The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

Sometimes it can be hard to respect the character of a person you really don’t like. That’s no problem, says Fr. Mike, because you can still respect them as a human being and—if they are in a position of authority—you can still respect their position. Not everyone in our lives is going to earn the kind of respect that Fr. Mike would equate with trust. Those who have a respectable character will earn that trust though, and that’s the kind of person we should strive to be in other people’s...

Sure, there are times when it’s just hard to believe what the Catholic Faith tells us, but when someone says “I’m losing my faith,” or “I lost my faith,” there’s something much more serious going on there. Fr. Mike examines this problem, but emphasizes that we actually can’t lose faith because it’s a gift from God. We can use that gift wrongly and put it into what Fr. Mike calls “God’s chief rivals” or, in other words, idols; but the faith is still there and we can still put it in God if we...

Anyone can and should condemn the sins of the priests and cardinals that have been all over the news. The real challenge is to ask God what he is expecting us to do within this time, our time, in history. If he has created us to live in these difficult times for Catholics, he must be calling us to some great task to help bring renewal to his Church and individual souls. Here's a link to last week's episode. (https://media.ascensionpress.com/podcast/pennsylvania-sex-abuse-scandal/)

The wisdom he shares here is akin to that of many successful, insightful writers such as Cal Newport and Josef Pieper. You can find the works Fr. Mike references here: Cal Newport's Deep Work (http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/) Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture (https://bit.ly/2Je5FwU)