#christopherzehnder

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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. 

You moved from parish work to a Benedictine Abbey. Is there a distinctive Benedictine spirituality?

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?

What’s the difference between spiritual direction and psychological counselling?

How does one go about finding a spiritual director? What might one expect if one Google searched “spiritual direction near me”?

How does one become a spiritual director? Who can become a spiritual director?

Is a personal calling from God requisite for being a spiritual director?

Do spiritual directors ordinarily have diocesan recognition?

What sort of direction do spiritual directors themselves have?

Might we say that the Holy Spirit is at the center of spiritual direction?

What are some signs that spiritual direction is going well? Or is not going well?

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This week on The Open Door (June 12) we complete our series on education. Our focus is developing Catholic textbooks that give history its deepest perspective. Our welcome guest is Christopher Zehnder, M.A. He is the General Editor for the Catholic Textbook Project. A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, he has worked as a graphic artist, journalist, school headmaster, and teacher of history, literature, theology, and mathematics. Mr. Zehnder has been affiliated with the Catholic Textbook Project since its founding in 2000. He has authored several of its textbooks, edited and contributed chapters to others, and made art selections for many of them. He is a novelist as well! A member of the American Solidarity Party, Christopher is on the town council of Hartford, Ohio. With his wife Katherine and their family, he has made his residence there since escaping Southern California. The following are among the questions we asked him: 

 How did you come to be an educator?

Why does it matter how we define education?

What led to your interest in history?

You write historical fiction. Is there any way to get beyond writing stories about history?

Can you sketch for us the history of education in the United States? What has led to the resurgence of interest in classical education?

How did the Catholic Textbook Project come about? What does it bring to the table in today’s educational milieu?

What do you make of “critical race theory”?

How can Catholic educators teach the truth about the uglier dimensions of history?

How can Catholic educators help form students into citizens who embody both charity and solidarity?

Are you writing a new textbook? How about another novel?

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In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink and Valerie Niemeyer interview Karina Fabian, the president of The Catholic Writers Guild. (March 20, 2024) We discuss all things literary. For a start, was Walker Percy, as a naysayer claimed, the last Catholic novelist? We don’t think so. And what’s the range of the “literary”? It includes, of course, non-fiction. It welcomes poets and dramatists. But what about bloggers and podcasters? Just how ecumenical should we be? Our welcome guest is Karina Fabian. She is the new president of the Catholic Writers Guild, an association committed to the development of Catholic arts and letters. The following are among the questions we’ll be asking her. 

Karina, if we may, could you fill us in about the history of the Catholic Writers Guild

How did you—a self-described geek, teacher, humorist, and Miata driver—come to be involved in the Guild?

How does the Guild help authors and readers? Book stores and publishers?

What is your advice for aspiring writers who have not yet published any of their work?

The Guild is serious about core Catholic values. In what ways does it promote these values?

What makes a book distinctively Catholic? Did Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor write distinctively Catholic novels and short stories?

Has the internet helped or harmed our literary capacities? Can we sit still long enough to read and write serious literature?

Who are some little known contemporary Catholic writers that we ought to become familiar with?

Can you tell us a bit about some of the publishers that your members have worked with?

Writers, so they say, (mostly) stay in and write. What are you working on these days? And is it true that you hate zombies?

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In this episode of The Open Door (Monday, March 4th) we’ll discuss the role of tradition in forming Catholic teaching. Some argue that Pope Francis overlooks the normative role of tradition. Others argue that some papal critics, as well as critics of Vatican Council II, misunderstand the dynamic nature of tradition itself. We’ll discuss, too, the development of doctrine and what it means. Our guest is the Portugal-based Pedro Gabriel. Dr. Gabriel is one of the co-founders of the apologetics website “Where Peter Is.” He is also a medical oncologist. He recently authored Heresy Disguised as Tradition (En Route, 2023). The following are among the questions we’ll ask are the following. Please feel free to suggest others!

What counts as “tradition”? Does a simple appeal to the social sciences answer this question? (25)

What is a radical traditionalist? Is there such a thing as “hyperpapalism”?

What is the scope of the teaching that Catholics are “to be united in mind and heart” with the Holy Father? Does it extend to matters of diplomacy? To philosophical orientation?

How are we to know the mind of the pope, especially when it is changing?

Should we assume that Pope Francis is as attuned to the Catholicism of Africa as he is to the Catholicism of Europe and the Americas?

To what extent is culture normative?

Would you assess Pope Francis’s restrictions on the Latin Mass as “harsh”? (17)

“Subjective culpability” can become a “mitigating circumstance” in moral assessment of an act involving grave matter. In such cases how are we to provide sound moral guidance?

Could you explain for us the concept of “complexio oppositorum”? Is it compatible with the principle of non-contradiction?

Has synodality come to terms with fundamental theological disagreements?

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Episode 250: Dr Alan Fimister, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Holy Apostles College & Seminary (December 14, 2022)

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Episode 249: Rick Clements speaking on Von Balthasar in his The Meaning of the World is Love (November 23, 2022)

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Episode 248: Virgil Gheorghiu’s La Condottiera with Inez Fitzgerald Storck, Iuliu-Marius Morariu, and Thierry Gillyboeuf (November 9, 2022)

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Episode 247: Professor Callum Scott on being a Catholic Philosopher in South Africa (November 2, 2022)

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Episode 246: Thomas M. Ward, Professor of Philosophy, on Affordability and Federal Interference in Higher Education (October 19, 2022)

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Episode 245: Mike Brinda on Parish Management in Light of the Catholic Intellectual and Spiritual Tradition (October 5, 2022)

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Episode 242: Perry Cahall on his book Living the Mystery of Marriage: Building Your Sacramental Life Together (August 24, 2022)

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Episode 241: Frank Calneggia, author of Assertions and Refutations (August 10, 2022)

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Episode 240: Patrick Harris, outgoing Chair of the National Committee of the American Solidarity Party (July 27, 2022)

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Episode 239: Dr. Peter Kwasniewski on Catholic liberal arts education, contemporary Thomism, and the role of the papacy (July 13, 2022)

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Episode 238: Thomas Storck talks about his book Foundations of a Catholic Political Order (June 29, 2022)

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Episode 237: Dr. Andrew Cummings of Mount Angel Seminary (June 15, 2022)