St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

The podcast is finally here . . . well, almost.

Those of you who have been reading for a while might recall that I’ve been talking about making a podcast. In fact, I think I’ve been talking about it since Day One. My original idea was to make a series of 15-minute podcasts on various topics. But I soon realized that would require a talent that I simply don’t possess — namely, the talent to come up with new material on a regular basis. In other words, if I were a fiction writer, I’d be a novelist, not a short-story writer. I simply don’t have the ability to come up with new ideas on a regular basis. That’s why the vast majority of my posts here are thematic. At any rate, I soon realized that I couldn’t come up with new podcast material on a weekly basis. So I started looking for something long-term.

My next idea was to make a podcast called “A Walk Through the Catechism.” There are about 80 thematic units in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and so I thought I’d take a “unit” a week. So far, so good, right? But when I finally made the first podcast, it was 45 minutes long and I’d only covered three paragraphs! There are about 2850 paragraphs in the Catechism. At the rate of 3 per episode, it would take me about 950 episodes — over 18 years, if I made a podcast a week — to finish. Even if I sped things up and kept myself from trying to pull everything out of each paragraph, it quickly became apparent to me that “A Walk Through the Catechism” was just too big of a project. Besides, it had the additional problem of having a limited audience. I mean, just how many people would find it interesting?

After moping around my house for a few days, it occurred to me that I should make a podcast about the life of Christ. I could use the Catechism of the Catholic Church as my primary interpretive guide for understanding the Gospels. As I was mulling it over, I remembered that St. Ignatius of Loyola has an outline of the life of Christ in his Spiritual Exercises. I took the book off my shelf, opened it up, and began making some notes. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became.

For one reason, this would give me an opportunity to really study the gospels in a way I have not done. For another reason, it would allow me to spend a great deal of time with Our Lord as I contemplated his life. The third thing that excited me was that I realized I’d found a topic that others would find interesting.

As I was telling my wife about it, she encouraged me to keep each episode in the 20-minute range. I think that’s a good idea — at least in the beginning. I hope this podcast is a source of evangelization, and I believe that many potential listeners are going to be more willing to listen to 20-minute episodes rather than 40 or 50-minute ones.

The only thing that was left was the title. The obvious title would have been, “A Life of Christ Podcast,” but that’s a bit pedestrian. After talking it over with a couple of friends, I settled with a title that highlights the Catholic perspective of this podcast: Jesus and the Catholic Church.

The first two episodes (the Introduction and Episode 1) will be published on Sunday, October 5. My goal is to publish a new episode each Sunday. This is feasible, I think; slow and steady work can yield an abundant crop.

If you know anyone who might find this podcast remotely interesting, I’d appreciate it if you sent them my way. And I won’t fight you if you want to put something on your blog about it.

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