Transcript of Interview with Matt Wielgos about St. Anthony Audiobooks. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.
The Promise – God’s Purpose and Plan for When Life Hurts
The Rite – The Making of a Modern Exorcist
Treasure in Clay – The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen
All audio books
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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash, Director of E-Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.
Today in the Spotlight, we have Matt Wielgos; he is director of media production for Saint Anthony Messenger Press. He’s the guy responsible for all the cool audiobooks as well as a lot of radio stuff that is done over there at Saint Anthony. Welcome, Matt to the show.
Matt Wielgos: Thanks Chris, I appreciate you having me on. And I want to say hello to all you listeners. I love this show and love the fact that your listeners tune into hear about the good things happening in the world of publishing, which includes audiobooks.
Chris Cash: Yes, I mean, audiobooks tend to be overlooked in our marketplace a little bit, just because I guess there aren’t that many of them made of catholic books.
Matt Wielgos: Well, that depends on your perspective Chris. The other day I was looking through, because we’re working on some arrangements with an online download service for some of our audiobooks. I was looking through we have over a 1000 titles in audio that are part of the Saint Anthony Messenger Press catalogue, if you can believe that.
Chris Cash: Wow, a 1000 books you know that is pretty impressive by any count I think. But you know especially when you just don’t see that much out and available in the catholic market, you know it’s kind of like one of those best kept secret things.
Matt Wielgos: It is and I think part of the history behind that is catholic bookstores, which traditionally were the way that people received catholic publications, whether print, audio or video, whatever it maybe, tended to shy away from those types of things because they were bookstores. But now we’re finding with online purchasing and so forth, picking up in pace by leaps and bounds with companies like their own with the catholic company. People are encountering catholic audio, video, media in new ways and there are new audiences out there developing everyday.
Chris Cash: You know I’m an avid consumer of any of the audiobooks I can find out there you know. I don’t have time to sit down and read usually, but I love to throw something into my iPod and listen to it while I’m driving kids around town or doing the dishes or all sorts of things. So, I think there is a huge audience out there for this kind of material.
Matt Wielgos: Yes, in fact, the audiobook industry is tracking sales with a major publishers of audiobooks, including Saint Anthony Messenger Press. And the increased in percentage is the people listening to audiobooks has been rising by leaps and bounds over the past few years, in contrast to the decrease in people purchasing print books. So, it is a rising star in the world of communications media, taking what has been a standby for so many thousands of years since the invention of the printing press, and putting it into a new form into an audio form to communicate the same message. So, we can do things like, do an audiobook, the autobiography of Saint Theresa of Lisieux: The Story of Soul and capture that same spirit with which that was written by Saint Theresa herself, however many 100’s of years ago. But do it in such a way that is not only authentic to the original intent, but also engages today’s modern listener. So, we had shared Kennedy Brownrigg voiced that audiobook, the autobiography of Saint Theresa of Lisieux. And when she voiced it, not only did she read the words but she entered into the spirit of Saint Therese. She *** [04:26] with Saint Therese possibly was experiencing as she wrote those words. And it comes through in the audiobook in a beautiful way, it just – it captures another sense of Saint Therese, her life and her experiences and then helps us to maybe take that into ourselves and integrate it into our lives into our spirituality. That’s the beauty I think of audiobooks. So they bring a new dimension into the experience of that communication, whether it came from a saint or from author today who just wrote the work.
Chris Cash: And you know another thing that has been a little bit prohibitive in the past about audiobooks is that they’re usually much, much more expensive than the book itself. But the internet is helping to make that cost issue go away since we – you no longer have to have 15 or 20 CD’s to get through a decent size book.
Matt Wielgos: Right. And now about Saint Anthony Messenger hasn’t been doing digital download of audiobooks to this point. We’re actually, as we speak Chris and by the time most of your listeners are hearing this, probably we’ll have in to deal with a – I won’t name them at this point, but a online distributor of digital audio files, so that people can download the audiobooks. And that does because it reduces our overhead in terms of physical having to create the physical discs that covers the cases that they go on and so forth. They can be sold at a lower price and still satisfy the same need for listeners. So, digital is a good option, we’re not going to abandon CD releases by any sense of the mean, because that is a way that people are still listening. It’s also a way to archive the work even for generations to come. An iPod can you know fail and go away and you can loose digital files, but a CD as long as you keep it in good shape and don’t scratch it up, will be there if that fails.
Chris Cash: Absolutely. Now, I wanted to touch right before we start talking about the other books, I wanted to touch just a little bit on your background and what got you into being a director of media production? Just because, I think some of our listeners out there are probably budding audio producers themselves and would like to have a sense of what goes into becoming an audio producer on a more professional level. And you know I think you’ve got that background to share, you know obviously I have a show here but my show is way below the level of what you guys do. I’ve just got a microphone on a computer and running through Skype you know about as simple as you can get, next to having a tape recorder sitting on a phone-line, but it works.
Matt Wielgos: Skype is a wonderful thing. I love Skype, so don’t diss Skype on me Chris, I love Skype.
Chris Cash: Oh, I’m not dissing Skype at all. It is made my life tremendously easier from the way I was originally trying to record these shows. If you go back to the early episodes and hear all the terrible static, I won’t even go into the hoops I was trying to jump through to do it for on the cheap basically.
Matt Wielgos: Sure.
Chris Cash: But you know we’re running this show on shoestring budget. And it is good content most of the time and people listen to it, but you know Matt has had the experience of being director of communications for churches, doing recording masses and other programs for churches as well as being a producer for Drew Mariani Show for several years on relevant radio. So, you want to share just a little about your background and how you got involved and what kind of training it took to take it to that level above the level that I’ve got?
Matt Wielgos: How far back do you want me to go Chris? You want me to go all the way?
Chris Cash: Sure, briefly.
Matt Wielgos: Well, I was born back in 1965. How – you want to go back that far?
Chris Cash: No.
Matt Wielgos: No, I think for those people who are interested in becoming communicators, I think the first and foremost thing that you have to keep in mind if you want to be a communicator that shares a gospel through the modern media is your own faith formation. You want to follow the call of Jesus Christ in your own life. So you want to get yourself established in your church with your community, in your spiritual life and get a grounding on what God is calling you to do, because that is prime and most important. In terms of getting into the field, once you sense that you have that call – I’ll share with you my story. I went to college and the Franciscan University out in Steubenville, Ohio. And took a double major out there, theology and mass communications. The theology was for myself. The mass communications was because I was looking at my life at that point as a young man and seeing that I really felt that God wanted me to do with my life, the task of sharing the gospel message in the most effective and powerful way possible with the largest reach. And for me, that was the mass media. It had to be, and I think that is still true to this day.
So, went Franciscan, got a good foundation there and coming out of Franciscan actually got into ministry for a time. And had some experience working with people, sharing the gospel on a personal one-to-one basis with large groups of youth and so forth. And that gave me the perspective of perhaps understanding the varied ways that people experience life, the vary ways that people experience god. And how somebody who is an advocate on their behalf, somebody who is a minister or somebody communicating the gospel can best approach that task and share it in a way that people can be open to the gospel message and then, receive it in a profound way. So, that experience was very good for me, then I had a opportunity at that point to really to do a combination of both the ministry and the mass communications. I was involved with a ministry called Holy Apostles communication that was supported by a community out in Northern Chicago. And there we built essentially, from the ground up, a audio and video production Apostle it really if you want to call it. That served the needs of the local community there and the wider community of the northern Chicago area. We had a great opportunity through an arrangement with Comcast up in that area to do programming for the local community. We at our peak were doing three weekly programs that communicated the message of the gospel in different ways. One was a weekly mass that we did that went on every week and it was the same day mass. So, we would record a mass essentially live with the three camera shoot doing a live switch and then, somebody would take the three quarter inch broadcast tape at that time and run it down to where they essentially fed all the Comcast cable outfits. So, the mass would air that day.
Then we did a music program based upon something that was happening there in our local community, the festival of prayers, which essentially was a live catholic Christian music concert that happened there at the local community. So reaching out through the arts and through what was at that time considered the new movement of worship music in the community. Then we would do specific teachings not just from within that community. We would go out and find speakers big and small name speakers who were communicating something unique and effective in terms of the churches teaching or how people can grow in their life spiritually or what have you, and we would put that to video and air that as one of those Comcast programs. So, it’s a great opportunity.
In the midst of all that though, knowing that there were many things we were dealing with in terms of financing that operation. Was given an opportunity to move into radio, which at first I bogged at, because radio essentially I did not have the – what I would call the *possess* [13:50] of video production. Video production just seems so much more exciting. But as I investigated it and talked to the people at the relevant radio network, which was headquartered up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I realized that this was opportunity to reach an even larger audience and engage them not only on a weekly basis, if they happen to be flipping through the channels and trying to program but on a daily basis and then, do it in an effective way.
I met Drew Mariani who is the – still to this day the afternoon drive time host there on Relevant Radio. And he and I struck up a great relationship and we produced that show, I did that show for a number of years for them. That was a great experience, and also got me back into some of the things I had been trained and back in student though in terms of audio production. And all the nuances that are unique to audio production alone. You know the guys in the video well don’t know is pay close attention or as close attention or as close attention as they should to the audio pieces of their work. So, I had kind of neglected that area. So, Relevant was really a good premiere to get back into the audio. And then, *** [15:13] behold this opportunity at Saint Anthony Messenger Press to come and they hired me initially to produce their weekly audio program, our weekly audio program that we produce for the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, American Catholic Radio. Which if your listeners are online; they can go to www.franciscanradio.org and listen to each one of those programs. I encourage you to subscribe to the show by iTunes, and we have a Facebook fan page that you can fan as well.
It’s a magazine style show, a half hour show that we do each week. It’s hosted by Father Greg Friedman who is a Franciscan here with the province of Saint John the Baptist. They are affiliated with Saint Anthony Messenger Press and my engineer, Ron Riegler, Judy Zarick, Sharon Cross, John Feister are all contributors to the show. And we put together, I think one of the finest Catholic radio programs in the country for that type of format. And it’s just been a great experience to do that, because I’ve taken the skills, both that I learned in ministry early in my career, the skills that I learned in terms of production and putting shows together that was learned in the television production at Holy Apostles, and then the skills learned in radio production with Relevant Radio. And it’s really combined for me personally into this opportunity at Saint Anthony Messenger Press. And it’s just been a road that I walked. People have asked well, how can I do that, how can I get into it. I think its going to be a little bit different for everybody, but I think again going back to what I said at first. If you are grounding yourself in your relationship with God and entering into the community of the church and listening for God’s calling and relying on providence, but also a little bit of to borrow a term from our Jewish Brothers and Sisters, a little bit of chutzpah to make things happen, God is going to lead you to that point that is right for you. What I do is may not be right for everyone and what everyone else does may not be right for me.
Chris Cash: And with that, we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor. We’ll be right back with Matt Wielgos from Saint Anthony Messenger Press. This is the Catholic Spotlight.
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Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Matt Wielgos, director of media production from Saint Anthony Messenger Press. You know we kind of talked about the background of getting into audio media, so let’s talk a little about the – some of the exciting books and products that you have out there. I think one of your biggest sellers right now is The Promise with Father Jonathan of Fox News fame?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, Father Jonathan Morris recorded The Promise, he actually voiced his own book. It also exists in print form published by Doubleday, but I encourage you to go out and checkout the audiobook. Because again Father Jonathan brings to this audio book, a unique expression of what the book is all about. Most people don’t realize this, they see Father Jonathan they think news. You know this must be about political issues or what have you, but now this book is really about dealing with the problem, which has been a plenty of problem in the question of – in the minds of theologians and philosophers for ages. The problem of suffering, how do you deal with life when it hurts? And is exploration into this is a really a practical look at how to step-by-step first of all, encounter suffering and then how to work it through, so that you can use suffering as an opportunity to encounter God and encounter others in your life. And even in the midst of suffering be incredibly blessed, because of that suffering. So, it’s really its taking the same principle of the cross, you know when Jesus was crucified it was meant to be something that was his destruction, they were killing Jesus. They wanted to basically do away with this Jesus and then, Jesus drew the power of the Father was resurrected, and what was meant for his destruction actually became the life of the whole world. In the same way, Father Jonathan talks about in his audiobook The Promise. How are suffering, as we work it through, as we begin to work through our suffering in our lives with God, it becomes an incredible blessing that can bless not only ourselves, but all of our loved ones and even people who are not very connected to us perhaps but who are watching how we deal with the suffering, so.
Great audiobook, I would very much recommend it to anybody who is dealing with suffering and knows somebody who is dealing with suffering. And is looking for a way in a practical way to begin to get a hold of it and use it for an opportunity for growth in their lives.
Chris Cash: Well, you know that’s really everybody, because everybody at some point in their lives is going to have to deal with sufferings in someway or another. It’s just pretty much a given.
Matt Wielgos: Yes, I think so and you know its part of the human condition, it’s a – if you will, it’s an effect of original sin that’s why we suffer, a question of why – you know why do we suffer? You know we can point back to in a theological way, well its sin. But then when it hits us personally, when it hits us individually that question of why and then to point back to say well its original sin, just doesn’t seem to satisfy. So, there’s a deeper encounter with God that can be had through your personal sufferings as we work that through. And it’s a – its really a mystery if you will to use a term that is often used in theological circles as to how God can take that suffering and turn it around and use it for our good.
Chris Cash: And hopefully, I’m going to have an interview with Father Jonathan sometime in the next few weeks. Matt is assisting us in reaching out to Father Jonathan; try to get him on the show to talk about the book in much more depth. So, those of you fans out there who’d like to hear that, keep that in your prayers that we can work that out.
Matt Wielgos: Yes, he’s a busy guy. He goes back and forth from New York to Rome on a regular basis, so if you can catch him between flights you’re in good shape.
Chris Cash: Now, another popular book you got out right now is the Rite?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, The Making of a Modern Exorcist. It’s a subtitle on that that’s by author, Matt Baglio, a young journalist actually from California who lives in Rome. And essentially wrote this book as he was performing his journalistic functions in Rome there, and came upon the story of the Vatican having one of our religious orders establish at school for the training of exorcism. And John Paul II, just I think a short time before he passed away actually through the congregation for the doctrine of the faith asked that each diocese have an official exorcist installed in their diocese. And that’s something that preceded this book, which is really the story of Father Gary Thomas, as he was asked by his bishop to consider becoming their diocese and exorcist, and actually he volunteered for it. Went through the training and encountered a new world that he did not know necessarily to what extent had existed before. And a new way for him to minister and help alleviate people’s suffering, because of the spiritual work really.
Chris Cash: And that is such a very deep topic that a lot of people just don’t even realize the depth that there is in that you know. You see exorcism’s performed in movies and such and its just like, throw somebody on the floor and say be healed and sprinkle some holy water. And it’s really very little of that and much more deep, deep prayer and spiritual life, especially among the – for the exorcist himself.
Matt Wielgos: Yes, I think one of the things that the author Matt Baglio would say and I think Father Gary as well is that they wanted to avoid with this book getting into what they would consider some sensationalism. That’s maybe some other movies or books or what have you, have gotten into, because they feel it distracts from the true ministry that is exorcism. Which is essentially it is helping to deliver people from evil and alleviate suffering and pain from their lives. It’s really a healing ministry more than anything else. Now, you read the book or you listen to the book, you listen to the Rite, you hear ‘em author Matt Baglio and they talk about the training that Father Thomas had gone through, they talk about how he apprentice with an exorcist in Rome, and there are those situations that are what I would call magnified situations of spiritual work there if you will. But they are all done in the context of the Rite of exorcism and the prayers that are part of that Rite.
And it’s really interesting to see how almost in a – I think very much so in a sacramental way, in a ordered way, in a way that benefits from the prayer of the churches as a whole, the church first of all ministers to the individual, but then opens up for them the kingdom of God. And how when the kingdom of god is opened up in the life of an individual, the darkness that maybe there perhaps through no fault of their own, perhaps that because of choices that they’ve made in the past, whatever it maybe that darkness’ is dispersed. And people are free and they are made new for the first time. When you listen to the audio book and you hear the stories of some of the people, some who are religious, some who are just average everyday people you would see on the street and how their lives are transformed through the love of God that comes through the ministry of the church that is the minister of the church through exorcism. This is an awesome picture, something I had never realized, because I had you know pretty much been exposed to things like The Exorcist movie and so forth. And you know that is what I would consider the ministry of exorcism taken out of its context. You know they took the fantastic and then they magnified it, where the reality is the real power is in the prayer of the church and in the ministry of the church to the people, to the faithful and even those who are not faithful to call them into a relationship with God that frees them in their lives to live as fully human persons.
Chris Cash: All right, and you know I wish we could talk more about these – about all of these books, but you know we’re starting to run a little short on time. So, let’s kind of go a little quickly through some of the other more popular things you got. I know another…
Matt Wielgos: Well, you can tell Chris, I love my work and I love these audiobooks, so if you need to stop me, stop me.
Chris Cash: Absolutely. Let’s talk briefly, A Call To Love, you did that one recently. That ones being fairly well, correct?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, Carl Anderson and Father Jose Granados wrote Call To Love. And we had Paul Smith who is a great voice talent, many of your listeners may know him from the – his pseudo name that he goes by on the radio, Brian Patrick on EWTN’s Son Rise Morning Show. Did a great job reading this book for us, it is essentially a review or a practical application of John Paul II, Theology of the Body. And is a great, I would say practical expression of that Theology of the Body for the everyday person. When I spoke to the folks at The Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson is the grand knight there; I think it’s what they call him. They…
Chris Cash: Supreme knight. He’s the supreme knight.
Matt Wielgos: Supreme knight, yes. They expressed to me their desire to see many of their own members of the Knight to Columbus exposed to this work, and they felt for some reason I don’t know why that many of the members may not read it, but they may listen to it. So, that’s one of the reasons why we did this audiobook to get this message out to people in a different way, in a way that maybe was easier for them to encounter the message, and then incorporate it into their lives.
Chris Cash: And just to list of some of the other more popular things you have out right now, Jesus is my all and all, that’s Mother Theresa reflections, correct?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, it’s actually a audio version of the novena to Blessed Mother Theresa. That’s been promulgated by Mother Theresa’s order Father Brian Kolodiejchuk who is the postulator for her cause for canonization, put together her own words into this novena. And it’s been encouraged by the missionaries of Charity and others who love Mother Theresa to pray this novena for essentially the needs of your life. And what we’ve done with this is, it’s a shorter, it’s only a one CD audiobook we call it. But really it’s a prayer experience. We put it to music; we treated the words on the page as a prayer. It’s perfect for somebody to pick up a copy of this and on your drive to work throw out in your CD player, put it on your iPod and pray along on a daily basis through the nine day novena, multiple times during the course of your month or year or whatever it maybe. It’s a beautiful prayer and it is invoking the power of Mother Theresa’s prayer and intercession for our life.
Chris Cash: And then, you’ve also got Treasures in Clay, which is – now is that an autobiography of Fulton Sheen or is it just the biography?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, Fulton Sheen wrote his own autobiography. Many people may not have been exposed to this, especially people who are from my generation or beyond. Fulton Sheen wrote Treasure in Clay, actually just before he passed away. And it is a – just a chalk full of anecdote and spiritual wisdom and stories that will engage any listener from I would say from about 7 years on up. Father Greg Friedman whose a – the host of our American Catholic Radio program at Fransicscanradio.org. He voiced this audiobook and he entered into the spirit of Fulton Sheen in a unique way. When he was a young man as a child actually watching Fulton Sheen on the TV screen, he would actually put on a bishops, I guess they call it a cope or a cape, and he would maybe have a little *** [33:12], he pretended to be Fulton Sheen. As he – his parents who watched Fulton Sheen, his parents who watched Fulton Sheen on the TV screen, so it was a light for him and a real treasure for him to reproduce Fulton Sheen’s words. And I think he really captures some of the sense of Fulton Sheen and his delivery and how he – what he brought to his audience that he was so popular with back in the 50s and 60’s and even before that. And shares parts of his life that most people don’t know about it, his work with the missions overseas and his work as a bishop in his own diocese of *** [33:51] was something that most people have not heard about, because it happened beyond his television career.
Chris Cash: All right, well, Matt, we are out of time so we’re going to have to wrap this up, but you know you have a lot of new stuff that was coming out. You said it was coming out around June of next year?
Matt Wielgos: Yes, June of 2010, we have actually right now slated five audiobooks or maybe more than that. First one is My Life with the Saints Brothers changed my…
Chris Cash: You know what we’re – we will try to have you back on sometime around June when those books come out, so we can talk about them a little more in-depth and maybe even get some of those authors on to talk about ‘em as well.
Matt Wielgos: Oh, that’ll be great. Yes, and if I may share a Website where people can go look at our new releases that we update on a regular basis, as we put new things out, messengeraudio.com. If you go there, you’ll see all the new releases. You’ll also be able to link to our entire catalogue so people can take a look there.
Chris Cash: All right, well thank you much Matt for coming on this show and we will talk to you again soon. God bless.
Matt Wielgos: Hey, Chris, it’s been a pleasure. God bless you and your family and God bless you listeners as well. I’ve enjoyed talking to you all.
Chris Cash: All right, thank you.
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Transcript of Interview with Matt Wielgos about St. Anthony Audiobooks. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.
The Promise – God’s Purpose and Plan for When Life Hurts
The Rite – The Making of a Modern Exorcist
Treasure in Clay – The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen
All audio books