Religion & SpiritualityChristianity

The Catholic Frequency

Catholic Frequency

Exploring the beauty of the Catholic faith through conversation.

Play

Open in

59 episodes
Avg 6 min
English

Episodes 59

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

#221
Tuesday · 6 min
Let Me Check With The Boss
Calling your wife the boss is not humility. It is a small public surrender of the headship Saint Paul names. Ask her. Do not crown her so you can duck the job.
#220
Monday · 6 min
God Made Me the Messenger
On January 2, 1492, Christopher Columbus watched the banners go up on the Alhambra. He wrote the voyage down in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. On October 12 he named the first island San Salvador. Years later, home in chains, he wrote that God had made him the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth, and he gathered the Scriptures into the Book of Prophecies.
#219
Saturday · 4 min
"Full of Grace" Was Not a Compliment
The angel does not start with her name. Hail, full of grace is a title, naming what God has already done in her. It is not flattery. It is news. God got there first.
#218
October 9 · 5 min
We Cannot Speak of Europe Without Christianity
Last week in Metz, Pope Leo XIV named Saint Benedict and said European civilization as we know it would not exist without the monastic tradition. We cannot speak of Europe without mentioning Christianity. Tom Woods already wrote the book that proves it.
#217
October 5 · 7 min
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde told a crowded room that a book cannot be moral or immoral. Then he wrote The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant, stories where charity knocks the wall down and a Child stands in the garden with the wounds of the Cross. On November 29, 1900, a Passionist priest conditionally baptized him on his deathbed in Paris. The nails stay on the little hands. Wilde left them there.
#216
October 3 · 3 min
The 1,700-Year-Old Prayer to Mary Protestants Never Hear
A lot of Christians were taught that prayer to Mary is a medieval add-on. Then you look at Rylands Papyrus 470, the Sub tuum praesidium: We fly to your protection, O holy Mother of God. Christians were already saying that in Greek, on papyrus, in Egypt, using the title Theotokos. Age is not the same thing as truth. But it does kill the story that nobody honored Mary until some pope got bored in the Middle Ages.
#215
October 2 · 5 min
One Good Man Can Make A Difference
There is an old rule of the moral life that the modern world keeps pretending it has outgrown. One righteous man frightens the unrighteous. Michael Desronvil sat on a jury with eleven others and refused to treat three murdered children as a footnote to their mother's suffering. Mercy for the sick does not require the pretense that the dead are incidental. One man who will not move is already a restoration.
#214
October 1 · 6 min
Imagine Is a Hymn
John Lennon's Imagine is treated like the unofficial hymn of decent people. It has a creed, a congregation, and a missionary close. It just will not name the god. The first verse clears out heaven and hell and calls it kindness. Charles Péguy, in 1911, made hope a little girl who still expects God. One of those paths is hope. The other is a hymn against it.
#213
September 30 · 4 min
Why Catholics Call Mary the New Ark
The Church names Mary after Israel's holiest furniture because Luke keeps replaying Samuel and Exodus: fear at the arrival, a leap, a three-month stay, a covering of glory. The first chest carried stone, bread, and a priest's staff. She carried a Person. That is not a goddess claim. It is a refusal to handle the Lord's mother as packing material.
#212
September 29 · 5 min
Feast Of Saints Michael, Gabriel, Raphael
On Michaelmas the Church names Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael together. Their names already answer the airport sales pitch: become divine, author your own message, fix yourself. Harari put that hunger in a bestseller. John Paul II would recognize the diagnosis and refuse the throne. A creature does not get the Creator's chair.
#211
September 26 · 4 min
They Sailed for Christ
A friend called the host a barbarian, then defended Western colonization of the New World as the spread of the Gospel. Catholics are trained to apologize first. The Great Commission is not a guilt pamphlet. Human sacrifice in the Aztec world was real, and so were Spanish sins. If the Gospel is true, bringing it west was mercy.
#210
September 25 · 12 min
Time Feels Faster Because We Lost Wonder
Time feels faster as we age because wonder thinned out. Chesterton: we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The cure is to become capable of wonder again.
#209
September 24 · 6 min
What Chesterton Told Shaw About Forming a Child
George Bernard Shaw hated the idea of forming a child's mind. Chesterton's answer: then hang yourself, because someone is forming them anyway. There is no third job called leaving the soul alone.
#208
September 23 · 5 min
America Is Overrun With The Broadminded
Fulton Sheen in 1931: America is not drowning in bigots. It is overrun with the broadminded. Tolerate persons. Never error.
#207
September 22 · 7 min
When the Pope's Executioner Crossed the Bridge
When a short man in a scarlet cloak stepped onto Ponte Sant’Angelo, Rome already knew someone was going to die. Mastro Titta was the pope’s executioner. The Church never taught that the innocent may be killed. She did teach that a lawful ruler may punish the guilty.
#206
September 21 · 4 min
C.S. Lewis vs the People Who Wanted Fearless Children
Lewis told librarians in 1952 that a far more serious attack on the fairy tale comes from those who do not wish children to be frightened. He had night terrors as a boy. Fairy tales did not invent them. Sanding the story does not protect the child.
#205
September 20 · 5 min
The 100-Year-Old Chesterton Warning About Bedtime Stories We Ignored
Chesterton said the baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. Fairy tales do not invent bogey. They send Saint George. We keep the dragon and take the knight.
#204
September 19 · 6 min
The Lord is My Shepherd
Psalm 23 is the psalm everybody thinks they know. David wrote it as a shepherd: green pastures in a dry country, still water you have to make, a rod against the wolf and a crook around a sheep's leg. Then Christ said He is that Shepherd, and He stayed in the valley.
#203
September 18 · 17 min
Modernity Made Men Weak
Andrew Tate looks strong in a world of weak men. That is why boys hear him. He is not the disease. He is a symptom of a culture that unmade fatherhood, discipline, and the Cross.
#202
September 17 · 6 min
Dante: Envy Sews Your Eyes Shut
Dante sews the envious shut on the second terrace of Purgatory. Envy is sadness at another person’s good. We call it fairness. Charity rejoices.

Showing 1–20 of 59 episodes