You can also view the video here on spotify:

Happy 5th Year Anniversary!

Welcome to What Matters Most! I’m Dr. John Martens, the host of What Matters Most and Director for the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at UBC. Do you know I have been saying that for 5 years now? On October 7, 2022, we released the first episode of What Matters Most with my friend and once upon a time colleague at America Media, Fr. Jim Martin.

We have been doing this for 5 years because people have been listening for 5 years! Thank you so much for listening, whether you started with episode 1, 10, 40, or 106, our last episode. Or somewhere in between. I appreciate you joining me on this journey. It is a shared journey!

In the spirit of sharing, I acknowledge that the land on which I record this podcast is the shared, traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Tsawwassen people, where I and my family live. St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi Colleges are on the unsurrendered, traditional, and ancestral territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam). The Land we are on is known as ?əlqsən (“Ulksun,” or Point Grey); it is a promontory claimed by the British as a Colonial Admiralty reserve in the mid-nineteenth century and occupied by the University of British Columbia since 1914.

This land has been a site of learning for many generations before the Colleges stood here, and we recognize our obligations as teachers, researchers, and scholars in ensuring that our classrooms and our work uphold the best of that longstanding learning context now and into the future.

In acknowledging Musqueam territory, we recognize that acknowledgment is an active dedication to more just, more accountable relations.

More just relations in many ways is at the heart of this podcast and its ethos, more just relations with our neighbours of all religious backgrounds, or none. We have had guests who represent many, though not all religious traditions by any means. Many guests have been Catholic, which makes sense at a Catholic college and centre, but many have been Christians of other sorts, and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and people who explore religion as scholars, but have no particular religious tradition, or people who study religions other than the ones they profess. I love it. I love talking to people about what they think and believe, what they study, their ideas, their hopes, their practices, their beliefs.

In another podcast, I mentioned the great Catholic theologians Bernard Lonergan who said that the Catholic tradition is not a forced uniformity, but a unity among diversity, similar to indigenous ways of knowing. This is increasingly important for Catholics themselves but for people in all of the world’s religions. There are temptations in Catholicism and Christianity that are coming to fruition currently in a sort of rigidity and fundamentalism that rejects the other in numerous ways, whether other other forms of Christianity, other religions, other ethnicities. But we are also seeing this growing in other religions around the world too. This is something we resist here.

Indeed, and you will hear this in a forthcoming podcast, the position we take is one that is found in a recent document from the Vatican, A JOURNEY OF HOPE: Sixty Years of Interreligious Dialogue and Fraternity in the Light of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate. Do read the whole document, but I will start at the end of paragraph 53, where it says, “Today, in the face of those who foment divisions and stir up conflicts, believers of different traditions—and above all their leaders—while remaining aware of their irreducible differences, are called to seek, with clarity and hope, the conditions necessary for peaceful coexistence.” Paragraph 54 says, “To achieve this goal, a genuine shift in mindset is necessary: abandoning the logic of defensiveness, hostility, or conquest in order to adopt an attitude that is open, benevolent, and courageous. Monolithic and isolated models, which encourage a closed view of reality, are proving increasingly inadequate and, ultimately, become sources of violence and suffering for the most vulnerable. The defensive entrenchment in one’s own position and the view that proselytism is the only way to engage with the other no longer make sense in a world that increasingly resembles an interconnected and constantly evolving global village.”

This description of the task of the world’s religions, from the Dicasteries of the Doctrine of the Faith, for Promoting Christian Unity, and for Interreligious Dialogue could not be a better description of the work that we hope to do at the Centre for Christian engagement and at What Matters Most podcast.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. This is a podcast about big questions, about big issues, about what matters most to people, what’s important to you, what gets you up out of bed in the morning or keeps you up late at night wondering. We are looking at these big questions and big issues through the lens of individual stories and individual lives. Religious traditions and institutions might be systems, ancient and modern, but people are people and religion lives in and through people. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. And how they like to worship.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Let us know what you want to discuss next on the Podcast in general or on Pop Culture Matters. Follow us at our Instagram page @stmarkscce or our new Facebook page Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s, and drop us a line as to what you want to see or hear. Or email us with your suggestions to [email protected]

A few thanks are in order. First of all, I am grateful to Martin Strong, who guides me in the podcasting world and joins me for the Pop Culture Matters regularly. Second, the episodes are edited, engineered, and produced by Kevin Eng who is the first listener to all the episodes and my consultant for each episode, especially with the snippets that begin each episode. Thank you, Kevin, for all of your expertise and support. Finally, to the Fang Fang Chandra, the CCE assistant, who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.

I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are interested in donating yourself to the CCE, please check out the CCE website where you can find the donate button on the top right corner. We are a non-profit organization, and all donations over $20.00 are tax deductible. Or support us on Patreon. If you do not know what Patreon is, ask your children or your grandchildren!

If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. It really makes a difference!

Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most. This work matters, so thanks for being a part of it.

Dr. John W. Martens