Five cardinals have sent a set of questions to Pope Francis to express their concerns and seek clarification on points of doctrine and discipline ahead of this week’s opening of the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican. Matthew Bunson has the details on this rather complicated story.

Pope Benedict will be remembered as one of the great pontiffs of the modern era. Dr. Richard DeClue joins us to remember his influence.

It’s a sad fact that the 21st century is full of hotspots of religious persecution. This is not something we can ignore or pass over with pious platitudes. Defending the persecuted and promoting religious freedom isn’t a political project; there’s nothing optional about respecting an inviolable right of the human person and the common good of society. Andrea Picciotti-Bayer joins us to discuss it further.

This Sundays’ Gospel features another parable – the man who asked his two sons to go work in his vineyard and received two very different responses. Peggy Stanton joins us with her insights.

As the universal Church prepares for the first portion of a two-part Synod on Synodality, significant attention has been paid to new kinds of participants in a Synod of Bishops, particularly the inclusion of a sizable contingent of non-bishops among the voting members. Shannon Mullen joins us to discuss more on the Synod and other Church news.

Raised in a loving home, Claire Culwell always knew she had been adopted and when she reached adulthood she decided to meet her birth mother. And that’s when she got the shock of her life. Claire learned that she was a survivor of a botched abortion. Not only that, she had an unborn twin whose life was terminated that day. And the story doesn’t end there. She joins us.

George Orwell once observed that “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.” What does this “orthodoxy” look like today? What so-called truths are we all supposed to accept? Al discusses.

Colonial Catholics were viewed with great suspicion. Many thinkers of the time doubted Catholics’ ability to separate country from pope, and thus declared them to be “dangerous until proven loyal.” Yet Catholics went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped draft the First Amendment. We talk with Michael Breidenbach about how those colonial Catholics transformed the idea of liberty.

JRR Tolkien fans observe September 22 as “Hobbit Day,” the day that Bilbo and Frodo Baggins celebrate their birthdays. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and his theology is expressed throughout the world of Middle-Earth. We talk more about it with Austin Freeman.

Shortly after the turn of the century, a new style of Atheism started to gain popularity. Dubbed the “New Atheism” and championed by figures like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, this position asserted that religion was actually harmful to society and was not to be merely tolerated – it should be eradicated. But this New Atheism cannot answer the basic questions about why we are here. We talk more with Dr. Rick Clements.