Breadbox Media

Setting the Record Straight: The Apostles Creed and Paul Claudel Part 2

Listen to Part 2 of this Lenten meditation on  the Apostles Creed drawn from the works of Paul Claudel, French mystic poet, and writer (1868-1955). 

This is the second part of a series of “Setting The Record Straight” in which we hear Claudel’s discoveries of God’s whispered meanings in our familiar Credo.

 Claudel was honored by Pope Pius  XII in an unprecedented public ceremony at the Vatican.

Paul Claudel

Setting the Record Straight: The Apostles Creed and Paul Claudel Part 1

Listen to this Lenten meditation on  the first line of our Apostles Creed drawn from the works of Paul Claudel, French mystic poet, and writer (1868-1955). This is the first part of a series of “Setting The Record Straight” in which we hear Claudel’s discoveries of God’s whispered meanings in our familiar Credo. Claudel was honored by Pope Pius  XII in an unprecedented public ceremony at the Vatican.

Paul Claudel

Setting the Record Straight: We Dig Noah

 Is Noah a fairy tale ? Or partly true? Did we steal the story from the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Didn’t many other societies have myths about a flood? How can they all be true? Isn’t Wikipedia inspired and infallible ?  How does the Catholic Church explain a flood that supposedly covered the whole earth?  Listen to some stunning evidence that has been dug up confirming the story of Noah and the Flood. It happened.

Setting the Record Straight: Graham Greene's Novel - The Power and The Glory

Listen to excerpts of one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It is the story of the last surviving priest in a Mexican province.  

As a Catholic priest he is to be shot on sight. He is on the run from the Mexican government soldiers.  

Setting the Record Straight: A Spectacular Revolution - Catholic Charity

Charity had never like this. Charity of a kind had existed, but our ideas of modern charity are the effect of Catholic examples and teaching. The whole idea of a hospital was invented by early Catholics. Before Christ created the Catholic Church the sick were often put to death, healthy infants left out for wolves and carrion eaters, and outsiders were denied care. Listen and be humbled by the stunning works of our fellow Catholics.

Setting the Record Straight: More Bells

Listen to this celebration of bells. Bells have rung in historical events, enriched literature, colored romances, inspired architecture, struck terror, or given consolation. They have rejoiced with the rejoicing, mourned with the grieving, chanted with the praying of all nations. They have opened markets, announced guests, roused for danger, summoned to war, welcomed the victor. They have pealed merrily for rustic weddings, joyfully announced the birth of royal heirs, and tolled with muffled tone the passing soul along his way.

Setting the Record Straight: Valentines to God

Dear God, Please Be My Valentine.  For Saint Valentine’s Day, listen to some love letters to God by great writers, including Saint John of the Cross, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Flannery O’Connor, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Who's Rilke? Listen and find out.

Setting the Record Straight: Bells

This is a Celebration of Bells.  Listen to the Catholic bells. 

Bells from all over the world. Hear stories about bells tolling then hear the bells tolling. 

Then listen tomorrow to “More Bells” and hear more bells tolling.

Setting the Record Straight: Catholic Heroes of the Holocaust

Setting the Record Straight: Is Catholic Art A Distraction?

Not everyone understands the Catholic Church’s robust use of arts, in all its forms, as a inspiration in the worship of God.

Yet the Catholic Church became world’s most fertile source of great art. 

Listen to the abundant reasons why.

Setting the Record Straight: Shipwrecked with Robinson Crusoe

Surprise again!  

One of the greatest of all novels is Robinson Crusoe. Whats the problem?

Well, the story told in the movies and even in the copies of Robinson Crusoe in our libraries and available to buy from  Amazon is …a fraud !

Let us set the record straight.

"Robinson Crusoe” has been censored and almost all the three-letter-words removed. The offending word was “God”.

Actually the central issue in the original novel “Robinson Crusoe" and the book's great gift is Defoe's account of how a civilization is born.

What transforms chaos into cosmos, survivalism into society, is obedience to God.

Setting the Record Straight: The Harmony of Science and The #Catholic Church - Part 2

Listen to Part Two and hear surprising facts about the close connection between science and The Catholic Church.

If mankind had attempted to derive Catholicism from science they might have have failed. If mankind had attempted to derive science from Catholicism they would have succeeded.

Actually that is exactly what happened!

Setting the Record Straight: The Harmony of Science and The Catholic Church

If mankind had attempted to derive Catholicism from science they might have have failed.
If mankind had attempted to derive science from Catholicism they would have succeeded.
Actually that is exactly what happened. Listen.

Setting the Record Straight - The Catholic Foundation Of Our Laws

Surprising but true. Our laws local, nation, and international spring from the Catholic moral tradition.

Beyond that the have their primary foundation in the hard work Catholics did in codifying consistent international laws.

Setting the Record Straight: The War on Catholics - Kulturkampf

Culture War: Two Popes and Ludwig Windthorst versus the Iron Chancellor.

Catholics are so sweet and forgiving.  They have seldom harbored long-term resentments against those who persecute them. The rough treatment of Catholics through the centuries are mere footnotes in history or entirely forgotten, so why dig up these past sins against our Church. 

Why?  To evangelize.

Evangelize?

Yes, because the other side of the story is inspiring. The other side of the story  is how magnificently faithful Catholics have handled themselves under the  persecution and slander of their enemies. We would have many more converts if this aspect of our history was better known.

Setting the Record Straight: What Happened To Us?

Everything seems to be a mess. Is it fixable? What happened to us, to our societies, our families, our reverence for life?  Listen to some really depressing facts about the present state of the world and then to some really optimistic thoughts on a cure that will really work.

Yes the cure is huge in magnitude but it is simple in concept..

Setting the Record Straight: What Did You Expect? The Spanish Inquisition?

Surprise!  What we assume about the Spanish Inquisition is mostly false, part of the slanders of the Black Legend promoted by the British to provide cover for their own far worse behavior in persecuting Catholics.  Because it was both professional and efficient, the Spanish Inquisition kept very good records. These documents are a goldmine for modern historians. Thus far, the fruits of that research have made one thing abundantly clear — the myth of the Spanish Inquisition has nothing at all to do with the real thing. The inescapable conclusion is that, by the standards of its time, the Spanish Inquisition was positively enlightened.

Setting the Record Straight: The True Music of Catholicdom

It is all about Roots.

Latin and Gregorian chant, which are deeply linked to the biblical, patristic, and liturgical sources, are part of an astounding tradition that, for twenty centuries, has been forged by the God-touched geniuses of Catholic musicians.  The obscuring of an entire tradition of prayer formed over two millennia has led to conditions favorable to a anarchic proliferation of new musical products which, in the majority of cases, have not been able to root themselves in the  tradition of the Church. The Catholic Church acknowledged "Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman Liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services". - Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium §116 (1963)

Pope Saint Pius X called "the chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant she has inherited from ancient fathers, which she has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faithful as her own..." (Tra le sollecitudini §3)

True sacred popular singing will be more valid and substantial as it takes its inspiration from Gregorian chant. John Paul II took as his own the principle asserted by Saint Pius X: 

“A composition for the Church is all the more sacred and liturgical the more its development, inspiration, and flavor approaches the Gregorian melody, and the less worthy it is the more it distinguishes itself from that supreme model.” harmony in action. John Paul II recalled: “The musical aspect of liturgical celebrations cannot be left to improvisation or the decision of individuals, but must be entrusted to well-coordinated leadership, in respect for the norms and competent authorities, as the substantial outcome of an adequate liturgical formation.

Setting the Record Straight: Shakespeare's Secret Catholicism

If Shakespeare’s father and daughter were Catholics, what about the bard himself? No one argues that, after the Lancashire years, and during his writing career, Shakespeare was known as a Catholic. Still, there are tantalizing events and, above all, there are things in the plays and poems that arrest. These were times when it was worth your life not to conform. Edmund Campion and other Jesuits were brutally martyred for ministering to the pockets of Catholics who remained loyal to the Old Faith.

Shakespeare did not volunteer for a martyr’s role, but, retired to Stratford, “He died a papist.”

Setting the Record Straight: Victorious Martyrs Of Poland

Hearing the stories of people who were  courageous in great adversity can often inspire us.  Listen to this account of the fiercely devout Catholicism of the Polish martyrs who were sent to concentration camps in World War II.  Maximilian Kolbe is one of the most famous of these many amazing Catholics who lost their life in the death camps.