CAITLIN West splits her time studying the words of William Shakespeare and the Catholic Catechism and, in her experience, the Bard had an easier time drawing an audience.
She wanted to change that.
Miss West, a doctoral student looking at Shakespearian theatre at the University of Queensland, recently launched a podcast aimed at breaking open the Catholic Catechism for millennials called Crash Course Catholicism.
She recently sponsored a young Catholic to enter the Church and discovered for many young people the catechism could feel like “such a tome”.
“We are part of a generation that is thinking less and less and functioning more and more on emotion,” she said.
“We need to get back to some of those basics and fundamental truths and do some real thinking.”
The challenge was making the catechism emotive, entertaining and engaging.
Miss West’s background in theatre, stand-up comedy, music and performance gave her the right skill-set to present the information and she had the passion to see it through.
She has experience running doctrinal classes and when she was asked to record her classes for people, she said “I might as well add an intro and turn it into a podcast”.
“I want to empower young people and anyone who wants to listen to have a fundamental understanding of Catholicism and to have that confidence to be like – ‘Okay, I know what the Catholic Church teaches’,” she said.
“One of the things I’m trying to do in every episode is give examples of other areas of reading or other philosophers or thinkers or podcasts or other places where (listeners) can go.
“It’s not just that the podcast is an end in itself but it will give everyone all the information that they need.”
Miss West grew up Catholic and she remembered her parents often encouraged her to ask the big questions around the dinner table.
Going through public school and onward to university, she often found herself running the gauntlet and defending the faith more than a few times.
She developed a love for philosophical discussions and exploring the richness of the faith.
The podcast was the next step in this pursuit.
She said the two episodes she was looking forward to airing the most were the ones on the Trinity and the Eucharist.
“They’re the two great mysteries of the faith and it’s like a personal challenge trying to fit something that massive into a half hour episode,” she said.
“It’s also such an amazing and mind-blowing (topic)… whenever I’ve given those classes it’s just so rich and people get so excited because they’re such incredible, beautiful mysteries.
“I love that experience of taking something that seems so strange and almost illogical and then seeing that light go on and, ‘Oh this actually makes so much sense and such a beautiful truth even if it is kind of overwhelming and huge’.”
She said she was always “discovering new things” as she studied, wrote and produced the podcasts.
The topics, she said, you could go into it with a good understanding but then start researching and “you could just keep going and going and going and never reach the end of it”.
“There’s so much richness to this stuff,” she said.
“I realised how little I actually know and how much there is there, which I’m just loving and it’s all so rich and so good.
“There’s always so much more to learn.”
You can find Crash Course Catholicism at all your regular podcast locations.
