Ignatius Press Podcast

Because the Catholic Church has always taught that only men can be ordained to the priesthood instituted by Christ, there is a perception that the Church’s story is a story about men. There’s the Blessed Mother, of course, and maybe the occasional nun who rises to prominence, but since only men can be ordained, the thinking goes, it is men who have built and shaped the Church’s common life throughout the centuries.

Not only is this bad ecclesiology, it is bad history, argues historian Bronwen McShea. In this episode, Andrew Petiprin speaks with McShea about her new book, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know. Women have always been at the heart of the Church, McShea says, and the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural contributions of women—queens and abbesses, wives and mothers, religious sisters, writers, and mystics—have made the Church what she is today.

Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, published by Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute, is now available at Ignatius.com.

You can read an excerpt from the book at First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/04/the-remarkable-legacies-of-ordinary-catholic-women

They’re simple questions, and ones that every believer has to confront at some point in his or her life: why do we suffer, and why does God—who we believe to be good and loving—allow it?

Humanity’s struggles with these questions have inspired countless works of art and literature—from the book of Job on through the ages—as well as theological treatises. But the struggle is also very personal; we all must undergo suffering in our lives, and as Christians, come to an understanding of how these sufferings fit into God’s plan for our redemption.

Mark Giszczak, professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute, has written a new book called Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know. While it takes the reader through Scripture from the Book of Job through the Crucifixion, bringing in the wisdom of the Church Fathers as well as Catholic sacramental and liturgical tradition, the book is accessible and sensitive to the deeply personal nature of suffering.

Giszczak joins your host Andrew Petiprin in this episode to discuss Suffering.

Read more of Giszczak’s work at CatholicBibleStudent.com.

In a society that often claims to value the voices of the marginalized, one group that find themselves frequently silenced by the very people claiming to speak for them are detransitioners—men and women who have gone down the road of “gender transition,” only to change their minds, embrace their biological sex, and reverse course.

In this episode, Andrew Petiprin speaks with Jennifer Lahl, a nurse and documentary maker who works to amplify the voices of those who have been harmed by gender ideology. Together with Kallie Fell, Lahl has written the new book The Detransition Diaries, which tells the stories of five women and two men who have reclaimed their identities after dangerous journeys through hormone therapies, surgeries, and other treatments aimed at changing their biological sex.

Find The Detransition Diaries at Ignatius.com.

Follow Jennifer Lahl on X: @JenniferLahl

Follow Kallie Fell on X: @kal_fell