Brett Salkeld - Conspiratorial Thinking
Podcast: Season 4, Episode 3
I first came across Brett Salkeld’s work a couple of years ago, during the first year of the pandemic, when he published a couple of excellent articles about conspiracy theories which I have written about before.
Since then, I’ve listened to the Thinking Faith podcast that Brett cohosts. I think he brings a valuable and balanced voice to Catholic conversations and I was thrilled to have him on the show to talk about conspiratorial thinking.
This episode is available below and in your favorite podcast app.
A note with this episode. The Youtube algorithm apparently can’t distinguish critical discussion of conspiracy theories from discussions spreading conspiracy theories, so this video was unfortunately flagged by Youtube. So we published the video on Vimeo, instead of Youtube, and you can of course listen to the audio on your favorite podcast app. Sorry for any hassle!
This week, Paul and Dominic talk with Brett Salkeld and conspiracy theories. Specifically, we discuss the components of conspiratorial thinking and compare and contrast those to the Catholic way of understanding and investigating reality. We then talk about how to avoid conspiratorial thinking in ourselves before ending the conversation discussing how to best engage with people, with friends and family, who have fallen into conspiratorial thinking.
Brett Salkeld is Archdiocesan Theologian for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina and the author of several books, most recently, Educating For Eternity: A Teacher's Companion for Making Every Class Catholic. He is the cohost of a weekly podcast, Thinking Faith!, with hundreds of episodes in the back catalogue, and author of a new monthly column, Two Wings, carried in the United States by Our Sunday Visitor. His work has appeared in Church Life Journal, Word on Fire, Crux and many other Catholic outlets. He serves the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Canadian Roman Catholic - Evangelical Dialogue and is book review editor for the theological journal Pro Ecclesia. Brett lives in Regina with his wife, Flannery, and their seven children.
Links:
Catholic Creationism as a Conspiracy Theory:
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/catholic-creationism-as-a-conspiracy-theory/
Faith, Reason, and Conspiracy Theories:
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/faith-reason-and-conspiracy-theories/
ABOUT DOMINIC DE SOUZA SmartCatholics founder, Dominic de Souza, is a convert from radical traditionalism – inspired by WherePeterIs, Bishop Robert Barron, and Pope Francis. He is passionate about helping ordinary Catholics break the ‘bystander effect’, and be first responders. “We don’t have to be geniuses. We just have to show up with witness and kindness. Christ does the rest.” Today he hosts the SmartCatholics community.
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