Flying is impossible. Well, not strictly impossible, because we fly in airplanes and hot air balloons, but you know what I mean: human beings can’t fly. It’s impossible. 

Except here’s the thing: a good number of people –– hundreds, maybe thousands –– have sworn, upon penalty of damnation, that they have witnessed people flying, or at least levitating. People like Teresa of Avila and Joseph of Cupertino. About saints like these, a nearly overwhelming number of testimonies say the same thing over and over: “they flew”.

 If flying is impossible, then the history of saints who flew is a history of the impossible. And that is the book my guest wrote. The book is They Flew: A History of the Impossible. The author and my guest is the esteemed scholar Dr. Carlos Eire, the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. In addition to They Flew, Professor Eire is the author of several other important and award-winning books, including Waiting for Snow in Havana, which won the National Book Award, War Against Idols, A Very Brief History of Eternity, and Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1560. 

Professor Eire joined us at the University of Notre Dame to deliver a lecture in our Saturdays with the Saintsseries, and a link to the recording of that lecture is included in this episode’s show notes.

Follow-up Resources:

• They Flew: A History of the Impossible, by Carlos Eire
• “The Trouble with Levitation and Bilocation,” by Carlos Eire, journal article in Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Notre Dame professors Abigail Favale and Brett Robinson join me today to talk about Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ. This is the second of two conversations on the encyclical that we are featuring on Church Life Today, each with faculty colleagues of mine from the McGrath Institute for Church Life. In this episode, we will talk about poetry and symbolism, artificial intelligence and algorithms, the importance of memory, the human person as a living union, and more.

 Abigail Favale is Professor of the Practice at Notre Dame, where her academic expertise brings her to the intersection of theology, literature, and women’s studies. 

Brett Robinson is Associate Director of Outreach and Associate Professor of the Practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. He leads a number of initiatives in our institute, especially ones related to Catholic media studies.

Follow-up Resources:

• Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ
• Part 1 of the conversation on the new encyclical, with Melissa Moschella and Joshua McManaway, podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Sacred Heart of the New Encyclical,” by Leonard DeLorenzo, essay in Church Life Journal
•  “Some Human Beings Carry Remnants of Other Human Beings in Their Bodies,” by Kristin Collier, essay in Church Life Journal
• On the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by the Sisters of Carmel

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be given to you besides.” When the Lord speaks to his disciples about anxieties, about busyness, about the hustle and bustle of the world, he does not lead them to abandon everything and run away; rather, he leads them to put the first thing first, and allow everything to come into the proper place thereafter. The life of integration, of wholeness, indeed of true holiness is rooted in putting God first and giving Him the authority to form you, guide you, and send you on mission. The monastic tradition has long offered pathways to this ordered, harmonious, rightly prioritized life, building communities where God is pursued first and in all things, while work and play and rest and learning and daily needs are organized with this first and truly necessary thing. But for those of us who do not enter monastic life, who live in the midst of the world with worldly anxieties and busyness and the hustle and bustle, we might think ourselves cut off from that wisdom.

Enter my guest today: John Cannon. He knows his way around the world, but he was significantly and definitively formed in a Carmelite monastery, where he was a monk for seven years. His mission now is to bring the order and harmony of the monastery, the fruits of that integrated life lived for and with the Lord, into the world. In particular, he serves and works with Catholic CEOs, founders, and investors to help them grow their ventures and their faith. He also launched Monk Mindset, which offers all of us, regardless of our jobs or stations in life, the opportunity to incorporate the simplicity, order, and harmony of the monastic life into our everyday lives.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn about SENT Ventures, which helps you lead your business with the collective wisdom of a faith-aligned community.
• Find information about the SENT Summit 2024, which will take place September 3–6, 2024, in Dallas-Fort Worth.
• Visit Monk Mindset, where you can sign up for a weekly newsletter, find a guide for building your daily and weekly schedule in alignment with monastic wisdom, and begin to seek greater order, harmony, and simplicity.
• “Monastic Life and Human Ecology, with Abbot Austin Murphy, OSB,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “You Gotta Confront Who You Are!” by Travis Lacy, article in Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What happens online does not stay online. The borders between the digital world andthe flesh and blood world have become rather porous. The ways we think, speak,and act in the digital environment bears meaning for how we think, speak, andact offline, and vice versa, at least to some extent. When we search around inmedia for Catholic voices, or for how Catholics engage with each other in thedigital space, what we find is conduct that is often far from charitable, andcontent that leads more readily to polarization than communion. What is theimpact, then, of digital media and the ways of being that are fashioned indigital space on concrete Catholic communities, like the parish?My guest today is paying close attention to these phenomena and workingto help develop ways and habits of communicating that are more conducive to theGospel. Deacon Matthew Kuna is a transitional deacon in the Diocese ofAllentown, who is finishing up his study and formation for the priesthood atSt. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He is also a member of theinaugural cohort in the McGrath Institute for Church Life’s ChurchCommunications Ecology Program, where pastors, lay ministers, and educators arecalled to respond to the myriad pastoral challenges raised by life in thedigital age. He joins me to talk about the ways in which our environments shapeus––especially the digital environment––and how we might create betterconditions for disciples to be formed for healthy, responsible, and discerningengagement in our increasingly digital world.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

​​“O God, smash the teeth in their mouths!”“Make their eyes so dim they cannot see.”“May his children be fatherless, his wife, a widow.”Who prays like that? Well, we do: Christians. Those petitions––those curses––that I justrecited come from Psalm 58, Psalm 69, and Psalm 109. But we don’t hear themvery often: not in the public liturgy as at Mass, not in the liturgy of thehours that we might pray alone. What is being lost by not praying things likethat, in just those words: the words of Scripture––the Psalms?These are examples of the imprecatory psalms. My guest today says we need to bring backthese psalms into the regular of the Church. He wrote an essay for our ChurchLife Journal with the very direct title, “Bring Back the Imprecatory Psalms.”This is the voice of Christ himself, who in praying the psalms took on eventhese cries, which the abused and oppressed offer up to God against theirvictimizers and the wicked.Timothy Troutner is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at Notre Dame, where hefocuses on the doctrine of creation and the place of language. He is here totalk about this call to bring back the imprecatory psalms, especially now inthe wake of scandals in the Church and the seeming prosperity of the wicked atthe expense of the lowly across the world today.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What does it take to create a world? Well, you might think it requires you to be God. So why don’t we ask the question about a literary world, but nevertheless a complete world, with a comprehensive vision, an atmosphere and a history and languages, customs, and traditions. We might think few people are capable of creating such things, and we are definitely right in thinking that. Yet there are some authors––some artists––who manage such a feat, and one such figure who stands perhaps above just about any other in the powers and fruits of creation is J. R. R. Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings. So let’s ask our question again: What did it take for Tolkien to create Middle-earth? And that is where today’s episode comes in. Many might think that Tolkien was a stand-alone genius, to whom ideas and images came complete unto themselves and without precedent. We might think his work is something like “pure originality” in that he conjures things up out of nothing, as if he were quite a bit like God who is indeed an uncreated creator. Or we might think that any influences Tolkien had, however dim they might be, are all located in the past, which accorded more with his special area of scholarly expertise. But today, we will consider the modern influences on Tolkien’s creative imagination, and in so doing we will think about what a creative imagination is and how a Catholic like Tolkien exercises his imagination.To guide us on our quest, Dr. Holly Ordway joins us today. Dr. Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Fellow of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, whose recently published book is Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When a Catholic parish is being what is called to be, what does that look like? What are the marks of healthy and vibrant parish life? If we really tended to questions like these, we might find ourselves changing our perceptions of what it is we want from our parishes. And that, my friends, may very well mean that we have to change what we ourselves give to our parishes.My guest today invests her time and energy in helping parishes realize their mission, especially through forming Catholics for lives of vibrant discipleship. Katherine Coolidge is Director for Parish and Diocesan Services at the Catherine of Siena Institute. She joins me today to talk about where we are in parish life, where we should be, and how we get from one to the other.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“Nothing new can happen between my son and me. And while I have taught the parable of the prodigal son many times, these days I feel not just why, when the lost is found, there is great cause for celebration, but how truly the zest goes out of life with such a loss. There is no word for the pairings of emotions one feels in grief—the enormity of love mixed with the enormity of sorrow.”Those words come from Robert Cording in an essay he published in the Image journal with the title, “In the Unwalled City.” In this remarkable essay, he puts into words what cannot be contained in words: his grief for the death of his son Daniel, his desire to keep communion alive with his son, and his duty of remembrance that raises his son to life in his own life. I reached out to Professor Cording after reading his essay and he graciously agreed to join me here on our show today.If you’ve been listening to recent episodes of our show, you know that I am working on a project between my own McGrath Institute for Church Life and Ave Maria Press about our relationship with our beloved dead. This is part of a book I am writing on this topic. As part of the project, I’ve been talking with people about their memories of and their hopes for their beloved dead. I’ve asked a few of those people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so you can listen in, too. This is the third of these episodes––on the previous two I hosted Laura Kelly Fanucci and Stephanie DePrez.My guest today––Robert Cording––is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross. His most recent poetry collection is Without My Asking (CavanKerry). You can find some of his other recent work in the Georgia Review, New Ohio Review, Hudson Review, and The Common.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

We are developing a mini-series here on Church Life Today about the relationship with our beloved dead. We’re talking about death, grief, longing, hope, and a lot more. This is connected to a project I myself am working on between the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press, which is a book on this topic. Animating that project are questions like “Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us, who remain?”I have been talking with people about their experiences of the death of loved ones and their desire for communion with them. I’m not recording all of these conversations, but I have asked a couple people—and maybe I’ll ask more––if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so that you can listen in, too. This is the second of those episodes, the first of which appeared under the title “Heaven in the Midst of Death.”My guest today is my friend Stephanie DePrez, a professional opera singer, a comedian, a voice coach, an artist. I’m so grateful to her for her willingness to talk with us today about her mom, Susie DePrez, and her own grief, desire, and hope.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us,who remain?”Those questions are animating a project I’m working on between the McGrath Institutefor Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press as part of the EngagingCatholicism series. To help with this project, I have asked a few people ifthey would talk with me about their experiences of grief, about their hope forcommunion with loved ones who have died, and about their images of Heaven. I’mnot recording all of these conversations, but I am asking a couple (or maybethree) people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show sothat you can listen in, too.Today is the first of those couple or maybe three episodes. My guest is Laura KellyFanucci, a writer and speaker who has worked extensively on grief and longingand hope and vocation. But she’s also got a story you’ve got to hear. Thanksfor listening in.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What do you want? We get asked a question like that often: when you order at a restaurant, when generating a Christmas list, when at a crossroads in a dating relationship. But of course, there are differing levels of seriousness to that question: sometimes it is what do you prefer or what strikes your fancy, and sometimes it is what do you really want. In other words, what do you desire? It is hard to think of a more piercing or demanding question than that: what do you desire? What do you really want? But then again, there is another question that goes right along with that one that most of us don’t confront even if we do take seriously the question of what we want. That other question is how do we want… how do we desire. And it is precisely that hidden question of “how do you desire” right alongside the slightly more evident question of “what do you want” that my guest on today’s show takes utterly seriously, and helps us to take seriously, too. Luke Burgis teaches business at the Catholic University of America, where he is also Entrepreneur-in-Residence. An entrepreneur himself, he has co-created and founded four companies in wellness, consumer products, and technology. Now he is managing partner of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator that he started to build, train, and invest in people and companies that contribute to a healthy human ecology. On the basis of his extensive experience along with his equally extensive classical training, research, and spiritual formation, Luke has authored a book filled with stories of woe and transformation, analysis of the mysterious workings of desire, and proposals for beginning to lead a healthier, more creative, truly human life. His book is Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. You can find an excerpt of the book in the Church Life Journal in an article titled, “The Joy of Hate Watching.”

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“While the shift to at-home learning has underscored the ubiquity of learning, [especially since March 2020, it has also cast into sharp relief [a crucial but suddenly imperiled dimension of education, which is] the distinct gift of teachers and artful teaching.” Those words appeared in the Church Life Journal as part of an essay titled, “New Pathways for Catholic Schools After the Pandemic.” The author of that essay is Dr. Kati Macaluso. Kati works and teaches at the University of Notre Dame within the Institute for Educational Initiatives, where she forms new teachers and helps to strengthen Catholic schools all across the country. She enables us to see that the experiences of education over the past year now force upon us urgent questions about the meaning and end of education, about the special mission of Catholic education, and about what exactly we hope that our children receive through their education. What Kati has to share would always be relevant, but in our day and age it is not only relevant but timely and even prophetic.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What if your decisions about how to use technology were based on your fundamental beliefs about what it means to be a human being, and what human flourishing is? Now, what if your children also made their decisions about technology in that way? I know that sounds like a doubly-tall task, like a fantastic sort of idealism. But what if I told you that this is not only doable, but utterly practical and liberating? And I know just the book that can help you think about the right use of technology, and help your kids to do so, too. My guest today is the author of that book. She is Amy Crouch, who wrote My Tech-wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices. In fact, she wrote this book when she was 19. I have read more books about technology than I’d like to admit, and I can tell you that this book is among the very best. Part of what makes it so spectacular is that Amy gives us a practical vision of how she and her family made their decisions about technology as a community and developed specific, intentional practices to cultivate their most cherished values while avoiding potential vices. And the book is just so readable, and enlightening. Amy joins me today to talk not just about her book, but about the vision of the good life that underlies her “tech-wise life” and how we can all make very small and practical decisions to be more fully and genuinely human.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit” (John 15:5).

Disciples are Christ’s branches. We grow from him. His life courses through us. The fruit we bear is the sign of his love.

As the Eucharistic Revival in the United States reaches its culmination this summer, we at Notre Dame are marking the occasion in a special way, with the performance of an original, three-act musical called “Behold God’s Love.” The first of the three acts is “Root”, which draw us into the Book of Exodus, where we encounter the Passover and the Manna in the Desert. The second act is “Vine,” which focuses on the Last Supper and Jesus’ meal ministry. And the third act is “Branches,” where we join the early Christian community at Corinth to receive the Eucharistic teaching and gift.

Today, the creator and composer of this new musical joins me to talk about what we can expect and how we will benefit, in our faith and reverence, from enjoying this work of art. Carolyn Pirtle is Program Director of the Center for Liturgy, here in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. She and her cast are preparing this musical now, which will be performed twice on July 6, 2024, both at 1pm and at 7pm in the O’Laughlin Auditorium at Saint Mary’s College. It is a free but ticketed event, and you can get your tickets before they run out at the link in our show notes.

Follow-up Resources:

• Find more information about and tickets for “Behold God’s Love” 
• “Eucharistic Beliefs among Adult Catholics, with Tim O’Malley,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Preparing for First Communion, Part 2: The Passover and the Last Supper,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Rekindling Eucharistic Amazement, with Jem Sullivan,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Passion, with J.J. Wright,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

This episode is sponsored by Catholic Charities USA.  Help Catholic Charities serve your neighbors in need. Join us at www.WeAreThere.US

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When we educate our children, what are we educating them for? In the Catholic tradition, the end of education has always been sanctity: to form truly free, wise, virtuous disciples who love God and their neighbor. This kind of education concerns the cultivation of the whole person: mind and body, heart and imagination, especially in terms of the habits developed, the affections nurtured, and the abilities fostered and ultimately perfected.Over the past year on this show, I have spoken with a number of leaders across the country in Catholic education, including some who are reclaiming and reproposing classical, liberal arts education as distinctively conducive to the aims of Catholic formation and the holistic education of young people. If you have been listening to our show for a while, you may remember an interview with Elisabeth Sullivan of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, as well as a pair of interviews with Thomas Curtin, Head of School at Our Lady of the Rosary in Greeneville, South Carolina. If you don’t remember those, you can find those episodes on our podcast––and I recommend them to you.In line with those episodes, today’s conversation will also focus classical, liberal arts education in the Catholic tradition, except this time, it is all a bit closer to home… at least to my home, in South Bend, Indiana. My guest is Dr. Margaret Blume Freddoso, Head of School and board member of the St. Thomas More Academy in South Bend, which is a private, independent classical liberal arts school in the Catholic tradition, opening its doors with full enrollment in August 2021. Margaret holds a PhD in theology from the University of Notre Dame, as well as a BA from Yale University. Along with President of the Board at St. Thomas More Academy, Dr. Kirk Doran, and others, Margaret has been laying the foundation for and is now building this new classical, liberal arts school to pursue the ideals of a robust Catholic education, with a view to the full dignity and splendor of the human person in Christ.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Would you ever consider moving thousands of miles for the primary purpose of living in a committed and passionate Catholic community? Of course, people move all the time for jobs and other reasons, but to make the pursuit of a Catholic environment the main reason for a major move seems a bit unconventional. Today, we are going to talk about the unconventional with someone who is seeing just this sort of 6thing happen… and who is helping it to happen.My guest is Thomas Curtin, Headmaster at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina. Tommy joined me on a previous episode to talk about his work of building this particular Catholic school from the ground up, expanding from an elementary school to a K–12 institution that is modeled more on the family than on a university. I am happy to welcome him back to talk about some of the fruits of the kind of school he, his pastor, and the parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary have been building, specifically in terms of Catholic families from all over the country moving to join their community. 

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When we are young, we need the guidance of mentors. We never really outgrow that need for guidance, but at some point, a change must take place if we are to reach maturity. Instead of always being the one who is guided and mentored, we become the ones who provide the guidance and mentoring to others. We stop always looking for the adult in the room because we have become the adult in the room.My guest today was recently awakened to the fact that she is very much at the threshold of that transition. Sarah Pelrine is a bona fide young adult Catholic, but one who is quickly moving away from the “young” part of that description and instead stepping into what it means to be an adult Catholic, a mature disciple. Professionally, Sarah works in the Archdiocese of Chicago where she applies her training in both theology and in business to help parishes undertake organizational transformations to better pursue their mission of evangelization. Personally, Sarah is relatively recently married but previously spent a great deal of time in her formative twentysomething years living and working in L’Arche communities. Together, we will talk about what we need and what we don’t need to be well-formed, engaged, and mature people of faith.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The heart of the Christian is not his own. Instead, our hearts belong to Christ. Our lives as Christ’s disciples are an ongoing formation to love what he loves, to care for those whom he cares about, and to join him in offering our hearts to the Father. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is open to all of us.Fr. Joe Laramie of the Society of Jesus has been praying into the Heart of Jesus for decades. But now, he has been called to bring people from all across the country into this devotion, joining in the prayer of Jesus and offering our own hearts to the Lord. Fr. Joe serves as the National Director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, through which Catholics and others around the globe pray and work to meet the challenges of the world identified by the Pope in his monthly intentions, all while allowing the heart of Jesus to form our own hearts.Fr. Joe joins me today to talk about this apostleship of prayer, the relationship of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Ignatian Spirituality, and even his own book, Abide in the Heart of Christ, which leads people through a 10-day retreat at home.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.” But do we, as Catholics, really understand what the Eucharist is? Let me rephrase that: do we really understand who the Eucharist is? Actually, let me try one more time: Do we fully revere and adore him who meets us in the Eucharist? Maybe we could use some help with all of that.My friend and colleague Tim O’Malley has written a book that will help all of us both to understand the Eucharist better and, especially, to grow in our love of the Eucharist through devotion, prayer, and longing. Tim’s new book is Real Presence: What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter? The book is part of the new “Engaging Catholicism” series from our McGrath Institute for Church Life through Ave Maria Press, where we explore important but perhaps misunderstood doctrines and devotions of the Catholic faith.In Real Presence, Tim teaches us about the related but distinct doctrines of transubstantiation and of the real presence, but he does more than merely teach us things to know. He shows us how what we come to understand must be joined to how we pray, and how we allow the Lord to transform and illumine our spiritual senses as we meet him in the Eucharist. This is an utterly practical book even as it is an utterly learned book. And today, Tim joins me to talk about the Eucharist, Eucharistic formation, and Eucharistic spirituality.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. You’re familiar with that, aren’t you? But have you ever really thought about what that is saying. God loved the world. This world. This world that does not love God very well, and in fact more often rejects God that welcomes him. God loved this world so much that He gave this world what is most precious, most intimate, most beautiful: his only begotten Son. And you know what can embody and manifest that kind of love? Filmmaking. And television. I bet you didn’t see that coming. And I bet that you haven’t thought about the art of filmmaking or television in quite the way that my guest today thinks about it. But that’s why we’re here: to listen to what he has to say about it. My guest is Doug Tooke, Vice President for Ministry Advancement at Outside Da Box Films and Renovo Media Group. No one has ever had a boring conversation with Doug Tooke. You and I both are going to enjoy this conversation.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“Life, for the vast majority of humans, is not very glamorous. It involves doing a lot of boring and tedious things like paying taxes, cooking dinner, and sweeping the floor. And yet, these everyday tasks seem to vex Millennials; this generation has suffered from widespread ridicule for laziness and for the inability to grow up. But, somewhat paradoxically, Millennials also seem exhausted.” Those words open an essay recently published through the Church Life Journal, where the experience of work and its consequences for especially Millennials living today was juxtaposed with the understanding of work that emerges from the Christian tradition and is hidden within the life of Christ. The essay is entitled “A Catholic Response to Workism: How to Lose a Life.” The author is my guest on today’s show. She is Elizabeth Klein, Assistant Professor of Theology at the Augustine Institute.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The desire for Truth. The Passion for discovery. The education of reason. The fundamental claim about what it means to be a human being. Being formed as a person of faith through the rigors of the scientific method. All these things and more were discussed in the first part of my two-part conversation with Sofia Carozza, a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge, studying in the field in neuroscience. Sofia is back for the second part of our conversation, to talk about the role of morality in the training of scientists, the breaking from disordered attachments, the education of desire, and prayer and companionship. I’m Leonard DeLorenzo, this is Church Life Today, a production of the McGrath Institute for Church Life in collaboration with the Spoke Street Media Network. I’m glad you’re here.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I’m a scientist. A Catholic scientist.” That might be how we would imagine an introduction in a support group for people who share a common problem. In this case, the problem would be being a person of faith in a field or profession within the sciences where prayer, belief, and openness to God would typically make you seem like less than you really should be. Or maybe we would imagine that, at best, the Catholic scientist can defend or give an adequate apology for religion and science being compatible. In other words, “It’s okay. Really. These things can coexist. I promise.” But what if we’ve gotten all wrong. What if rather than a problem to be eradicated or a dimension to be defended, there is a more profound, integral, and mutually enriching relationship to be heralded and explored in the person who is at once a person of faith and a person of reason: a Catholic and a scientist. That wider space is where my guest today leads us. She is Sofia Carozza, a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge where she researches the neurobiological pathways through which early adversity affects the developing brain. She was the 2019 valedictorian of the University of Notre Dame, and now, in addition to her graduate work in neuroscience, she blogs at Synapses of the Soul and co-hosts the podcast, The Pilgrim Soul. Sofia and I will share a two-part conversation, and this is part one.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

According to one recent study, fully half of the twentysomethings who were raised Catholic no longer practice the Catholic faith or name themselves as Catholic. Half. That’s troubling, isn’t it? Other recent studies have tracked the rates of disaffiliation from the Church and tried to identify some of the root causes of that disaffiliation. It is important for us to understand why young people are leaving the Church, but it is perhaps even more important to show young adults a Church they want to be a part of. That they desire to be a part of. That they are invested in and which is worthy of their investment and even their sacrifice. Nicole Perone is working toward that end. She is the National Coordinator of ESTEEM, a faith-based leadership program for Catholic students at colleges and universities across the United States. She joins me to talk about the challenges and opportunities of forming young adults for lifelong affiliation in the Church, the importance of mentoring and of developing leaders, and how we move together from being satisfied with cozy religious experiences toward becoming fully committed, courageous Catholics.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The Lord gives us what we cannot make or do for ourselves. Our first task in life is to receive. And from what we receive, we are to be changed. The mystery of the Eucharist abides in that exchange: receiving, becoming.

In a new book titled Eucharist: The Real Presence of Christ, my longtime friend Tania Geist presents twelve substantive Eucharistic reflections that help small groups discover, discuss, prepare for, and respond to the gift and mission of the Eucharist. Our conversation today will touch on the meaning of the Eucharist, the gift of peace, God sustaining us with simplicity and joy, and the movement from possessiveness to gratitude.

About today's guest: Tania M. Geist has worked as an editor and writer of Catholic books, newspapers, journals, and other media. Her reflections in these pages have been especially shaped by her time studying theology and philosophy at Blackfriars of Oxford University; her years translating and editing Pope Benedict XVI’s preaching for L’Osservatore Romano newspaper inside Vatican City, and the decade during which her young family was part of the community at the University of Notre Dame. There, she received a master’s degree in systematic theology and served as an editor for Church Life Journal.

Geist currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island, with her scripture-scholar husband and their four spunky young children. As a small business owner, she runs Book Pocket, LLC, which provides editorial and audio event services.

Follow-up Resources:

• Eucharist: The Real Presence of Christ by Tania Geist
• “The Folly of Mine” by Tania Geist, article in the Church Life Journal
• “Matter Matters: One the Need for a Pastoral Theology of Radical Particularity” by Tania Geist, article in the Church Life Journal
• “Motherhood and the Paschal Mystery” by Tania Geist, article in the Church Life Journal
• “Eucharist Beliefs Among Adult Catholics, with Tim O’Malley,” podcast episode on Church Life Today
• “Augustine on the Eucharist, with Elizabeth Klein,” podcast episode on Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

If you want to remain comfortable, do not let Jesus ask you questions. I learned this the hard way a few years ago when I decided that as a Lenten practice, I would spend time each day reflecting on and praying with the questions that Jesus asks in the Gospels. If you have ever looked for these, you’ll notice that he asks a lot of questions. • What are you looking for?• Why do you call me good?• How does your concern affect me?• Does this shock you?• Do you want to be well?• Have you anything here to eat?And on and on. What I found is that the more I dwelt with Jesus’ questions, the more I discovered that I was being moved by Jesus away from my own comfort zones. Those are the zones of my own thoughts, of my own vague desires, of my own expectations. Of course, I didn’t just read these questions––I read the pericopes in the Gospels where they are set. I found myself connecting these episodes and these questions to other parts of Scripture. And then I started writing. And writing. And writing. In turns out that I had stumbled into scriptural pilgrimage. I don’t know how us to put this but to say that Jesus led me by his questions through a prolonged examination of conscience, towards his suffering, and even to glimpse anew the glory of his resurrection.Reflecting on and praying with the questions of Jesus turned out to be a very appropriate, very challenging, and very renewing Lenten practice. So I want to share a bit that with you today.Our episode today is pretty straightforward. I am going to select a few of these questions of Jesus. I tell you what the question is, I will read the Gospel passage in which it is set, and then I will share with my reflection on that question. Maybe this will spark an interest in you to take the chance of letting Jesus ask you his questions.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

To be a parent is to be busy. We often start by wanting to get everything just right but end up just trying to hold things together. And then Lent comes around, and we either dream up fantastic spiritual regimens for ourselves, or we think, “Gosh, I can’t do another thing.” This is normal. What’s more, Lent is for normal people––not superheroes, not gluttons for spiritual punishment. But especially for us parents, we might need a little help, a little guidance, for learning how to pray through Lent.Well, I’ve got good news: Maria Morrow wrote a book for us. It is called A Busy Parent’s Guide to a Meaningful Lent, available now from Our Sunday Visitor. In this book she shows us how to develop the habit of prayerfulness as busy parents, who are bound by all kinds of constraints. It is a practical book, because the best spiritual things are always the most practical things: they have to do with how we actually live our lives.Dr. Morrow is a scholar of American Catholicism and Catholic parenting, among other interests, and she serves as an Adjunct Professor of Catholic Studies at Seton Hall University. I am grateful that she’s made time to talk about her book, parenting and Lent with me

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“We have to imagine a people so deeply committed to their neighbors that they would risk their lives for them—and risk their lives perhaps not even to save them, but simply to be present and perhaps to speak to them of another life. As we imagine that, we begin to see the enormity and beauty of our own vocation as Christians.” This at the very heart of what it means to be “pro-life”Those are the words of Holly Taylor Coolman, who invites and challenges us, as Christians, to heed the central call of the Gospel to provide care to the suffering, to offer hospitality to those who in need, and to build communities that are indeed “pro-life”, through and through. Dr. Taylor Coolman is assistant professor of theology at Providence College, where she also serves as chair of the department of theology. She is here to talk with me about foster care, in particular, which was the subject of an essay she published in our Church Life Journal, and a call she has heeded in her own life.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In the blink of an eye, digital technologies went from supplemental and exploratory in education to primary and necessary for continuing instruction during a global pandemic. This has been true in higher education as much as anywhere else. But how do you quickly move in-person learning experience into an online experience in an emergency, and then how do you plan for an entire semester of dual-mode instruction, with in-person and online education happening simultaneously? And what does this all mean for the present and future of higher education?These are the kinds of questions my guest asks and responds to. Elliott Visconsi is Associate Provost and Chief Academic Digital Officer at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also Associate Professor of English. He’s here to talk about the quick move digital instruction in Spring 2020, planning for dual-mode instruction in Fall 2020 and afterwards, and the role of technology and new modes of digital engagement for higher education, all for the ultimate goal of enriching, enhancing, and delivering transformational learning.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Over the past year, I have been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my two younger boys, now age 7 and 9. We were into the third volume––called “The Return of the King”—and had just concluded the chapter entitled “Houses of Healing.” This is after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, from which came great suffering and destruction, but also great bravery and friendship. In the Houses of Healing, the wounded are being tended to, though some are so deeply wounded that their recovery is uncertain or even doubtful. But then Aragon is summoned to the Houses of Healing and is eventually revealed as the true king because he has the power to heal those who are wounded in body and spirit––wounds so deep that the normal courses of treatment could not heal. And my 9-year-old, Josiah, suddenly said, “That’s like Jesus who showed his kingship by healing people.”I want to talk about this kind of healing today on our show. Not explicitly Jesus’ healing touch, but profound meditation that Tolkien invites into in his Lord of Rings, where the health and wellbeing of the wounded is never only physical, never just bodily, but indeed psychological and especially spiritual. Tolkien’s meditation emerges, of course, from his Catholic imagination, and so though not explicitly about Jesus’ healing, it is nevertheless about Jesus’ healing in and through others.To talk about these kinds of sicknesses and this kind of healing, I am so happy to welcome back to our show Dr. Kristin Collier, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, where she is also the director of the medical school’s Program on Health, Spirituality, and Religion.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

If you were to see the sacred, what would you see? Would you see beauty, light, color, form, simplicity, complexity, joy? One thing we can be sure of is that what we would see would be immersive and full-bodied. To really see the sacred is not about a fleeting or casual glance; it is a long, loving look that changes us.My guest today is an expert in helping people to “See the sacred,” She is Jill Alexy, who works with the Vatican Patron of the Arts, where she regularly takes people not only through the artistic treasures of the Vatican, but those scattered all throughout Rome and across Europe. She has launched a new initiative called “Seeing the Sacred,” that brings some of those treasures to you, where you are, while also teaching you and guiding you towards a more profound encounter with God through beauty. Let’s talk about Seeing the Sacred.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

If you could see the full expanse of the universe, do you think that might change your perspective? That probably seems ludicrous to even consider, but I gotta tell you: it happened to me. In 2006, I walked into a digital planetarium, and a couple hours later I walked out beginning to see things differently. The man I met when I walked in? Phil Sakimoto, former NASA astronomer, professional planetarian, and, for the past 15 or so years, my partner in creating the unique planetarium presentation, “All Creation Gives Praise”—a journey of scientific observation and theological reflection.Phil and I are together recording the audio for the final version of this presentation, which will soon become “exportable” to pretty much any other digital planetarium in the world.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In a world where forgiveness seems less and less possible because transgressions are rendered more and more permanent, how can there be a tomorrow? Or maybe we need to ask that question another way: Is there a Christian way to have a tomorrow? Professor Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown University seeks to show us what is at stake in questions like these. He joins me to discuss his new book, American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time, where he addresses the ills of our contemporary society and attempts to chart a path forward, partly dialogue with great social theorists like Alexis de Tocqueville and Plato.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Every child is a mystery, but as scientific advances in prenatal testing grow, so does the temptation to know more and more about our unborn children. Will they be healthy? What are the chances they will have a disability? With questions like these comes another question: how much is too much when it comes to trying to know who our children will be? My guest is Dr. Mary O’Callaghan, a developmental psychologist who, among other things, studies, writes about, and teaches on “disability selective abortion” and issues of human dignity.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In an age when belief in God seems more and more difficult to achieve, and perhaps less and less likely to be recommended, how do we commit our lives to God? This is indeed a spiritual question, but it is also a philosophical question, a question of incredible practical import, a question of faith and reason and beauty and imagination. My guest today dives deep into the question of belief in God for people like us, living in times like ours.Joining me is Fr. Ryan Duns, a member of the Society of Jesus and assistant professor of theology at Marquette University. We will be discussing his new book, Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age: Desmond and the Quest for God, which is out now from the University of Notre Dame Press.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Jessica Bross helps people find their stories, craft their stories, and tell their stories. In fact, she usually writes out other people’s stories in their own voice. Jessica ghostwrites memoirs. She listens to people, she listens more, she helps them find the desire that shapes a story or theme in their lives, then she writes that story for them and with them, creating a memoir that contains that story for themselves and others. You could say that she is in the business of helping people grasp and communicate the meaning, uniqueness, and importance of their own lives’ stories.

 Jessica is the founder and owner of Cider Spoons Stories, an Austin-based company that specializes in ghostwriting, editing, teaching, and coaching. Today Jessica joins me to talk about the memoir writing process, the impact it has on the memoirist, her skill and responsibilities as the ghostwriter, and the effect deep listening can have for all of us.

 Follow-up Resources:

• Cider Spoons Stories online at ciderspoonstories.com.
• Follow Jessica Bross on LinkedIn

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Do you have hope for the future of American politics? Is now the time for the pro-life movement to take a leading role in that future? We’re going think about things that like on today’s show, as I welcome Dr. Charlie Camosy, associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. We’ve got a lot to talk about, which means I’ll keep the intro brief.I’m Leonard DeLorenzo, this is Church Life Today, thanks for listening in.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When we think about bringing Catholic young people into adulthood, what should be included and prioritized for their formation as mature disciples? There is a lot we could talk about around that question, but today we will be talking about the crucial role of intellectual formation for Catholic young adults, especially in and around the college years. Joining me to talk about the intellectual formation of Catholic young adults is my friend and colleague, Dr. Tim O’Malley, who is the director of education in the McGrath Institute and teaches in the department of theology at Notre Dame. Among other books, Tim is the author of Liturgy and the New Evangelization, Bored Again Catholic: How the Mass Could Save Your Life, and Off the Hook: God, Love, Dating, and Marriage in a Hookup World.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When Time Magazine named Sister Norma Pimentel as one of the 100 most influential people of 2020, they said that she “has been on the front line of mercy for three decades.” The front lines of mercy. That’s where God’s preferential love for the poor and suffering meets people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, and seeking not just safety, but compassion. For Sister Norma, that meeting place is the area around the US-Mexico border, on both sides.Sr. Norma has been the executive director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley for over a decade. In that time, her organization has housed and assisted well over 100,000 people at the border. During his visit to the United States in 2015, Pope Francis thanked her personally for her work and witness. And in 2018, the University of Notre Dame awarded her the Laetare medal, which is the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.To talk about the sanctity of life amid the humanitarian crisis at the border as well as her own religious vocation and family history, Sr. Norma joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo, on Church Life Today from Redeemer Radio and the McGrath Institute for Church Life.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Every year more than 100,000 people visit Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart (though of course, the year 2020 may be an exception). Nevertheless, those who walk in the basilica’s doors, discover a worship space that is immaculately maintained, utterly impressive, and completely orderly. But the order and intentionality of that church is not merely a matter of polishing and tidying up; it is in fact written right into the space itself: a space that was intentionally designed and ordered with a theological and spiritual vision. That vision is perhaps most visible in the light that bends through and illuminates the 44 stained-glass windows that contain 220 scenes throughout the basilica. Those windows tell the stories of the radiance of God’s love in the lives of his saints and the events of salvation history. These are Stories in Light. Nancy Cavadini is co-author of the new book Stories in Light: A Guide to the Stained Glass of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. This is a beautiful book, both in how it is written and how it is presented, replete with full-color photographs of these windows. This work of art history and theology undertaken by Nancy Cavadini and her co-author Celicia Davis Cunningham, brings the stories of this remarkable church and its resplendent stained-glass to both those who have visited the Basilica and those who have not yet in a fresh and indeed illuminating way.

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Our reliance on digital technologies and media accelerated dramatically beginning in March 2020. When we could no longer gather in offices for work, in schools for learning, or even in churches for worship, we found ways to make do through screens and chats and webinars. Even as communities and institutions started to open back up in the late spring or summer months of 2020, the increased reliance on technology persisted and continues to influence how we live, work, pray, and communicate.But that shift was not new. Again, it was an acceleration of trends that started long ago. Without diving too much into the historical factors, I wanted to share a conversation in today’s show about that focuses on what we’re seeing in especially the digital landscape, what is going on with us in our everyday lives, and what this might mean for where we’re heading.So I invited my friend and colleague, Brett Robinson, who is a media scholar to talk a little bit informally about all these things.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

For Catholic Campus Ministries across the nation, the unprecedented interruptions to both typical campus life and the traditional ways of ministering to young people have generated frustration and trials, but also the possibility for rethinking approaches to ministry in terms of what is possible and what is most important. My guest today works with Catholic Campus Ministries across the country to help them sustain and enrich their work with young adults, and to meets the personal and spiritual needs of students in times certain or uncertain.Dr. Mike St. Pierre is executive director of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. The mission of his organization is to connect, equip, and inspire ministry professionals, so that they can evangelize, catechize, and nourish the faith lives of students in private and public colleges and universities. In addition to his work in campus ministry leadership, Dr. St. Pierre also writes regularly on topics such as rest and focus, breaking from an over-reliance on digital media, and prayer, both on his blog at mikestpierre.com and in his book, The 5 Habits of Prayerful People. Mike joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo, on Church Life Today, a production of the McGrath Institute for Church Life. And I’m very happy you’re joining us, too.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

This is Leonard DeLorenzo on Church Life Today. Thank you for joining us for the second-part of my two-part conversation with Daniel Philpott, Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. We’ve been talking about projects of reconciliation in international settings and we’ll continue that here, but we will also talk about the possibilities for reconciliation in the Church after the sexual abuse crisis and Christians promoting reconciliation in the public square.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Have you ever thought about Eucharistic justice? Professor Daniel Philpott has. He is my guest on Church Life Today, where will talk about the biblical notion of justice, the work of reconciliation after violence and civil strife, restoring people torn apart by offenses and indignities to right relationship.Daniel Philpott is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University and specializes in religion and global politics, focusing on religious freedom, reconciliation, the political behavior of religious actors, and Christian political theology. Professor Philpott joins me for two episodes, with this being the first. In the second episode, we'll talk about reconciliation in the Church after the sexual abuse crisis and the possibilities for Christians to promote a vision of reconciliation in the public square. If you’re listening on radio, the second part of our conversation will air next week, or if you’re listening on podcast, check out the next episode.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The Christian hope in the resurrection of the body is nothing short of absolutely radical. It not only gives meaning to the hereafter but also to the right now. Because if we are raised with our bodies, then everything that happens in our bodies, through our bodies, and with our bodies takes on permanent significance. Christians know this through their faith in Christ, who raised from the dead promises the same for those who live in him. But does this decisive aspect of our faith truly shape our imaginations and affect the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves, right now? This hope should change everything. And if you find hope like that hard to come by, especially in these recent months, then I’ve got just the book for you.Today on the show, I discuss the new novel End of Ending with the author, Josh Noem. This is Josh’s book debut, but believe me, he crafted a narrative of an ultimately hope-filled vision of this very ordinary world that I can’t help but think is just the kind of truly realistic fiction we need right now. Josh joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo, for this episode of Church Life Today, brought to you by the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and Redeemer Radio. We are recording this episode in-person, safely distanced, from the deck in Josh’s backyard.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What can we do to build a culture more welcoming of life and more devoted to upholding human dignity? Many might think those to be worthy pursuits, but have no idea what to actually do. But you know who not only has good ideas, but is putting those ideas into practice? My guest on today’s show.I am joined today by Jessica Keating, who serves as the director of the Office of Life and Human Dignity within the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame. Jessica holds a Master’s of Divinity degree from Notre Dame and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and sociology from St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia. In addition to her work in the office of life and human dignity, she is also completing a doctoral degree in systematic theology at Notre Dame. If you want to follow up on the resources or initiatives we will discuss today, please go to mcgrath.nd.edu/lifeandhumandignity.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

It’s hard—and getting harder—to discern the proper relationship between our Catholic faith and American political life. Perhaps it is time to reset the framework for how we engage politics as Catholics, even by broadening our understanding of our duty to public life beyond merely politics. In his new book, Citizens Yet Strangers, Kenneth Craycraft challenges Catholics to move away from individual liberal impulses of American political identity. He seeks to set out a vision for how we orient our moral and civic lives based on the dignity of the human person, through the practices of solidarity and subsidiarity, and toward a true and worthy vision of the common good.

Kenneth Craycraft is the James J. Gardner Family Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology, the seminary for the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. He writes a monthly syndicated column for OSV News, a weekly column for Our Sunday Visitor (“Grace is Everywhere”), and monthly columns for The Catholic Telegraph and the U.K.-based Catholic Herald. Dr. Craycraft is also the author of The American Myth of Religious Freedom. He is a licensed attorney in Ohio, who holds a Ph.D. in theology from Boston College and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

Follow-up Resources:

• Citizens Yet Stranger: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America (OSV, 2024), by Kenneth Craycraft
• “‘Say my name’: Self-Deception, Transparency, and Redemption in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, with Ken Craycraft,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The full vision of Catholic education spans from the beginning to the end of childhood, and on into who young people become as adults. It isn’t just about students: it is about their families, the community of faith, the very vision and life that is shared among people. My guest today speaks to this comprehensive vision of Catholic education from his perspective as the head of a k-12 Catholic school.Kyle Pietrantonio just completed his term as Head of School at Holy Spirit Preparatory School in Atlanta, where he served in school leadership for 15 years. He joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo on Church Life Today from the McGrath Institute for Church Life and Redeemer Radio.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Americans do not talk much about abortion, but we can under the right conditions. This is one of the conclusions that Dr. Tricia Bruce and her team of researches posit in the report on their groundbreaking and comprehensive interview study focusing on abortion attitudes in the United States. Dr. Bruce is joining me for the second of a two-part interview on her report “How Americans Understand Abortion.” Dr. Bruce’s study was conducted in partnership with the McGrath Institute for Church Life and you can download a copy of the report for free at mcgrath.nd.edu/resources.I’m Leonard DeLorenzo, this is Church Life Today, and you can find part 1 of my interview with Dr. Bruce on our Church Life Today podcast.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

American do not talk much about abortion. That’s sounds strange, doesn’t it? We seem to hear a lot about abortion in the news, in politics, in relation to the Supreme Court, but in terms of everyday Americans in their interpersonal conversations, we are actually very quiet about abortion..This is part of what Dr. Tricia Bruce and her team of researchers discovered in their groundbreaking and comprehensive interview study of abortion attitudes in the United States among “every Americans.” The report of their study was released in mid-July 2020 under the title “How Americans Understand Abortion.” This study was undertaken in partnership with our McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, and you can download a copy of this report for free at mcgrath.nd.edu/resources.Today Dr. Bruce joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo, for a two-part interview to discuss her report and to offer us some observations and insights about American attitudes towards abortion. This is part 1 of our interview, while part 2 will air next week on Redeemer radio or, if you are listening on our podcast, part 2 is the very next episode.------Live: www.redeemerradio.comFollow Redeemer Radio on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@RedeemerRadioFollow McGrath Institute for Church Life on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram:@McGrathNDSubscribe to the Podcast:iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.