In this episode Trent sits down with Tim Ryland, editor of Catholic answers magazine, and Todd Aglialoro, director of publishing, to learn more about Catholic Answers press and how Christians can use the written word to evangelize a digital age.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. And today we are talking about how the pen is mightier than the meme. When I was growing up and I was learning apologetics, especially before the age of high-speed internet, what I remembered was downloading articles, trying to find books in the library, and really sifting through arguments that way. But you fast forward 20 years, it seems like a lot of people today are learning arguments for and against the faith. Sometimes just with short videos, or even worse, sarcastic memes that don’t really contribute to good public debate about really important issues. So that’s why I’ve brought two wonderful guests with me. Todd Aglialoro, who’s the director of publishing here at Catholic Answers. And Tim Ryland, who is the editor of our Catholic Answers Magazine. And we’re going to talk today about the importance of writing. And how, even though we’re in more of a digital age, we’ve got videos, Snapchat, TikTok, which I don’t entirely understand yet.
You’ve got memes and macros. Why writing books and articles are still valuable, and will always have a perennial value to them. And how we, you and me, can become better writers and learn how to use the pen to better explain and defend our faith. And now without further ado, gentlemen, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast.
Todd Aglialoro:
Thanks Trent. Glad to be here.
Trent Horn:
All right, well Todd, let’s start with you. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them a little bit more about how you became associated with Catholic Answers, and what your role is within the apostolate.
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I became associated with Catholic Answers over two decades ago when I came to work for the apostolate for the magazine for Catholic Answers Magazine, I was the editorial assistant of then, This Rock. So I’ve always had an interest in the written word. I kind of have ink in my veins. And I was happy to rejoin the apostolate eight or nine years ago to run Catholic Answers Press.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And so what’s interesting here, I love seeing how Catholic Answers has developed over time. I mean, originally it was the magazine, and then we had the website. But it’s only fairly recently, it seems, like in the organization’s history, that we actually had a press and published books. Did our apologists do a lot of publishing with other people? It seems kind of new.
Todd Aglialoro:
Our apologists did some publishing elsewhere with other publishers. And we did have a publishing effort here at Catholic Answers, even before the formal establishment of the press as such. But certain that we’ve been more systematic and much more prolific with it since.
Trent Horn:
And then Tim, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself?
Tim Ryland:
Well my position here was gained through pure nepotism. My father was a Catholic priest.
Trent Horn:
Now I’m going to say there’s nothing wrong with nepotism. There’s a wonderful de motivators poster. And I encourage our listeners to go and look at these, it’s a wonderful way to spend time there. Parodies of the motivational leadership posters, like an eagle that shows, aspirations, you’ll never know how high you can fly. But they’re always dark and cynical. My favorite one has a picture of a lion with a cub on top of its head. And it says, “Nepotism, we promote family values here almost as often as we promote family members.” So your father was involved with it.
Tim Ryland:
Yes, he was, back in the early, mid 90s. And I was a journalist at the time. I had known Carl just through our family for years. And my dad had left the apostolate at that point. But when I became editor actually for the first time, in 1998, of the magazine, was here six years, left for personal reasons, came back about the same time Todd did, about eight to nine years ago. So my total, excuse me, my total history here is over 14 years as the editor of the magazine.
Trent Horn:
Okay. And the magazine, what’s interesting, that it’s changed. So it was originally called This Rock, of the, “upon this rock, I’ll build my church”. But then we went through a different element, we understood the concept of branding.
Tim Ryland:
Right.
Trent Horn:
So then we changed it through our understanding, trying to brand everything.
Tim Ryland:
Right. So we changed the name to Catholic Answers Magazine in late 2011. And it’s been that way ever since.
Trent Horn:
And then more recently we developed the blog. Well, it started with you, and most of you will call it a blog, I guess. But we prefer to call it an online magazine. There was a bit of discussion about how we would do that. And we ended up calling it Catholic Answers Magazine Online. Because you’re always emailing Todd, do I have a CAMO piece up? And I tell Laura, I always tell Laura, I need to do a CAMO piece. Or I’ll tell people I’m working on a CAMO piece. And some people say, why are you writing about camels? Why are you writing about camouflage? And then I say, no, no, it’s Catholic Answers Magazine Online, as opposed to Catholic Answers Online Magazine, because I don’t even know how I would say that acronym.
Todd Aglialoro:
[crosstalk 00:04:55]. I think the same for Catholic Answers Magazine, which we internally refer to as CAM. And I think about a camshaft in a car. So I have that same cognitive dissonance there myself.
Trent Horn:
What went through the decision making in coming up with Catholic Answers Magazine Online Because there’s a lot of choices in what you do, and including our listeners would probably wonder this as well. If they want to get out there and blog and write blogs and articles in defense of the faith. It seems like blogs or online publishing can come in a lot of different formats, lengths, styles. And we had to make a conscious decision of what ours would look.
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I think the conscious decision, and certainly there’s a lot of gray area here, there’s overlap. So none of these definitions are absolute. But to my mind, anyway, and I think my thinking is what drove this. Blogs have a somewhat more informal quality, they’re often tied to an individual. Of course, the very term is a short version of weblog, which implies a kind of daily record or things you’re doing, or daily thoughts that you have. Whereas magazines, whether online or in print, even the very name suggests a bit more organization, a bit more planning, a slight degree more formality. Even if in the digital online space the articles are much shorter than in a print feature would be, and there is less formality in their structure and content. Nonetheless, we did want to position our online offerings as a online magazine. And also to give it room to grow.
Trent Horn:
What do you mean room to grow? Into other venues, to grow where?
Todd Aglialoro:
And room to grow into other kinds of content types. A blog generally takes the form of someone’s occasional thoughts, a kind of mini article. It can be just 100 words or something like that.
Trent Horn:
Or it can just be deep thoughts by Jack Handy.
Todd Aglialoro:
It’s somebody’s deep thoughts essentially. And whereas a magazine, whether online or in print, can have components, can have feature components. There can be editorial. There can be things like book reviews or online debates. The array of content types that you can fit into that package is greater.
Trent Horn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then Tim, for Catholic Answers Magazine, while the name has changed we still stuck to the basic print format. Though I’ve noticed there has been some changes in layout and playing with understanding that. But I think it’s impressive that even though we are expanding into the online world, a lot of print publications are falling by the wayside. But we haven’t, we’ve managed to not go into extinction. We hid underground when the asteroid hit
Tim Ryland:
That’s right. That’s one thing that we do stress is we’re kind of the last man standing, certainly in this area. A lot of people, several of the magazines have moved online exclusively, and some have just gone dark. But we continue to sail along. And we put a lot of importance in the printed word. [crosstalk 00:07:51]-
Todd Aglialoro:
I would say we row along more than sail, but we continue to move forward.
Tim Ryland:
Slug along, maybe.
Trent Horn:
We have a galley of slave writers moving the magazine ahead.
Tim Ryland:
Yes, better analogy.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. But yeah, let’s talk about that, why it’s important, the printed word. I mean, because everyone looks at everything at screens all day long, there is something different and special about either holding a magazine in your hand, or leaving a magazine somewhere. Or, I would say for Todd, holding a book in your hand. Because when we look at our sales, we have eBooks, but physical books far outstrip them when it comes to our sales. So what would you guys say is driving behind that importance of the actual physical element of the printed word?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, without getting too philosophical about the corporeal element of our faith, I would say that there’s certainly a convenience to it. Even though you have your phone. For me, as an older person who needs glasses to read, I can read a magazine more easily than I can read my phone. I can fold it in my back pocket, a magazine, and put it in my back pocket or leave it. As you say, if you want to evangelize, we always say, look, just leave it in the doctor’s office. You know? You never know who’s going to pick it up. So there are some physical advantages, I think, to the magazine.
Tim Ryland:
I think when it comes to books and magazines, they’re a little bit different. The difficulties that magazines of any type, and newspapers, any kind of print periodical that they’re having right now in the market, perhaps suggest that short form of content delivery, of written content delivery, is perhaps slightly more replaceable in the digital. With books, you have the added element of something being a permanent keepsake in your home library. People exhibit a devotion to a certain book that they may read and reread over and over again, in a way they don’t to the June 3rd edition of the New York Times, or something like that.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Tim Ryland:
So the longer you get, the more substantial the package gets for the written product, I think the more advantage print has.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think that’s been helpful, especially when we look at Catholic Answers Press, like with my book, Why We’re Catholic. I think that did so well because people enjoyed having an actual physical thing to be able to give someone else to consider reading. I mean, that book-
Tim Ryland:
Right, right. Sold a lot in bulk.
Trent Horn:
A lot in bulk that people, I get all kinds of emails, people continually buy cases of the book. Because I think there’s something special about giving someone an actual physical copy of something, rather than here’s a link to something for you [crosstalk 00:10:24]-
Todd Aglialoro:
There’s more engagement on the part, both of the giver and the receiver. It takes virtually zero effort to hit forward on the link, or share on the link. But there’s something very human and endearing about handing over, whether it would be either a physical book, or as Tim mentioned, an issue of the magazine that you leave someplace or give to a stranger on the bus. There’s a certain amount of demonstration that you care when you do that.
Trent Horn:
I think also, when we look, and Tim, I think you briefly alluded to this. When we think about having a book or a magazine in our home, it’s almost like a kind of witnessing to other people. I mean, people come to our home. People don’t see what we browse on the internet, but having that magazine on a nightstand. Or, I have to admit when I go over to people’s houses, I do shamelessly look through their bookshelves. I don’t know if you guys do the same thing. But hopefully I make sure, do they have a bookshelf? And then second, I really do wonder what’s there. Because that is a little bit of a window into the person’s soul, I would think.
Todd Aglialoro:
Sure. And certainly keep that in mind when we’re making the magazine, we’re creating the cover of the magazine. I often visualize my mother, God bless her is still with us at 98. But her a place in the Midwest, when I visit there once or twice a year, she’s got the magazine on her coffee table. So I think of the coffee tables across America, what’s it going to look like sitting there for two months because it’s a bimonthly. So we want to try to look as elegant or as attractive as possible in that regard.
Tim Ryland:
I just read a couple of days ago that a business has arisen in the wake of the lockdowns, and all this Zoom meeting that we’re doing now, to create bookshelf backdrops for people. Every expert needs a bookshelf behind them when they’re interviewed on the news.
Todd Aglialoro:
Carefully chosen, and celebrities are doing this a lot. Celebrities who probably haven’t read two words. They’re having consultants come in to stock their bookshelves as their backdrop, as a signaling to their fans what kind of intellect they have.
Trent Horn:
Or what they purport to have. And they take a book out of the bookshelf and say, oh, I love Evelyn Waugh, she’s such a good author. And then this is such a dead giveaway, which if you haven’t seen it, Lost In Translation, everybody. And Evelyn Waugh is a man, a wonderful author, I’ll say. But yeah, then they get caught like, oh, maybe you’ve never actually read that. Or there was an episode of The Office where Jim tries to join The Finer Things Club, and then he hasn’t done any of the reading. And they say, oh, you thought it was really great. Yeah-
Tim Ryland:
Angela’s Ashes.
Trent Horn:
He’s like, who’s the main character. Angela. The ashes. So something else. One more point about the superiority of the written word before we get to talking about how we can improve our written word, and what you all look for. There’s something else that’s a benefit, I think, to buying a physical book, and maybe this is just the paranoia inside of me. And any kind of thing that’s physical. The more we rely on electronic media that we essentially stream or share, there’s a worry that it could be taken away.
Now for me, for Catholic Answers, I have to get all kinds of books for research. And so many books I would need, it would just fill up my space. So I usually get a lot of them on Kindle. And I just have them on my Kindle cloud. But I guess unless I get it to a device that doesn’t have an internet connection, I feel like Amazon or Kindle, or all these other places could just take my stream, my streamed movies, or anything else. It could just be taken away, like in an instant. You’re just kind of borrowing it. Whereas it’s actual physical book, or vinyl, or DVD, it’s yours. Maybe I’m just paranoid. I don’t know. So Tim.
Tim Ryland:
I think so. And I also think, to touch on a philosophical issue I raised a little earlier. We had an article a couple years ago by a great writer named Holly Ordway. And she was talking about the symbols of our faith. And in a sidebar she was talking about, is a sacramentary ever going to be digital, is it ever going to be a tablet? And one of the things that she raised is, because of the nature of physical reality, you don’t get that with a tablet. You don’t ever know what those pixels were showing a few hours ago. It could have been something not very uplifting. So there’s a lack of physical permanence there. And the sacramentaries, as they get older, they accrue, they smell like the incense-
Trent Horn:
Old book covered with incense.
Tim Ryland:
And there’s something, I think, profound about that. About the physical nature of our faith.
Trent Horn:
They have an air freshener for new car, I really do wonder if they have one for old book. Because old book really does have that distinct smell to it. Then let’s talk about becoming better writers and learning how to share the written word. Because we may even have some listeners, and if you’re interested, you may be an upcoming author and you experiment, you want to write an article, maybe for our magazine. I always get people who come to me with requests for books, to pass along to you Todd. Not all of them get passed along. I do act as a filter at some point with books that are… Although, people will come and present books, and some are very noteworthy, and others, maybe want to go back to the drawing board a bit. What do you all look for if people want to submit articles or books, and want to write about the faith? What are some qualities you look for?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I would break them down into a few different categories. I think one that would apply both to our books and our articles is a plain writing skill. So the ability to organize thoughts, to use language in a way that is clear and even delightful. And those are skills that are required, I would say, by reading and imitating is the best advice I ever heard on how to become a better writer. I’ll let Tim speak to the shorter form. When it comes to books, I think if I would focus on one thing now, it would be this, there are many things that people want in our marketplace. And there are many things that people need. And those two categories only overlap in a certain amount of area. And so I’ve had many, many a query or proposal that the author, very enthusiastic claim, people need this, they need it. And they can’t understand why we don’t want to publish it because they need it.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
And what I have to make them understand is, if we can’t actually get it into a reader’s hands and put it in front of his eyeballs, it doesn’t matter how much he needs it, he’ll never get it.
Trent Horn:
People need their vegetables, but those canned vegetables sill sit on the shelf.
Todd Aglialoro:
Dietary things is not a bad analogy, and I’ve used it myself. And so we want to provide books to our people and fulfill our mission here, at Catholic Answers, by giving them things that are delicious and nutritious. And that’s no easy trick to pull off.
Trent Horn:
Tim, how about for the short form, more for, especially for the printed articles? And this may overlap also with our blog, things that we look for. I’m sorry, our online magazine.
Tim Ryland:
Well I would certainly echo at Todd said about the writing. And I don’t think I’ve ever met any good writer that didn’t read widely. And especially as a young person. So if you haven’t done that, you’re going to have a much harder road, I think, writing well.
Tim Ryland:
But having said that, I’m always looking for, there’s only so many apologetical arguments you can make about the faith. There are only so many topics. So we’re looking for new takes on things, or for new insights. Jimmy Akin is really good about that because he’s so widely read, he’ll come up for instance, in the next issue. He’s got an article on Aquinas on the occult. I mean, we don’t often hear about-
Trent Horn:
That is a new one.
Tim Ryland:
But he noticed, I guess, in going through the Summa and through other writings that you would assume that someone like Aquinas would automatically be opposed to the occult or to this supernatural, not necessarily of God. And he wasn’t, he was very cautious about it. And Jimmy actually comes up with a flow chart, which we’ll publish, coming up with an action. And then, is it reverent? Who are you contacting, spirits or demons? And is it permissible or not? So these are the kinds of new takes or insights that I think are very interesting to people and that illuminate their faith in a greater way.
Todd Aglialoro:
I’ll piggyback on that. And I agree 100%. and I’ll also say, it’s not always, or doesn’t simply have to be some new synthesis or some new angle. But it can also be a way of taking classical apologetic data, arguments, proof texts, ways of approaching apologetic subjects, and delivering them in a different way. So some of our best, most successful and most useful for our people books, haven’t come up with the fourth person of the Trinity, or a new Gospel, or a Bible verse that proves the real presence that no one had ever thought of before. But they take the data that we have and that we’ve relied on and combine it and make it user friendly in a way that breakdowns to the spiritual.
Trent Horn:
Well, it’s like in my book, Why We’re Catholic. There’s not really an argument in there that’s super novel. It’s, we’re pretty standard apologetic.
Todd Aglialoro:
No, you rip everybody off in that book.
Trent Horn:
I pay homage. I pay homage to them. So if you just do that, then it’s a classy thing to do. And it’s a pretty standard fare. But I tried very hard to deliver it in a way that would be as accessible to a wide variety of people.
Todd Aglialoro:
That’s a great example.
Trent Horn:
And that’s one of my biggest pet… I guess each of us, I’d love to hear your guys’ pet peeves when you’re reading particular writers. I guess, too, that are on different ends of the spectrum for me. One would be writing that is incredibly pedantic. I remember when someone gave me a book to review, and unusually I can tell with a book, it’s kind of like a screenplay. I can tell on the very first page, if they don’t have me by page one. Sometimes even the first line I can tell. And the line was, “Ancient Greek philosophy is as old as ancient Greece itself.”
Todd Aglialoro:
That’s compelling.
Trent Horn:
Because it’s one of those things where it’s like, oh, it almost sounds deep. Excuse me. It’s like what Daniel Dennett called a deepity. And this isn’t the exact line, because I don’t want to cast aspersions on this person. It was basically a line something like this. But it sounds deep, but upon further reflection, it’s not deep. And then that’s irritating for me to read. But on the other end of the extreme is, I know people who are very, very intelligent, who will write prose that actually has deep thoughts in it. But it’s so obtuse, and it uses so many archaic references that the writing almost becomes impenetrable. So it’s like, you’ve got the shallow stuff that’s trivial, or the deep obtuse stuff. I guess those are some of my peeves. And maybe yours as well. If you have others, I’d love to hear them.
Tim Ryland:
Chesterton said there were a thousand angles at which a man may fall, and there are a thousand plus kinds of bad writing. So I’d have reflect on that a little bit.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Is there, I guess, other things that may peeve you when you look at writing? I know that I’m always driving up the wall with editing and grammar mistakes. You always send me helpful emails to-
Tim Ryland:
Look, Trent, you’re a son of your generation. So your generation doesn’t care about, for example, using pronouns that match the gender of their noun. It’s just-
Todd Aglialoro:
But may I say [crosstalk 00:22:02]-
Trent Horn:
Todd, a member of my generation, they’re not going to care about that criticism you make. I’m not allowed to say, he doesn’t care. The male cannot embrace the female.
Todd Aglialoro:
Male embraces the female, as Ogden Nash said. We stand by that.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Tim Ryland:
We still stand by that here at Catholic Answers, we still refer to the he when it’s-
Trent Horn:
When it’s a single individual, a single abstracted individual.
Tim Ryland:
Right. And that’s just standard English for the last umpteen centuries, or whatever. So we’re still following that.
Trent Horn:
Let’s talk about other tips to help writers, people who want to. And we should also encourage people who are listening, who may not do articles or books for our magazine. It’s actually, you can even put forward on Facebook, you can put forward three… Like Twitter, I hate. Twitter is the worst. I hate like Twitter threads that have 10 things linked together. I would almost prefer, at least on Facebook I feel like someone can put three cogent paragraphs together for someone to read. So even if it’s that short of length, let’s talk a little more about tips and ways that can help someone to grow in their writing abilities.
I’ll re-emphasize what you said, Tim, about being a good reader. It’s interesting people say, how do you become a good writer? I think it’s paramount you have to be a good reader first. It’s the same as how someone can become a good musician. Like nobody, I can’t imagine, except for some kind of savant, someone could be a good musician if they’d never listened to good music. I’m sure it’s something pretty similar with writing. And then other tips you all might have in that area, I think our listeners would benefit from that.
Tim Ryland:
I would say, certainly to keep it simple. Don’t write long paragraphs and sentences. Listen to yourself. Another thing I always tell people, this has more to do creative writing, but also with writing apologetics. When you’ve written something, read it out loud to yourself, see how it sounds, see how it flows, and that will probably help you break up some long sentences and paragraphs. But you have to have clarity of thought in order to have clarity of expression. That’s another important thing. If you don’t, if you’re not honed in on your thesis and don’t know exactly what you want to say about it, you shouldn’t be writing it.
Trent Horn:
What other traits do you find in some of the articles? Especially, let’s think of maybe authors in the magazine that you always enjoy putting their pieces in the magazine. Stop, stop Tim, [crosstalk 00:24:24] do go on about me.
Tim Ryland:
Quit fishing for compliments.
Trent Horn:
What are some things you comment… What’s interesting, I’m sure you can think in your head of authors. You’re always glad when they throw something your way to put it in the magazine, but they may have very different temperaments and styles. And I’m sure there’s common threads in their writing you read that you appreciate.
Tim Ryland:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Certainly our in-house guys I always enjoy reading what they give us. And even a person like Tim Staples, who is very colloquial, even in his writing. He goes, that’s it folks. Sorry, that’s just the way things are. I enjoy reading it before I cut it all out. And he never has a problem when I run it by him. He says, okay, thank you for doing what you did.
Trent Horn:
But that familiar tone remains in his writing.
Tim Ryland:
It does.
Trent Horn:
Even if you remove the colloquialisms.
Tim Ryland:
Yes, yes. And certainly Jimmy is a very precise mind, and I always enjoy reading what he writes. And you as well. And Carl always gives me a good dose of philosophy, which I haven’t had since college. So that’s always helpful.
Trent Horn:
Todd, what are traits that you’ve noticed in writers you really enjoy?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I’ll back up just half a step, and maybe it’s answering the same question ultimately. But when it comes to tips for good writing, we did mention, read and imitate. But two others that I adhere to from Strunk and White’s great, The Elements of Style, which is kind of the Bible of good writing. Include omitting unnecessary words. Most of us can say something in three words that we take 13 to say. And even when we allow ourselves a little bit of floridness of style, or even making account for that, we can be much more economical than we usually are.
Secondly is, avoid cliches. So the worst writing is twice as long and riddled with cliches, which are substitutes for thinking. So I would advise not only expunging carefully every unnecessary word that you can. Carl used to go by this maxim that Samuel Johnson would prescribe, that after you finished what you’ve written, go through it and find the one sentence that you think is just your absolute darling, and is simply irreplaceable, and strike it.
Trent Horn:
Oh, wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
So there’s a certain amount of humility that goes along with being a good writer. And no questions, the writers with whom I enjoy working the most are the ones who are the humblest about having their prose shaped and formed.
Tim Ryland:
And they’re usually the best writers.
Todd Aglialoro:
And they are. And-
Trent Horn:
Well, it’s kind of like, every good man has a good woman behind him. You know, every good husband has a good wife supporting him. I really feel like the best writers have a good editor behind them. I know with both of you, you’ve saved me from felicitous phrasing that could have gone awry. Or arguments that seem to make sense in my head, they made… I think this happens a lot to writers. How can it not make sense to you, it makes sense to me?
Todd Aglialoro:
Right.
Trent Horn:
But the problem is it’s communicating what makes sense to you, to someone else. So there’s that role of the editor. I mean, it’s an interesting relationship between the editor and the author of making sure each that there’s a give and take there. Making sure you have that proper balance.
Todd Aglialoro:
Right.
Tim Ryland:
It’s a partnership. It is. In fact, just very quickly, Todd reminded me of the story when I was working as a newspaper editor in a newsroom. I had an intern who was very ambitious and very eager to learn, but she wasn’t the best writer in the world. But she would go out and she turned in an article and she just happened to sit behind me so she could look over and see what I was doing on my screen. And of course I would just rip her stuff apart and she got discouraged. And I was trying to tell her some of these things we’ve been talking about in terms of simplicity, and taking out words and stuff. And I said, you can’t fall in love with your language. In fact, when she was watching me once, I said, okay, what’s your favorite sentence in this whole article? Which one are you most attached to? And she said, this one, and I just took it out.
Trent Horn:
Wow.
Tim Ryland:
And she just looked at me and turned away. But it really is a truism, I think.
Trent Horn:
But is a part of it, also, that especially if you’re writing in defense of the faith, and you’re writing apologetic arguments or theology or evangelism, do you think a part of it comes from that you’ll be successful if you see your work as a service rather than as an art form or an expression? Because I think if you have that service mindset, then you’re more apt to be able to receive correction and training and advice from others, as opposed to the artist that lets everything go to his head.
Tim Ryland:
Yeah, and as much as we’re talking about virtue here. And virtue, broadly speaking, having the virtue of humility and cooperativeness, and those things will make you more of a team player with an editor. But I don’t know that the genre that we publish in has any particular rules with regard to clarity of expression or other qualities that make any writing good. Certainly any writing intended to educate or advocate, as opposed to say writing fiction or poetry.
Trent Horn:
I think one thing in what we’re writing, what we strive hard to at Catholic Answers, unique to our genre and mission, would be probably putting forward articles as making a clear distinction between what the church teaches and what we think. I think that’s something we’ve always strived to do. And maybe you guys can speak to that a bit more, and editorial decisions that have to be made. That other people, I don’t think they’re as careful in drawing that line and can mistakenly put forward opinions as doctrine, or reverse, doctrine as opinions. But we try hard not to do that, I think.
Tim Ryland:
And we get taken to task for it a lot, but that is not our charism, is to comment on current affairs. It’s to teach what the church teaches. So that’s really our bottom line.
Todd Aglialoro:
And even there, there’s some gray area, so we don’t even always agree where that line needs to be drawn precisely. So it’s always a source of lively conversations around this place, as you know. But Tim is right, I’ll get anonymous emails come over the transom through our website. Why don’t you go after Father So-and-so, who’s leading people astray? [crosstalk 00:30:48] Or this Bishop, or this Catholic politician. And we do sometimes, in an oblique way, when we can judge that the way we’re presenting it is really anchored in a core Catholic teaching. And it’s just simply a practical extension of that. But we’re not here to issue calls to reshape church leadership or to advocate for this or that spiritual enthusiasm, or pious practice, or anything like that.
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, he who fights everything fights nothing. Groups that have a focused mission, and I think that’s what’s made us so successful is that our mission is to explain and defend the teachings of the Catholic church. And then whether critics are Catholic or non-Catholic, if a critic puts forward an argument or idea that leads people away from the correct understanding of what the church teaches, we’re happy to correct that person. And especially in a fraternal way.
Well, as we come to end of our time together, for those who might be interested in publishing, either with Catholic Answers Magazine maybe a book for the press, or maybe even starting out. I think the easiest way for someone who’s starting out might be an article for Catholic Answers Magazine Online. I’m sure, Todd, you would agree, start small and then think bigger out from that. What are some things you guys are really looking for when it comes to publishing, either topics, styles, things that you really always hoping that people can contribute to us?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I think we’ve covered some of this ground. As Tim said, we’re looking for new takes. We’re looking for syntheses. We’re looking for new ways of packaging old data. Tim did say, we’re not really here to comment on current events, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t springboard off of current events to make some of the classic subjects more timely. And so we’re definitely open to… So I’ll give an example. We’re about to publish a book now by Joe Heschmeyer called, Pope Peter. It’s at the printers, and it will be available in just a couple of weeks. It’s available for pre-order now. And it is a really comprehensive and outstanding papal apologetic. But it takes, as its jumping off point, this period in which a lot of controversy dogs the papacy.
This current period in which people take things Pope Francis says and run in all different directions with them. And so it’s one in which many Catholics, and people outside the church looking in, shaking their heads and wondering, how trustworthy is this institution? And so we’re able to springboard from that state of affairs to a perennial topic of the papacy.
Trent Horn:
Tim, what are some things that you’re looking for?
Tim Ryland:
What Todd said I think is an important thing. I think it’s great to be able to springboard off of current, I wish we could do that more often in the magazine. But because we’re on such a long schedule, bimonthly schedule, we can’t be topical. But I think that’s a very good way to engage Catholics and non-Catholics in the faith, is to find something current and use that and extrapolate from that into the elements in the truths of the faith.
Todd Aglialoro:
The online magazine allows for that more certainly because we’re able to publish literally the day after, or the day of sometimes.
Trent Horn:
Right. I think also, another thing that I think you all agree where we could look for in writing is that it’s not just putting forward the facts and the arguments, and getting, okay, we’ve got a clearly synthesized argument here. There’s also that human element in writing that I would encourage our listeners as you go and practice that. You don’t want to lose that unique human element of it. I think some of the best writers that I know and I enjoy reading, they’ve got that great argument. I remember, it was Scott Hahn, he wrote in his book, A Father who Keeps His Promises. And that he opened the book with a story about a little boy, it was an earthquake, I think in Romania or somewhere. And the school collapsed.
And then the father went and he dug through the rubble, and the people are like, your children are dead, don’t even bother. And he digs through the rubble and then he finds a little boy with his classmates. Now I’m choking up when I think about this, but it’s powerful. And then he says that our God, our father, loves us just the same. And it’s like, I read that probably, I don’t know 15 years ago. I haven’t read A Father who Keeps His Promises in a long time. But just finding that kind of illustration, that ability to illustrate the argument in a way that reaches you.
Tim Ryland:
Well yeah, the rhetorician, whether writing or speaking, has a whole bag full of tools. And anecdote, and appeals to emotion and analogy and a hundred others. And the way that you utilize them and combine them is part of developing your voice. And your voice comes with experience and practice. So it’s a longterm, iterative process. But it’s one that only comes by doing.
Todd Aglialoro:
A writer, writes. Even if it never sees the light of day. If you fill chapbooks full of stuff that never sees the light of day, you’re polishing your craft. You’re flexing your muscles. And I would just say, write. But I would also say, one of the top, I’d say top five things I tell people. When you finish writing, if you’re on a computer, do a search for L Y space, and you’re going to come up with every adverb you’ve used, and take them all out. Take them all out, except for maybe really is sometimes useful. But they’re usually completely unnecessary. Right?
Trent Horn:
You don’t want to write badly.
Todd Aglialoro:
They’re either unnecessary or they’re not. So completely, is useless.
Trent Horn:
Right. It’s completely and understandably so, one needs to not-
Todd Aglialoro:
So we speak that way, but I certainly don’t think we need to write that. Look for a stronger verb or adjective if you’re using a lot of adverbs. That’s what I would say.
Trent Horn:
Very good. How can people get in touch with either the press or the magazine to make a submission?
Tim Ryland:
Nouns are best, by the way.
Todd Aglialoro:
I don’t know. Verbs-
Tim Ryland:
We’ll talk about this later. I’m sorry, Trent. So on our website, if you scroll to the appropriate place, I think it’s at the bottom.
Todd Aglialoro:
Bottom. Yeah.
Tim Ryland:
You’ll see submissions guidelines for our various platforms, with some general data about what we’re looking for and what we’re not. And then information about how to reach out to us.
Trent Horn:
Great. So just go to catholic.com and link under submissions.
Tim Ryland:
I believe it’s submissions, or submissions guidelines, something of that ilk. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I’ve seen it on there. Just go to catholic.com. Our emails can always usually get rerouted to the correct person, but the easiest way is go to catholic.com, click submissions and-
Tim Ryland:
Just go to the bottom, that’s the important part to remember. There’s other menus that you can-
Todd Aglialoro:
And their submissions for the press, and submissions for the magazine, I think are two different. So they get routed properly.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Great. Well thank you guys so much for stopping by the show today.
Todd Aglialoro:
All right. Thanks-
Tim Ryland:
Thanks for having us.
Trent Horn:
All right. And thank you all for listening. Be sure, no matter what you do, keep writing and keep praying for us and everything we do here at Catholic Answers. And don’t forget to support us at trenthornpodcast.com. You all have been great. And thank you for stopping by. Have a blessed day everyone.
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