Soul Food Priest
This is the podcast where culinary and Christianity collide. Each week Fr. Ben Bradshaw will serve up homilies, whip up Teaching Tapas, answer your burning questions, and pass along recipes.
Listen on:
Episodes
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
All of life can be a lesson, even getting struck with food poisoning. Fr. Ben expands on this type of suffering and how we can apply it to the spiritual life.
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Monday Dec 05, 2022
What does beauty in art teach us? Beauty is all around us, but none of it compares to you.
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Ever wondered what the Church teaches on Angels & Demons? Check out this episode! Oh & we talk about Mexican food.
Monday Nov 28, 2022
Monday Nov 28, 2022
Are you overwhelmed at this time of year? The culture tells us it's "the most wonderful time of the year" but inundates us with all the "must haves". Stress and anxiety creep in and tensions rise. Fr. Ben provides tools for navigating this season.
Monday Nov 21, 2022
Monday Nov 21, 2022
If our view of Jesus is that of just our "buddy", then Fr. Ben challenges us to rethink this idea. The Lord wants your relationship with Him to go deeper.
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
We're honored to have Dr. Abigail Favale on our podcast! We have received questions regarding the gender issues in the media and what the Catholic Church teaches. Dr. Favale is an expert on this topic, and we wanted her to provide her expertise and beautiful wisdom.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Abigail Favale is a writer and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist literary criticism, and now writes and teaches on topics related to women and gender from a Catholic perspective. She tells her amazing conversion story in her book Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion where she traces her journey from birthright evangelicalism to postmodern feminism to Roman Catholicism. Her latest book The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory was just released in June 2022 by Ignatius Press. For more information you can go to her website here.
Monday Nov 14, 2022
Monday Nov 14, 2022
C.S. Lewis said: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” Our ego can get in the way of our spiritual growth. Fr. Ben explores this point in his homily and how Bono can teach us a valuable lesson as well.
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
Fr. Ben gives a brief reflection on the beauty of the different cuisines in America and how that reflects the beauty of the differences found in men and women.
Monday Nov 07, 2022
Monday Nov 07, 2022
In this homily, Fr. Ben encourages us to keep an objective perspective when facing problems. How do we do that? Why should we do that? Just take a listen.
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
We're honored to have Dr. Abigail Favale on our podcast! We have received questions regarding the gender issues in the media and what the Catholic Church teaches. Dr. Favale is an expert on this topic, and we wanted her to provide her expertise and beautiful wisdom.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Abigail Favale is a writer and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist literary criticism, and now writes and teaches on topics related to women and gender from a Catholic perspective. She tells her amazing conversion story in her book Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion where she traces her journey from birthright evangelicalism to postmodern feminism to Roman Catholicism. Her latest book The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory was just released in June 2022 by Ignatius Press. For more information you can go to her website here.
Every other week Fr. Ben will be answering your burning questions regarding food and faith. He is joined by two of his friends and staff members, Silvia Vega and Khira Rotty, who will be the moderators for the upcoming Q & A episodes.
If you have a question for Fr. Ben regarding food or faith email us at soulfoodpriestmemphis@gmail.org or the Soul Food Priest FB page at https://www.facebook.com/soulfoodpriest/.
Fr. Ben Bradshaw S.T.L.
Originally baptized Lutheran, Fr. Ben became Catholic at a young age and attended Catholic schools in Memphis growing up.
He always loved to cook and always considered being a professional chef or a Catholic priest, and so he became both.
At age 17, he began working for a French chef in Memphis and worked in kitchens until age 20. He then entered Johnson & Wales University culinary arts program in Charleston, SC. There he earned an Associate’s degree in Culinary Arts.
Fr. Ben then decided to travel to Russia where he lived and worked as a missionary with a religious community. It was there, in a small village, where he began to consider a calling to be a missionary priest. (Since then he has spent time visiting and working in Guatemala, Mexico, Africa, and Eastern and Western Europe.)
He returned home to Memphis and worked as a pastry chef for 5 years. This led him study in Paris, France at the L’Ecôle Lenôtre school of Pastry Arts, where he studied chocolate and pulled sugar artistry. He continued to consider more frequently the call to be a missionary priest.
After returning to the United States he attended The New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Food and Beverage Management. After graduating from NECI, Fr. Ben began considering an option he had not yet considered: Diocesan Priesthood. After much prayerful discernment, he entered the seminary at the age of 27 and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Memphis in June of 2006.
Fr. Ben earned a Masters of Arts and a Masters of Divinity in Sacred Theology. He wrote his Master's thesis on Pope Saint John Paul II's understanding of femininity and womanhood as it relates to writings of St. Edith Stein. He also holds a Licentiate degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C. The focus on his dissertation was on the response of the Catholic Church to the issue of Same-Sex attraction. Since 2005, his continuing education studies have been at the Theology of the Body Institute in Philadelphia, P.A.
Fr. Ben is currently the pastor of St. Michael's parish in Memphis, TN.