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 291: Fr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz on the Immigration Question in his Two Towers and a Minaret (August 21, 2024)

    Episode 291: Fr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz on the Immigration Question in his Two Towers and a Minaret (August 21, 2024)
    Aug 21 2024
    In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Valerie Niemeyer, and Christopher Zehnder discuss the multi-faceted issue of immigration. How can we better understand the new waves of immigrants, whether in the United States or Europe? What does the Church teach about the ethical issues that come into play? How can we assess the politics of immigration? What role should our parishes play and how might we best respond at a personal level? Our special and welcome guest is Fr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz. He is a professor of political science and Catholic social thought at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw as well as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Christianity—World—Politics. From 2008-2012 he served as Secretary General of the Commission of Bishops of the European Community COMECE. Mazurkiewicz recently authored Two Towers and a Minaret: Migration from a Catholic Perspective (En Route Books, 2024). Among the questions we’ll ask are the following.
    1. Fr. Piotr, could you tell us how you came to your work on the topic of migration?
    2. How would you compare current migration to Europe with migration to the United States?
    3. What is national sovereignty and what is its foundation? What are the limits of sovereignty?
    4. Is there a right to emigrate? A right not to emigrate?
    5. What happens to property rights in times of grave necessity?
    6. How do you understand multiculturalism? Is it an ideology?
    7. On what basis can we evaluate the practices of a given culture?
    8. Here in the United States we often speak of a “culture of death.” Might not the first concern of many cultures be the need for repentance?
    9. Should Poland respond to migration from Africa and the Middle East in the same way that it is responding to refugees from Ukraine?
    10. What might it mean with regard to immigration to be neither right nor left but simply Catholic? What might be some promising political approaches to migration?


    Mass migration is a serious challenge in both America and Europe. Hence the question of the ethical limits of hospitality. The answer must consider not only the needs of migrants, but also the ability of the host country to integrate migrants. This depends not only on the size of the migration, but also on its homogeneity. For example, a peculiarity of the current migration to Europe is the strong dominance of Muslims, which is changing its religious demographics and, consequently, European culture.

    https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/twotowers/
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Episode 290: Christine Myers Miller on Servant of God Romano Guardini (August 7, 2024)

    Episode 290: Christine Myers Miller on Servant of God Romano Guardini (August 7, 2024)
    Aug 8 2024
    This week on The Open Door (August 7th) we will explore the thought of Servant of God Romano Guardini, a widely influential theologian whom both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis deeply admired. So did Flannery O’Connor! Guardini is often thought of as a unifying figure in the Church. Our welcome guest is Christine Myers Miller. She is a graduate of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family in Washington, DC, and is the Director of Adult Faith Formation, Marriage & Family Life at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Parish in Tulsa. Dr. Myers Miller researched Romano Guardini for her doctoral thesis, studying the topic of Christian responsibility for the world. She has published essays in the Catechetical Review, Humanum online review, and in the important theological journal Communio. Among the questions we’ll ask are the following.
    1. Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Have you always been an Okie?
    2. What was it like to study at the John Paul II Institute? How does the Institute reflect the vision of St. John Paul II?
    3. What are your responsibilities as Director of Adult Faith Formation and Marriage & Family Life at your parish?
    4. Could you introduce us to Romano Guardini? A time-line would help. And how did he survive World War II?
    5. In these “interesting times” there’s deep disagreement on just what it is to be a human being. What does this mean in terms of how we can best address ethical questions?
    6. On your view, crisis can be an occasion of growth. How might this come about with regard to scandals in the Church?
    7. Romano Guardini saw the apparent contradiction between faith and science as one of the main sources of crisis in his time, and it surely remains one for us. How might we effectively respond to it?
    8. How might Guardini advise us to manage AI technology?
    9. You have written that “faith needs culture to survive” and warned that “a faith without culture is a dying thing.” What would a Catholic culture look like today?
    10. Might it involve a distinctive Catholic political presence?
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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • 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
    On this episode of The Open Door (July 24), panelists Jim Hanink, Valerie Niemeyer, and Christopher Zehnder 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?
    Altar Against Altar: An Analysis of Catholic Traditionalism by Andrew Mioni | En Route Books and Media
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    1 hr and 22 mins
Spirituality
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