We all know the secular world opposes the very idea of a person with same-sex attraction seeking any kind of therapy or spiritual counsel that might enable them to reach a state of healthy relations with the opposite sex. But what’s odd is that many Catholics seem to have bought into...

The way Natural Family Planning is commonly taught does not adequately reflect the Church’s perennial teachings on the purpose of marital relations, on sexual asceticism, and the good of continence. To be sure, critics of NFP are wrong when they say it is the same as contraception. The...

The standard textbook of theology in medieval universities was the Sentences by Peter Lombard. This collection systematically arranged the theological judgments of Scripture and the Church Fathers on various topics. For almost four centuries, those seeking higher credentials in theology had to...

St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century abbess, mystic, polymath, and Doctor of the Church, is best known to non-Catholics for something else—her music. We have more pieces of music by Hildegard than by any other medieval composer whose name we know. Her chants are beautiful, otherworldly,...

Fr. John Nepil, priest and mountaineer, joins the podcast to discuss his book To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. Topics discussed include: The modern view of “nature” vs. God’s creation A morally responsible approach to risk-taking The...

Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong joins the podcast to tell the inspiring story of her older brother, Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the heroic Vietnamese Cardinal who was imprisoned by the Communists for 13 years, 8 of those in solitary confinement. Thuan was descended from a line of...

This is the first in a series of episodes (accompanied by articles) surveying the most important encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. His third encyclical, Aeterni Patris (1879), on the restoration of Christian philosophy, famously called for a revival of the teaching of St. Thomas...

A number of doctrinal ruptures occurred in Catholic life after Vatican II—not in the sense that the Church’s magisterium contradicted its previous teachings, but that the vast majority of Catholics, even conservative ones, tend to get these topics wrong. One of the worst...

Dappled Things: The Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In its 20 years it has contributed to the beginning of a Catholic literary revival, nurturing the talents of many Catholic writers and visual artists. In recent years especially, many exciting new...

One of the most important encyclicals we need to rediscover is Pope Leo XIII’s Libertas (1888), on the true nature of human liberty. This encyclical explains what true liberty consists of, followed by a lengthy exposition of the Church’s condemnation of liberalism, in the...