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The Open Door

By: WCAT Radio
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  • Summary

  • Please join us at The Open Door!

    We discuss solidarity, subsidiarity, economic democracy, and nonviolence in light of Catholic Social Teaching. We explore how to move from discussion to political change. Culture and politics, to be sure, are interwoven. So we care deeply about education and the arts. Our questions often lead us to report on the projects and promise of the American Solidarity Party.

    Dr. James Hanink, a philosophy professor who taught at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA, is the lead anchor for The Open Door.

    Dr. Mario Ramos-Reyes, Professor of Philosophy and Latin America History and Founder of the Institute for the Study of Personalist Republicanism, is a co-host of The Open Door.

    Valerie Niemeyer, a homeschooling mother of six interested in the application of Catholic Social Teaching to our citizenship and the realm of politics, is a co-host of The Open Door.
    Copyright WCAT Radio
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Episodes
  • Episode 289: Andrew Mioni on the Catholic Traditionalist Movement (July 24, 2024)

    Episode 289: Andrew Mioni on the Catholic Traditionalist Movement (July 24, 2024)
    Jul 24 2024
    Coming next on The Open Door (July 24) we will discuss the Catholic traditionalist movement. Our special focus will be “independent” traditionalists. How do they differ from other traditionalists? What leads them to “LeFebvreism”? What can we learn from the ongoing debate about the movement’s role in the Church? Our welcome guest is Andrew Mioni. He is a graduate of Kansas State University, with a B.A. in English. As a contributor to Faith in Crisis (Wipf and Stock, 2024), he explores the roots of what some see as a crisis of faith in Catholicism. Mioni is the author of Altar Against Altar: An Analysis of Catholic Traditionalism (En Route Books, 2024).

    1. For clarification: What is the difference between the SSPX, the Society of St. Pius X initiated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and the FSSP, the Fraternal Society of Saint Peter?
    2. How do you understand the word “ideology”?
    3. Who are the sedevacantists?
    4. How has George Weigel, a St. John Paul II scholar and frequent contributor to First Things, helped you to put the traditionalist movement in a broader context?
    5. Richard John Neuhaus, once a Lutheran, thought that the chief complaints of the Reformation had been answered. You ask the “independents” what would count as the crisis in Catholicism being resolved. What sort of an answer should we expect?
    6. Why do you think that “To be deep in history is to cease to be traditionalist”?
    7. Just what is modernism? How is it linked to a certain view of reason?
    8. To what do you attribute a crisis of faith dating back well before Vatican II?
    9. What is the authority of the ordinary magisterium of the Church? Does Vatican II express that authority?
    10. Could you explain the “functionalist” approach to spirituality and the liturgy?
    11. How have the lessons you learned in authoring your book carried over into your own parish life?
    12. What’s your next book project?
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Episode 288: Donald Boland, David Cooney, John Médaille, Garrick Small, and Thomas Storck on Money, Markets and Morals (July 10, 2024)

    Episode 288: Donald Boland, David Cooney, John Médaille, Garrick Small, and Thomas Storck on Money, Markets and Morals (July 10, 2024)
    Jul 11 2024
    In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Valerie Niemeyer, and Christopher Zehnder discuss Catholic social thought and economics. That means taking a long, hard look at capitalism in practice and the dominance of corporations. We’ll explore the nature of usury and what’s at issue in a fair wage. We’ll consider the State as a political community and the family as the cornerstone of social justice. We’ll talk about personal responsibility as the foundation of a just social order. Our welcome guests are Thomas Storck, the editor of Money, Markets, and Morals (En Route Books, 2024) and its Australian contributors Dr. Donald Boland and Dr. Garrick Small, as well as the American distributist thinkers John Médaille and David Cooney. Among the questions we’ll address to this panel are the following. Please feel free to suggest your own!
    1. Is Catholic social teaching a dimension of moral theology?
    2. How should we define capitalism? How can it become a threat to justice?
    3. What is the origin of the modern corporation? Is there any way to challenge its power?
    4. Can you compare and contrast for us, say, the Bank of America, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a publicly owned bank or a credit union? What dangers does the former pose?
    5. Just what is usury? Why is it wrong? Can you give examples of usurious practices
    6. What is the distinction between a market wage and a fair wage? Where does a minimum wage guarantee fit in?
    7. What is the basis of ownership? Do we own our bodies and our lives?
    8. Should we think of the State as the political community of the highest degree?
    9. Does the current economic order recognize the family as the first unit of a just society? What would a “family politics” look like?
    10. In what ways might we practice personal responsibility in today’s profoundly complex economic order? Is personal responsibility compatible with stock ownership?
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Episode 287: Msgr. Patrick Gaalaas on the Ministry of the Spiritual Director (June 26, 2024)

    Episode 287: Msgr. Patrick Gaalaas on the Ministry of the Spiritual Director (June 26, 2024)
    Jun 26 2024
    In this episode of The Open Door (June 26), panelists Jim Hanink, Christopher Zehnder, and Valerie Niemeyer discuss the role of spiritual direction. Just what is it? What is the ministry of the spiritual director? Our special and welcome guest is Msgr. Patrick Gaalaas. He is a priest of the Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma. Msgr. Gaalaas retired from parish work in 2022 at the age of 75. But “retirement” has led to “redirection.” He has worked as a spiritual director at Conception Seminary College in Missouri for the past two years. (Full disclosure: Monsignor has known Jim Hanink from the time they were fellow college seminarians at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Texas.) Msgr. Gaalaas spent his final four years in the seminary at the American College at the University of Louvain in Belgium. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in Sacred Theology and a master’s degree in Moral and Religious Sciences. Among the questions we’ll be asking are the following.

    1. You moved from parish work to a Benedictine Abbey. Is there a distinctive Benedictine spirituality?
    2. Spiritual direction pairs a spiritual director with a person interested in direction. But how does the average Catholic, if there is such a creature, know whether to seek spiritual direction?
    3. What’s the difference between spiritual direction and psychological counselling?
    4. How does one go about finding a spiritual director? What might one expect if one Google searched “spiritual direction near me”?
    5. How does one become a spiritual director? Who can become a spiritual director?
    6. Is a personal calling from God requisite for being a spiritual director?
    7. Do spiritual directors ordinarily have diocesan recognition?
    8. What sort of direction do spiritual directors themselves have?
    9. Might we say that the Holy Spirit is at the center of spiritual direction?
    10. What are some signs that spiritual direction is going well? Or is not going well?
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    1 hr and 2 mins
Spirituality
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