Brian Holdsworth

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/ I feel the need to start by establishing my own bona fide as someone who has something to say on this topic because I, personally resent it, when people get on a soapbox and criticize phenomena that they don’t know very much about. I’ve said this about Catholic and Christian critics of Harry Potter in the past especially when it’s obvious that they have never read the books. In the case of bands and music like what Ghost offers, I can say that this is something I was heavily immersed in prior to my conversion to Christianity and then Catholicism. I don’t listen to music like that any more for, what I hope will be, obvious reasons, but I have enough experience to draw on to be able to sympathize with those who still do listen to this kind of music. One thing I noticed, when I was an enthusiast of heavy music was that there were two kinds of fans. There were those who liked the aggressive scene and the opportunity to get wasted and bang their heads and act disruptive to others and themselves. And then there were people who took the music and the art seriously. I was the latter. I didn’t just casually listen to bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica, and by Metallica, I don’t mean the rocktallica phase… I mean the metal-lica phase of that band. I consumed every last drop of what they were offering. I bought all their albums, I went to their concerts, and I took it seriously. #Ghost, if you’re unfamiliar with them, are an emerging Swedish #metal group descended from a long line of black Scandinavian metal. The term black, here is usually meant to denote the sinister character or persona that the band portrays in their lyrics, musical style, and stage presence.   It’s characterized by depictions of #satanism, evil, and a fixation on the demonic or whatever personification of evil you can conceive of. In the case of Ghost, though, they offer a slight variation, in that their music is catchier, more melodic, and, you could say, fun. It’s the kind of music you could dance to, at times, which is what rock and roll was invented for. And as someone who will, probably, always have an appreciation for various forms of heavy music, I can say that I can enjoy their sound. It’s original, it’s complex enough not to be boring, it’s well played – the band members are gifted musicians, and their stage presence is the kind of thing that will keep your attention. If I was an unthinking person, motivated purely by my passions, I would probably listen to them because I could easily enjoy their music. But we aren’t unthinking – our intellect and our reason is what makes us unique from all other life on this planet. We are able to make judgements about actions that can even help us forecast the potential effects of our choices. And that is why it is our intellect that should govern our choices, not our desires. If we were to predominantly rely on our desires, than we would be nothing more than animals. So, let me try to invite you to use your intellect to assess the role that a band like Ghost and the subculture that they perpetuate might have on you and your life.

Sponsor: https://thesaintmaker.com Fr. Longenecker's website: https://dwightlongenecker.com/ Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Channel sponsor: https://realestateforlife.org Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com A lot of people having been weighing in about whether or not Pope Francis is a heretic, or even an anti-pope and some surprising figures have come out to assert this very thing. Needless to say, such claims, coming from respectable voices, has the potential to cause scandal and distress in the minds of many Catholics who have relied on some of these very same voices, in the past, as sources of knowledge and encouragement in their faith. These are some of my thoughts on how lay people should respond to such claims and what responsibilities we have in the midst of them. #popefrancis #antipope Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca This week's sponsor: https://www.thesaintmaker.com/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com We are living in a time in the Church when social justice seems to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and I think this is largely the result of the emphasis of Pope Francis who has made talking about the needs of the poor a priority. But one thing that is true of a crisis is that it will test the sincerity of certain beliefs and how committed people are to them, especially if it starts to cost them something and I would say recent events did just that. And it makes me wonder that for the people who talk about social justice the most, do they actually understand what the Church even teaches about social justice and even if they do, are they sincere when they rehearse those concepts in conversations that will portray them as those most committed to the needs of the poor? Whenever you explore Catholic social teaching, you will inevitably collide with the concepts of solidarity and subsidiarity and many respectable commentators and instructors on the subject will point out that if you ever want to evaluate and compare some system or fabric of society for its compatibility with Catholic social teaching, you should look to see if they get these two things right. Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/

Get The Saintmaker: https://www.thesaintmaker.com/ Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/ We are told that the Synodal Way is going to be a time for listening in the Church. If that's sincere, then this is my attempt to penetrate into that conversation with what I think needs to be a the top of our hierarchy of priorities, as a Church. If we intend to renew the Church, if we intend to see it flourish, and if we intend to enable the mission of the Church, evangelization, then we have to offer what only the Church can - a mystical, transcendent encounter with God. Instead, we keep getting distracted by a desire to offer a natural, down to earth, worldly-minded message and culture. It's self-defeating and, when I was a convert, it was a bit turn-off. And as much as we may not want to hear it, the Tridentine Latin Mass is the kind of thing that does offer that encounter. So what can we do now, to reform ourselves to be more capable of embracing the mysteries of our faith then trying to brush them under the rug for fear that they will repel naturalist sensibilities?

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca This video brought to you by the Albertus Magnus Institute: https://magnusinstitute.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com This is my conversation with Dr. Anthony Esolen in which we discuss what it means to get a liberal arts education and how it produces liberty (freedom) in its pupils. We cover topics including utilitarianism, leisure, culture, university, humanities, freedom/liberty, and more.

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com The word Rigid or rigidity has become something of a buzzword and specifically a hammer to use, indiscriminately against orthodox or traditional Catholics who want to hold fast to the teachings of the Church, without compromise. I’ve heard pastors and bishops using it a lot these days and what I find interesting is that this term doesn’t appear among lists of sins in scripture or in tradition. When St. Paul enumerates who will not inherit the kingdom of Heaven in 1 Corinthians, the rigid don’t appear there. When we think of the 7 deadly sins, it doesn’t appear there either, so it raises the question, is this something new or. The first thing to notice about it is that the word rigid, is a metaphorical word. It doesn’t describe a literal trait that someone could have, unless you’re talking about diseases like Parkinson's… but I doubt that’s what clerics mean when they are accusing people of being rigid. Now, the thing about metaphorical language is that it is drawn from objects which are not human and is therefore, imprecise when it is applied to us… which means, it needs a lot of clarification when it is used. It needs to be related back to traits that are, literally, human traits. This is the thing about metaphorical language. It can help expand our understanding of something literal, by providing references and associations to other things that we might already be familiar with. Because, as Catholics, grounded in the knowledge of scripture and revelation, as well as the great wisdom of the tradition of reason which gave us virtue ethics, we have a fairly comprehensive list of qualities that we can be confident are precise and accurate in defining good qualities, what we might call virtues, and bad qualities, what we might call vices. If we want to use metaphorical words like Rigid to expand or enhance our understanding of a literal vice or virtue, then it can be a welcome rhetorical device as long as it’s accurately applied in a way that brings clarity rather than ambiguity and confusion. Unfortunately, when I’ve heard this term used by Catholic leaders, it often appears divorced from the kind of clarity that I think is necessary. It’s tossed out in vague allusions which can be seized on by anyone who wants to use it to condemn people they don’t like. So, I think we need to be more precise with this term by clarifying what literal vices or sins we are associating it with or stop using it altogether because of how easily it can be associated with qualities that are not only not sins, but virtues, in fact. As a side note, notice that the definition of virtue is, a stable disposition to good. The catechism substitutes stable for firm but whichever word you use, it means unfaltering.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca Sponsor: https://www.thesaintmaker.com/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com I used to think that the best way to draw people into the faith was by making it as trendy and contemporary as possible in its liturgical expression. What I’ve come to realize since then, is that, except in really rare cases, this approach, in the balance of things, has the opposite effect. And it isn’t hard to understand why. The most obvious criticism I could make about it is that it excludes large portions of faithful Catholics and that’s because popular contemporary culture isn’t real culture – it’s consumerist culture. All the fixtures of what we think of as culture, like food, language, and music, are actually just biproducts of what happens when people are bound together by something radically communal – which is often worship – which is why the word cult appears in the word culture. But pop culture is something that is packaged together for its marketability and then consumed individualistically. It’s antithetical to what culture is and it doesn’t bring people together, it separates them in their own unique identity based on the products that they happen to prefer and consume. It’s fundamentally individualistic. That doesn’t produce inclusivity except by accident so when we draw inspiration from pop consumer culture for the way we worship as a community, it’s always going to exclude someone who doesn’t find whatever pop culture persuasion that has been chosen, attractive. Even if you pick the most popular music or personal style of communication, there will always be some people who are repelled by that and, as a result, think that what they’re rejecting is the Catholic Faith, when in fact, it’s just one particular attempt at shoehorning some trend or preference into the Catholic faith. They’re rejecting a current of fashion and mistaking it for the faith. If they’re going to reject the faith and they reject it for what it actually is, then that’s their culpability before God. But if they reject the faith because I substituted Gregorian chant with 80’s style power ballads, then it’s I who am culpable for that rejection. And that’s a scary thought. And for us Catholics, the one thing we have in common and the one thing that draws us together is the Catholic faith as it has been preserved and handed down from each generation going all the way back to Christ himself. That’s the thing we have in common that draws us together but when that is substituted for some personal preference of the priest or the music leaders, then you will inevitably and unjustly exclude people from their own faith. You will compromise the only thing that we can all say we are here to partake in and turn it into something that only a portion are there to partake in. So the very last thing that we can say about that approach is that it’s in the name of inclusivity or in making it more attractive.

This video's sponsor: https://www.thesaintmaker.com/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Support my work by donating or joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca A conversation between Jonathan Pageau and Brian Holdsworth in which we discuss faith and reason, classical vs. modern thought, how and why we shifted away from metaphysics, scientism, empiricism, symbols, patterns, culture, customs, liturgy, and more.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com As many of you know, if you’ve followed this channel long enough, I’m a big admirer of CS Lewis and even employ some of his argumentation in my videos. This in spite of the fact that even though his Catholic friend J.R.R. Tolkien was instrumental in his conversion to theism and then Christianity, he never converted all the way to the Catholic Church. He instead, embraced a kind of high Church Anglicanism. Lewis was famous for trying to build bridges along the fault lines of Christian denominations by promoting what he called Mere Christianity, or what was essential and mostly agreed upon by the main denominations – you could call this credal Christianity because it promotes the fundamentals of the ancient creeds which we almost all agree on. This is probably why Lewis wasn’t in the habit of criticizing any Christian church or tradition, but he is supposed to have compared the Catholic Church to an overwhelming jungle where people can get lost and distracted before they ever get to the fundamentals of mere Christianity. And, I, in the course of my own conversion to Catholicism have found it hard not to sympathize with that criticism. Catholic thought and beliefs are so substantial that it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees. For example, I’ve met Catholics who could tell you all about the apparitions of Medjugorje but don’t know what the phrase “consubstantial with the Father” in the Nicene Creed means. I’ve met Catholics who know all about the life of St. Juan Diego, but can’t name the 12 apostles. So maybe Lewis has a point. But instead of describing it as a jungle, I might amend the comparison to be a library – a massive library. Because, if we’re talking about the Church’s intellectual tradition, her teachings, and even her dogmas, you actually do have something like a library of content. But the challenge with a library, is that it’s easy to get distracted with the stuff you want to read as opposed to the stuff you should read.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca. Take a look at our sponsor Real Estate for Life if you are looking to find a new home and would appreciate the help of realtor who shares your beliefs: https://realestateforlife.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com We live in the age of information, but as any reasonable person can appreciate, most of the information that is available to us, is pollution and noise. Most of it does not educate or illuminate our minds. Plenty of it is misleading. This is a consequence of unflinching admiration for technological advance. It blinds us to important ethical questions like, "Should we do this?" And since we've refused to ask those questions, we now find ourselves in the age of fake news and having to try to fight back against it. But instead of revisiting those important ethical questions that we've neglected, we've decided to technologize a new solution to fix the old: enter fact checking! But the phenomenon of fact-checking has introduced more problems of its own. The authority that it brings is too tempting and intoxicating to not breach its own requirements and now we find ourselves getting censored for conclusions that cannot be easily called into question because... you cannot fact check an argument. That requires counter-arguments, but that isn't fact-checking, yet the self-appointed fact-checkers aren't willing to admit that what they're doing is argumentation because they're too used to the unquestioned authority that fact-checking has brought them.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca. Take a look at our sponsor Real Estate for Life if you are looking to find a new home and would appreciate the help of realtor who shares your beliefs: https://realestateforlife.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com So, a lot of people have been asking me about The Chosen and if I’ve watched it and what I think of it and my reply is always the same. I haven’t watched it and I don’t intend to. Now that sounds harsh as if I’m prejudiced against it, and maybe I am, but it isn’t meant to be an outright criticism of the show. Like I said, I haven’t seen it so I can’t judge it on its own merit and I wouldn’t fault anyone for watching it, but I can say why I’m, generally as a rule, wary of dramatic depictions of Jesus Christ and why that has discouraged me from taking a look at The Chosen. The two reasons, broadly speaking, for my apprehension have to do with Christology and the use of sacred art to inform our faith. So, starting with Christology, if you aren’t familiar with that term, it is the study of who Jesus was and is and some of the nuances of the incarnation of God as man – like how the puzzle pieces of humanity and divinity fit together in a coherent way. Here’s the first thing to realize: our understanding of Christology is extremely nuanced and very difficult to get right. In fact, it was so difficult that for the first few centuries of the Church, this is what theologians spent their time debating and even fighting about, and trying to resolve. And even once those controversies were resolved and a clear theology emerged, we still had bishops, clergy, and statesmen who couldn’t even get it right when it was dogmatically defined and explained to them. All of which is to say that it’s very difficult to get right and requires great care. And that isn’t to say that filmmakers don’t feel the weight of that pressure when they attempt to depict the person of Jesus, but it does mean that it’s extremely easy to make mistakes.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca. Take a look at our sponsor Real Estate for Life if you are looking to find a new home and would appreciate the help of realtor who shares your beliefs: https://realestateforlife.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com If you’ve ever seen videos of street corners in the late 19th or early 20th century, if you have a soul, you may notice how beauty is exemplified in so much of what is captured there; from the architecture, to the carriages, to the dress of the people. And, if you have a brain, it may have left you wondering, what changed? What happened to our culture that caused us to go from sensibilities that would inspire men to aim at a vision of masculinity like this to something more like this? The first reason for the shift in our cultural sensibilities that I’d want to highlight is that as the influence of the Church and Christianity has waned over the years, we’ve been more easily persuaded to believe that external appearances do not convey anything necessary about internal realities. We say things like, don’t judge a book by its cover. By that, we mean, there is some internal value that you can’t see when judging an object or a person by their external appearance. Whereas Christianity has, predominantly, insisted that human beings are body-soul composites and that the material world expresses the spiritual reality of God’s creation. All of which is to say, the external does tell us something about the internal or incorporeal. Just as a person’s words tell us something about the content of their thoughts, so too, does our appearance, tell others something about our mind and our soul. For example, St. Francis de Sales said, “External cleanliness is a sort of indication of inward good order.” But as we’ve slowly embraced this dualistic idea that external and internal are distinct and irrelevant to each other, we’ve, in theory, become more accepting of unconventional appearances.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca. Take a look at our sponsor Real Estate for Life if you are looking to find a new home and would appreciate the help of realtor who shares your beliefs: https://realestateforlife.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com It's that time of year again, when Christians of various stripes complain about the war on Christmas and if it isn’t Christmas it’s some other effort to marginalize or erase Christianity from the public sphere. By a war on Christmas, they mean the watering down of the festival of Christmas in order to turn it into some secularized silhouette of its former self. For example, the vernacular authoritarians will complain that it’s offensive to non-Christians to use the word Christmas, so we have to substitute it with some vacuous alternative like “happy holidays” which is amusingly ironic because holiday means holy day which should give you some indication of the origin of the concept of a holiday… it comes from the Catholic Church scattering days of celebration throughout the Gregorian calendar, which the Church invented. All of which is to say, if you want to fully vandalize the Christian cultural heritage to make it appear like it never existed, there’s more work to be done. And when some Christians complain about such cultural appropriation, they are met with ridicule from non-Christians as well as some Christians who claim that this is not worth getting upset about and that if you truly think you’re being persecuted, go learn about REAL persecutions and martyrdoms and if your current marginalization doesn’t compare, then stop being such a mollycoddle. This kind of response is a bit absurd, though, if you compare it to other possible scenarios where this might apply. Imagine if someone broke into your house and stole something of value to you and when you called the police for help, they said something like, “you know there are people who have been murdered recently. Unless what has happened to you is that bad, you shouldn’t be complaining to us.” It’s a reprehensible assessment of a victim’s experience that insists that unless they have suffered the worst out of anyone, then their suffering, to whatever degree it is measured, doesn’t matter. Which is insane. But I’d add, that Christians have good reason to have an elevated sensitivity to this kind of thing because it doesn’t take much for a subtle current of animosity towards Christians to turn into something far more insidious and terrifying.

Support the channel by joining the Reinforcements at https://brianholdsworth.ca. Take a look at our sponsor Real Estate for Life if you are looking to find a new home and would appreciate the help of realtor who shares your beliefs: https://realestateforlife.org/ This is a clip from my interview with Joseph Pearce (watch the whole thing here: https://youtu.be/F21QsuTn3cM). We discuss the similarities between elements in LOTR and pagan mythology but pinpoint the very Catholic influences behind Tolkien's work.

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com If you'd prefer the podcast: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/ This is my conversation with Mark Mallett (https://www.markmallett.com) in which we discuss the Catholic tradition concerning the apocalypse, eschatology, mysticism, prophecy, and if he thinks we're living the end times today. t

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com If you'd prefer the podcast: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/ In the beginning of the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, they break out into a song about Tradition where the main character admits that some of the things they do, they don’t understand. They do them for “Tradition”! That’s the great chorus they sing out. And in many ways, that story is about the collision of Tradition with new and emerging, “progressive” ideas of the modern world. But from that opening chorus, it’s easy to conclude that tradition is something we blindly adhere to without employing our reason or critical thinking. It’s the lazy reliance on a way of life without ever challenging yourself to think for yourself or progress to something better than your ancestry would allow. It’s a mark of fear and ignorance rather than courage and enlightenment. And there may be some truth to that. There are some traditions that we inherit that you could say we blindly follow simply because they are traditions. But does that make the alternative more prudent or discerning? Well, let’s take some time to consider why traditions exist at all. Tradition is what happens when ideas, practices, beliefs, and culture are passed down from one generation to the other. And why exactly do we invest all the effort it takes to transfer these goods from one generation to the next? It’s so that our descendants won’t have to unnecessarily solve every problem that has already been solved. If we made discoveries and acquired knowledge and customs that have a clear benefit to us, if we truly love our fellow man, which includes our descendants, then any good society would want to save them the trouble of having to go through all the sacrifices, danger, and difficulties that we had to in order to overcome our adversities. If we’ve already mapped out certain landmarks of the human experience, it would be cruel and evil to withhold the knowledge contained in discoveries from future generations. As I spoke about in a previous video, this is the whole reason we have education, to transmit knowledge and culture which means the work of education is inherently a process of a living tradition. And a lot of people seemed to misunderstand what I was saying in the past about that. This isn’t to say that there is no room for innovation or authentic progress – there is, but the only way you get progress is by starting where your ancestors left off. You first have to inherit what they have to offer, become intimately familiar with it, and then build on from that point.

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Education is the process by which the knowledge, culture, and way of life for a particular people is passed on from one generation to the next in a deliberate way. It’s what happens when a people are able to recognize the goods that they have, whether it be knowledge, technology, art, ritual, religion, literature, and wants to ensure, out of charity and concern for their descendants that they will be able to access those goods as well – that they won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. It starts by identifying those goods, prioritizing them, and deliberately transmitting them and if that transaction is successfully completed such that a generation can identify what is good and should be transmitted, aims to do so, does so, and consecutive generations receive that knowledge and wisdom and honor it such that they would be willing to invest the same, if not more, effort, labour, and resources to perpetuate that transmission – then what you have is exactly what tradition is. Tradition means we identify the things that we have developed that are worth preserving and handing them on by transmitting them for the benefit of those who receive them. This is what tradition means which, therefore, should help us to appreciate that education, is intrinsically traditional. That is its purpose, its telos, its end – to transmit the knowledge and discoveries of your ancestors. This is the fundamental aim of tradition and education has no other purpose.Education cannot be divorced from tradition. Without tradition, there is no point to education. Without a tradition to transmit, education becomes something else entirely – like indoctrination or manipulation. Which is why when people who are supposed educators, prioritize progress, change, evolution, or even revolution and the overturning of tradition as their goals in education; they a) reveal that they don’t understand what education is and probably couldn’t provide a cohesive definition of the very thing they are supposedly practitioners of, and b) are undermining their own efforts as a result.

Thanks for watching. Please consider supporting my channel by joining The Reinforcements at: https://brianholdsworth.ca and don't forget to like and subcribe. I just had the pleasure of listening to Matt Fradd's podcast on why you shoud get rid of your smart phone and was so excited by what he had to say, that I had to join in and add some of my own thoughts to his. Matt's original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTJu-QdWxAI

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca This week's sponsor: https://realestateforlife.org/ Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com This is my interview with Barrie Schwortz rom the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association which runs www.shroud.com. We talk about how Barrie became a member of the first team of scientific researchers to examine the shroud, what their research discovered, and how it changed his life.

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com When Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published, it featured themes of death, seduction, temptation, and eternal life, and something about the arrangement of those themes, produced a story that was horrifying to its Victorian audience. But vampire stories, mostly in movie form today, don’t have the same effect. When people today think of the scariest movies they can, very rarely will a vampire movie feature among them. Vampires of contemporary story telling are just as often portrayed as our friends as they are our adversaries and the worst thing they can do to you is kill you which is no worse than any other human adversary. They’re no worse than serial killers, which is bad enough, but it doesn’t produce the kind of uncanny terror that other concepts can in us. So why is it that vampire stories, especially the original vampire story, have lost their ability to terrify us the way they once did? What about us has changed so dramatically that this story no longer produces the terror and dread it once did?

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com My family and I recently went on a few hikes in the Rocky Mountains and there was one particular hike that was such a spectacle, in every direction you turned, that I was reminded of an anecdote that CS Lewis introduces in his book, the Abolition of Man, which, by the way, I believe is one of the most important modern books I’ve ever read. He treats a scenario in which two people are observing the same waterfall and in which two people could have different responses to that encounter. You could say something like, “It is majestic, it is beautiful, it is sublime.” Or, you could say, I am experiencing sublime feelings, I am in awe. And the difference between these two reactions, can reveal to us the very heart of human evil. Take any obvious example of evil that we can point to and you will find the same common denominator among them all – the same erroneous pattern of thinking and the behaviour that proceeds from it, is at the root of all evil.

Support the channel by visiting https://brianholdsworth.ca Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com If you're like me, you may have felt like the whole world, including the Church, has gone insane and you're exhausted from standing your ground in opposition to it all. In this video I describe a recent experience of contemplating a way that I could surrender the fight, especially the fight for traditional Catholicism and where that time of prayer led me.

Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/Q5GN38DDGCk Indian Residential Schools researcher, Dr. Rodney Clifton, shares a story about how one school program brought Indigenous children to the world stage.

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com 00:00 - Intro 05:50 - Dr. Clifton's expertise 09:11 - Truth and Reconciliation Report 12:41 - TRC Report vs. Summary Document 15:03 - Reliability of the Report 16:48 - Positive stories from Residential Schools? 20:33 - Positive experiences anomalies? 28:23 - Stolen language 31:00 - Abducted from families? 35:30 - Using the term "genocide" for Res. Schools. 41:32 - Mortality rate & deaths in Residential Schools 49:13 - Hidden records? 51:08 - Mass graves 55:28 - Ground Penetrating Radar 59:35 - Legacy of those involved (Bishop Grandin, Fr. Albert Lacombe) 1:03:29 - Why is the truth being hidden 1:05:50 - What is the media's role in perpetuating misinformation? 1:07:25 - Consequences of misinformation? 1:10:47 - How should churches respond? 1:14:20 - How to move towards reconciliation?