Questions from the Unsettled Mind

About Questions from the Unsettled Mind

If you’ve grown up with religion like I did, you’ve probably also felt from time to time that it just doesn’t add up. Certain questions haunt you at two o’clock in the morning, questions that whatever group you practice your faith with tends to frown upon. You don’t find the provincially acceptable answers at all acceptable. But however much these questions prove to be forbidden, your mind remains unsettled. You keep coming back to them—hesitant, worried, and sometimes even angry. I’ve spent my life tossing away the shackles of fear and facing these forbidden questions directly. I cannot understand why religious people should fear the truth, if the truth is supposed to set us free! So, let it out, I say. And I offer you here the fruits of my lifetime of labors, both in the hopes that you can profit from my struggles but also in the expectation that you might add something to inspire our other travelers still facing those anxious nights.

Publisher

Jeffrey Tiel

Category

religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Aug 2020

Latest episode

23 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

81 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Is Marriage Compatible with a Covenant Community? The Third Person in the Marriage

   Is Marriage Compatible with a Covenant Community? The Third Person in the Marriage A married woman told the bishop's investigators that if her husband disapproved of how she arranged the kitchen cabinet, she had to rearrange it, and that if she objected, her pastoral leader would correct her. Who is that third person in the marriage, where did his authority come from, and what does his presence do to a sacrament the Church says no human power may govern? A reading of the full essay, in nine parts and a postscript. In this episode: • What the covenant itself says, and where the real obligations are kept • How the system enters a marriage: courtship, headship, and the parents' curriculum from childhood to college • Five incompatibilities: political, moral, familial, metaphysical and sacramental • The claim of "pastoral authority" tested against ordination, prophecy and recognition, and against the 1997 instruction Ecclesiae de mysterio • What the bishops found in South Bend, Newark, Cleveland and Steubenville, in their own words • The case for the defense, answered point by point, and the question of who decides who decides • Columbus today: the community, the campus outreach and the parish, and what the Church could do about it Mentioned: the Sword of the Spirit; Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ; the Ottenweller Report (Steubenville, 1991); Pius XI, Casti Connubii; John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem; the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Code of Canon Law on consent; Aquinas on marriage as the greatest friendship; St Paul's Outreach; University Christian Outreach; Kairos. The essay, with its 177 endnotes and the census of covenant communities, is at jeffreytiel.com. Chapters are marked by Part. If this question appeals to you, my book Faith (Amazon, ISBN 9798335840705) takes up the epistemology of belief in contrast to the deceptions of cults.

2. 

   22 Aug 2026

   John Flaherty Bonus Episode: My Experience in a Covenant Community

   John Flaherty presents his covenant community personal story

3. 

   7 Aug 2026

   What is a Covenant Community?

   With the recent nomination of a former Handmaid of a Covenant Community to the Supreme Court of the United States, many people are asking for the first time, “What is a Covenant Community?” The following description attempts to provide a deeper explanation using documentation from two major Covenant Communities as well as the experiences of former members who have exited, many after years of participation. The Shared Folder - Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HgL9UjDkCTvlSBUwRO14oYMyGPg-0Swn)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

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4 ratings

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