Church Life Today

If you attend Mass regularly, maybe you’ve thought that your parish is a little less full than it had been before the pandemic. Or, maybe you’re someone who has noticed that you yourself haven’t been attending Sunday Mass quite as consistently as you did before. Some parish and diocesan leaders have some evidence about their own Mass attendance numbers to confirm the perceived drop in participation, but many of the rest have hunches or our own unscientific observations. Regardless, for everyone who notices and is concerned about the decrease in Mass attendance, the question of whether or not those who are not there will come back lingers.Thanks to a new report from Vinea Research, we now have survey data to support or challenge our assumptions, and to give us some reliable predictors about future Mass attendance, as well as church giving, faith in God, and prayer. My guest today is Hans Plate, founder and president of Vinea Research, which seeks to support the Church by helping it better understand those it s

In his apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II wrote that a Catholic university or college is “a living institutional wtiness to Christ and his message, so vitally important in cultures marked by secularism.” He continues by saying that everything in these Catholic institutions should be conducted in harmony with the evangelizing mission of the Church, including offering an “education in a faith-context that forms men and women capable of rational and critical judgement and conscious of the transcendent dignity of the human person.” I wonder if you might agree that Catholic colleges and universities that seek to form young adults holistically and intentionally in this manner are perhaps more important today than they ever have been.My guest today carries the responsibility of helping provide just such a Christocentric formation in an intentional college culture. Dr. Joe Wurtz is Dean of Students at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he also serves as Executive Director of the G

Christ did not rise from the dead so we could gorge ourselves on marshmallow Peeps. Gorging is an act of singular enjoyment, and it only takes a moment to look around our world to see how disastrous it is when people just fill themselves with what they want… besides, it would be just gross if all we wanted was to be stuffed with marshmallow Peeps. The true measure of Easter joy is the degree to which the disciples of the Risen Lord indulge in the good of others. The celebration of Easter is ordered to communion, so much so that Easter works centrifugally through Christ’s disciples: we move the joy outwards.Using Pope Francis’s beloved term, Easter is the season for “missionary disciples.” The heart of the mission is Christ, the source of the mission is his Resurrection, and the power of the mission is the Holy Spirit he imparts to us. With this mission, we, his disciples, bring him to others and work to unite all in him.This is a special episode of Church Life Today. Only very rarely do I create an episode wi

With the right kind of care, support, and attention, the last days and months of an aging loved one’s life can become a source of new life for those who draw near to them. My guest today witnesses to this splendid, glorious truth in her new book about accompanying her father through death into life.Noreen Madden McInnis is the director of liturgy and spirituality for the Diocese of San Diego and author of the book Keep at It, Riley! The title of the book is a saying passed down through generations of Noreen’s Irish Catholic family––the Maddens––who never quit in the face of challenges in life and never quit on each other. In her testimony of journeying with her father and her mother toward their deaths and, ultimately, into the love of God, that resolve and resilience is shown to be a profound commitment to the dignity and beauty of the aged, the infirm, and the dying. Noreen’s book is part of the Magenta series from New City Press, which is committed to healing the ills of polarization by uplifting visions t

When we, as Christians, engage in evangelization that seeks to transform our culture, what metaphor tends to inform our thoughts and actions?Frequently, we land on the metaphor of “war”––we are engaged in a “culture war.” Have we thought, though, about the implications of that metaphor, about what it might do to us and what it might do to “the other” in our eyes? If we do think about that, perhaps we see that this metaphor, which has been widely adopted, might in fact be at odds with a truly Christian vision of ourselves, of others, and of engagement with culture more broadly.Fr. Aaron Wassmen has been developing ideas about the inaptness of the “culture war” metaphor for the evangelizing mission of the Church and for Christian’s missionary activity. He spoke on this topic recently at a conference on Transforming Culture hosted by Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas. The title of his presentation made his conclusion pretty clear: “It’s Time to Bury the Culture War Metaphor.”Fr. Aaron is vicar general and

It’s your friends who break your heart.That’s the title of the article by Jennifer Senior for The Atlantic. It is an incisive and enlightening piece that also made me laugh out loud. Friendship doesn’t get the kind of attention that other forms of relationship tend to get. It is not studied as much in psychology. It is not examined like family relationships for the sake of explaining the way someone is. It is not fretted over like romantic relationships or marriage. It is not obsessed over for the sake of maximizing productivity like the relationships in work culture. And yet, as Senior writes, “friendship is the rare kind of relationship that remains forever available to us as we age. It’s a bulwark against stasis, a potential source of creativity and renewal in lives that otherwise narrow in time.” So Jennifer Senior writes about friendship, but from an unexpected perspective: from their end, the dissolution of friendship.In addition to her work with The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior has written for the New Yor

When you hold a position of authority in Catholic education and you believe that the #1 goal of Catholic schools is to evangelize, then that affects everything you do. It affects who you hire and why, what your priorities are, how you think about curriculum and culture, and what you value in the hard decisions you have to make in times of trial or crisis. You give an account of why the kind of education you provide matters by what you place as your #1 goal, not just in print or in theory, but in practice.My guest today is shaping one of the largest and oldest Catholic school systems in the United States with precisely that goal in mind. Thomas Carroll is Secretary of Education and Superintendent of Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Boston. A longtime leader in education and in community development, Mr. Carroll has been leading Catholic schools in Boston since 2019.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Su

Do you or someone you know feel burned out by work? Have you questioned the place of work in your life, and how it balances with everything else? Do we work to live? Do we live to work? Do we reach for and sometimes touch value that is in our work and also somehow beyond our work? What is the meaning of work?Here’s another question: Can philosophy help us find meaning and purpose at work? That is a question that my guest has been asking, and he is helping college students and other people out there in the world to think about and investigate the meaning and the good of work.Paul Blaschko is assistant teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where he now also serves as director of the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise & Society within the College of Arts & Letters. Dr. Blaschko is deeply committed to matters of practical philosophy, and of doing philosophy in public, helping others to engage the world philosophically, as a way of life. In the past c

Missionaries venture to sites unseen, to open up the Gospel in new ways. The hard to get to places are the special province of missionaries, who exercise both creativity and commitment to get where others have not thought to go. We might think of missionaries sailing across seas or hiking across mountains, but a missionary’s vision and aim can take on very different forms than those we see in movies. Sometimes, missionary work means recognizing the obstacles that impede access to the Gospel, or the Church’s tradition, or spiritually edifying resources that enrich people’s lives, and finding ways to lower those barriers to grant access where access was not previously granted.Such is the work and mission of the Xavier Society for the Blind, which came into existence over a century ago in response to a prayer that “God would inspire someone to take pity on the blind of the country for whom there was no Catholic book to be had.” The person who prayed that prayer became a co-founder of the society, and since then

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