In Conversation With

Fr David Palmer, the Catholic chaplain to Nottingham University, returns to Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald, to discuss Fiducia Supplicans, the new document from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that appears to open the gates to blessings for same-sex couples within the Catholic Church.

In this 66th episode, Fr Palmer explains to Dr Gavin Ashenden why the British province of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, to which he and 500 other British priests belong, was compelled to publicly assert that such blessings remain “pastorally and practically inadmissible”.

Bianca Jagger, the president and chief executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden to discuss the atrocious treatment of Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa by the regime of President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

In this 65th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald, Ms Jagger reports disturbing new information about the deteriorating condition of the “prophetic” bishop since he was jailed in February for 26 years after he refused to go into exile in the United States, and about the “real, dangerous and serious” persecution of the Catholic Church in the land of her birth.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is our guest for this 64th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald.

The Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, talks about his new book, Credo: The Compendium of the Catholic Faith, a catechism commissioned by the US-based Sophia Institute Press, and why the bold and clear iteration of the truths of the Catholic Church is more vital than ever in these times of moral and doctrinal confusion.

Paul Coleman, the executive director of ADF International, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden to discuss the appalling treatment by the Finnish state of Päivi Räsänen, an MP, former government minister for the interior and the wife of a Lutheran pastor, for alleged hate crimes after she publicly expressed the teaching of the Bible on human sexuality.

In this 63rd episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, they discuss the Räsänen case following her exoneration by the Helsinki Court of Appeal and explore how loosely-worded hate legislation poses mounting threats to such legitimate rights as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion throughout the Western world.

Kathy Gyngell, the co-foundress and editor of The Conservative Woman: Defending Freedom website, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden for the 62nd episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald.

They discuss feminism, motherhood and the revolution in childcare, the growth of the state, the relationship between economic liberalism and social conservativism, rolling Islamist hate marches and the new phenomenon of two-tier policing, as well as intolerance, cancel culture and censorship, fake news, the “invidious” and stratospheric rise of the new ideologies and the sacking of Suella Braverman.

In the 61st episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald, Dr Gavin Ashenden talks to Tim Dieppe about challenge of Islam to Western democracies and the values that underpin them following mass migration and radicalisation triggered by war.

Mr Dieppe is head of public policy at Christian Concern, which he joined in 2016, and has a special interest in Islamic affairs. He co-authored the book Questions to Ask Your Muslim Friends with Beth Peltola and also contributed two chapters to Beyond the Odds: Providence in Britain's Wars of the 20th Century by John Scriven.

The struggle between the family and the state has been “a feature of the relentless march of secularism” in the western world, notes Dr Gavin Ashenden in this 60th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, in which he speaks to Barbara Socha.

The deputy minister for family and social policy since 2019 with a specific responsibility for demographic policy, Mrs Socha, a mother-of-five, describes why Poland is willing to bravely buck the western trend by choosing to robustly take the side of marriage and the family and freedom of religion against insidious new ideologies with the aim of creating the “best conditions” in the world for married Catholic couples with children.

Can the Pope change the teaching of the Catholic Church by the stroke of a pen during the course of correspondence? In this 59th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, Dr Jules Gomes speaks to Dr Gavin Ashenden about the dubia submitted to the Pope by five cardinals concerned about the remit of the Synod on Synodality and the response of the Holy Father to the doubts they raise.

Dr Jules is a theologian, a journalist and a Catholic correspondent based in Rome. He has a Doctorate in Biblical Studies from Cambridge University and is the author of five books of Theology.

Mark Lambert, the author of a popular blog called De Omnibus Dubitandum Est and a regular on the Catholic Unscripted YouTube channel, returns to Merely Catholic to consider the plight of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who in the summer was subjected to visitation after his alleged criticism of the conduct of Pope Francis on social media.

In this 58th episode of the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, Mr Lambert joins Dr Gavin Ashenden to together reflect upon the extent that Bishop Strickland might be either a blessing or a curse in a pontificate which is leaving many Catholics all over the world increasingly perplexed.

In a society obsessed with sex and increasingly confused about what it is to be a man or a woman, Megan Madden, an Oxford-based American author and mother, offers a radically different perspective about what fulfilled femininity might really be. Her new book, Mary, Teach Me to Be Your Daughter, is based on years of studies on marriage and the family and reading the works of such distinguished Catholic philosophers and theologians as St Edith Stein, Gertrude von le Fort, Alice von Hildebrand, St John Paul II, and St Teresa of Avila, asking herself all the time what it truly means to be a woman.

She shares her thoughts with Dr Gavin Ashenden in this 57th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald.

You can purchase a copy of Megan's book here.