Catholic Answers Focus

Defending the Faith can take an emotional toll. Rather than turn to bitterness, the person who engages with those who attack the Faith will be most effective with some distance and calm. Psychologist Dr. Ray Guarendi offers tips on how to gain this distance and calm. ...

Mike Aquilina, author of Africa and the Early Church, explains the African roots of much of what we now take for granted in Christianity. His work reminds us of an age when Christianity spread quickly in all directions so that before the Muslim invasions, a fruitful Christianity had taken root in Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Eritrea, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.   ...

Once again, legislatures in some states are considering bans on the seal of confession. We asked the chaplain of Catholic University of America, Father Aquinas Guilbeau, to explain why we have the seal, and why breaking it won’t to anyone any good.   ...

Anti-Semitism is the bigotry that never rests. And these days, there are Catholics in the public sphere once again proposing degrading ideas regarding Jews. How is a Catholic to understand Catholic/Jewish history in a way that comports with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Joe Heschmeyer joins us. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, joined this time by Joe Heschmeyer, and we’re going to talk about a somewhat difficult topic for Christians to discuss, one in which we prob...

Faith or works or faith plus works or just lots of good works? How are we justified before God? Tim Staples explains the Catholic understanding of the role of grace before all else. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome again to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and Tim Staples here with us again, this time to talk about justification. When we think about the things that divide Catholics and Protestants, justification’s always one of the top, maybe the top among those. And I was thinking I might say...

What is religious freedom? Did the Church err about religious freedom at Vatican II? Michael Lofton from “Reason and Theology” tackles one of the great controversies of the council. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic Faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host. And this time we talk a bit about a controversy within the Catholic Church one that good apologist or good defender of the faith would want to have some familiarity with because different Catholics and, and, and those in the Catholic orbit who may ...

Why is it so difficult to explain the Sacrament of Confirmation? And why does the Latin Church seem to offer it just at the wrong time? Simone Rizkallah digs into the controversy. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and one of the things we need to live better, understand better and defend better, so we’re going to cover all three in this episode, is the sacrament of confirmation. Well, one of the reasons we have to defend it is there’s a general lack of unders...

With the strident morality of modern movements such as “Me Too,” it would seem that relativism has been replaced with moralism. Well, maybe not, says Karlo Broussard in his latest book, “The New Relativism.” In this episode, he explains how moral outrage is often a cover for an entrenched relativism. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and Karlo Broussard is our guest. He’s got a brand new book out that you can get over at shop.catholic.com or...

Having started from scratch himself, John Martignoni explains how to get started as a Catholic apologist. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith, I am Cy Kellett, your host. And we get asked a lot, how do I do what you all do? Not talking about me specifically but about the folks around here, this whole apologetics thing. Many people are interested in being better at defending the faith. I think, in large part, that comes from lived experience that the faith is under assault in many places. Some people w...

Dr. Craig Turczynski, the former director of in-vitro fertilization, andrology, and hormone assay laboratories at Louisiana State University Medical Center-Shreveport explains how IVF is done, and why it raises grave moral concerns. CORRECTIONS: 1. The number of IVF procedures annually is about 250,000 not 250. 2. Cytoplasmic transfer is taking cytoplasm from a young woman’s egg and injecting it into the infertile woman’s egg. It is not injected into the woman. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers’ podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic f...

American racism was given the power of religious fervor by those who thought the Bible alone provided the rule of faith. Don Johnson, author of “Twisted Unto Destruction: How ‘Bible Alone’ Theology Made the World a Worse Place,” explains. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and delighted to welcome Don Johnson to the program this time to talk about racism, and sola scriptura, and how those two things go together. And maybe you think, “Could t...

Modern people often have an unrealistic view of “development” in the early Church, thinking that ideas such as the divinity of Christ or practices such as the celebration of the Mass were products of early Church life rather than things received directly from Jesus. Joe Heschmeyer, author of The Early Church Was the Catholic Church, helps debunk some myths about where the Mass came from. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and delighted to get to talk with Jo...

Many Catholic/Protestant doctrinal differences have their roots in misreadings of the Apostle Paul. EWTN’s David Anders explains the relatively simple message of Paul and why modern ideas of Paul so often miss the mark. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, delighted to welcome Dr. David Anders, who you know from EWTN Called To Communion with Dr. David Anders, which airs each day on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network. And from time to time when I am listening, and ...

Scott Weeman, founder of Catholic in Recovery, sits down with us to talk about how Jesus is the answer to finding healing from addiction. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and today we got one of our favorite guests from Catholic Answers Live and someone who’s doing just wonderful work in the field of healing from addiction and obsession and all of these kind of things. He’s the founder of catholicinrecovery.com. He’s the author of the 12 Steps and the ...

Recently there has been controversy over who can and can’t receive communion. Msgr. Eugene Morris joins us to help clarify this important question and gives us the proper parameters when knowing who can and cannot receive communion. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending Your Catholic faith. Today we talk about why some people, or maybe all people at some time, I don’t know how to quite how to put it, are excluded from receiving the Eucharist in the Catholic Church. Many people are deeply offended by this. Man...

Tim Staples has shared his conversion story around the world, but one part of that story is of particular importance today: How the moral teaching of the Church, far from driving everyone away, often provides a powerful incentive to become Catholic.   ...

Michael Lofton, from the Reason and Theology podcast, gives us a primer on the words that many people think are the main divider between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Does the question about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and from the son” really divide churches? Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Our guest is Michael Lofton, the proprietor of the podcast Reason and Theology. And one of the things that Michael is well known for is...

In the Western societies, fewer men than women practice religion. Karlo Broussard argues that, at least in part, this means they are likely failing at the hard work of manliness. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Karlo Broussard, our guest this time. And we’re going to talk a little bit about religion as it relates to men because it does seem… I don’t know the last time you were in a Catholic church, but that more women are taking seriously the ca...

His sudden death and final writings have put Australian Cardinal George Pell into the headlines around the world. Given his importance, we went down under to get insights into his view of the Catholic role in today’s world. Our guest, Monica Doumit, is the Director of Public Affairs and Engagement for the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. One of the great defenders of the Catholic faith in recent decades has been Australian ...

Tim Staples shares the story of the dark figure early Church writers say motivated John to clarify the truth about Jesus Christ. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and it may not seem obvious, but many of the earliest Christian writings had to do with defending the faith; not just expressing the faith, but defending it. Today we talk about the Gospel of John with Tim Staples, senior apologist here at Catholic Answers, and author of all kinds of stuff you could find...

Philosopher Edward Feser has read the major texts of critical race theory and has some concerns. He joins us for a discussion of his newest book, All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and maybe we’ll be helping with the living part today because, among the great plagues of the modern world, the many things that make modern life burdensome, is racism. It’s not necessarily a plague tha...

For most people, the Parish is where the Catholic Church happens. But something is not quite right in parish life. JD Flynn, founder of pillarcatholic.com, digs into why today’s parish is not quite what it could be. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And today we talk a bit about the parish. There’s lots of concern about what we should be doing as Catholics in the worlds today. Podcasts like this are one answer. We got radio shows, we got TV shows, we go...

Sometimes the Second Vatican Council gets a weak defense: “Well, it was just a pastoral council, so why worry about it?” Michael Lofton, from Reason and Theology, asks whether this defense is true? Is Vatican II really “just pastoral”? Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host and this time we talk a bit about the Second Vatican Council, which yes, we are still talking about almost constantly, still debating about, still even fighting about 60 years a...

Jeremy Christiansen, author of From the Susquehanna to the Tiber: A Memoir of Conversion from Mormonism to the Roman Catholic Church, joins us for a conversation about arguments against Mormonism. Which will work and why? Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll talk a bit about defending your Catholic faith this time, because among those who are interested in defending the Catholic faith there’s probably three people they’d most like to try out th...

Jason Evert from chastity.com joins us for a discussion of transgenderism from a Christian perspective. Most importantly, what is driving the current mania for switching genders, and how might a disciple of Christ respond? Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And I’ll bet you sometime in the next few months, between now and the end of the year, you’re going to have a conversation about transgenderism. That’s going to happen at Thank...

Jesus spoke a great deal about money and wealth, but how do we apply his teaching in a world of complex financial interconnectedness? Deacon Frank Reilly, the founder of Reilly Financial Advisors, now a part of Creative Planning brings a lifetime of experience to the question. Terence McGoldrick, Providence College Theology Professor, is an advisor to Deacon Frank in the work of finding morally acceptable investment opportunities. Both join us for a discussion. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending you...

The term “social justice” can make lots of people roll their eyes. But the teachings of Christ have profound social dimensions. So how does a Catholic view of social development differ from the world’s? We asked Jim Cavnar, cofounder of Cross Catholic Outreach to give us some answers.   ...

Modern secular people have forgotten the role of the Catholic Church in lifting humanity out of ignorance, violence, poverty, and disease. Perhaps most forgotten, is the Catholic contribution to an embrace of the dignity of women. Simone Rizkallah, director of program growth at Endow (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women), explains. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic Faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. One of the things we do here as Catholics is that Catholics have a sorted history when it co...

At times the Bible uses feminine imagery for God, so why do we not refer to God as mother? Joe Heschmeyer considers whether the modern Church should reconsider the masculine in reference to God. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Joe Heschmeyer our guests today. And the question is, what do we make of those who would prefer to address God as mother? Well, how do we respond to those who would prefer to address God as mother? Or might in fact say, ...

Trent Horn, author of Why We’re Pro-Life, digs into some of the Bible verses that people use to support abortion. Turns out, the Bible is pro-life. Go figure… Find out how you can get free copies of Why We’re Pro-Life at whyweareprolife.com.   ...

Did Science Kill the Biblical Worldview? Astrophysicist (not historian) Neil deGrasse Tyson gives a little history lesson about how science forced Christians to give up the biblical worldview. Is this real history, or did he make it up? We asked Jimmy Akin to give us a take.   ...

Joe Heschmeyer joins us for a look at the growing popularity of the word “Christofascism.” What does it refer to, and are Catholics who want to spread the Faith guilty of it?   ...

Dr. David Anders joins us for an in-depth look at the accusation that the Catholic Church is superstitious. The Catholic relationship to superstition might at times be complicated, but the complications have a very Catholic remedy. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And we’re familiar with the need to defend the faith against objections, but sometimes, we end up defending the faith more against a misimpression or a suspicion about the faith, and superstition i...

Charbel Raish, founder and chief executive of Parousia, one of Australia’s leading Catholic media apostolates joins us for a discussion of his early embrace of Islam and his subsequent rediscovery of Catholic Faith. Cy Kellett: Charbel Raish from Sydney, Australia. Thanks for being with us. Charbel Raish: Thanks for having me. Cy Kellett: From Parousia Ministries. Charbel Raish: That’s right. Cy Kellett: And is that, that’s- Charbel Raish: Parousia. Parousia. Yeah, it was, we’re known as Parousia Media for a long time, but then we dropped the word media because we do s...

Today’s children face many new adversities that past generations could never have imagined. Filmmaker, Don Johnson sits down to discuss his new film Dysconnected, and the truth behind this radical movement thats being pushed on our children. Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion Cy Kellett : Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Ct Kellett, your host, and very happy to welcome my friend Don Johnson this time to talk about a new film that Don has. This is actually a very bus...

Theologian Deborah Savage, currently teaching at Franciscan University in Steubenville, delves into the Hebrew wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to uncover new and liberating insights into God’s revelation of the meaning of womanhood and manhood. Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast, for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. There’s some accusation against the Catholic faith actually, that perhaps it has strains of misogyny in it, maybe strains of a kind of old way of thinking about men and women that makes men the superiors of women, o...

Can Catholics follow astrology? Jimmy Akin, host of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, joins us to discuss the Catholic approach to astrology. Does the Bible forbid it? Can a Catholic follow the daily horoscope? Is there any reason to believe in astrology at all? Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Jimmy Akin is our guest this time and we wanted to ask him about astrology. Actually, astrology been around, I guess, about as long as people have been around, but very ...

What can our forebears teach us about dealing with persecution? In this bonus episode, we ask theologian Ben Safranski how one very important early Christian – Cyprian of Carthage – dealt with Roman persecution in some surprising ways.   ...

Are Christians going to be taken up and out of the world before the big trouble with the anti-Christ begins? Catholics say no, that is a false view of God’s revelation regarding the end times. Our guest, Karlo Broussard takes up a popular Protestant challenge: How can the Catholic Church teach that faithful Christians will experience the final trial when the Bible teaches that Christians will be raptured before such a time? Cy Kellett: Karlo Broussard, apologist here at Catholic Answers. Thanks for being with us for focus. Karlo Broussard: Cy Kellett. Thanks for having me. Cy Kellett: Y...

The Bible has relatively few passages about homosexuality, and modern thinkers have found ways to explain some of them away. For example, is Genesis 19 really about homosexuality or is it really about a failure of hospitality? Dr. Mary Healy, a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, gives us a bracing Catholic answer. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus the Catholic Answers podcast for Living, Understanding and Defending Your Catholic Faith. One very delicate area of Christian apologetics in our times is homosexuality. There’s a great deal of confusion abou...

At Google, some employees are starting to think the computers have come alive. How might a Catholic understanding of souls help us explore the matter? Jimmy Akin joins us for what turns out to be a bit of a hilarious conversation. Cy Kellett: Jimmy Akin, senior apologist of Catholic Answers, thanks for doing Focus with us. Jimmy Akin: Hey, my pleasure. Cy Kellett: So… Jimmy Akin: What are we focusing on today? Cy Kellett: Artificial intelligence. I know this is one you have focused on before and you know a good deal about, but it became news when an employee of Google suggested or made ...

What exactly does it mean when Christ accuses the Pharisees of abandoning the commandments of God in favor of traditions of men? What are the implications for us? Karlo Broussard explores the proper place for “traditions of men.” Cy Kellett: Karlo Broussard, apologist here at Catholic Answers. Thanks for being with us. Karlo Broussard: Cy Kellet, thanks for having me. Cy Kellett: It’s always good when you’re here for focus. Karlo Broussard: Amen to that. Cy Kellett: And one of the things we can focus on with you because you’ve spent a lot of time in scholarly res...

The term transubstantiation has been used for centuries within the Church but does it actually men? William Albrecht, co-author of The Secret History of Transubstantiation joins us to explore its true meaning.   ...

Every so often the debate over Mary having other children comes up. Tim Staples, author of Behold Your Mother, joins us to debunk this claim. Cy Kellett: Tim Staples, Catholic apologist. Thank you for being with us on Catholic Answers Focus. Tim Staples: It is great to be with you, Cy Kellett. Cy Kellett: I stress Catholic apologist because I want to challenge you a bit on a Catholic belief. Tim Staples: Uh-oh. Am I in trouble? Cy Kellett: I’m going to challenge you with the Bible, and this just is a passage of the Bible that seems so clear and seems to have such an obvious, indisputabl...

Tik Tok seems pretty sure that the God of the ancient Hebrews had a wife, an idea that perhaps would debunk the Jewish story of covenant with the One Lord God. We asked Jimmy Akin, author of The Bible Is a Catholic Book to evaluate the merits of the whole “God had a wife” idea. Cy Kellett: Senior apologist, Jimmy akin. Thanks very much for being here with us on Catholic Answers Focus. Jimmy Akin: My pleasure, Cyril Kellett, host of Catholic Answers Focus. Cy Kellett: Also, I should say, host of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. I should have added that. And here’s one for you. The in...

Have you seen the recent images from the James Webb Telescope? Catholic convert and Harvard astrochemist, Karin Öberg joins us to examine the recent images and what they tell us about God, the beginnings of our universe, and bug people. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. Recently, we all got to see some magnificent images from a magnificent piece of technology, the James Webb Telescope. Out there in space, somewhere, looking deep into the past using its various sensors. And this raises a tremendou...

Seventh Day Adventists claim that the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday centuries after the life of Jesus. Joe Heschmeyer, author of The Early Church was the Catholic Church, joins us to debunk this claim. Cy Kellett: Apologist, Joe Heschmeyer, thank you for being here with us on Catholic Answers Focus. Joe Heschmeyer: The pleasure is mine. Cy Kellett: You want to talk about the Sabbath? Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah, lets. Cy Kellett: It seems very straightforward, and yet it’s a matter of some great controversy. Joe Heschmeyer: It’s even a denominational splitting issue. Cy ...

What do Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and Jesse Duplantis have in common? They all promote a form of Christianity that preaches a good and easy life. Tim Staples breaks down the reasons why the prosperity gospel is dangerous and exposes the pitfalls of this theology. Cy Kellet: Tim Staples, Catholic Apologist, thanks for being with us. Tim Staples: It is great to be with you, Cy Kellet. Cy Kellet: I want to talk to you about the prosperity gospel. And this is something that really is big. The prosperity gospel is really big, and I do sometimes feel a pang of guilt that we don’t talk ab...

Is hell empty? Michael Lofton joins us to answer the question that seems to be surrounded by controversy in many Catholic circles. Cy Kellett: Will hell ever be empty? Michael Lofton is next. Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host confessing to you that one of the hardest things to defend is hell. It’s a very unpleasant thought. It certainly doesn’t comport with our modern idea that everybody gets a participation trophy. There seems to be some very serious consequences ...

Former inmates often struggle adjusting to everyday life. In this episode, we talk to Joe Gilbreath, founder of RiseUp Industries and Mike Lucero on bringing hope to those adjusting to life after prison. riseupindustries.org Cy Kellett: Taking Jesus seriously about visiting prisoners. Folks from Rise Up Industries, next. Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And today a special bonus episode. Cy Kellett: Jesus has so many good friends. Sometimes his very best friends a...