Considering Catholicism

Does God have a gender? Why does the Catholic Church use masculine pronouns like “He” and titles like “Father” and “Son”? In this episode, Greg explores the scriptural, theological, and traditional reasons behind this language, drawing on the Catechism, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. He addresses modern objections—Is it patriarchal? Why not “Mother” or gender-neutral terms?—and shows how this language shapes our faith and relationship with God.


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Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

For secular folks this is Halloween, for Catholics it's the eve of All Saints Day, but for Protestants it's Reformation Day, when Martin Luther nailed his complaints against the Catholic Church to a cathedral door in Germany. Today, Protestants celebrate what they imagine is a heroic and prophetic scene. But as Greg explains in this snapshot, it's nothing to celebrate.

SUPPORT THIS SHOW Considering Catholicism is free and ad-free for everyone, thanks to listeners like you. Become a patron for a Q&A video every other week, the Podcast Albums (50 topical playlists), Deep Dive courses, and a monthly live session: https://patreon.com/consideringcatholicism

Or give a one-time or recurring gift with PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5LGR5E89Z7Y2Y

CONNECT WITH US • Website & contact form: https://consideringcatholicism.com • Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com • Leave a comment on Patreon (I read every one!)

RATE & REVIEW If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating (and even better, a review) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — it really helps new listeners find us.

SHARE THE SHOW Know someone who’s curious about Catholicism? Send them a link or share an episode on social media. Thank you!

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

A glimpse of something beautiful can put you on the road before you have a name for the destination. In this episode Greg returns to the moment in The Lord of the Rings when Sam sees a white star through the shadow of Mordor, and to the way Tolkien and Lewis kept writing the same thing: beauty is not an ornament. It is a pathway. He traces that hunger through a childhood Christmas song, the Magi following a star, and the recognition that the Catholic house had kept that beauty and given it a face — Mary, the crucified Christ, stone and glass and a line of chant that was not performing an experience but letting you into one. The Catechism, John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, and Augustine all say the same thing in different words: created beauty never fully satisfies. It stirs a nostalgia it cannot finish. The draw is not that Catholics have better art. It is that this house is thick with it, and ordered toward the One who is beauty.

SUPPORT THIS SHOW Considering Catholicism is free and ad-free for everyone, thanks to listeners like you. Become a patron for a Q&A video every other week, the Podcast Albums (50 topical playlists), Deep Dive courses, and a monthly live session: https://patreon.com/consideringcatholicism

Or give a one-time or recurring gift with PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5LGR5E89Z7Y2Y

CONNECT WITH US • Website & contact form: https://consideringcatholicism.com • Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com • Leave a comment on Patreon (I read every one!)

RATE & REVIEW If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating (and even better, a review) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — it really helps new listeners find us.

SHARE THE SHOW Know someone who’s curious about Catholicism? Send them a link or share an episode on social media. Thank you!

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

Catholicism does not lower the bar to make the faith easier to swallow. It treats people as adults and expects them to grow up — in doctrine, in moral responsibility, in the seriousness of the sacraments, and in the long conversation the Church has been having with itself for two thousand years. In this conversation with Ed, Greg and Ed talk about what it feels like when a church stops trying to entertain you and starts expecting you to keep up. They look at the features that get criticized as bugs — the depth, the obligations, the refusal to let a sin remain a secret — and why those things can feel like a relief after years of being told that God does not really expect anything of you. The draw is not complexity for its own sake. It is the sense that Christianity, if it is true, is a serious thing, and that a grown-up faith calls people to take it seriously.

SUPPORT THIS SHOW Considering Catholicism is free and ad-free for everyone, thanks to listeners like you. Become a patron for a Q&A video every other week, the Podcast Albums (50 topical playlists), Deep Dive courses, and a monthly live session: https://patreon.com/consideringcatholicism

Or give a one-time or recurring gift with PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5LGR5E89Z7Y2Y

CONNECT WITH US • Website & contact form: https://consideringcatholicism.com • Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com • Leave a comment on Patreon (I read every one!)

RATE & REVIEW If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating (and even better, a review) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — it really helps new listeners find us.

SHARE THE SHOW Know someone who’s curious about Catholicism? Send them a link or share an episode on social media. Thank you!

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

Nine or ten at night, fog on a mountain road, and a Catholic chapel the size of a tool shed. A crucifix, a couple of benches, a place to pray. It was the first Catholic building Greg ever walked into, and it was quiet. A lot of people describe the same pull. An empty church on a Tuesday that is full of glass and saints and stories, and dead quiet. Confession lines, a candle, a priest anointing someone before surgery, five silent minutes while the vessels are purified after Communion. Not a lower volume. A room, and a week, that are not trying to fill every gap. Hell, in Lewis’s picture, is noise that never stops, because if it stopped you might hear something. The Church kept the other thing on purpose, from Benedict rationing even good speech to a parish that agrees to wait.

SUPPORT THIS SHOW Considering Catholicism is free and ad-free for everyone, thanks to listeners like you. Become a patron for a Q&A video every other week, the Podcast Albums (50 topical playlists), Deep Dive courses, and a monthly live session: https://patreon.com/consideringcatholicism

Or give a one-time or recurring gift with PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5LGR5E89Z7Y2Y

CONNECT WITH US • Website & contact form: https://consideringcatholicism.com • Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com • Leave a comment on Patreon (I read every one!)

RATE & REVIEW If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating (and even better, a review) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — it really helps new listeners find us.

SHARE THE SHOW Know someone who’s curious about Catholicism? Send them a link or share an episode on social media. Thank you!

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.