an intense way of getting to the inner truths of the outer stories.
If you’re looking for black and white answers that bear the whiff of complete certainty, try a dogmatic theologian. Peterson is acutely allergic to tossing out glib answers to questions he believes need to be deeply pondered before wading into premature answers. In sense, many of his lectures seem to be orally delivered first drafts of something he might write down later and polish. He clarifies his own thinking as he goes.
For people (especially mothers and fathers) who are concerned about the aggressive neo-Marxist social engineering on college campuses and about the rise of the dictatorship of relativism, Peterson’s courage and perseverance in the face of intense pushback from defenders of the academic status quo is downright inspiring.
12 Rules for Life is not short, and is not for everyone. His eponymous rules embody the kind of tough love messaging that was common in say, pre-1960s America. In a post-modern era of politically correct bromides beloved by feminists and their beta male cheerleader, Peterson offers strong lye, albeit peppered with an offbeat sense of humor. He knows that some medicine now and again needs a spoonful of sugar to go down.
How his role in the battle for free speech in Canada with the passage of Bill C-16, which criminalized “misgendering” someone, ended up launching his new career as a social critic and surrogate father to millions of millennials.
Why PTSD is as much about the realization of the evils of which one is capable as about life-threatening experiences one has had.
His thought process in analyzing the foundational miracle of Christianity, the Resurrection of Christ.
The ways in which the West is still in something of a hangover from Soviet Communism.
How suffering can be an introduction to experiences of profound meaning and sensitivity to the pain of others.
The enduring influence of his father (and former teacher) Walter Peterson.
Why failing to speak up against evil is far more costly than actually doing so.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
He Leadeth Me, by Walter Ciszek, SJ.
With God In Russia, by Father Walter Ciszek, SJ.
Holy Bible, Ignatius Study Bible, Second Catholic Edition.
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Here’s an easy one for you: would you like to meet someone, say, at a business meeting or barbeque and actually remember his or her name for more than a nanosecond? Would you like to remember a list of grocery items even if you don’t have a pen and paper with which to write it down?
Meet Harry Lorayne.
I get a lot of compliments about my memory, and I like to give credit where it’s due. Harry Lorayne’s first book, How To Develop a Super Power Memory (1957) is still, for my money, the best way to learn his system. His later book Ageless Memory: The Memory Expert’s Prescription For a Razor-Sharp Mind (1957) incorporates many additional insights for memory improvement.
Lorayne became nationally known for his many television appearances through the years, having “done” all the television biggies, from Ed Sullivan to Jack Paar, to Johnny Carson (24 times!), to Mike Douglas to Merv Griffin, et al. His showcase piece is to meet hundreds of strangers, one after the other, and then recite everyone’s name later with perfect accuracy.
Hale and hearty at 92, Mr. Lorayne epitomizes line from Psalm 92:14, “They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green.” It’s always a thrill to interview a long-time mentor, and I found myself smiling throughout the entire interview with the great man.
The personal obstacles he overcame growing up on the mean streets of the Lower East Side would flatten most people. His childhood family experiences and his early days breaking into the world of magic (and memory) performance are straight out of the Damon Runyon school of hard knocks. He lost his beloved wife Renee three years ago after 70 years of marriage. (Ponder that level of loss the next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself.)
But Harry Lorayne keeps putting one foot up, one foot down, all the way to Londontown, as the saying goes. He has at least one more book in the creative pipeline, and he still does the occasional convention lecture to magicians and others for whom he is a living legend. Not bad for someone who grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia and crippling boyhood shyness.
I have a half dozen of his books, but few more interesting than his autobiography, Before I Forget which his long-time pal Mel Brooks calls “a rememoir.” Talk about funny and insightful anecdotes – couples’ trips around the world with Brooks and his wife the late Anne Bancroft; things going terribly wrong during shows, and his big television break on The Jack Paar Show, thanks to writer Moss Hart, then a very big name. (Mr. Lorayne, a self-described crier, barely manages to hold it together when recalling Hart’s kindness.)
Lorayne speaks the way he writes – quickly, crisply, clearly. His teaching style is at once compressed (he never wastes a word) and conversational (he never sounds “professorial”).
Harry Lorayne is an American original. I know you’ll enjoy this audio only conversation.
Ad multos annos, Mr. Lorayne.
Question of the week:
Lorayne says that memory is just a synonym for understanding. Do you agree?
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In most social circles today, if you announce that you’re a Buddhist, that’s cool; you’re like a celebrity. If you say you’re into yoga retreats, that’s wonderful. Even if you say you’re a Christian (understood as Protestant) everything is still more or less groovy, unless you’re one of those fundamentalist types that believes Jesus really rose from the dead.
But announce you’re Catholic? Better get ready for the inquisition. Tim Staples knows all about it. Tim was raised Southern Baptist, later became an Assemblies of God youth pastor, and is now the director of apologetics and evangelization at Catholic Answers.
In this interview, Tim goes off-road to talk about life as a Catholic in a post-modern culture. How has the papacy of Pope Francis been a game changer? Some have implied or accused Pope Francis of being a heretic. Tim weighs in with his take.
Last year was the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the revolt now called the Protestant Reformation. How can Catholics talk about about the breakaway that had led to constant, and predictable, splinterization of so many different denominations, each contradicting the others is various ways?
And what is ecumenism, anyway? What should the endgame be for our prayers “for Christian unity”? Tim Staples has been debating, writing about, and pondering all these questions for 30 years. Listen and learn.
Much more!
Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines by Tim Staples
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Question of the week:
Why is it important to get the definition of ecumenism right?
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As promised, I posed the questions solicited from Facebook about Medjugorje to my guest, historian Donal Foley, author of Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud? and Marian Apparitions, the Bible, and the Modern World
Please understand that the number of questions exceeded the time limit of the show, but I did my best to compress together the ones that either asked the same basic thing or were already answered in the first episode. Be assured that none were skipped or censored.
Much more!
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Also on our website www.patrickcoffin.media
On June 24, 1981, a clear Wednesday afternoon, some young people went up Podbrdo Hill near the small hamlet of Medjugorje in then Yugoslavia. When they came down, they told people they saw “the Gospa,” (Croatian for “Our Lady”). A few more joined them, and it happened again.
And again. And again.
Today, three decades later, the six teen-aged seers are middle-aged adults and are still getting these visitations with their alleged secrets and signs. A global movement supporting these visions has been selling the phenomenon as real, in the face of the official stance of the Catholic Church.
What is the official stance? What is the truth about Medjugorje? I spoke with British historian and researcher Donal Foley about the whole story behind the visions, about the assessment by the local bishops (and every official commission that ever investigated the seers’ claims), and about the criteria the Church uses to approve or condemn private apparitions.
There are undoubtedly good fruits associated about some of the more disturbingly bad fruits of Medjugorje. We can start with that: there are good fruits, and that is GREAT. There is much more to the story, including some very bad fruits.
His book Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud? is a must-read for anyone interested in the most popular unapproved apparition in history. It is the definitive account. (Full disclosure: I wrote the Preface).
There are three groups of people on the Medjugorje spectrum: 1) true believer zealots; 2) sarcastic naysayers; and 3) the much larger group in the middle—people who are either on the fence, ignorant of the details, or who don’t care one way or the other. This two-part series is meant for that much larger middle group.
One American theologian told me privately, “Medjugorje is not only unapprovable; it’s a giant tar baby. Whoever touches it gets sticky tar all over himself.” So why am I doing it anyway? Clickbait? Attention? Not even close. As I’m sure my comment box will reflect, that first group, the fanatics—mercifully small in number—will provide lots of “attention,” all of it hostile and negative. They cannot can’t abide any information getting out there that contradicts almost four decades of propaganda.
The Medjugorje Movement dominates the publishing and internet world, fleeces good people of millions of dollars based on half-truths and outright lies, and people have a right to know a fuller account of the story. In the scores of books and websites that peddle the phenomenon, you will not find references to its serious problems, and so pilgrims are kept largely in the dark. This is a problem.
I have dear friends whom I love and respect who believe the Blessed Virgin Mary continues to appear to the seers. There’s no soft way to say that the Church has never wavered in the official judgment, however, starting with the late Bishop Pavao Zanic, and now Bishop Ratko Peric of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno (to whom the Church gives the right and duty to judge apparitions). The Latin phrase is non constat de supernaturalitate, meaning, “it is not established that anything supernatural is happening.” It is a negative judgment, and the Church has never wavered in giving it.
Why negative? Medjugorje enthusiasts are quick to claim that it simply means something like, “Wait and see the final approval; in the meantime, go there so you, too, can discover that the Blessed Mother is appearing.” That logic won’t work, for the same reason that if a man asks a woman to marry him and she replies, “Let me get back to you” -- that’s a no. He’s only engaged after she says yes.
The fact that more than one commission has been set up by Church authorities stems not from “doubt about the disbelieving local bishop,” nor did the Vatican “take it out of his hands.” The Movement repeats this mantra frequently. The real reason for additional commissions is disobedience to the judgment itself, as the local Ordinaries have been dealing with fanatical attachment to the visions from the get-go.
Despite the spiritual bullying that some of the zealots employ, it is perfectly fine for Catholics to disbelieve the claims of Medjugorje, as even approved apparitions like Fatima and Lourdes are not binding on the faithful.
As this is being written, the results of the investigative Ruini Commission (chaired by Cardinal Camillo Ruini of Rome and initiated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009) have been on the desk of Pope Francis for two years. A rumor floated around the internet last year that the Commission is set to approve “the first seven” apparitions—a rumor based on information leaked to a pro-Medjugorje Italian journalist)
In addition to my interview this week with Donal Foley, interested readers need to read this summary regarding that first week in late June, 1981, compiled by Bishop Ratko Peric. The summary is based on the taped interviews with the seers. It’s devastating evidence against the claims of Medjugorje, particularly the first seven apparitions.
Please note that this is not an “anti-Medjugorje” position. It’s a pro-Catholic one. As with most disputes in the Church, this one is about authority. The legitimate authority of the local bishop, His Excellency Ratko Peric, has been rejected, derided, and, in one instance, through a physical attacked. Not exactly a good fruit.
I pray this conversation with Mr. Foley will be of great value to you and I highly recommend his comprehensive book on the matter, and also his Marian Apparitions, the Bible, and the Modern World.
Marian Apparitions, the Bible, and the Modern World by Donal Foley
Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud? By Donal Foley
The Medjugorje Deception: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing, Ruined Lives by Dr. E. Michael Jones
VERY IMPORTANT TO READ: Bishop Ratko Peric, the local Ordinary has compiled the following summary of the first week of apparitions here:
http://md-tm.ba/clanci/first-seven-days-apparitions-medjugorje
Question of the week:
With the embarrassment of riches we already have—the Blessed Trinity, the sacraments, the papacy, the magisterium, the Holy Bible, approved apparitions—why do some people still attach themselves to unapproved apparitions?
Next week’s episode, Part 2, where questions solicited from Facebook cheerfully answered! Don't miss it.
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Ask Katie Ascough (pronounced azkoe) if she ever dreamed a year ago that she would be elected president of the Student Union of the 32,000 strong University College in Dublin (UCD), only to be impeached eight months later for following the law regarding advertising abortion services. Ouch, to say the least.
The third year medicinal chemistry major won the election hands down and disclosed from the start that she is pro-life, although she was not the “pro-life candidate” as the Irish press labeled her. She just wanted to make some real improvements for UCD students, like healthier cafeteria food, better living conditions, and open discourse among disparate groups.
In this interview, she shared with me what she did that induced so many of her fellow UCD students to impeach her (the first time in UCD history). The reality behind the misleading headlines is maddening and provides both a snapshot of post-Christian Ireland and an example of media manipulation. It turns out that my guest was found guilty of EWPL (existing while pro-life).
Target Africa by Obianuju Ekeocha
Love Unleashes Life by Stephanie Gray
Question of the week: How much does the fear of human respect stop me from becoming more actively pro-life?
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This is episode is my first to feature two guests on the same topic, although Episode 34 included Jordan Peterson and Senator Don Plett at the same time in separate cities.
This week’s show topic is the enduring cultural impact of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) through the eyes of two women close to its creation.
I say “Frank Capra’s” because that’s how the movie was marketed (it’s now called the vanity credit) and may help explain why the film got only a so-so reception when it was first released. Most of Mr. Capra’s pre-World War II movies were so sweet-hearted that they later earned the not-quite-complimentary moniker “Capra-corn.”
It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made. Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number 11 on its initial 1998 greatest movie list, it also ranked number one on its list of the most inspirational American films of all time.
Think about that, in light of the hundreds of thousands of movies ever made.
By the end of the War, though, the mood of the movie-going public had shifted, as I wrote about the making of the movie in National Review a few years ago here
The next day after it was published, an appreciative email from a woman named Mary Owen arrived in my inbox. Turns out, Mary is the daughter of actress Donna Reed, who played Mary Bailey, the wife of James Stewart’s George Bailey.
I thanked her for the lovely email and we had a few back-and-forths. After my podcast was up on two feet and spreading around the world (11o countries and counting), I thought it would be fun to have her on the show to talk about her mother’s role in this now-international favorite Christmas movie and to learn some back story to her mother’s career and her commitment to writing back to the G.I’s who wrote to her from the trenches and the gun turrets of World War II.
(Oh, by the way, she was not named for the character her mother played in the Capra movie.) The interview segues nicely into the next one, a rich conversation with actress Karolyn Grimes who played Zuzu, one of the four Bailey kids. Remember Zuzu’s petals? This was a real treat for me who loves the movie so well, and I know it will be for you as well.
I learned, among other things, how much Mrs. Grimes suffered as a teen when her mother died and then the next year her father was killed and she became a ward of the state—then “rescued” by an aunt and uncle in Missouri. An unhappy home situation after an abrupt end to her budding acting career (she also played Debbie, the daughter of David Niven and Loretta Young in another Christmas favorite, The Bishop’s Wife).
For those of us who can’t gobble up enough trivia and true stories about It’s a Wonderful Life, Mrs. Grimes is a treasure trove of first hand memories and insights!
Blu-Ray of It’s a Wonderful Life
Blu-Ray of The Bishop’s Wife
It’s a Wonderful Life Book edited by Jeanine Basinger
It’s a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book by Stephen Cox.
The Essential It’s a Wonderful Life: A Scene-by-Scene Guide to the Classic Film by Michael Willian
The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography by Frank Capra
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Tony Esolen is both a sage and a survivor of the culture war. He knows there’s a war over which camp gets to determine the default setting narrative, and he knows the cost of warfare. He also knows it’s not a military war (at least not yet) but a war of ideas and moral stances.
Esolen suffered a bumpy and very public exit from Providence College last year, where he taught English and classics since 1990 -- their youngest full tenured professor ever. But the diversity demon took hold and Esolen fought back manfully. In the end, he stepped away from the salary, the tenure, the sabbatical, and the sundry perks and joined the faculty of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH.
Like Ferdinand the Bull at the end of the Munro Leaf story, Esolen is happy. Our interview covered the story behind his departure from Providence not in a literary gossip way but in a What Went Wrong With Catholic Colleges way.
We talk about the new Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture and the importance of getting in the game of reclaiming our cultural heritage.
Question of the week:
What small thing can I do as a family to restore the Christian culture?
Comment below.
Don’t forget to Subscribe to the show in YouTube, as well as the podcast so you can get the weekly show updates. Check the podcast in iTunes and other podcast directories, please leave an honest review.
Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful