A Resounding Yes!

Belle Meade sits down with Haley Stewart, Catholic convert and author of The Sister Seraphina Mysteries, to talk about the fourth book in the series, The Secret of the Starkworthing Rubies. Haley shares how saying yes to openness to life led her into the Church, and why she believes children deserve beautiful images and vocabulary that stretches them. Along the way, she explains why every book in the series follows the liturgical year.

What We Talk About:

• How a dream about mouse nuns living under G.K. Chesterton’s house became a children’s mystery series, with the first book written in an attic during COVID lockdown.
• Why Haley starts every book without knowing how the mystery gets solved.
• Animal characters let a child see their own vulnerability in a world of much bigger things.
• Why a good mystery comforts readers: things start out of order and are set right by the end, much like God bringing order out of chaos in creation.
• How Sister Seraphina’s discernment over a new role gives young readers a picture of bringing a hard decision to prayer.

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• The Secret of the Starkworthing Rubies
• The Sister Seraphina Mysteries
• Haley Stewart’s Newsletter
• Word on Fire Votive

Chapters:

• 00:00: Intro
• 00:30: Welcome and Opening Prayer
• 02:20: Haley Stewart’s Resounding Yes
• 04:11: Mouse Nuns Under Chesterton’s House
• 08:00: The Secret of the Starkworthing Rubies
• 10:25: Why Animal Characters Speak to Children
• 13:14: Illustrations and the Storybook Format
• 18:19: Why Mysteries Comfort Readers
• 21:14: The Liturgical Year in Each Book
• 24:48: Why the Series Works as a Read-Aloud
• 32:38: Prayer and Discernment in the New Book
• 37:59: Childhood Books and Favorite Saints

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Belle Meade welcomes Dr. John Cuddeback, who has taught philosophy at Christendom College for 30 years, to discuss his newest book, The Intentional Household.

The ordinary activities that once filled the home have left it, Dr. John argues, and families have to bring them back on purpose. He also makes the case for drawing grandparents back into family life.

What We Talk About:

• Why Dr. John points to his marriage, 30 years in, as the yes that shaped his life
• Why the 1950s family was already a post-industrial family, and what the traditional household looked like instead
• How a meal followed by real conversation counts as leisure, not amusement
• Why every no to technology needs a stronger yes behind it
• How grandparents and older members of the community can hand on faith and wisdom to a family, even when they live somewhere else

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• The Intentional Household: Living As If People Matter
• LifeCraft
• Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
• Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction and Opening Prayer
• 02:30: Dr. John’s Yes: Marriage
• 05:06: Why He Wrote The Intentional Household
• 09:13: How the Household Lost Its Place at the Center
• 14:05: Living As If People Don’t Matter
• 17:53: Why Relationships Need a Conducive Context
• 22:15: The Home as the School of Responsibility
• 26:13: True Leisure vs. Mere Amusement
• 30:52: Channeling Technology to the Good of the Household
• 40:09: Bringing the Elderly Back Into the Home
• 49:09: Writers and Thinkers for the Intentional Household
• 51:46: Making a House a Home

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade welcomes Michele Sagarino, president of Cross Catholic Outreach, a Catholic relief and development ministry that works through the local Church to serve the world’s poorest communities. Michele tells the story of the mission trip that set her on this path, and of the 2013 dinner conversation that became Box of Joy. That program is now closing in on its millionth Christmas gift.

What We Talk About:

• On a mission trip, Michele saw the same food and bedding neglected at government-run facilities and given with love by a community of sisters.
• Cross Catholic Outreach sends no American teams overseas. It funds the local Church already serving each community and meets spiritual needs alongside material ones.
• Why her staff gives the first hour of every day to God.
• How Box of Joy works: parishes and schools fill shoebox-size Christmas gifts, and Cross Catholic adds a rosary and a story of Jesus in each child’s language before shipping them overseas.
• Two ways to take part: lead a group by October 30, or have a box packed and shipped for $36 through Box of Joy Online.

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• Cross Catholic Outreach
• Box of Joy
• God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
• Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testaments

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and Opening Prayer
• 02:37: The Mission Trip Behind Michele’s Yes
• 08:05: How Cross Catholic Outreach Works
• 11:04: Integral Human Development
• 15:21: Michele’s Path to Nonprofit Work
• 19:15: How the Work Deepened Her Faith
• 26:34: How Box of Joy Began
• 33:33: What Goes Into a Box of Joy
• 36:48: Stories from Children and Families
• 43:21: One Million Boxes and How to Help
• 49:12: A Gift That Deepened Michele’s Faith
• 51:50: Closing Challenge and Prayer

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade sits down with Knox Thames, a human rights lawyer who spent twenty years advocating for religious freedom in the U.S. government and now leads the Everett Center for Global Religious Freedom at Dallas Baptist University. Their conversation centers on Blood and Water, the graphic novel Knox produced about his late friend Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic cabinet minister in Pakistan who was murdered by the Pakistani Taliban. Knox also explains why Christians are called to defend the faith of others.

What We Talk About:

• Why Shahbaz Bhatti turned down asylum in Canada and went back to Pakistan, knowing the threats against him were real.
• Bhatti as a university student, posting a petition written in his own blood when extremists tried to shut down his Christian group.
• Why Christians should defend religious freedom for people of every faith, not only their own.
• How a graphic novel reached Knox’s teenage sons, who never read his policy articles.
• An artistic choice in Blood and Water: Christ’s face is never shown, so each reader can picture the Christ they know.

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• Blood and Water: The Life and Martyrdom of Shahbaz Bhatti
• Knox Thames
• Everett Center for Global Religious Freedom

Chapters:

• 00:00: Intro
• 00:30: Welcome and Opening Prayer
• 04:10: Knox Thames’s Faith Journey
• 09:57: Who Was Shahbaz Bhatti?
• 15:41: What Bhatti Was Like as a Friend
• 17:55: Why Bhatti Refused Asylum
• 22:39: The Church’s Role in Defending Religious Freedom
• 28:37: The Three Acts of Bhatti’s Life
• 33:35: Why Tell the Story as a Graphic Novel
• 37:53: Bhatti’s Gethsemane Moment
• 41:59: Seeing the Hurting World Around You
• 45:01: Favorite Memories of Shahbaz Bhatti

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade welcomes Thomas Curry, a mostly retired physician from Port St. Joe, Florida, to talk about his faith journey and his novel Miss Sally's Son. Raised Methodist, Thomas shares how his wife led him into the Catholic Church and how questions about Thomas Merton's life became the seed of a story about a lawyer searching for his father and his lost faith. It took him thirty years, he admits, to appreciate what he had joined.

What We Talk About:

• Why Thomas enlisted in the Army during the Vietnam War, and how everyone he trained with shipped out to Vietnam while he never did
• How an unanswered question in Thomas Merton's life—a child he fathered before his conversion and never mentioned in his autobiography—inspired Miss Sally's Son
• A priest's challenge to Jack: no one can be a hypocrite before God, and the real reason he won't pray is pride
• Why Thomas and his wife pray the rosary every night, even over FaceTime when they're apart

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• Miss Sally's Son by Thomas Curry
• The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
• The Catechism in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz

Chapters:

• 00:00: Intro
• 00:30: Welcoming Thomas Curry and opening prayer
• 03:36: Thomas's conversion and his wife's influence
• 07:54: Joining the Army during the Vietnam War
• 12:25: How Thomas Merton inspired Miss Sally's Son
• 21:13: What a novel can do that apologetics can't
• 29:15: The distractions pulling Jack away from faith
• 35:19: Jack's struggle with prayer and pride
• 39:23: Choosing the rosary for Jack's return to faith
• 46:31: Why Augustine's journey mirrors Jack's
• 50:32: Advice for Catholics who see themselves in Jack
• 53:19: Where to find the book and what comes next

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade welcomes Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress, O.P. back to A Resounding Yes to talk about the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage on Saturday, September 26, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. Fr. Joseph-Anthony is the Promoter of the Holy Rosary for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph. 

In this episode, he explains why the rosary is the Dominican patrimony and why Mary's fiat at the Annunciation was only her first. He also recalls the question a friar asked him in the novitiate: why are you staying?

What We Talk About:

• Why the rosary belongs to the Dominicans: tradition holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave it to St. Dominic, and every Dominican province must name a friar as promoter of the rosary
• The set number of prayers is a framework for meditating on the life of Christ, not a checklist
• Mary's fiat at the Annunciation was her first yes, followed by thousands more—and unlike angels, we have to keep making ours again and again
• Why being connected through a livestream is not the same as being present
• The Rosary Confraternity: a commitment to pray 15 decades of the rosary each week, with no dues or meetings, so members share in one another's graces

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage
• Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary
• The Hillbilly Thomists
• Redemptor Hominis by John Paul II

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 00:30: Welcome and Opening Prayer
• 07:15: The Dominicans and the Rosary
• 15:22: More Than Checking Off Prayers
• 19:02: Mary's Repeated Fiats
• 27:18: Nine Months of Preparation
• 32:20: Connected Versus Present
• 37:34: Pilgrimage Has to Be Uncomfortable
• 43:38: Praying the Rosary Together
• 48:46: The Rosary Confraternity
• 51:21: The Hillbilly Thomists and the Place of Humor
• 01:05:31: Fr. Joseph-Anthony's Yes

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade talks with Corinna Turner, a Catholic novelist and lay Dominican who has been writing since she was fourteen and now has more than thirty books behind her, including the Carnegie Medal–nominated I Am Margaret series. The conversation covers why she trusts a story to carry truth further than an argument will, and how she writes danger and violence without ever making them graphic. She also tells the story of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, at length.

What We Talk About:

• Why integrity in a character is not the same thing as perfection — readers have grown tired of flawless heroes, and the saints are the evidence that real people can manage genuine heroism.
• Fiction reaches people where argument cannot. Christ taught in parables, and most adverts are miniature stories for exactly the same reason.
• Handling violence and danger without graphic description: imply it through what the characters feel, so each reader supplies only as much as they already carry.
• The story of St Edmund, the ninth-century English king killed by Vikings, whose shrine later kings were afraid to cross for six hundred years.
• Where to find Catholic fiction for teens, and why she reads the one-star reviews first.

Resources Mentioned:

• Paloma&Fig
• Catholic Teen Books
• Catholic Writers Guild
• LegendFiction
• Ignatius Press

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 00:30: Welcome and Opening Prayer
• 03:17: Starting to Write at Fourteen
• 05:33: What Integrity Looks Like in a Character
• 08:39: Dominican Spirituality and Not Preaching
• 14:04: Inside the I Am Margaret Series
• 17:31: Writing Gritty Without Writing Graphic
• 20:05: The World of unSPARKed
• 26:10: Pier Giorgio and Writing the Saints
• 29:24: The Story of St Edmund, King and Martyr
• 39:15: Writing for Teen and Young Adult Readers
• 46:25: The Campervan and the Giant African Land Snail

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade sits down with Jenny duBay, an author and trauma-informed Catholic coach, to talk about her debut novel World Between Worlds, a fictional retelling of the early life of St. Catherine of Siena. Jenny traces how a passing reference to Catherine in a secular history book pulled her back into the Catholic faith after years away from the Church, and shares stories from years of research and travel to Siena. The conversation moves through what made Catherine radical for her time, the discipline behind writing historical fiction, and what readers can carry away from her story today.

What We Talk About:

• How a passing reference to St. Catherine of Siena in Barbara Tuchman's history book "A Distant Mirror" led Jenny duBay back to the Catholic faith after years away from the Church
• The story behind leaving a copy of the novel in St. Catherine's home church in Siena, and how it ended up being sold in the basilica's gift shop
• A surprising discovery from Jenny's research — St. Catherine's real mission to Avignon was to broker peace for Florence, not simply to bring the pope back to Rome
• Why World Between Worlds opens with Catherine's childhood rather than her public ministry, and what that choice reveals about the ordinary struggles behind every saint
• St. Catherine's teaching on the "cell of self-knowledge" — balancing honest awareness of one's own sinfulness with trust in God's mercy — and how it shapes a healthy spiritual life

Resources Mentioned:

• World Between Worlds
• A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman
• The Prodigal Parishioner (Jenny's Substack)
• Paloma&Fig

Chapters:

• 00:00: Intro
• 00:43: Welcoming Jenny duBay and opening in prayer
• 03:11: What inspired the novel about St. Catherine of Siena
• 05:53: The path back to Catholicism
• 07:39: Research trip to Italy and the gift shop encounter
• 12:18: Surprising discoveries about St. Catherine's life
• 15:00: Why the novel opens with Catherine's childhood
• 21:09: Understanding St. Catherine's "Truth, capital T"
• 23:37: The novel's writing process
• 29:21: What readers can gain, and a look at the sequel
• 33:18: Returning to Italy and writing rituals
• 35:24: What brings the most joy — daily adoration

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Belle Meade sits down with Sister Betty Ann McNeil, D.C., a Daughter of Charity and former provincial archivist who edited the second edition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Spiritual Portrait. Sister Betty Ann has been telling Elizabeth Seton's story for fifty years, since winning a place as one of the youngest Daughters of Charity sent to Rome for the canonization in 1975.

What We Talk About:

• How a biography read at twelve set Sister Betty Ann on the path to the Daughters of Charity, and how she came to be in Rome for the canonization
• What happened to St. Elizabeth Seton in Italy: the month quarantined in a stone building with no window panes, her husband's death two months later, and the widow left in a country where she didn't speak the language
• The moment in a Florence church when an Englishman leaned over during Mass and told her what Catholics call the real presence
• Why Sister Betty Ann went back through the first edition and verified every quotation against St. Elizabeth Seton's own writings, and what she added for readers who want to check the sources themselves
• The painting of Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in Mary's arms that a grieving young widow could not get out of her mind

Resources Mentioned:

• Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Spiritual Portrait
• National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton
• Letters and Writings of Elizabeth Ann Seton, DePaul University
• Paloma&Fig

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 03:20: Losing her father, and meeting the Daughters of Charity
• 05:40: Winning the lottery to attend the canonization in Rome
• 08:02: A socialite on Wall Street, and the business that collapsed
• 10:15: Sailing to Italy, and quarantined at the Lazaretto
• 14:21: "That's what they call their real presence"
• 16:59: Home to New York with a Catholic heart
• 21:14: Emmitsburg, and the founding of the American Sisters of Charity
• 22:56: Fifty years since the canonization
• 26:58: Why the book needed a second edition
• 36:10: The painting in Florence that gripped her
• 42:19: How Elizabeth Seton shaped her own choices

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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Christina Sabo and co-host Fr. John Johnson welcome veteran astronaut and planetary scientist Dr. Tom Jones, who flew four space shuttle missions and made three spacewalks helping build the International Space Station. Tom traces the yeses that carried a fourth grader's dream all the way to the launch pad, and tells the story of the Sunday in April 1994 when three Catholic astronauts received the Eucharist aboard Endeavour. He also describes the sunrise that broke into the cockpit moments after communion, and the five minutes on a spacewalk he calls the best he has spent in space.

What We Talk About:

• Growing up during the space race, and the parents, teachers, and nuns who kept telling a fourth grader he could be part of it someday
• A failed Air Force Academy medical exam, a bomber assignment instead of fighters, and the five years of graduate school that followed
• Three hours strapped in on the launch pad, the prayers said during the wait, and the eight and a half minutes to orbit
• The Sunday aboard Endeavour when three Catholic astronauts shared the Eucharist, and the sunrise over the Pacific that followed
• Wonder, beauty, and what Tom and Fr. John offer anyone who believes faith has no place in science

Resources Mentioned:

• Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir by Tom Jones: Tom's Website | Smithsonian
• Jesus in Space: A True Story That's Out Of This World 
• Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davis
• Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? by Guy Consolmagno, SJ and Paul Mueller, SJ
• Vatican Observatory

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and introducing Dr. Tom Jones
• 02:31: Mary's fiat and the yeses that led to space
• 05:33: Asthma, a bomber assignment, and the long road to the astronaut corps
• 09:32: What a shuttle launch feels like from the inside
• 16:51: Fear, prayer, and an engine shutdown on the pad
• 20:03: Explorers or active participants in creation?
• 24:04: How the Eucharist came aboard Endeavour
• 27:07: Sunrise over the Pacific and the blue of the Virgin's veil
• 30:14: Beauty as a language for God that science cannot give
• 34:13: The view from orbit and the best five minutes of a spacewalk
• 40:10: Faith and science: Georges Lemaître and Brother Guy Consolmagno
• 47:29: What brings Tom the most joy now

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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