Considering Catholicism

Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory and Shusaku Endo's Silence both tell the story of a persecuted Catholic priest forced to choose between martyrdom and apostasy. In this installment of Book Club, Cory and I explore how the two novels are mirror images that explore the same theme with inverted characters and plots.

Who is, or isn't, "Catholic?" What do you have to believe or do to "be Catholic?" What about people who don't or won't do those things? Are they still Catholic?

In Episode 32, I answered Ed's question, "Why do Catholics have a pope?" But we kept going, and covered the everything from whether the pope can make up new doctrines, to megachurch pastors, to why Pope Francis seems to meddle in politics, and whether papal infallibility means he can tell me who will win the Super Bowl.

Ed asked why Catholics have a pope, which seems crazy to them. I gave him an answer that most "cradle Catholics" wouldn't typically give.

Some argue that the novels of JRR Tolkien, particularly his 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, are the greatest Catholic novels of the 20th Century. Generations of converts to Catholicism have cited it as an important step on their Road to Rome--including Cory and I. In this installment of Book Club, we share why.

We're launching a new recurring feature on the podcast: "Book Club." In this first installment, Cory and I talk about what, exactly, makes a story "Catholic."

My Protestant friend Ed finally got around to asking me about the biggest problem that Protestants have with Catholicism: the Virgin Mary.

I was asked to speak at a conference just a few days after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision. Here's what I said.

Part 2 of a two-part episode exploring how and why the Catholic Church in America has shrunk and Catholicism has lost influence over the last half century. (Episodes 26-27.)

It's been exactly 30 days since the last episode released. An update on what's been going on, what's happening, and what's ahead for Considering Catholicism.