Inside the Vatican brings you some of the
world’s most informed & insightful Catholic writers!

ITV’s “Writer’s Chat”  is an interview with our featured writers with questions from online participants.

ITV’s “Reader’s Chat” is where you, the readers, get to take the lead with your questions.

Upcoming ITV Writer’s & Reader’s Chats

This page will be updated with upcoming ITV Writer’s Chats in the next few weeks.

Previous ITV Writer’s Chats & Reader’s Chats

Mary Ellen Stanford

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Professor Mary Ellen Stanford was held on Friday, August 12, 2022.

This Zoom event was recorded and is available to view on our YouTube channel.  

Mary Ellen Stanford received a Master’s degree from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. A homeschooling mother of seven, speaker and author, Mary also teaches the occasional theology course at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Her new book, The Obedience Paradox: Finding True Freedom in Marriage, is forthcoming in 2022 from Our Sunday Visitor.

Mary Ellen Stanford’s articles in Inside the Vatican magazine are below

St. Edith Stein: Understanding the Feminine

Jul 1st, 2022|Comments Off on St. Edith Stein: Understanding the Feminine

This Converted Jewish Intellectual and Atheist Articulated the Truth of God’s Design for Woman by Mary Ellen Stanford * Edith Stein (1891-1942), once the brilliant student of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, is now revered by Catholics as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. A German Jew and atheist who [...]

Suffer the Little Children

Nov 1st, 2015|Comments Off on Suffer the Little Children

God presents Eve to Adam. Mosaic in the Cathedral of Monreale, Italy (near Palermo). “The universal fact about marriage is not that all human persons are called to it — but rather that all human persons are called to come forth from it”  By Mary Ellen Stanford At [...]

Dr. Gavin Ashenden

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Dr. Gavin Ashenden was held on Friday, February 18, 2022.

This Zoom event was recorded and is available to view on our YouTube channel.  

Dr. Gavin Ashenden is a former Anglican Archbishop and Honorary Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth of England, now a Catholic convert and layman. He was a university lecturer on the psychology of religion; literature; and monotheistic mysticism, and he presented a weekly ‘Faith and Ethics” radio program on the BBC for four years. After a distinguished academic and clerical career, he was appointed Chaplain to the Queen in 2008; he resigned in 2017 in order to speak more freely about what he saw as threats to the Christian faith. In December 2019, Dr. Ashenden was received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, England.

He writes as a lay Catholic apologist here; and also contributes articles in the secular and religious press. His YouTube broadcasts can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsEZkV8hLSQJbWyR_B4arQ

Dr. Gavin Ashenden’s article in Inside the Vatican magazine is below

“Stripped of Both Wings”

Jan 1st, 2022|Comments Off on “Stripped of Both Wings”

A Former Anglican chaplain to the Queen of England talks about his entry into the Catholic Church — and the demise of Anglicanism By Dr. Gavin Ashenden* Gavin Ashenden, a former Anglican bishop, is blessed by Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury, England, during Ashenden's reception into the Catholic faith [...]

Peter Kwasniewski

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski was held on Friday, January 21, 2022.

This Zoom event was recorded and is available to view on our YouTube channel.  

Peter Kwasniewski received his B.A. from Thomas Aquinas College in California, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America. After teaching philosophy and theology for eight years at Franciscan University’s Austrian Program, he became in 2006 a founding administrator and professor at Wyoming Catholic University, teaching philosophy, theology, and fine arts, and leading the choir and schola. 

In 2018 Peter left WCC to pursue a career as a freelance writer, editor, publisher, and composer, focusing on the defense of Catholic Tradition in all its dimensions. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Reclaiming our Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Below are some of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s writings in Inside the Vatican magazine and The Moynihan Letters

A New Book Chronicles the Worldwide Reaction to Traditionis Custodes

Jan 1st, 2022|Comments Off on A New Book Chronicles the Worldwide Reaction to Traditionis Custodes

From Benedict's Peace to Francis's War looks at the new suppression of liturgical tradition from many perspectives By Christina Deardurff Peter Kwasniewski's new book From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War. The book collected reactions [...]

Letter #81, 2021, Tues., Aug 3: Kwasniewski

Aug 3rd, 2021|Comments Off on Letter #81, 2021, Tues., Aug 3: Kwasniewski

    “All the striving towards ecumenism, however necessary, must begin not with attention-grabbing meetings with Eastern hierarchs but with the restoration of the Latin liturgy, which represents the real connection between the Latin and Greek [...]

Is CDF Survey a Veiled Attack on Summorum Pontificum?

Jun 1st, 2020|Comments Off on Is CDF Survey a Veiled Attack on Summorum Pontificum?

It may be impossible to say; but a Traditional Mass defender offers possible scenarios By Peter A. Kwasniewski, Ph.D. A Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage in 2019 draws near St. Peter’s A letter dated March [...]

Anthony Esolen

The ITV Writer’s Chat with Shroud expert Jim Bertrand was held on Friday, July 9, 2021.  This Zoom event was recorded. You can view the video below as well as on our YouTube Channel.

Jim Bertrand began teaching high school science in 1981, obtained his Master’s Degree in Education in 1987, and taught high school science for 39 years. He is now retired, working full time giving presentations on the Shroud of Turin. He and his wife have been married for 36 years and have 6 children and reside in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.

In the past six years he has presented on the Shroud over 200 times across 12 states, in 18 dioceses. The presentation has been seen by over 18,000 people, including those at the Eucharistic Convention of 2016 in Auckland New Zealand.

He donates his time to spread the word about the Shroud of Turin. All donations are forwarded to The American Confraternity of the Holy Shroud based in Colorado Springs, which is associated with the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado. Those funds are used to promote the mission of giving factual information about the Holy Shroud.

Jim Bertrand’s article below from the May/June 2021 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine.

Was the Shroud’s First-Century Origin Really Debunked?

May 1st, 2021|Comments Off on Was the Shroud’s First-Century Origin Really Debunked?

Pope Francis prays before the actual Shroud of Turin during a showing in Turin in 2015 New Exposé Reveals Carbon Dating Labs’ — and Church’s — Errors and Contradictions By Jim Bertrand [...]

Jane Adolphe

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Professor Jane Adolphe was held on Friday, May 28, 2021, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.  This event was held live on Zoom.

Jane Adolphe is a Catholic international human rights lawyer, and Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law (AMSL) in Naples, Florida, USA, with four law degrees: licentiate and doctorate in canon law (J.C.L/J.C.D), common law (LL.B), and civil law (B.C.L.) as well as a Bachelor of Arts. She began her legal career clerking with the Court of Appeal and Queens Bench in Calgary and the law firm Bennett Jones Verchere, then prosecuted criminal cases for the Alberta Crown Prosecutor’s Office. After that, she studied canon law and began teaching law at AMSL (2001 until the present).

Then, after working as an outside consultant to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, Section for Relations with States (2003-2011), she entered the same section as an “Expert” to collaborate on work related to human rights’ treaties ratified by the Holy See, most notably the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

Despite the illnesses and deaths of her parents back in her native Canada within two years of each other, in 2018 and 2020, Dr. Adolphe, in her capacity as Professor of AMSL, was able to plan and organize multiple international conferences on topics of interest to the Holy See, which led to publications that she co-edited: The Persecution of Christians in the Middle East: Prevention, Prohibition, and Prosecution (Angelico Press: 2018); and Equality and Non-Discrimination: Catholic Roots, Current Challenges (Pickwick: 2019).

But the “most challenging” book she produced and co-edited, she says, was the 2020 volume Clerical Sexual Misconduct: An Interdisciplinary Analysis (Cluny) provoked, as it was, by the events of 2018, and the contradiction between efforts to protect victims from clerical-sexual abuse, the majority of whom were adolescent males and seminarians, while some sought to “mainstream” homosexual acts as a “good” within the Church.

Professor Adolphe’s article from the May/June 2021 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine. She was also featured as an Inside the Vatican Magazine’s Top Ten People of 2020.

Top Ten 2020 #6: Professor Jane Adolphe

Feb 14th, 2021|

   Sunday, February 14, 2021 Feast of St. Valentine (early 200s to AD 269 or 270), Patron of Love, Young People, Happy Marriages     St. Valentine, officially known as St. Valentine of Rome, is a third-century Roman saint widely [...]

Joseph Pearce

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Joseph Pearce was held on Friday, March 19, 2021.  This Zoom event was recorded and is available to view on our YouTube channel.  

A native of England and former member of the National Front, a UK white nationalist group, Joseph Pearce converted to Catholicism in 1989, repudiated his earlier views and became an internationally acclaimed author; among his bestsellers are The Quest for Shakespeare, Tolkien: Man and Myth, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis and The Catholic Church, Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. His books have been published and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Croatian and Polish.

He has hosted two 13-part television series about Shakespeare on EWTN, and has also written and presented documentaries on EWTN on the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. His verse drama, Death Comes for the War Poets, was performed off-Broadway to critical acclaim. He has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Europe, Africa and South America.

Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute, and editor of the St. Austin Review, series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, senior instructor with Homeschool Connections, and senior contributor at the Imaginative Conservative.

Joseph Pearce’s article from the March/April 2021 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine.

Adopting God’s Perspective in a Troublous Time

Mar 1st, 2021|

The Pattern of Good and Evil Woven Through History Is No Different Today By Joseph Pearce Dante Rebukes Pope Nicholas III, by Gustave Dorè, from the Inferno, Canto XIX, the circle of simoniacs. Simony [...]

Anthony Esolen

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Professor Anthony Esolen was held on Friday, February 12, 2020.  This Zoom event was recorded and is available to view on our YouTube channel.  

The topic for this ITV Writer’s Chat with Professor Esolen was: “Why a culture cannot produce great art without AWE – and perhaps cannot even survive”

Anthony Esolen, Ph.D., is a faculty member and Writer-in-Residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. Dr. Esolen is a renowned scholar and translator of literature and a prolific author; he has published 25 books, and well over 700 articles, including a monthly series of reflections on Scriptural themes for Inside the Vatican. His monthly column for Magnificat, “How the Church Has Changed the World,” is so popular that Magnificat has begun to publish them in book form. (Volumes 1 and 2 of this series are already in print.) He was to be this year’s recipient of the Circe Institute’s “Russell Kirk Award,” given each year to a writer “who has dedicated his or her life to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.” Due to the virus, that award will be given to him in 2021.

He is a senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity and a contributing editor at Chronicles, and his most recent book of social commentary, Sex and the Unreal City (Ignatius Press) has been called his most incisive yet. Among Dr. Esolen’s other titles are The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery Press, 2008), Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010), Reflections on the Christian Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2013), and a book of commentary on “The Last Gospel” (the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John).

Dr. Esolen’s latest work, a just-released book-length poem, The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius), is described as “a tapestry of hymns, monologues, and short lyrics knit together as one book-length poem in praise of Christ in his startling humanity. Using all the riches of the English poetic tradition―meter, rhyme, music―the poet ponders the mysterious man from Nazareth and the world he came to set on fire with splendor.”

Anthony Esolen’s Articles on InsideTheVatican.com

109, 2021

“To God, the Joy of my Youth”

Sep 1st, 2021|

The Lord cheers the heart of my youth, not just in age, but in spirit The Anointing of David by Samuel, by Félix Joseph Barrias, Musée [...]

107, 2021

Hidden and Revealed

Jul 1st, 2021|

The poetry of Scripture can deepen our understanding of its meaning By Anthony Esolen Parable of the Hidden Treasure, Rembrandt (1606-1669), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. [...]

101, 2021

No Mere Romance

Jan 1st, 2021|

The Gospel relates the story of the boy Jesus, at once prosaic and unfathomable By Anthony Esolen The Finding of Jesus by William Holman Hunt, Birmingham [...]

112, 2020

Let Us Be Nourished by Mary’s Example

Dec 1st, 2020|

Mary is the true Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey By Anthony Esolen Madonna and Child, by Lippo Memmi, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, [...]

111, 2020

I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

Nov 1st, 2020|

He is the great Vindicator, who pays our ransom "skin for skin" By Anthony Esolen The resurrection of the dead in a detail from Michelangelo’s Last [...]

110, 2020

“The Tongue Is a Fire”

Oct 1st, 2020|

The evil of lighting fires of destruction with the tongue — and the keyboard By Prof. Anthony Esolen Highlight from the troubling Christ Carrying the [...]

Finding Vigano

Reader’s Chat with Robert Moynihan and a special guest!

The first Reader’s Chat with author and founding editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, Robert Moynihan, Ph.D., was held on Wednesday, December 16.  Dr. Moynihan discussed his new book FINDING VIGANÒ and talked with a very special guest about how he came to tell this incredible story.  This event was invitation only and the recording will be available on YouTube at a future date.  

Reader’s Chat live with Robert Moynihan

A second Reader’s Chat with author and founding editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, Robert Moynihan, Ph.D., was held on Friday, January 22 live on Zoom. Dr. Moynihan discussed his new book FINDING VIGANÒ as well as his upcoming book and answered Reader Questions

Anthony Esolen

Writer’s Chat with Dr. Paul Kengor

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Paul Kengor, PhD., was held on Friday, December 11, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. This Zoom event was recorded. You can view the video below and on our YouTube channel.  

Paul Kengor, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, and a New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books. He is senior director and chief academic fellow at the Institute for Faith & Freedom and former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He often writes for National Catholic Register and Crisis Magazine. In August 2020, he released his latest The Devil and Karl Marx (TAN Books/St. Benedict Press).

Anthony Esolen

Writer’s Chat with Dr. Robert Moynihan

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Robert Moynihan, PhD., was held on Friday, November 20, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. This Zoom event was recorded. You can view the video below as well as on our YouTube channel.  

Dr. Robert Moynihan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine. He is an American journalist who speaks five languages, and a seasoned Vatican analyst. He earned his B.A. in English, magna cum laude, from Harvard, and an M.A and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale. Moynihan also received a Diploma in Latin Letters from the Gregorian University in Rome, Italy.

Dr. Moynihan is a world-renowned commentator on Catholic issues who has appeared on Fox News, CNN, ABC, EWTN and other international networks to discuss the legacy of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI; he appeared live on Fox as the lead analyst for the election of our current pope, Francis.

Robert Royal

Writer’s Chat with Dr. Robert Royal

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Robert Royal, PhD., was held on Friday, October 30, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. This Zoom event was recorded. You can view the video below and on our YouTube channel.  

Robert Royal is the founder and President of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., and Editor-in-Chief of The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org). Dr. Royal was also appointed in 2020 as the inaugural St. John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. His most recent book is Columbus and the Crisis of the West is available from Sophia Institute Press.

Dr. Robert Royal’s article in the October 2020 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine:  “Put Not Your Trust in Princes”

110, 2020

“Put Not Your Trust in Princes”

Oct 1st, 2020|

Stark Choices Lie Before Us. No Matter the Outcome, the Penultimate Struggle Has Already Been Won by Christ By Robert Royal “Put not your trust in princes.” We quote it all the time. And [...]

Anthony Esolen

Writer’s Chat with Professor Anthony Esolen

The ITV Writer’s Chat with author Professor Anthony Esolen was held on Friday, September 25, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.  You can view the video below or on our YouTube Channel