My OSV interview with Bonnie Engstrom: ‘Miracle’ baby helps Fulton Sheen cause

From “Who is that guy? He looks like a vampire!” to “Fulton Sheen brought my dead son back to life.”  Here is my interview with the delightful Bonnie Engstrom of A Knotted Life.

‘Miracle’ baby helps Fulton Sheen cause

I’ll be on Radio Maria’s “Meet the Author” at 3:00 eastern

Radio Maria’s “Meet the Author” with Ken Huck at 3:00 eastern — and yes, it will be live this time. Hope you can catch it!

I thought yesterday’s interview with the Catholic Doctors was live, but it turned out we were taping. I will let you know when that interview will be broadcast — it was tons of fun!  Except for the few seconds of stunned silence after I described how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, which means that the caterpillar’s body almost entirely dissolves into a horrible caterpillar soup, and, with special instruments, you can detect an agonized groaning noise the whole time; and that is what love is like.  On the plus side, I managed not to say “asshole” until I was off the air.

 

I’ll be on Relevant Radio Monday morning

chatting with Sean Herriot of the Morning Air Show at 8:40 eastern time.  Click hereto listen live, or go to Relevant Radio and hit the silver “listen now” button near the top of the page.  Hope you can catch it!

My interview with ZENIT

ZENIT: “Would you place your book in the context of the New Evangelization?”

SIMCHA:  [runs and looks up ‘New Evangelization’].  “Yes.”

 

I’ll be on Al Kresta today at 5 Eastern

I know, I already said it, but I wasn’t sure of the time. Now I am!  I really enjoyed this interview. Al Kresta is a funny guy, and very smart.  You can listen live here.

Speaking of parents as primary educators of children. . .

I’ll be speaking about parents as primary educators of their children on the Son Rise Morning Show this Friday morning.  Seven of my children will be at school, and the other two will be watching Dinosaur Train.  The baby will be yelling, ‘WHERE ‘DUC-TER????” every time the Conductor goes off the screen.  The dog will be pawing frantically at the door of my bedroom, where I do radio interviews, because the only, only, only way he wants to spend his time these days is playing Lonely Dog Rodeo on top of my bed.  He weighs 140 pounds and is not allowed on my bed, but he tries.

Catch the excitement here, Friday, around 8:50.

I will be on In the Arena at 12:30 Eastern

Chatting about how to prevent tomato-based sauces from staining your more porous stonewear casserole dishes.   Just kidding, it’s about my book, my book, my book.  You can catch my segment streaming live at iHeartRadio.com, on NET tv (TimeWarner Ch. 97 & Cablevision Ch. 30), and streaming live tv online
Later, the segment will air on In the Arena on WOR, on Verizon FiOS OnDemand (via the NET Catholic Channel), and on NET tv’s YouTube Channel

In which I reveal to the Catholic News Agency why I write instead of ad libbing

Great interview questions from Keri Lenartowick; highly long-winded answers from yours truly.  One reasonably sensible part:  Kerri asks about teaching millennials about NFP.  My answer:

I think that people of that age are in the habit of questioning reality. When something is presented as true, they just automatically question whether it’s ‘really really true,’ or just ‘fake-true,’ so I think it’s very important to be very clear with people that this is not a trick – this is not some kind of illusion that we are talking about.

… It’s one thing to be a sucker if you’re sitting in a movie theater and you got tricked into thinking that that guy’s guts are getting pulled out or King Kong really is on the Empire State building or whatever, and then you realize, ‘oh that’s not really true, ha ha I got fooled,’ but if you’re a few years into your marriage and you realize, wow I got fooled – that is a whole other thing, and that is a really serious disturbance, especially when it’s being done in the name of religion. When people are presenting something as God’s teaching and it turns out not to be true, that’s incredibly damaging.

I would rather err on the side of scaring people a little bit, as long as you also present the beauty of it. I think that’s extremely important to present it as something that is hard but beautiful – and I think people are going to be up to that challenge, but people are not – and rightly so – going to be up to the challenge of being lied to and getting over it, because that’s too painful and humiliating and damaging.

I also make a comparison between “prosperity Gospel” Christians and NFP cheerleaders who promise sunshine and lollipops as your just and guaranteed reward for foregoing contraception — but I fail to come up with a snappy name.  Anybody?

Archangel Radio is rebroadcasting my live hour

This was tons of fun to do, so I’m glad the’re rebroadcasting it.  If you  hear “Catholic radio” and think “borrrrrr-ing” then you need to listen to the live hour on WNGL.  These guys are hilarious.  There was shouting.  Shouting about NFP.

The show I was on will air tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 10 from 7-8 a.m. CST and again at 9-10 p.m. CST.   You can listen online here.

Jennifer Fulwiler interviews me from aboard her TARDIS

No paradoxes were created in the making of this interview, in which Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary speaks from the perspective of her past self.  She introduces the interview this way:

Seven years ago, I found myself in a place of great upheaval. I was in the middle of a profound religious conversion and found myself in a no-man’s land, adrift from my old belief system, yet not fully integrated into my new one.

Now this is the part that makes me blush:

Around that time that I came across a small blog by this woman named Simcha. She was a brilliant, hilarious writer on par with the famous names of the secular world…yet she was religious, describing herself as a Hebrew Catholic since she comes from a family of Jewish coverts to Catholicism. Reading her blog never failed to brighten my day (usually by making me laugh until I gasped for air), and her writing transformed my view of everything from motherhood to what it means to have faith.

About once a week I would think, “This woman’s blog needs to be much, much bigger!” and “When is she going to write a book?!” Seven years later, I got my wish.

Tons of frank, funny (and really difficult!) questions from the point of view of someone who can’t imagine why you would go to all the trouble of charting and abstaining, especially when you might end up having — ugh — babies anyway.  Check it out, if only to read the phrase “boinking machine” on a Catholic blog.