The Catholic Frequency

Modern feminism has spent decades telling women that Christianity is their enemy. Then Easter morning gives us Mary Magdalene — the first witness of the risen Lord and the Apostle to the Apostles.

Is it a sin to call someone evil? Scripture names evil plainly, but it also warns that every careless word will be judged. This episode draws the line between truthful moral judgment and contempt, and asks whether we still desire the sinner’s conversion.

The centuries after Rome’s collapse contained real disorder and decline. But Christianity did not turn out the lights. The Church preserved memory, sustained learning and charity, and helped rebuild the civilization that later produced universities, Gothic cathedrals, and the medieval synthesis of faith and reason. Today we possess extraordinary technological power while losing our grasp of human nature itself. Which age deserves to be called dark?

Margaret Sanger promised women freedom through control over fertility. But her language of choice repeatedly opened into eugenics, social engineering, and the classification of some lives as fit and others as burdens. This episode traces the conflict between Sanger’s vision and the Catholic understanding of freedom: not domination of the body, but truth, self-government, responsibility, and the dignity of every human person.

In a 1935 BBC debate, Bertrand Russell argued that parents were naturally unfit to raise their own children. G. K. Chesterton answered by defending the permanent bond between parent and child—and by insisting that experts and public institutions should serve the family rather than replace it.

Why do Gothic churches make us look up? This episode explores how pointed arches, ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, stained glass, and the altar turn stone, light, mathematics, and human craftsmanship toward God—and why beauty can make us feel small without making us feel worthless.

Vampire stories are built around a terrible hunger: one life must be consumed so another can continue. Christianity places Blood at the center of its story too, but Jesus reverses the movement. The vampire takes blood to preserve his own life. Christ gives His Blood so that we may share His life.

When politics becomes a religion, celebrating an enemy’s death can start to feel faithful. This Catholic Frequency essay asks whether we can still recognize the human person — relief vs relish after a public death, with Ezekiel 33:11 and Proverbs 24:17.

Bishop Robert Barron warns that Marxism is resurfacing in the United States. Fulton Sheen saw the same danger decades ago. This episode examines why communism’s deepest error is anthropological: it takes Christian concern for the poor, equality, and solidarity, then severs them from Christ, grace, freedom, family, and the inviolable dignity of the human person.

Bertrand Russell rejected Christianity while continuing to speak with moral force about reason, liberty, dignity, and justice. G.K. Chesterton saw the unresolved problem: if Christianity is false, what gives the moral law its authority?