Church Life Today

Catholic schools extend and make present the life of Christ in his Church. Yes, Catholic education serves the students who are nurtured in its classrooms, but as we know the parents and families of those students are also often nurtured and even newly evangelized through the school. Catholic schools can be one of the most important ways in which the Church responds to the concrete needs and desires of a given community, and by doing so, draws people into intimacy and communion with Jesus Christ.Today I welcome to the show Dr. Matthew Vereecke, Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Dallas, who will share with us not only his vision for Catholic education, but also the way in which his growing and diverse diocese activates the Church’s evangelizing mission through its schools. Dr. Vereecke is in his seventh year as superintendent in Dallas, a role which he assumed after nearly a decade as a Catholic school director and as a principal.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institu

“A woman who knows she’s loved can do anything.” This fundamental belief animates the ministry of the Sisters of Life, who dedicate themselves to building up a culture of life and who work with the Lord to drive out the contempt for life in our world. It all begins with restoring the belief in one’s own belovedness before God.In collaboration with our McGrath Institute for Church Life and CampCampo film production company, the Sisters of Life have created a new, 12-part original series on accompanying women into life. The series is called “Into Life: Love Changes Everything.” This series will be released, for free, on March 25, 2022, along with accompanying study and discussion guides, that are especially well suited for parishes, schools, and ministry groups. The hope is to reframe the conversations around abortion and the beauty of life through helping people learn how to listen and understand the heart of another, how to rejoice in the beauty of the individual person in an encounter of hope, and how to tru

In countries with underfunded health systems, surgical care is often ignored and widely inaccessible to the poor. Local facilities lack appropriate supplies and equipment, medical professionals do not have the benefit of training in the latest techniques, and few can afford the high cost of surgery.An organization responding to this gap in healthcare is One World Surgery. Focusing heavily on forming local partnerships and capacity-building, One World Surgery has established a surgery center in Honduras and is developing one in the Dominican Republic. In Honduras, the Honduran staff leads the surgery center that serves patients on a daily basis, while volunteers and medical missionaries provide additional personnel support, education, and an extension into specialty services. Through its partnership with local health professionals and working in tandem with the local health care system, One World Surgery seeks to provide world-class surgical care and strengthen primary care for underserved communities.My guest

Does purgatory matter? Does it matter later, as in after we die? How about now? Does purgatory make a difference to who we are now as Christians, how we live now, what we are responsible for now, and our relationship to the dead now?My guest today has been researching and writing on purgatory for some time. Dr. Brett Salkeld is no stranger to the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where he has contributed to the Office for Life and Human Dignity, as well as to our Church Life Journal. He is the author of several books, including the recently released Transubstantiation: Theology, History and Christian Unity from Baker Academic, as well as the book Can Catholics and Evangelicals Agree about Purgatory and the Last Judgment?, which will figure into our conversation today. In addition to being the Archdiocesan Theologian of the Archdiocese of Regina in Canada, Brett also hosts the podcast “Thinking Faith,” where this very episode will also be shared. Today, my conversation with Brett is all about purgatory.Church

When people speak of “gender fluidity,” what is the understanding of the human body that is at play? When a researcher analyzes a dead body, are they seeing a still frame of what the body really is? How do we best conceive of––maybe even wonder about––the human body, and what does that mean for gender theories, feminist concerns, and biological sex?To guide us in thinking about all these things and more, Dr. Angela Franks joins me for a discussion today, building off of one of her recent essays which bears the title “The Body is a Formed Stream.” That essay appeared in the Church Life Journal. Dr. Franks is professor of theology at St. John’s seminary in Boston and Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge. I’m excited about this conversation today because I think that what Dr. Franks both lays out and proposes can help all of us to think more clearly and in a richer way about the questions of embodiment, sex, and gender that are so difficult to think through today.Church Life Today is a partn

How would an authentically Catholic feminism both dialogue with and meaningfully differ from secular feminism? This is the focus of a new program from The Catholic Woman. The program is called  “Cultivating Catholic Feminism.” It  seeks to establish a framework for Catholic feminism through lesson and story and, from that framework, to engage with secular feminism on a range of important topics. Today I welcome two guests to talk about this program’s aims, approach, and timeliness. Corynne Staresinic is founder and executive director of The Catholic Woman, an online based nonprofit that is dedicated to sharing stories and wisdom from Catholic women to affirm the goodness, unrepeatability, and dignity of every woman for the redemption of humankind and the Church. Abigail Favale is Dean of Humanities at George Fox University, who wrote and presents the 21 video lessons included in “Cultivating Catholic Feminism.” She is the author of Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion, and of the forthcoming book Th

Who am I when I’ve forgotten who I am? What does it mean to love God and be loved by God when I have forgotten who God is? These are the two main questions of John’s Swinton’s book on Living in the Memories of God, and these are the kind of questions that Xavier Symon is trying to explore in developing a more robust theology and philosophy of dementia.Xavier Symon is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Australia Catholic University’s Plunkett Centre for Ethics and currently scholar in residence at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute for Ethics. In an essay he published with our Church Life Journal, he proposes that Christian personalism offers promising avenues for pursuing a theology and philosophy of dementia, since Christian personalism leads us toward seeing and caring for whole persons. Today we will talk about conceptions of the self, the deconstruction of the ego, the loss and the dignity of those who suffer from dementia, and even the radical reversal of our commonplace understanding of personhood.C

It was the strength of the Israelites that scared the Pharaoh. You learn that in the first several verses of the Book of Exodus. The rest of the Book is about the journey to freedom: first the liberation from Egypt, then the training in freedom through the years in the desert. The whole journey concerns Israel’s growth as God’s own people.Since 2016, the Exodus 90 program has been following this same path: giving men a reliable structure of basic spiritual disciplines to grow in freedom. The point is to let the true strength of men become a gift for others.My guest today is the co-founder and CEO of Exodus 90, James Baxter. James has overseen the growth of this program from a handful of men in its first year to now over 50,000 men in over 70 countries around the world, and from hundreds of parishes all across the United States. I want to talk with James about the inspiration for this spiritual program, the fruits that it bears, and why something like this is so needed for men today.Church Life Today is a part

If you wait for certainty before acting, you will rarely ever act. More often, it is action that leads to certainty. We might expect to find a saying like that on an inspirational poster or as the takeaway from a motivational talk. But we might be surprised, challenged, and invigorated to consider such wisdom when approaching discernment, especially discernment of the priesthood. Rather than waiting for certainty to take the first step, start taking steps and build toward certainty. This, in a way, is the approach of a new guide to discernment produced by the Archdiocese of Boston, in the form of a series of short videos under the title “Sciavias: Know the Way of the Lord.” The creator of the series is Fr. Michael Zimmerman, assistant vocations director in the archdiocese, who joins me today to discuss discernment, the sanctification of time and place, and discovering true intimacy in the Christian life.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre

More than 8,000 miles separate students at the University of Notre Dame from students at St. Bakhita Vocational Training School in Northern Uganda, but a course in innovation and design thinking brings them together. The creator of that course is Wendy Angst, teaching professor in the Medoza College of Business at Notre Dame, where she also serves as assistant department chair in Management and Organization––she is also a fellow of the Pulte Institute for Global Development. Through a partnership with St. Bakhita’s begun in early 2020, Professor Angst has taught and guided Notre Dame undergraduate students in working with students at St. Bakhita’s and local community members to develop and strengthen this school that helps create opportunities for young girls who otherwise have few opportunities before them.One of the best places to learn about St. Bakhita’s Vocational Training School is on their Facebook page, where you can also link to ways to supporting St. Bakhita students, especially in the form of schol

On more than a few occasions on this show, we have hosted experts in media and technology, or education and family life, to talk about young people and the effects of digital and social media on their relationships and development. Today, I want to do something a little different, not in terms of content but in terms of conversation partner. That’s because my guest today is not someone talking about the ubiquity of technology in the lives of young people, but indeed a young adult who is living in this technological environment, and doesn’t like what he’s seen.Isaac Sullivan is a recent high school graduate from Lafayette, Indiana. He has been paying attention to what we have all seen elsewhere when a group of people get together in public: they’re technically together, but not really. They are all separately engaged with their phones. Isaac’s seen this very clearly in his own friend group for years now, and in this show he and I will talk about what he thinks about all that.Church Life Today is a partnership

Today I’m doing a different kind of show to bridge Advent and Christmas. I’m calling this episode, “The Three Wisemen”. My three guests are not here in the studio, nor are they joining me by phone. Instead, they are with us in their preaching. This episode is built around Advent and Christmas Sermons of the Saints. My guests will be the great British intellectual and churchman St. John Henry Newman; the martyred pastor of Munich, Fr. Alfred Delp; and the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, St. Oscar Romero. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ve selected some excerpts of Advent and Christmas homilies from each of these great preachers that I want to share with you. I’ll mix in a little of my own commentary, sort of as a first pass at really pondering the depth and power of their preaching. One of the things I love about hosting this show is that I get to interact with some brilliant, inspiring, and persuasive leaders in the Church, who help us all to be more knowledgeable and discerning about Church Life Today.

There is nothing not to like about today’s episode. Advent music, Christmas movies, and obsessive concern with “progressive solemnity,” with both well-reasoned and unfounded opinions mixed in.Joining me today is Carolyn Pirtle, program director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy. She’s going to take us through the sounds Advents, the films of Christmas, and more besides.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 sin of racism disfigures and hides the truth of the human person. The healthy response to sin is conversion, and conversion begins with begging the Lord for healing. That healing, though, provokes and necessitates change.My guest today is committed to helping to develop a Catholic response to the sin of racism, along these very lines.Gloria Purvis is well-known for in Catholic media in her capacities as radio host, TV series host and creator, and now as the host of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast” from America Media. Gloria was recently named as the inaugural Pastoral Fellow of the Notre Dame Office of Life and Human Dignity, in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. Through this fellowship she will develop resources for classroom teachers, co-create an online course addressing the theology of racial justice, deliver two public lectures on Notre Dame’s campus, and facilitate a workshop series for pastoral leaders equipping them for dialogue and engagement on issues of social justice. Today she joins me to foll

“Catholic Christans came into my community and they helped us with education, they helped us with healthcare, they helped us to find our self-respect and to realize our capabilities when the world had told us for so long that we were nothing and would amount to nothing. And I wanted to be part of that effort. That’s radical Christianity, that’s radical Catholicism. How do we find the needs of God’s people? How do we as a Catholic Christian community of believers say that we believe that God is active in our lives, and we want to share the Good News with you?”These are the words of Servant of God, Sr. Thea Bowman. She encountered the Gospel not just in the words but also in the actions of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration who came from Wisconsin down to Thea’s hometown of Canton, Mississippi and created new opportunities for education, for healthcare, for respect and dignity for Thea and other young black people like her in the segregated south of the early 20th Century. She was so attracted to the

It is Thanksgiving week and we want to celebrate that here on Church Life Today. I am going to do different kind of episode to mark the occasion. This episode is called “Eucharist Means Thanksgiving” and what I want to do is share with you quotes, passages, even a poem that invite us to deepen our appreciation for and wonder about the gift of Christ in the Eucharist as an exchange of thanksgiving. Now I know, of course, that the holiday Thanksgiving is not itself about the Eucharist. But this civic holiday is probably the closest in character to our religious holidays, and all the more because it is a feast of dedicated to giving thanks. For those who revere and adore the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we know that being transformed by that particular and unique “thanksgiving” should shape and transform our entire lives. So I hope you will spend the next half hour with me and a few guests who aren’t joining us by phone or in the studio, but rather through their meditations and prayer about the Eucharist meaning

Praying for the dead. This is a spiritual work of mercy, but does it really do anything? Do our prayers matter to the dead? Do the dead matter to us?I wanted to find us some help in understanding this practice of the Christian faith, and so I have invited Prof. John Cavadini to talk with us about his own practice of praying for the dead, the love of Christ poured out for us, and our communion with the dead in the Eucharist. Yes, these are theological matters, but they are also matters of devotion, of grieving, of longing, and of hope. I think that what we are about to talk about will matter to you. I think it will matter to me, too.If you’ve been listening to our show for some, 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

It is easy to bemoan the problems in the Church; it is harder to take the initiative to heal and renew the life of the Church, and to sacrifice for that renewal with all your own creativity and passion. But that is exactly what the Our Sunday Visitor Institute for Catholic Innovation is calling forth from leaders in the Church today. They want to help visionaries become the innovators who discover new means of evangelization and who revitalize the faithful’s responsibility for proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ.Dr. Matt Smith directs strategic alliances for the OSV Institute for Catholic Innovation, and today he joins me to talk about the tradition of innovation and its timeliness in the life of the Church today, while also highlighting some of the specific initiatives he and his team are working to develop to foster a culture of innovation for the Church.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 Vis

Meg Hunter-Kilmer has no time for bland, stale stories of saints. She is too busy reveling in the wild and diverse beauty of holy people. When their stories have not been told well, she seeks after the heart of their story and waits to see the drama, the glory, the full-fledged humanity that others have missed. And then she tells their stories. Meg tells the stories of the saints with passion, with care, with personality, with joy.Friends, I have read a lot of books about sanctity. I have read a lot of stories about saints. I have read a lot of books of stories about saints. But the book that Meg Hunter-Kilmer wrote stands apart. It is an education in true holiness, which depends on a willingness to see and accept the whole human condition. Her stories of saints are filled with piety and grace, but also with the afflictions, failures, abuses, and unrespectability of these very flesh and blood people who received and responded to the love of God in Christ.The book is Pray for Us: 75 Saints Who Sinned, Suffered

​​There was a time before the Second Vatican Council, and there is a time after. The time before is old, outdated, stodgy, stale, and lifeless. The time after is modern, progressive, adaptive, active, and alive. Out with the old and in with the new. That, at least, is the way Vatican II has often been portrayed, as a breaking point between liberals and traditionalists, between those who want to be relevant and those who want to be ancient.But maybe by interpreting Vatican II that way, we are seeing something that isn’t true. We are perhaps seeing a false image of the council, rather than seeing the council itself. That, in part, is what my guest on today’s show has to say to us, and he wants to help the Church and the world to rediscover the Second Vatican Council for what it truly is, not for what we have been led to think about it, one way or another.Fr. Blake Britton is the author of Reclaiming Vatican II: What It (Really) Said, What It Means, and How It Calls Us to Renew the Church. Fr. Blake is a priest