Hello everyone. The 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea is upon us, and we are pleased to present you with an interview on the subject. Ben Wyatt is an author, podcaster, and Episcopal priest, who has recently published his first book, Christ and the Council: Conflict, Politics, Theology, and the Outrageous, Extraordinary Story of the Church’s First Creed. In the course of our interview, we discuss the nature of the theological debate surrounding Christ's divinity at the Council, the role of Constantine the Great on its outcome, and the legacy of Nicaea and its creed for Christians today. You can find Ben's book on Amazon and other outlets, and you can listen to his podcast, the Road to Nicaea, on Spotify and other major platforms. Thanks to Ben for sharing his time and discussing his book with us at Controversies in Church History.
In the latest episode, I take a deeper look at a recent controversy. Two Catholic scholars recent wrote an article in Commonweal Magazine comparing Traditionalist Catholics--those who attend the Latin Mass--to a heresy known as "Jansenism." In this short episode, I talk about why this comparison does not hold, but is actually a polemical use of history designed to smear Traditionalists. In it, I discuss the history of Jansenism and the danger of taking historical analogies too seriously.
In the late 2nd century AD, a Christian convert from Phrygia (modern Turkey) named Montanus began experiencing visions and speaking in tongues, which he believed were the Holy Spirit speaking through him. Soon he was joined by two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, who experienced the same ecstatic episodes. Montanus and his followers believed he was a prophet, called to lead Christians back to their primitive purity. In this episode of Controversies in Church History, we take a look at the history of Montanism, as its followers were called, and how it parallels other heretical movements in the history of the Church.
With the election of Pope Leo XIV, we move into a new papal reign, and in this brief episode, I share a few thoughts about the new pontiff, the challenges he will face, and musings on the larger historical context of those challenges. Cheers!
Our latest episode continues our discussion on the cult of the saints, but this time focusing on one of its more controversial aspects: the veneration of relics. In this episode, I talk about what the veneration of relics entails, how it emerged from the cult of the martyrs, and the evidence for its practice among early Christians. I also describe how by the sixth century, belief in the powers of relics became a defining feature of Christianity, and why the practice distinguished Christians from both pagan Greco-Roman religion and Judaism in the ancient world.
Controversies in Church History is back! This time, I interview the husband and wife team of Joseph and Monique Gonzalez about their book, Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy: How God Prepared the Americas for Conversion Before the Lady Appeared. In our interview, they discuss the history and culture of the peoples of Mexico prior to the Spanish conquest, and how certain aspects of their culture prepared them to receive the revelation of Jesus Christ. They make the case that the apparition of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego in 1531 led to the conversion of millions of native Mexican peoples because of this "preparatio evangelica" deposited within Nahua culture (Nahua is the native language of the peoples of Mexico the Spanish encountered). This is an enlightening discussion and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Cheers!
Hello! This is just a brief update on what's cooking for Controversies in Church History. Please take a listen, I have some good things in store for my followers. Cheers!
When did the early Christians begin to seek the intercession of particularly holy people, such as the martyrs? Was this something they copied from Greco-Roman society? In the latest episode of Controversies in Church History, we take a look at the origins of the cult of the saints. In it, I discuss when and how the early Christians began to venerate Christian martyrs, and the evidence of this practice. I address the similarities and differences between the veneration of the saints and Greco-Roman religion, and why veneration of saints marked a radical departure from other religions in the ancient world.
Hello! I thought I would drop a short, unscripted episode about something that has been on my mind recently, namely, elites. Inspired by an embarrassing situation in the Catholic Church in England, I muse on the theory of "elite overproduction" and how it might apply to the Protestant Reformation. Which means I geek out over the numbers of universities founded in late medieval Europe. If you like thinking about history, I hope this more speculative episode whets your appetites. Cheers!
In this episode of Controversies in Church History, we tackle the subject of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors waged a campaign against the veneration of sacred images, destroying them and persecuting their defenders. Despite this, the practice persisted, and eventually supporters of icons proved victorious and the veneration of images was enshrined in Orthodox and Catholic teaching. In this episode, we will look at the historical context of this important period, discussing the motivation for iconoclasm, the arguments on both sides, and why the eventual triumph of icon veneration is important for the history of Catholicism and Christianity in general.
Controversies in Church History returns to its ongoing series on the Latinization of the Eastern Churches. The tenth installment deals with the trials of the Armenian Catholic Church, which faced persecution within the Ottoman Empire but also suspicion from Rome, which led to a brief schism in the 1870s. Along the way we discuss the wider context of the Ottoman Empire, Vatican I and the calamity of the Armenian Genocide during WWI. Please spread the word about the podcast if you like what you hear. Pax Christi!
Controversies in Church History is back! The first episode of 2025 is a review of the books I've been reading the past year, featuring some interesting works on theology and liturgy with a side dollop of nothing-to-do-with-Catholicism-in-particular. If you like hearing someone's else's opinions about books you've never read, this is the episode for you. Also, I preview upcoming episodes and lament how behind I am on book reviews. Cheers!
Books Discussed:
1. Peter Kwasniewski, Treasuring the Goods of Marriage in a Throwaway Society
2. Abbé Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols: the Traditional Mass and its Meaning
3. Peter Kwasniewski, Ultramontanism and Tradition: the Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Church
4. Erick Ybarra, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholic and Orthodox
5. Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (Sword of Honor Trilogy #1)
6. Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution
7. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
8. David Grann, The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
9. Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon
10. Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: a Short History
11. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
12. Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
13. Ilan Pappé, A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
14. Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: the Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassination Program
This episode is a special one, as I present you with a Controversies in Church History interview, normally reserved for patrons of the podcast. Here is our interview author and apologist Erick Ybarra. We discuss his book The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox, the state of the evidence for papal claims in the first millennium and much more. Enjoy!
Just a brief preview of some upcoming events I am involved in the next month or so, including the next Controversies in Church History interview. Cheers!
The latest episode of Controversies in Church History takes a look at the early 19th century writer and apologist Francois Rene Chateaubriand (1768-1848), and his work, The Genius of Christianity. Often considered one of the first "Romantic" authors, we will take a look at Chateaubriand's life and background and how it shaped his approach to arguing for the truth of the Catholic faith.
The latest episode of Controversies in Church History covers a curious topic and debate among academics. Why are modern Western societies so different from other civilizations? Why are they WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) when so much of the world is not? In this episode, we take a look at the thesis that the medieval Church's prohibitions on marriage paved the way for changes in social structure that account for the modern West's WEIRDness, and why the Church insisted on those prohibitions in the first place.
Hello everyone! The latest installment in our series on the Latinization of the Eastern Churches is now available to all of our listeners. In it, we discuss the conflict between the Latin rite bishops of the United States in the late nineteenth century and the immigrant clergy of the Ruthenian Catholic Church, which resulted in the defection of tens of thousands of Ruthenian Catholics to Orthodoxy.
The latest Catholic Lives episode, in which we look at notable non-saints in Catholic history, delves into the brief life of Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (1174-1185). Famous for contracting leprosy when he was a child, he fought multiple battles with the Muslim emir Saladin, and successfully protected the kingdom while he lived. Face with particularly difficult personal, political and diplomatic challenges, Baldwin IV earned the praise of contemporaries, and continues to fascinate today.
Hello! The latest episode of the podcast is now available. Last year I did a "what I've been reading episode" and the feedback was in favor of a repeat, so here we go. In this episode, I recount the ten best books I have read this year, from poetry to history and liturgy. Enjoy!
Books Covered:
1. John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Poetry
2. Byung Chul-Han, The Disappearance of Rituals: a Topology of the Present (2019), Philosophy
3. Julian Jackson, A Certain Idea of France: the Life of Charles de Gaulle (2018), Biography
4. William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794), Poetry
5. Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (1986), History
6. Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., Christendom Lost and Found: Meditations for a Post-Post Christian World (2022), Religion
7. Yamen Manai, The Ardent Swarm (2017), Novel
8. Mike Yomer, Please Tell Me (2023) Novel
9. James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (2010) Literature/Art
10. Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass: History, Form and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite (2011/2021) Theology/Liturgy
