Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
We Adore You, O Christ...
RED-C Presents
Without a doubt, the Eucharist (Holy Communion) is the most widely misunderstood and hotly debated teaching in all of Christianity. Whether you’re a lifelong Catholic, new to the Church, one of our Protestant or Evangelical brothers and sisters, or someone starting to question if God could be real, a little clarity would be nice! In recent decades, teachings on the Eucharist have fallen out of style in favor of lessons on how to live right, how to help the poor, how to live the Faith in the workplace, and more. All of these are important and necessary, but they miss the core essence of our Faith. That’s why the Catholic Church in America is right now in the midst of a Eucharistic Revival to bring awareness, understanding, and desire to the Sacrament; set hearts on fire with love for Jesus; and bring us, the faithful, into a deeper relationship with our Lord and Savior. RED-C stands for Religious Education for the Domestic Church, so a Eucharistic Revival is right up our alley! After a lot of prayer and discernment, we realized there is a lot of information out there on the Sacrament of the Eucharist that is very high-level and helpful... if you’ve been a practicing Catholic (or theologian) for quite some time. But resources are much more scattered and difficult to find if you are brand-new to the Church or a non-Catholic searching for Church teachings. That’s why we created Eucharist 101: a short, seven-part miniseries that covers the absolute basics of the Eucharist, provides helpful information for new Catholics or those who have never encountered the Eucharist before, unveils some of the deeper theology of the Sacrament, and points you in the direction of where to learn more.
Listen on:
Episodes
Episodes
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
If you're an American Catholic, you've probably heard about the infamous 2019 Pew Research Study, which purported that 70% of Catholics don't believe in the Real Presence. Well, the Deacon and the Doc have always maintained that said poll doesn't pass the smell test. Listen in as we point out some of the flaws with the study itself, dissect its questions, and offer some countervailing conclusions. We also point to arguably a more robust study, which presented quite different findings. You can learn about that survey here.
Monday Sep 19, 2022
Monday Sep 19, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc preview the book, Reclaiming Vatican II, which will serve as the basis for two of our upcoming fall faith formation classes in the Brazos Valley. You can sign up to attend here: redcradio.org/vc260.
Changes in the liturgy, the abuse scandals, the collapse of religious orders, a decline in Mass attendance, just to name a few have all combined to create renewed doubt about and criticism of the Second Vatican Council in recent years. Did the implementation of the council damage the Church or were the documents themselves to blame? The book's interpretative lens of "paracouncil," borrowed from Henri de Lubac in his notes on the council, offers a helpful mechanism for fleshing out how the implementation went awry. And what might lie behind those disturbing events listed above. But could a liturgical revival of ad orientem worship, for example, ever really take hold? And how might that happen?
Listen to all of our RED-C podcasts at redcradio.org/podcast.
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc are back for another season of conversations, not only about the teachings and legacy of the Second Vatican Council, but the ongoing Eucharistic Revival in the United States.
It's with some of Vatican II's legacy that we start off this season. Only three years after the close of the council, Pope St. Paul VI issued his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Its promulgation triggered waves of dissent within the Church and dismissal by observers from outside. Well, it's back in the news again. The Deacon and the Doc tackle the recent hub-bub and…questionable tweets!…coming out of the Pontifical Academy for Life. The encyclical's magisterial status is being questioned and, therefore, the permanence of its teachings. Dcn. Mike Beauvais breaks it down for you. Along the way, the Deacon & the Doc zero in on the absurdity of debating theological questions (especially!) over the medium of Twitter.
If you live in the Bryan-College Station area or in Central Texas, go now to redcradio.org/vc260 and sign up for at least one of our numerous in-person classes this fall to learn more about Vatican II. Read its documents or dive deeper by reading the book Reclaiming Vatican II.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc concluded their discussion of Gaudium et Spes(GS) as well as the closing address of Pope St. Paul VI and the afterword to the Word on Fire Vatican II Collection by Dr. Matthew Levering. In many ways, GS encapsulates Pope Paul’s quote: "This council hands over to posterity not only the image of the Church but also the patrimony of her doctrine and of her commandments, the “deposit” received from Christ and meditated upon through centuries, lived and expressed now and clarified in so many of its parts, settled and arranged in its integrity."
Throughout the document, the council fathers largely succeed for the Church at explaining how the “patrimony of her doctrine” remains a “deposit” of faith that is “lived and expressed now.” Many of the challenges presented by the modern world—some completely unanticipated by earlier eras—are, nevertheless, cogently evaluated in GS precisely because they can be measured against an unchanging Christian anthropology and judged in light of the Incarnation.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc continued our discussion of Gaudium et Spes (GS). Its predictive quality in describing the world we live in today continued to impress us.
Deacon Mike thinks that Part Two of GS really shines as the council fathers began to speak with clarity and charity about how the Church and her constant teaching is the necessary ingredient for a civilizing humanity. The Doc couldn’t stop praising what the document had to say about the essential role of the family. It’s clear from our experience that if the family is broken so will society be. Gaudium et Spes provides us with the philosophical and theological grounding to backup that empirical knowledge.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc dove right into talking about our initial impressions of Gaudium et Spes (GS). We agreed with many of our participants who called the constitution prescient in its analysis of modern society’s situation.
That situation arose due to the West’s gradual abandonment of Catholic Christianity as it acquired new technological, cultural, and political forms. Nevertheless, those same societies suffered from environmental degradation, spiritual malaise, sensual overload, and ideological extremism. All of these maladies were, in the clear-eyed analysis of GS, due to humanity’s rejection of Christ as the standard by which individual human beings and human societies evaluate themselves.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc continued to analyze Sacrosanctum Concillium. This episode covers the second part of the constitution, which explained how the other sacraments, the sacramentals, the divine office, sacred music, and sacred art are all part of the Church's liturgy, the public work it established and maintains for the salvation of souls.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
The Deacon and the Doc discussed the first half of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concillium. It is primarily concerned with the Mass and lays down norms for its revision. However, the beginning of the text is beautiful meditation on the nature and purpose of liturgy.