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 Man for All SeasonsFred 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.
Helps with: What is conscience?; Church and state; The office of Peter
-
The Thomistic Institute, 2020 · short videos, about 10 minutes each · A free video course in the thought of St. Thomas, taught by Dominican friars.
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 BecketPeter Glenville, 1964 · about 2 h 30 min · Thomas Becket, the King's friend made Archbishop, takes the Church's side against Henry II.
Helps with: Church and state
-
Bishop Robert Barron, 2011 · 10 episodes, about an hour each · A documentary series filmed in fifty locations on Christ, the Church, the sacraments, the saints and prayer.
Helps with: What do the sacraments do?; Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?; The office of Peter; Icons and images; Liturgical development
-
Film Into Great SilencePhilip Gröning, 2005 · about 2 h 45 min · A wordless documentary of a year inside the Grande Chartreuse, the Carthusian mother house.
Helps with: The way of prayer; Contemplation or action?
-
Film Jesus of NazarethFranco Zeffirelli, 1977 · about 6 hours, a miniseries · The life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Resurrection, faithful to the Gospels.
Helps with: Where does your eye rest in Christ: His divinity or His humanity?; How should Scripture be read?
-
Film Of Gods and MenXavier Beauvois, 2010 · about 2 h · The Trappist monks of Tibhirine, living among their Muslim neighbors, decide whether to stay as civil war closes in.
Helps with: What is suffering for?; May a Christian take up the sword?; Who can be saved?
-
Bishop Robert Barron, 2016 · a series of short documentaries · Documentaries on the figures who shaped the Church and the culture: Aquinas, Newman, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Michelangelo, Chesterton and others.
Helps with: Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Does doctrine develop?; Contemplation or action?; Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?
-
Film The Island (Ostrov)Pavel Lungin, 2006 · about 1 h 50 min · A Russian Orthodox monk, a holy fool, lives in repentance for a sin of his youth.
Helps with: The way of prayer; What is salvation for?; What is suffering for?
-
Film The MissionRoland Joffé, 1986 · about 2 h 5 min · Jesuit missions among the Guaraní are given up to the colonial powers; two priests choose between prayer and arms.
Helps with: Should the faith take the forms of each culture it enters?; May a Christian take up the sword?; Church and state
-
Film SilenceMartin 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.
Helps with: Should the faith take the forms of each culture it enters?; What is suffering for?; What is conscience?