This episode examines what happened after Britain abolished the slave trade — and why that decision was only the beginning. It follows Britain’s choice to enforce abolition in a world that largely rejected it, tracing the creation of naval patrols, international treaties, and legal mechanisms designed to suppress the trade at sea. The episode confronts the human and financial cost of that commitment, including the deaths of thousands of sailors and the absence of material gain or imperial reward. It culminates in the 1833 abolition of slavery across the British Empire, showing how Britain chose costly enforcement and moral responsibility over profit and convenience, and asks how history should judge a nation that was willing to tear down part of its own power in the name of conscience. 

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This episode explores what happened after Britain’s moral awakening about slavery, when Christian conviction collided with Parliament, profit, and imperial power. It follows the long, exhausting struggle to translate conscience into law, focusing on years of resistance, delay, and repeated failure led by figures like William Wilberforce. By examining the arguments against abolition — economic collapse, imperial rivalry, and fears of instability — the episode shows that Britain’s decision was neither easy nor inevitable. It ends with the 1807 abolition of the slave trade, not as a moment of triumph, but as a sober choice to accept loss in obedience to moral duty, setting the stage for the far greater costs that enforcement would demand. 

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This episode traces how Britain came to see slavery not as an unfortunate fact of life, but as a moral wrong that demanded repentance. It explores a world in which slavery was normal, profitable, and largely unquestioned, and shows how a distinctly Christian moral claim — that every human being bears the image of God — began to reclassify slavery itself as sin. By examining Britain’s deep entanglement in the slave system, the role of Christian abolitionists, and the quiet but decisive shift in English law through cases like Somerset v Stewart, the episode shows how moral awakening came before political action. It ends at the moment when conscience has changed — but before the far harder question is answered: what happens when that conscience collides with Parliament, profit, and empire? 

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This episode explores the often-assumed similarity between Catholicism and Anglicanism, and why that assumption breaks down under closer examination. By looking beyond aesthetics and culture, it examines how each tradition understands authority, Scripture, sacraments, moral teaching, unity, and continuity over time. The episode argues that these differences are not accidental, but flow from two distinct ways of holding truth across history. It closes with a personal reflection on why Catholicism’s emphasis on continuity, custodianship, and endurance in the face of cultural pressure has become compelling, not as an abstract theory, but as a place to stand. 

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 This episode explores why Catholicism is so often misunderstood as a system of rules, and why that starting point misses what the Church is actually claiming. Drawing on personal experience, it argues that Catholicism begins not with moral demands, but with deeper questions about reality, human nature, and meaning. Only once those foundations are in place do rules make sense. The episode invites listeners to slow down, rethink their assumptions, and approach Catholicism in the order it presents itself — reality first, then meaning, and only then behaviour. 

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 This episode explores the growing gap between rights and responsibility in modern moral life, and asks why responsibility has become so difficult to articulate. It examines where moral authority comes from, why societies have historically trusted the Catholic Church to speak on moral questions, and how responsibility, rather than entitlement, has shaped a vision of the good life grounded in purpose, community, and human dignity. 

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This episode examines what the Church claims to be, and why it has historically asked for trust. Rather than approaching the Church as an idea or moral influence, it explores it as a living institution shaped by continuity, authority, and responsibility. By tracing how Christianity preserved truth through persecution, disagreement, and internal failure, the episode argues that the Church’s credibility does not rest on perfection, but on endurance — on its refusal to reinvent itself in response to power, pressure, or preference. The episode concludes by reframing trust not as blind belief, but as a serious response to an institution that has carried meaning across centuries.

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 This episode explores how Christian fragmentation shaped my distance from faith — not through disbelief, but through confusion and paralysis. I examine the loss of shared authority, Britain’s Catholic past, the rupture of the English Reformation, and how the modern relocation of truth into the individual has weakened belief, community, and meaning. Against this backdrop, Catholicism emerges not as an easy answer, but as a demanding claim rooted in continuity, unity, and authority. 

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What does faith really mean in the modern world? In this episode, I explore faith as belonging, practice, and trust — drawing on history, Catholic tradition, and my own ongoing journey. 

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In this opening episode of Catholic Waypoint, Liam shares the personal journey that led him from atheism and cultural Christianity to taking his first serious steps towards Catholicism. Reflecting on community, history, identity, and the experience of attending Mass for the first time, this episode sets the tone for an honest, unhurried exploration of faith — learning out loud rather than offering answers. 

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