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Episode Description
With the big news last week of Cardinal John Henry Newman being declared a doctor of the church, Dr. Paul Shrimpton joins to give us a glimpse into the impact the saint had on Catholic education. A prominent figure of the 19th century and convert to Catholicism, Cardinal Newman’s writings are considered classics of religious literature that are still being studied today.
Word on Fire’s Haley Stewart also delves into her recent book, “Women of the Catholic Imagination: Twelve Inspired Novelists You Should Know,” and why Flannery O’Connor and Sigrid Undset should be on your reading list this last month of summer. Her collection highlights a dozen Catholic women novelists of the past two hundred years that will fascinate and inspire.
As the Knights of Columbus wrapped up their convention, Msgr. Roger Landry joins with details on the great work being done across the globe, especially in forming strong fathers. The Knights of Columbus strive to live out their Catholic faith through service and charitable works around the world, and promote virtues such as family and dignity of life.
Bios
Dr. Paul Shrimpton is a prolific writer, historian, and professor who has taught at Magdalen College in Oxford for over 40 years. He is considered an expert on Cardinal John Henry Newman and is the author of A Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School (2005), and The ‘Making of Men’: the Idea and Reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin (2015). He has also written about Newman’s influence on the students of the White Rose resistance in Nazi Germany, among other writings. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Balliol College in Oxford, and his PhD from Magdalen College School of Oxford. His latest book, The Most Dangerous Man in England: Newman and the Laity, will be released in October of 2025.
Haley Stewart is an award-winning author, host of the Votive Podcast, and Editor of Word on Fire Votive – a children’s version of Word on Fire ministry which creates entertaining and educational books for children that foster their Catholic faith. She is author of The Grace of Enough, Jane Austen’s Genius Guide to Life, The Sister Seraphina Mysteries, and The Catholic Kids’ Cookbook. Her latest book, Women of the Catholic Imagination, was released in June of 2024, showcasing a collection of twelve brilliant but lesser-known Catholic women authors of the past 200 years. Haley has also led pilgrimages around the world. She lives in Florida with her four children.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York. Father Landry traversed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024 and joined the historic Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, an event which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood. In 2024, he was appointed the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 329 Transcript
| Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences now on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Betty Fentress. |
| Mary | And I'm Mary Fiorito. |
| Betsy | And we have with us today a wonderful scholar on the life and legacy of Cardinal John Henry Newman, with news last week of the Saint becoming a doctor of the church. Doctor Paul Shrimpton has been working on a book about him for the last two years, but he's also studied him for the last 35 years. He's a professor at the Modlin College School, and he recently brought out two volumes of Newman's unpublished university papers. My Campaign in Ireland, parts one and two, both of which are critical editions. So today our topic is Saint John Henry Newman, who has recently been declared a doctor of the church. Welcome, Professor Shrimpton, and tell us, how excited are you about this news? And what does it mean for the church? |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Obviously, I'm very excited. I've been working on, John Henry Newman, for 35 years. I think it was in 1990. I first discussed with a fellow Newman scholar the idea of him being a doctor, the church. And that was at the time before he was venerable, let alone blessed and saint. So to some extent, I've seen this coming, but it's only in the last few months. I'm really hoping for about a year and a half to, When I realized that the cause of being started in May 2024. Yes. And, I was asked to contribute in November last year to the position, the official document, which, has gone to all the Cardinals. There's a big section at the end, maybe three quarters of it, and 17 essays where required by Newman scholars around the world to sum up his eminent teaching. And I did that, in education, because obviously I've spent decades working on that, not just his his, what he said in his famous book, The Idea of University, which is generally agreed to be an extremely significant book on the, the nature and purpose of university education. But my line is more on the practical Newman setting up a university, rolling up his sleeves and doing that in very difficult circumstances, and founding a totally new type of school with his friends from the, tearing up Oxford Movement in 1859. Anything you said was what about the significance of a virtual church? Okay, so I think we wait a staggering and we don't know how to react. Quite. Newman. Joins it's now Wikipedia. It must be official. Wikipedia. Have him as the 38 doctor. I checked yesterday. He's not a doctor of anything yet. Although the favorite, the long time is being doctor of conscience. I think it's going to be. Yeah, I think at 50 years time, a hundred years time, people will look back on this and see the whole thing of Newman as being a sort of see change. With the church and the world. I think it's it's a pretty it's this is not just any old doctor. We're dealing here with someone who was the first man really to grapple, with the enlightenment and secularism, at least in the English speaking world. He was the first one to confront, various intellectuals and other organizing society who were going to dispense with religion. The Newman didn't only defend Christian institutions. Okay, first he's an Anglican, then as a Catholic. But he actually pointed out why alternatives were seriously deficient. So I think he's he's given the whole church, Christendom at large, and a sort of boost in confronting all of this. But his work has got to be processed so much more. A lot has been done, but there's a huge amount more, yet to be done and disseminated. |
| Mary | Yeah, it's very exciting that this is this is going to be happening. At least we can assume it will now that there's more attention drawn to him and Doctor Shrimpton in the United States for American Catholics, there's often a confusion because our patron saint of education here for children would be Saint John Newman. And so unfortunately, these have names that are so similar. Can you distinguish for us? Since we are speaking to American Catholics in the show who Saint John Henry Newman was, and that it's not the same kind of patron saint of education as our Saint John Newman, who is one of our patrons of Catholic elementary and secondary schools here. |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Well, I think we need as many patron saints for education as possible. I've spent my whole life in action. So yes, it's great to have some of these these holy and learned people. So John Henry Newman was born, February 21st, 1801, in London. His father was a banker. He went to school, a boarding school not far out of central London, and then he went on to Oxford at the age of 16 to Trinity College. He was there for three and a half years. Didn't do very well in these exams, but, a year and a half later got accepted to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1822. It's the leading college in the university and was there until 1845. So he's, he's all sorts of things. He gets, ordained as a deacon then, priest in January and church. He becomes a tutor in his college and effectively, after two years, sets up the modern tutorial system in Oxford for which it's famous. In 1828 he is appointed vicar of the University church. And from that pulpit, delivers some extraordinary sermons, just over 600. And these are published in various volumes, with colleagues in Oxford, Anglican colleagues. He led the what's called a sectarian or Oxford Movement, which was really the the the biggest renewal within the Anglican Church that it has been, bringing it back into contact with the primitive church, researching in particular the fathers, the church fathers at the first millennium, sending out tracts all around parishes, in England. So it was it was an intellectual movement which quite quickly turned into a liturgical one, a devotional one. So it forced a huge revival, in seriousness, in Anglicans taking seriously their Christian calling. They were sitting rather happily in their country parishes, not doing very much, very well remunerated for living a fine life. But Newman and his associates shook them all up. He became a Catholic in 1845. He went off to Rome, was ordained, and when he came back to England, to Birmingham, he set up the oratory, the first authority of Saint Philip, near I. A few years later, in 1852, he was invited to found and lead a a new type of Catholic university. The university opened in 1854. He left after four years. Once he got it going, returned to England, and a year later started up what's called the Oratory School in Birmingham. In a sense, it's the first, school secondary school in England, geared for the laity. It might sound very strange, but the other schools on offer or mixed up people training for the religious orders, and the priesthood, he died in 1890, after living 45 years nearly in Birmingham and, tens of thousands of people lined the streets. So he in his life, he wrote a huge amount. There are 36 major volumes in in the main critical edition, not fit for the, the standard edition of his works. His letters have been collected into 32 fat volumes. So a copious writer, a really deep thinker. Seminal contributions to church thinking on faith and reason, conscience, the development of doctrine, how to deal with the Magisterium. Education. Of course. He's a poet, writer of novels. Where did you stop coming? It's it's it it's an immense amount of activity. I would actually stress, although people might be thinking in general, here is a major world intellectual who's joining this very exclusive club. Yet at the same time, he's also, a very much a man of action and a very personable individual. So in his time, he had extraordinary charisma in spite of being shy. He had an immense friendship circle. And to do things like set up a national movement to revive the Anglican Church and to establish almost singlehandedly, across the Irish Sea, a new type of university in Dublin. These are these are big things of any, any person. So I'm actually quite interested in people learning about Newman, the man of action, as well as the Newman and the intellectual. And in fact, Pope Benedict alluded this to this when he came on a state visit to Britain in 2010 to beatified him in Birmingham, when he said he has the character of the talk to the church because life and thought are completely intertwined. They go together. |
| Betsy | Well, despite all of these pioneering thing he did, he also met with a lot of abject failure in this area and still he persevered. Can you enlighten us a little bit about what that was like for him? You're smiling doctor. |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Yes I am, yeah, yeah. I often think when you read these large, Newman biographies where they're single volume or in several parts, you need to be supplied with a pocket. A pocket, a box of paper tissues because it's it's, it's so moving, to see how shabbily he was treated as a Catholic after being a sort of national hero, the greatest intellect who's come out of the Anglican church, a household name, that he just wasn't understood, as a Catholic. I mean, right from early on, a few months after, I think a couple of months after he found himself in a seminary school, which is home to lay boys as well, and he was lined up with the school boys, for confession, which wasn't an extraordinary thing to do to treat someone like, that's just a minute thing. It's easy to sort of criticize. A bit too easy for authorities. They didn't know how to handle, a major intellect like this. And I don't think anyone in the church really knew, whether in Rome or in London or in Birmingham. His thoughts were couched in the language they didn't understand. It seemed to many of them in particular, Archbishop, the later Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, who'd been a great buddy of Newman, in Oxford. He turned against him and effectively thought like a number of the hierarchy and in people in Rome that Newman had not acquired Catholic characteristics. He wasn't fully a Catholic. He didn't have the Catholic spirit. And there was a great danger in England and therefore in Christendom of this, of this, new fellow, introducing Protestant notions, thoughts, and practices in his educational institutions. So, and then some of his works, the 1859 he took over. Okay. He took over the Rambler newspaper in 1859. It was a oh, it was almost going to be closed down by the bishops in England. And the converts who were running it didn't know who to turn to. And the only persona grata to both sides was John Henry Newman. Well, he lasted two issues. He got into trouble with the first, he tried to explain it in the second, it wrote a very well known document called Consulting the Laity in matters of Doctrine. And this was deleted to Rome for heresy. Very, ask him to explain. The letter was somehow lost and Newman thought they'd they weren't bothered anymore. But in Rome they assumed he'd refused to explain himself. And then for a decade and more, yes, he was definitely under a cloud. That really goes virtually till 20 years later, until 1879, when the new Leo the 17th, makes Newman a title in the first batch. For those 20 years, Newman was excluded from all major projects in Britain, pushed to one side. And, yeah, he had a very, very tough life. But he's an extraordinary model for people who can see the way forward but are utterly docile to to the church. I mean, it's a martyrdom, a silent martyrdom he underwent, but at the same time that allowed him, not being involved in public projects to actually, to do more fabulous writing, to be receiving and advising converts, to keep up an extraordinary friendship circle. So, yeah, I know Newman very likes it to some extent. His life as a Catholic had been a failure. He he came to terms with it and realized that God works through failures. And he used to tell people that, so yes, he he never lost his case, but it was it was really difficult. Really difficult. |
| Mary | Well, Doctor Shrimpton, what's, interesting here is sort of the the time frame because he was only canonized a saint in 2019, and he's already being made, you know, a doctor of the church six years later. So that's, I think one interesting side note, but I understand that Prince Charles went to the canonization in Rome and, you know, seemed to quite interested. I know a bishop who, was seated near him and spoke with him at some length, and he seemed quite interested in the person of John Henry Newman. Do you see this now, this new honor being bestowed on him, this new recognition of his contributions, perhaps bringing the, inter-religious dialog or the interdenominational dialog, between Anglicans and Catholics in England or in the United Kingdom. Any closer? |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Yeah, that's an interesting question. You could argue that both ways. I've recently informed various Anglican bishops and priests, Anglican priest in Oxford about the, the New Order. And they all right back very warmly. I've met them. I met these people probably a year ago at celebrations, the 200th anniversary, the bicentenary of Newman's first sermon, the list of extraordinary events in Oxford, near Oxford, bringing Anglicans and Catholics together. The visit, of course. This great. I mean, you mean in many respects as a great humanist. It will be an opportunity for inter-religious dialog. But at the same time, I know that you've, the greatest intellectual and the great saint, has joined the Catholic Church. So it's an interesting one that, very interesting. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. I think they will be rejoicing because they, they can perfectly well claim they've had a hand in this. I, I think Newman is the first, nun. Well, obviously you've got Augustine who went away from the church and came back, so he's rather a special case. But Newman is probably the first certainly the first Anglican to, be named, a doctor of the church. I think probably he's the only one who's going to be from another communion apart from Augustine. So people will be taking note of this. Yeah. And when I was in Rome, I mean, I actually met Prince Charles. I wrote the story for the exhibition The English College. And after the mass, I went to the private tour with him for a quarter an hour there. And he was extremely well informed, about Newman. He'd been briefed very, very well. And he wrote a letter in the Times the day before, talking about the opportunities for renewed dialog. But actually, his main line was how Newman is a great example of somebody who can listen in in a very noisy world where things are polar, where, where discussions. So polarized. Newman is an extraordinary example of someone who can listen to all parties. So I think that's a very interesting line to take as well. I mean, he has a sort of knack, a bit like Thomas Aquinas. If he doesn't agree with something, he would actually enter into the arguments of his opponents and almost write them up better than they can, and then begin to answer them very gently and in a reasoned fashion, but with a certain firmness at the same time. So I think, yeah, for all sorts of points of view, people will be looking at him as a major thinker. |
| Betsy | Professor Shrimpton, you wrote in a piece online, a point about why Newman is so interesting to us because he confronts non-Christian approaches at the time, they were being beginning to be propagated and responds to them with reasoned arguments. Tell us what paint a picture for what some of these non reasoned arguments were, and how he responded so well. |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | In terms of education, he the resonance there with when I first discovered Newman, probably when I was preparing, finishing my degree in Oxford and did an extra year, up the works just rang true. He understands human nature better than so many other people. So in designing, institutions, education institutions, schools, universities, he understands the human person better than others. So much better. He. It's right. They're both to the idea of university and his other essays in the documents, the founding documents of school university. It's there in his correspondence all the time. He it's a great Christian humanist. And and that is why you have people like, Stefan Carlini. He's retired a few years ago, is professor of intellectual history in Cambridge. He wrote a book around about 2010 called What a University Is For, but he holds Newman on a pedestal as somebody and and kallenius not a man of religion at all, but he just has immense respect. And that's in education. And certainly whenever I am meeting academics and I, they ask me who I am, what I'm doing, and I mentioned I'm working on Newman. It's almost as if they bow to the name John Henry Newman, the utter reverence for. And then often they say, well, actually, I should have. I started the idea, but didn't finish and so on. So I don't know. In that area, people have just extraordinary respect for this man and people, in, in certainly in university world thinking where the Academy's going. It's Newman is such a great answer. And was in Covid he's he talks about say education being a very relational activity. And of course in Covid and lockdown times, we lost all that remote dialog and so on. So he's he's a counterbalance to all sorts of things which go wrong. So I've written to quite a bit on this and different trends and people saying, what does Newman have to say on this? And he's got the answer. Even you might it might surprise you in this world of, when we're swamped with information through the internet, you might think, well, Newman hasn't got much to say in that. Well, actually, in the 1830s and 40s, cheap literature was being disseminated for the first time. And all sorts of things, particularly science. And the schools were being swamped with this. And Newman addresses that and talks about how we how it's information alone isn't going to form, human minds. It's processing that information. It's integrating it properly. It's joining up the different subjects. So many things. He's there. He he not only says he understands it more than anyone else, he actually, with his fabulous English, expresses it better than anyone as well. So he's going to be around, for a long, long time. And, people of faith and no faith will be continue to listen to him, particularly in education. |
| Mary | Well, in the few minutes we have left, doctor Shrimpton, can you expand a little bit on Newman's distinction between knowledge and virtue and how those two things are achieved by different methods? |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Yeah, it does actually say, knowledge is one thing, virtue another. Yeah. In terms of this, this is in the idea of university. And, it's an essay which is anonymous, which is almost definitely by him. He says, in essence, a university is almost a secular institution, which is extraordinary thing to say. It's simply people teaching, and it's about knowledge. But he says it also in practice, the university needs to support the help of the church. But this isn't done directly. It's done indirectly. Human virtues sure can be educated. People can be those virtues can be inculcated, to produce the gentlemen. But something is more for the supernatural virtues. This is obviously grace and the support of the church. So, yeah. Newman says the essence of the university is the teaching part, but the the integrity of it, that's the word he uses. The fully flourishing form needs, religious institutions supporting it, supporting the students outside. So he he has he would almost say you could teach the theory of virtue in the university, but you need student residences and the like to teach the individual formation of virtue is habits. The two sort of complement each other and go together. |
| Betsy | So you point out a moment in history with Newman where you write on a Sunday evening in November 1854, the day before the first lectures were to be given, Newman addressed the first 17 students of the Catholic University. He told them that they had not come there to become lawyers, teachers, or doctors because there were other places which where they could do that, but they came to be made into men. They came to the university to develop as human beings and become useful citizens. Was that a novel idea at the time? |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | No. It wasn't actually. No. In many respects, Oxford and Cambridge were, well, finishing schools for the two gentlemen class British society. So there was there was always an element that, being polished up before going on the Grand tour, meeting the right sort of people. You know, that's that socialization going on there. The Newman's talking about being more than just the a secular gentleman. He's talking about living a life of virtue and effectively, of being of service to society. So much grander, bigger, a larger concept. He so it's there, but he develops it. So all his thinking, really, you can trace back to various people, but he, he moves everything so much more forward. So he takes the idea from Aristotle of human flourishing, where Aristotle would say, you are responsible for your character, but Newman takes that further and runs with it. And, yeah, effectively says to some extent, you are responsible for your face from a human point of view. You've got to do the running as well. The King does enough to find out about the, the creator out there in nature and and using all sorts of other means. It is up to you to do that. So it's a whole, whole group of different things going on there, which Newman pulls together in terms of all around human flourishing. And that to some extent is what we're missing now, in university life. I couldn't believe it. When 15 years ago, in, in England, the universities were outsourcing student accommodation to private companies. He would he would be tearing his hair out of that. He almost felt that for a proper university education, you could almost dispense with exams, with, lectures and just bring together a group of people with a bit of tutorials, supervision. And that would be more like a university than one which had merely lectures and exams. But, Newman wanted it both actually, both ways. But he often speaks rhetorically, quite strongly, and can mislead people. But he wants both the intellectual education there and the social and personal education at the same time. |
| Betsy | Well, we're so grateful to you, Doctor Shrimpton, for joining us today. And make sure to check out Doctor Paul Swinton's new book, The Most Dangerous Man in England. Newman in the laity. Thank you so much for joining us today. |
| Dr. Paul Shrimpton | Just be with you. All the best. Goodbye. |
| Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences. Now on and Radio. I'm your host, Betty Fentress Sneed, and we're happy to have the fiery and fun Haley Stewart with us today. You may know her from Word on Fire and many of her amazing books, including the Grace of enough. But today, with Summer coming to a close, we want to revisit her book, Women of the Catholic Imagination. Welcome to the show, Haley. |
| Haley Stewart | Thank you so much for having me. |
| Betsy | So to kick off, we wanted to ask you about your recent Substack. When someone gave you a most awesome compliment. You're chatting with a friend about life, and she says you really are the incarnation of Anne Shirley. How did you take that? |
| Haley Stewart | Well, as a huge, huge compliment. I love the Green Gables series. I love the character of Anne. I love her just unwavering hope amidst the trials of life. And so I took that as just a huge boost when my friend said that. |
| Betsy | Well, that's also in my notes, the unwavering hope. And, also, it made me think of another heroine from Shakespeare. |
| Haley Stewart | Yeah. I, I was connecting in some writing that I was doing about Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I grew up watching the film from the 90s and I kind of had it memorized as a child, and I loved Beatrice because of her joie de vive and her positivity. But firing is and just. She's such a strong, wonderful character. So I thought of her too, in that joyful, hopeful attitude that she brings to life. |
| Betsy | Well, what I love about this book is that you say in the introduction that there's been a lot of focus on Catholic male writers, and you feature Catholic, female writers in this. And do you have a favorite? |
| Haley Stewart | I mean, I think I'd probably have to say Sigrid Undset because her book, Kristin Laverne's Daughter, is just at the top for me. But it's really hard to choose a favorite with these women understandably focused a lot on some of the famous male writers like Tolkien and and War. But there's also so many incredible women, and so it's a lot of fun to delve into these authors. |
| Mary | And I love the image of you in your backyard finishing up Brideshead Revisited, which happened to be then a year before you ended up coming into the church. I love that book too, and I was just wondering, are there any books that you happened to read during your college years, say, as a non-Catholic, that you have reread since entering the church? And like, how has that influenced your, like, growing catechesis? |
| Haley Stewart | Absolutely. I think for me, the number one name that comes to mind is Flannery O'Connor. And there is a story about her in the book and encountering her as a Protestant. I grew up in the South so I could go, wow. Then the weirdness. But the Catholic themes were definitely really striking and kind of shocking and unsettling, which is not a negative. You know, that's kind of why she's such a great writer. She really makes you sit and get uncomfortable. |
| Mary | Yeah. Brutal flashiness. Yeah. And I can imagine that once you sort of. Yeah. Convert and you can see like that's sort of our religion too. Like the visible units every day. |
| Haley Stewart | It's my kids about how Catholicism is and the goth religion. You know, we have chapels made out of bones. We, like, venerate relics. It's it's kind of gory and strange and unsettling, but beautiful. And I think there's something about O'Connor that helps us enter into the strangeness of God's mercy and grace. |
| Betsy | In her book, The Habit of Being Is and her Her Letters. That was a really important book for me in college. And, I actually corresponded with Sally Fitzgerald, the editor, and I well, of course, that the line that you see on t shirts now, I think Jonathan Rumi had one on if it if the Eucharist is just a symbol, to hell with it. |
| Mary | Yeah. |
| Haley Stewart | I actually have a sticker of that on my water bottle. Amazing. |
| Betsy | Okay, there you go. But another person that's tangentially related to Flannery O'Connor is featured in your book. And it's funny because I, through the habit of being and their correspondence, Flannery and Carolyn Gordon, I got really interested in her. And she was married to the poet Allen Tate and all these people at that time, Robert Lowell, his wife, Jean Stafford. There was this kind of flurry of conversions. So tell us why you included Caroline Gordon in the book? |
| Haley Stewart | Sure. Well, when I was kind of crafting which authors to include because there are many more that I could have included, I wanted a combination of writers like Flannery O'Connor. She's the poster child of Catholic women writers, but also some of these forgotten women who are really worth reading but are not on the same radar. And then women like Toni Morrison and Donna Tartt, who are very well known in the secular world, but their Catholic identity is not often really explored. |
| Mary | I'm glad that you brought up the choosing of the authors, because I was wondering in, sort of what was a chicken and egg situation, whether you chose the essayists versus the people that commented on the authors that you chose or which way first, it sounds like you chose the authors. I'll call the people who wrote the book like Flannery O'Connor, author that first. And then did you ask specific people to write on specific authors or how did you do that? |
| Haley Stewart | So it was a little bit of a combination. Some of them I knew Flannery needed to be in there. So it was just determining who's the best person to write about her for this project. But then there were some. As I was finalizing the list, I would sometimes reach out to a Catholic contemporary writer that I wanted to contribute to this book and pitch well. What if we wrote about this woman? Would you be interested? And they would say, oh well, maybe. But have you thought about this writer? |
| Mary | Because I love that collaboration. |
| Haley Stewart | And talk about her. And so that was kind of shifting back and forth between trying to offer some of these incredible novelists, but also collaborate with other Catholic writers who are interested in these women of the Catholic imagination. |
| Mary | Yeah, I love that. |
| Betsy | Well, another author that you feature, Carol Housley under the Divine Eccentric, what an interesting woman she was. Had an affair with a Russian spy before she converted to Catholicism. Do you have a favorite book of hers? |
| Haley Stewart | I think probably the read of God. I mean, it's just, I think as a Protestant convert to Catholicism, there is no book that helps me understand Mary the way the read of God did and understand why is it so important? Why is relationship with her important? How do we model our spiritual life after Our Lady? And just the way that House Landor presents that book and it is just a must read. It is is so good. So I love that one. But I've also enjoyed getting into some of her stories for children. In fact, Word on Fire Votive, which is the imprint I edit for Word on Fire, we released one of her stories for children and got it re illustrated as a as a picture book. And so that's been fun too, is getting her work out to this next generation. |
| Mary | Until your book has been out for over a little over a year, right. Have you found, I'm sure because, you know, you're a public figure, you have a Substack, people can find you and contact you. Have you found people who were in your shoes once, maybe grew up a southern Protestant and found this sort of, you know, Catholic imagination of female writers and had a similar experience or had questions or come. |
| Haley Stewart | Up with that. I think that when you're sharing about things that you really love, other people who love those things find you. And so that's one of the one of the joys of it. And so it has been an opportunity to connect with other readers and also the joy of, like I was saying before collaborating with some of these Catholic writers that maybe I didn't have any kind of relationship with before, and then getting to collaborate on this project and share this love. But I do hear from a lot of people who say, yes, Leonard O'Connor was the gateway person for me, or, you know, Evelyn was was or that. So that's just beautiful to see how these novelist art was sent out into the world. And then God uses that. |
| Betsy | In your introduction. You have this great quote from Pope Benedict the 16th, who at the time was Cardinal Ratzinger. And he says the only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the church is produced and the art which is grown in her womb. So would you say that you came into the church, through the art primarily, or was it that the art that led you to, okay, what does the church actually teach on various issues? |
| Haley Stewart | Yeah, I think that, of course, it was a combination of different things, but I definitely think it was the art that first opened me up to the church. You know, I felt this draw and this attraction to the church's literature and sacred music and sacred art and just the beauty and so as a Protestant, I then was faced with the issue of, oh, no, I feel this attraction. |
| Betsy | To. |
| Haley Stewart | This church, but oh, that's. |
| Mary | So evil. |
| Haley Stewart | Nonsense, right? Like, and so in college, I really had the opportunity to, for the first time, then read the early church fathers and understand what the church actually taught as I was reading great texts of the Western tradition. And so then it's like my heart was drawn, and then those obstacles that I had that were misconceptions about the church were slowly broken down. So it was kind of that, that combination. And then I got to meet the Saints, which I, I love the Pope. Benedict said that because how can we not be inspired by the stories of the saints and see like, yes, but that's just such a beautiful, beautiful inspiration that points to the truth of the church. |
| Mary | I love that because I have to. Two of my four sons have autism and we have found that, maybe much like someone coming from a Protestant background, some of that, you know, crazier things that we believe as Catholics are a little bit harder to grasp. And through things like Tolkien and, Lewis, the hillbilly Thomas, you know, art and beauty is really an important gateway for them. And I wondered if you were going to do something with the imagination in the child, children's series that you edit. |
| Haley Stewart | Yes. So I'm really excited you brought that up because we're we have a book in the works with Jacqueline Warren and David Warren, and it is Jacqueline is an illustrator. David, her husband, is a writer, and it's about different Catholic figures who are artists. So like just short biographies of these different artists, whether it's someone like Tolkien or Flannery O'Connor or someone from, you know, more ancient visual artists and and just showing kind of the variety and breadth of what they contributed and, and the, the way that the faith impacted their lives, whether, you know, some of them might be saints, but some of them are just regular sinners who are. |
| Mary | Teaching. |
| Haley Stewart | Meaningful art for God. And so I'm really excited about that, because I think that young people are so drawn to beauty. |
| Mary | Is. |
| Haley Stewart | Able to help them make that connection is so important. And I love what you're saying about your sons, because my son is also autistic and books like Lord of the rings have been so helpful in conversations with him about faith and just being able to dive into that story and talk about why does this ring so true, and what does that have to do with the faith? And how does lead us on our journey of faith? |
| Mary | Yeah, and I love the way too. They sort of slowly digest it. And then it comes up a couple days later, you know, just like in the car or something. It's my favorite. So when do you think that children's book will be out? |
| Haley Stewart | So I think that will be out in late 2026. |
| Mary | Oh, that's so far. |
| Haley Stewart | Not too far. But I'm very excited about it. I have seen some of the illustrations so far and it's just wonderful. |
| Betsy | People I want. I wanted to ask a question about so many of the authors in the book are British, and did you think about that at all as you put this together? Because you have Carol Salander, of course, and Josephine Ward, Ellis Thomas and Ellis, Muriel Spark. And to what do you attribute their kind of collective conversion? Do you see any, common threads in them coming into the church and, and realizing that it was important for that to be informing of their art? |
| Haley Stewart | Yes. Well, I think there's two things there. I mean, one just very practical thing is, as English speakers, we're going to be reading a lot of of writers who are in the English. So I tried to branch out from that a little bit by including writers who, wrote in different languages, were in different parts of the world. But one thing that I think really contributed to this amazing wealth of British writers is, I think, actually, strangely, the persecution of the church in Britain. There's this history of the Catholic Church being suppressed over many centuries. And I think something about that contributes to a smaller but strong church. There's a strong sense of Catholic identity in British Catholics, and because the church there has been through so much. And so I think that has something to do with the art that we see coming out, because it is a sacrifice for most of these writers. It was a sacrifice to be Catholic in that environment. And so looking back to say Tolkien's life, his his mother was persecuted after she converted. This made, you know, his life more difficult. And so I think then there's this sense of this is so worthwhile. This is so something that I want to protect. It's so much part of my identity because I've really had to fight for it and sacrifice for it. |
| Mary | That's really interesting. I never really I never thought about it like that. And I also just something else you said reminded me that so many of these writers that often lead people to conversion are converts themselves, which is really interesting. It's sort of like art begetting, conversion, converting, you know, begetting art, you know, like this circle involving other bringing other people in. And it's really, really just a wonderful project. Is there going to be a second volume? I don't know. |
| Haley Stewart | There's definitely enough writers to do another volume. And there's some that even you're mentioning. Did people reach out to you? Ask me the book and one of the fun things is people reaching out and saying, if you ever do a second, oh yeah, you should include this person. And so I said so and I haven't even ever heard of him. So then I want to dive into her novels. So so we shall see. But I, I do love that about some of these artistic converts where it's, it's almost like they still have enough of the same language to still communicate with other people who are not already inside of the church. |
| Mary | Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. Yeah. Of course that's true. And they can still sort of speak in the vernacular, but in the pre conversion. Yeah, I like that. |
| Betsy | So in the concluding essay by Natalia San Martin Vander Rella entitled The Hidden Secret of Catholic Literature, she writes, the only way to understand Christian literature is to assume that we are always we will always find more sinners and saints in it, and that its pages must confer an inescapable place to the human experiences of pain, the fall and sin, and especially of grace. That's an incredibly beautiful summation of what Catholic literature can bring to us. How does that resonate, in your life in terms of what you pick to read and, and how you, how you view these authors? |
| Haley Stewart | I, I love that line to, from from the conclusion. And I think it speaks to what the Catholic faith has to offer, where it is very honest about suffering and sin, but also grace. And so oftentimes you hear Catholic novels kind of criticized for having so much sin in them, like. |
| Mary | Yeah, right. |
| Haley Stewart | I remember people saying, I can't believe you converted, partly because of Brideshead Revisited. All the Catholics are terrible in that book or so it's sin. But that's also the point. And so being honest about our brokenness, our sin, our need for grace within the lens of there's hope. There's hope because of the resurrection. There's hope because of grace. And so I think that that honesty and that willingness to really, encounter and sit with suffering and grief and sin is one of the things that makes Catholic literature so compelling and so powerful. |
| Betsy | I mean, Christian love, Anne's daughter really is kind of the, you know, the epitome of that, wouldn't you say? |
| Haley Stewart | Absolutely. I mean, Kristen, the character. So the story goes kind of from birth to death of this one very compelling character, and she is a sinner. But you connect with her, relate to her on such a deep level, and it really helps you examine your own soul. And I love. |
| Mary | How you compare to Don Draper. That was like a like a definitely lol moment. It was really great. |
| Haley Stewart | Yeah, I just, I think of her because you care about her so much, the same way that you are somehow still rooting for Don Draper. |
| Mary | Now, I know. |
| Haley Stewart | You're still frustrated. And you're disappointed again and again. And yet, isn't that how God probably feels about us all the time? And so, yes, I think Christian loving love and Sutter is the perfect example of that. Sin and grace in a big way. |
| Betsy | Hayley, we're out of time, but please tell our listeners where they can learn more about you and your work and your writing. |
| Haley Stewart | Sure. So you can find the children's books that I edit for Word on Fire at Word on Fire votive. That's the name of the imprint, but I've e you can find women of the Catholic Imagination from Word on Fire or Amazon wherever you order your books, and you can find me on Instagram. I'm at Hayley Carrot, or you can find me at the the whimsically titled Hayley Stuart's Newsletter on Substack. |
| Betsy | Great. Thank you so much for joining us, and to find out everything that we're up to at the Catholic Association, you can find us on Substack, Twitter, and online. Thank you. |
| Haley Stewart | Thank you so much. |
| Mary | Bye. |
| Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences, where we are once again visited with our globetrotting Monsignor Roger Landry, who was in Rome last week. And he has just come back from the convention of the Knights of Columbus. Welcome back, Monsignor, and tell us what's going on with the Knights of Columbus. |
| Msgr Landry | Yeah. So every first week of August, the Knights of Columbus, which is the largest Catholic fraternal organization of Catholic men in history, has its supreme convention. And so in DC this year, which was a great opportunity to prepare for next year's 250th birthday of the United States. The pillars of the Knights of Columbus are fraternity and charity and unity and patriotism. And so it was an opportunity, at least for the American Knights, to help everybody prepare for the 250th anniversary of our country, for the freedom that is distinguished, the United States for the religious freedom, which is our first freedom, for which the Knights have always thought everybody should know that it was the Knights Columbus in the 1950s that God under God in the Pledge of Allegiance and in our currency and things like this, just to make sure that against the militant secularism that was starting to rear its head, the Knights Columbus fought back as real knights do. And so it's always an extremely edifying time for me to be present with the knight, to hear the Supreme Knights, annual Report, which was broadcast live on EWTN, describing the 48, I want to say 48. No, $197 million of charitable care across the world that was given last year, and I think it was 48,000, but maybe it's even million. Volunteer hours from Knights of Columbus, from the 2.1 million Knights of Columbus all across the globe. And so, to be able to see the explosion of charity that the Knights of Columbus continue to build on every year is something that is one of the great untold stories in the church. And I would encourage every man who's listening to us, if he's not a knight, seriously, to think about it, because there's an incredible brotherhood there that strengthens men to grow in faith and serves the church as 2.1 million men of God take up a special role to make the church stronger. |
| Betsy | We featured a new program that they've rolled out for men in parishes, and we were so impressed by just the need for fraternity that they're offering through their historic groups in in parish life. |
| Msgr Landry | That's called the core programs. CoA are the Latin word for heart, and it's one of the great, source of pride for the Supreme Knight, Patrick Kelly, who was a friend of mine. He loves that program. And it's already being implemented in thousands of parishes across the country. And then in other countries to enhance the spirituality of Catholic men as Catholic men. The Knights of Columbus, once upon a time, were known for 20 year old drives and for clubs in which you could always go and get some inexpensive beer after hours. That's not the Knights of Columbus at its best. The Knights of Columbus formed men to be true family, men to be men of the church, to be men of God in the middle of the world. And the core program puts that masculine spirituality into practice, and it's really helping draw many new young men to the Knights of Columbus, because they're looking for the formation as Catholic men that they really haven't gotten in our parishes, and Catholic religious ed programs, etc., where sometimes the maternal dimension of the church is a little bit, stronger than a masculine dimension. But the Knights of Columbus are really remedying it now, and I'm super proud of the core program. |
| Betsy | Well, that's great to hear. We had a big feast this week that connected to a church in Rome that has special significance because of Pope Francis. Can you tell us about that? |
| Msgr Landry | Yeah, talking about the maternal dimension of our faith. At the same time, after, the Knights of Columbus is the feast of the dedication of Saint Mary Major Basilica, which liturgically is the most important Marian church in the world, it goes back to 354 A.D., when there was just no, storm on August 5th and Rome, which is pretty impossible, but in the midst of the snow, according to the fourth century accounts, Pope Liberius traced out the, the the, architectural parameters of the first church to be built there in the four 30s, right after the Council of Ephesus that declared Mary to be the mother not just of Jesus Christ according to humanity, but because Jesus is God, the Mother of God. They built that church there. It was ultimately Pope Leo the Great, who was the Archdeacon of six. It's the third at the time who sort of led that whole architectural pattern. And so it's so important for our faith to have this church dedicated to the Mother of God. When you go on inside, you've got the history of Mary and devotion. What's super important to me, if you've got the series of fifth century mosaics on the triumphal arch in the main part of the church, all about how Mary brought to us the victor, and so it's all Mary's relationship to Jesus and the triumphal arch inside the church, just like the arc de Triomphe and Paris talks about triumphs and battle of the Arch of Constantine in Rome. So we have Christ's triumphal arch in the role of Our Lady. And then you've got other fifth century mosaics of the Old Testament scenes that led up to Jesus. You've got a little bit about Abraham, a little bit about Moses, a little bit about David and Solomon. But half of those mosaics are all dedicated to Joshua. And when I give tours of Saint Mary Major Basilica, I basically ask, why Joshua? Well, this was in the fifth century, after Rome had been sacked in 410 and Joshua, we know, was the one who led the Jews into battle when they crossed the Jordan River against Jericho. To have so much of a focus on Joshua in fifth century Catholic mentality in Rome was to strengthen them for the fight against the barbarians who were coming to invade Rome. And so I think today, when we look at how secularism tries to attack our faith, learning from the first Christians about the role of Joshua and strengthen them to live out their faith in the fifth century can strengthen us today. In the 21st to be able to live out our faith as well. And we remember that Joshua is the Hebrew name for Jesus. Jesus would have been called Yeshua by Mary and Joseph, etc. and so the focus on Joshua was to help us to follow Jesus into battle. Battle for the good, battle for love for us, for a civilization of life, but also a battle against the types of things that want to separate us from God. So what an incredible house, Mary's house in Rome for all of us to go to that. The whole church throughout the globe celebrates on August 5th. |
| Betsy | Well, that was a great explanation and history of this historic church. And thank you so much for joining us, Monsignor Landry. |
| Msgr Landry | God bless you, Betsy. |