The Catholic Accent Podcast

BONUS 18 - Christians

• Diocese of Greensburg • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Bonus Conversation — Following Season 2, Episode 8

 Headlines often focus on religious spectacle, but that noise can drown out the deeper meaning of what it means to live as a Christian. In this episode, we take an honest, down-to-earth look at how Catholic life is less about performance and more about pursuing truth through faith, reason, and authentic community. We talk about how faith and science can strengthen each other, why thoughtful questioning is part of belief, and how the call to follow Christ challenges us to love deeply—not to set ourselves apart, but to serve others.

We explore how the Church throughout history has valued learning and discovery—founding schools, nurturing study, and treating reason as a gift from God—while recognizing that knowledge alone isn’t enough without grace and compassion. Inspired by Dante’s imagery, we reflect on how reason can guide us toward faith, and faith can lift reason toward understanding.

Along the way, we discuss how Christians of different traditions work together in shared ministry and service, each bringing unique strengths that enrich the whole. We also touch on what draws many people—especially younger generations—toward deeper faith and meaningful worship today.

True faith isn’t about spectacle or slogans—it’s about self-giving love, lived with humility and hope. If this conversation helps you see faith and reason in a new light, share it with a friend, follow the show, and leave a review so others can join the journey.

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Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol, Vincent Reilly, Cliff Gorski, John Zylka, Sarah Hartner

SPEAKER_02:

You're listening to the Catholic Active Podcast. We discussed the act that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. Great to be back, Jordan.

SPEAKER_01:

You don't know us by now, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Jordan Waco here with Father Hamilton and Father Pooil. Do you have anything to add?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think today, especially in society and in our US culture, when you hear the word Christian, uh, I think many people kind of bristle aback because, you know, if you have a name, right, or a title, people can misuse that. And so we've seen that done, whether it's politically, socially, economically. And so there's a lot of ramifications for people who say that they are Christian, or they do some other like strange activities, right? So I was just watching this YouTube video of these Christians down in the south, and they were playing with snakes and and you know, saying, like, oh, we are the perfect Christians because the snakes won't bite us, and so scripture's fulfilled in our midst. And it's like, no, yes, you might be Christian, yes, you might believe in the Lord, and yes, you believe Jesus is God, but there's a lot more to it than a show.

SPEAKER_02:

I also feel like they do that because it's entertaining. You they want people to watch because when I see that stuff, I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see this person get bit.

SPEAKER_00:

But you know, but it pushes people away from you know wanting to be a part of this community because it's bizarre.

SPEAKER_01:

And one of those connotations that can come with certain groups of Christianity or people the way that they purport their Christianity is for Christianity to really be opposed to science, opposed to other reason modern things. So Christianity just becomes like a negative, an ante to all these other things. Whereas rather you have to see it like in the positive sense. We're called as Christians, especially as Catholics, that our faith is never infrarational, that we don't use our reason. God has given us reason as a great gift, and so we use that and we get to a certain point where reason can't continue on from there, and then there needs to be faith, which is the hope in things yet to be seen. Not that it contradicts logic, reason, but we can't see what is yet to be that has to be revealed to us by God.

SPEAKER_00:

And a great image of that is just uh this week, Pope Leo was at the Vatican Observatory, and you know, seeing the Holy Father there, looking up into the heavens through one of these magnificent mic um telescopes that the church has cared for for centuries, you know, exploring the solar system, um, you know, finding so many different scientific realities.

SPEAKER_01:

The scientific method is a is a Catholic method, and science means to have knowledge, and so the church has always been about that knowledge and then leading to wisdom, right? Because knowledge is primary, and then wisdom is something that is is really a gift.

SPEAKER_02:

It's just like you know, we talked about the magician, and magic was really just science that haven't hasn't been hypothesized yet or written out, like in certain areas like alchemy or these other things, but sometimes they had like pagan draws towards other oh right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Stay away from the demonic, Jordan. How many times do we have to tell you?

SPEAKER_01:

Another good image of this, and I always love Dante Alighieri, so I'll bring it back. You guys will yell at me for mentioning the divine comedy. But nonetheless, make sure you read all three. His guide, yes, all three, his guide through the inferno and then purgatorio is Virgil, the famous writer of the Aeneid, a great Roman poet. He represents reason, rationality. When he comes to the threshold of going to then into paradise, heaven, he no longer has Virgil anymore. Reason, it gives way to Beatrice, or as we think of Beatitude, this joy, and Beatrice leads him then through the rest along with uh some of the saints. And what that shows is that it gives way from reason to faith eventually to the higher realms. And so both and together as the church has always held.

SPEAKER_00:

So when we look at our Christian brothers and sisters, you know, our hope is that they do come to the full union with the church, but you can also see in their practices those things that are lacking, right? Because most of those Christian communities have separated from the Catholic Church. And um I think it was this year actually in England for the first time since the Reformation, Catholics are now outnumbering Anglicans, members of the Church of England. And so we see a great resurgence, I think, with our young people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but so like with that, it's not just what we have and other Christian denominations maybe don't have in the sacraments or the understanding of the apostolicity of the church, but we can really be challenged by other Christian denominations. Oh, for sure. I've been especially edified and moved to work with other Christian pastors. Like whenever I was a prison chaplain, I was there with others. I was there with a Jewish rabbi that I worked with and people from different faith backgrounds. So there is a give and take there and a learning where like we can still be challenged. Sometimes Protestant pastors can be excellent preachers. They're very, very dynamic in the way that they preach, yeah, in their scholarship. But in a really great way, it can challenge us to be like, well, I can't just give a dull, boring sermon. You know, you think that's because they're like Protestant is protesting. Like it's an interesting word to bring up, right? Because other Christians, other than say Orthodox, Orthodox Catholic is the split that happened in 1054, but kind of the East and the West in tradition started to grow apart, and then there was tension there.

SPEAKER_00:

Both with valid orders, valid sacred Latin and Greek, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

What you start to see is with other Christian groups, well, their identity is based upon Catholicism, right? Or the church. Yeah. What are they protesting? So it's kind of like you have to saw off the branch that you're sitting on to then make a protest against the tree that you came from. You know, that's why myself, I struggled with coming back to the faith and understanding why I would be Protestant rather than being Catholic. And I always say, too, we hold people to a high standard. You have to go to Mass every week, you have to do certain things, you have to keep the commandments of the Lord in a certain way that the church obliges you to. I think that's a good thing because organizations or just things that we experience in general, the order of the world, if you have a high bar standard, that usually means that you're really holding people to something more and expecting something of them. And that tends to be true.

SPEAKER_00:

And we're not simply a social club or like an elk's, you know, we're not paying our dues and, you know, coming in to the hall, but rather we are living our lives and giving our lives for someone greater than ourselves. And we see this in the early church with these early martyrs and early Christians who give their all for the name of Christian. Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

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