Beyond the books

Listen, watch and history

Not everyone learns best from a page. Here are podcasts, lectures, audiobooks, videos and films worth your time, and the histories that explain how each question came to be asked. Each names the questions it helps with.

To watch

Documentaries, video courses and films that carry an argument.

Film A Hidden Life

Terrence Malick, 2019 · about 2 h 55 min · Bl. Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, refuses the oath to Hitler against the advice of nearly everyone.

Journal

Helps with: What is conscience?; May a Christian take up the sword?; Where does authority come from?
Film A Man for All Seasons

Fred Zinnemann, 1966 · about 2 h · St. Thomas More refuses to swear to the King's supremacy over the Church, and keeps his conscience to the scaffold.

Journal

Helps with: What is conscience?; Church and state; The office of Peter
Video Aquinas 101 Open

The Thomistic Institute, 2020 · short videos, about 10 minutes each · A free video course in the thought of St. Thomas, taught by Dominican friars.

Journal

Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Do natures and essences really exist?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?
Film Silence

Martin Scorsese, 2016 · about 2 h 40 min · Two Jesuits in seventeenth-century Japan face the persecution of Christians, from Endō's novel. Hard, and argued over.

Journal

Helps with: Should the faith take the forms of each culture it enters?; What is suffering for?; What is conscience?