Christopher Check is president of Catholic Answers, the largest lay-run apologetics and evangelization organization in the English-speaking world. He holds a degree in English Literature from Rice University.
Christopher served for two decades as vice president of The Rockford Institute and before that for seven years as a field artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps in deployments and expeditions in the Far East and the Persian Gulf. His writings have appeared in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Catholic Answers Magazine, Touchstone, The Wanderer, Angelus, New Oxford Review, Culture Wars, and the Chicago Tribune.
He has addressed audiences at home and abroad including at the University of London, the Pontifical Augustinian University in Rome, the Serbian Writers Union in Belgrade, the National Press Club, Catholic Answers, the American Chesterton Society, Legatus, Catholic Citizens of Illinois, Saint Michael's Abbey, Silverado, California, Saint Gregory's Academy, The Institute for Catholic Culture, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Ave Maria University, Argument of the Month Club, and, most respectable of all, the Irish Rose Saloon in Rockford, Illinois. Christopher is the creator of The Lepanto Lectures, a series of audio lectures on topics in Salvation History from ancient times to the present day.
Lepanto: The Battle that Saved the Christian West
October is the month of the rosary, but most Catholics don’t know why. Learn how, on October 7, 1571, the Blessed Virgin Mary joined the most important sea battle of all time and saved the Christian West from Islamic conquest.
Making Sense of the Inquisition
No story sets itself so violently against the Catholic Church as the black legend of the Inquisition. The truth of the Inquisition (or, more accurately, Inquisitions) is quite different. This lecture looks at the scriptural and historical precedents for the Inquisition, dispels some of its most persistent myths, and equips Catholics to explain it to those who hold the Inquisition as the blackest of marks against the Church.
¡Viva Cristo Rey! The Cristeros and the Martyrs of the Mexican Revolution
In the 1920s the enemies of the Church seized control of the Mexican government and declared war on Catholicism. An army of tradesmen and farmers arose in defense of Christ the King. They were the Cristeros, and their tale of courage is among the great Catholic war stories of all time. It is a story American Catholics need to know as the freedom of Holy Mother Church comes under greater and greater assault by our own government.
What Were the Crusades?
To many, the Crusades were the brutal colonization of Palestine by savage French knights seeking untold wealth. This talk will make clear what the Crusades really were, and it will arm Catholics to answer the charge that Catholics should apologize for this glorious period in Church history.
Henry VIII’s Divorce
When Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon, he separated England from the Catholic Church. Henry’ defenders argue that his motives were merely political. This lecture lays bare Henry’s true (and much more sinister) motives and names the painful and widespread effects of the divorce that we suffer right down to the present day.
St. Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years’ War
Much of what we think we know of St. Joan of Arc ranges from pious legend to deliberate fabrication. The truth of her story, altogether unique in history, is more fascinating than the legends and the propaganda.
Liberation from e-Slavery
We have today more devices and systems with which to communicate than ever in history. Yet, far from strengthening human relationships, they render them more abstract and distant. Worse still, they serve as obstacles to our relationship with the divine. Find out how to navigate the “information superhighway” and find silence amidst the noise of modern communication technology.
Was Catherine of Siena a Feminist?
Feminists have long argued that Catherine of Siena, who told the pope in Avignon to get back to Rome, made it big in a man’s world. In this lecture you will learn the truth: St. Catherine’s life was one of death to self, a celebration of her suffering and the mercy of God, and an example for all of us today.
The Spanish Armada: The Catholic Version
American schoolchildren—or the handful that still study history—learn that the defeat of the Spanish Armada was the victory of the heroic Francis Drake and the noble Queen Elizabeth over the forces of imperial Spain determined to arrest religious and economic freedom with vessels laden with the torture devices of the Inquisition. Learn the truth of the Armada story: why King Philip II was justified in launching the invasion, what really brought down the Spanish force, and who the real heroes were.
For Cross and Crown: The War in the Vendée
The French Revolution is heralded as the great flowering of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In fact it was tyranny and terror: a deliberate war against tradition, against the crown, against marriage and the family, and most of all, against Jesus Christ and His Holy Church. In the west of France, however, the fiercely devout Catholic farmers and craftsmen of the Vendée formed a courageous army of and drove the Revolutionary Army of France from their soil. In the end they were crushed in what is certainly the first modern genocide, but their bravery and fervor are a much-needed inspiration in our own age of increasing persecution of the Church.
