Fr. Charles Coughlin: America’s first mass-media demagogue priest

Jesuitical

America Media

Spirituality, Christianity, News, News Commentary, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 949 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A charismatic demagogue with millions of devoted followers. A novel means of communication with little government regulation and few guardrails. The threat of violence in the streets and a country in crisis. No, we’re not talking about the 45th president but America’s first radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin. On “Radioactive,” a new podcast series from Tablet Studios, Andrew Lapin takes listeners through the history of Father Coughlin, who through a mixture of Catholic piety, anti-Semitism and raw political ambition became the most popular voice on the U.S. airwaves during the Great Depression and the lead up to World War II. We ask Andrew what Father Coughlin’s story can tell us about the connection between religious demagoguery and authoritarianism; the Wild West of new media platforms; and the failure of the church to reign in Catholics who exploit these toxic forces. In Signs of the Times, Zac and Ashley share some Pope Francis-inspired New Year’s resolutions and give their predictions for Catholic stories coming in 2022. Links from the show: Volunteer, stop judging and get off Twitter: 8 New Year’s Resolutions Inspired by Pope Francis Pope Francis’ action-packed agenda for 2022 Potentially explosive report will document handling of sex abuse in Pope Benedict’s former diocese Who will be the first Black Catholic saint from the United States? Join our Patreon community Come to Italy with Jesuitical! What’s on tap? Bringing in the New Year with some Bubbly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Father Jim Martin and Jesuit priest.
0:06.0	Much of my ministry focuses on helping people to pray.
0:10.0	One of my own daily prayer practices is the examine, which helps me to pay attention to how
0:15.1	God is working in my daily life.
0:18.2	On days when I'm feeling joyful or at peace, and on days when I'm feeling anxious or worried I can always rely on the
0:24.4	examine to ground me. Now I'm excited to share 10 brand new sessions of the
0:29.5	examine with you in a new collaboration between America Media and the Ritual app.
0:35.0	Join me in praying the examine. Download the Ritual app to start listening for free. Hello and welcome to Judge Whiticle, a podcast by the Young Hip and Lay editors of
1:05.0	American media. That lay part means we aren't Jesuits but we work with them.
1:08.6	Join us each week for a smart Catholic take on faith culture in the news often over drinks I'm Ashley
1:14.6	and I'm joined by Zach Davis happy new year Ashley happy new year how was your
1:19.5	how was your time off you're brilliant it was it nice. Like you there's a little COVID exposure not for myself but within the family. So things were a little bit thrown off, but still a lovely time. Yeah, we're recording this from our apartments again.
1:35.6	Thank you very much, Amakron.
1:38.0	Our office and studios close at the moment,
1:39.7	so we busted out the remote kit,
1:41.4	and I'm talking to you again through a computer screen.
1:43.4	Yeah. So that's a bummer. But we still have a great show this week. What's going on
1:51.0	this week? Our first podcast of 2022. Yeah, so during
1:53.8	Sign to the Times we'll be talking about some Pope Francis inspired New
1:57.4	Year's resolutions and some of our predictions for Catholic stories coming in
2:02.0	2022.
2:03.0	And then we're talking with Andrew Lapin, who is the creator and host of the podcast, Radio
	...

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