Church Life Today

Today, the day this episode is released, is the Commemoration of All Souls. I have long been fascinated by the mystery we observe today, which I understand to be a mystery of longing in Christ. It is a longing of the living for their beloved dead and, if we can say such things, the longing of the dead to be living. It is a day clouded by unknowing but pierced by hope. It so happens that my first and constant academic interest is in precisely what we, as a Church, uplift in our liturgy today: ...

If you have used any of the artificial intelligence tools that are everywhere now, you know how good they are with words. You ask, they answer, and the answer sounds like someone talking to you. Except no one is. It is the appearance of communication without a person on the other end, and I don’t think we have reckoned with what it does to us to get used to that. My guest today, by contrast, is convinced that creation itself communicates, and that learning its language is slow, personalizing,...

Every family hands something on. Not just property or a business, but a way of speaking to one another, a set of habits, the things we talk about and the things we have silently agreed never to raise. Some of that was built on purpose. Most of it was not. And one day, without any announcement, you find that you are no longer the one receiving the culture of your family. You are the one responsible for it. My guest today puts the question this way: what kind of ancestor am I becoming? Josh Gen...

In the summer of 2024, about 1,300 people gathered at Saint Mary's College for the premiere of "Behold God's Love," an original Eucharistic musical in three acts: "Root," "Vine," and "Branches." Everyone else missed it. Now the whole world can listen. The full musical is now available as a recorded album, from the manna in the desert, to the Last Supper, to a house church in Corinth. Today, its creator and composer returns to the show to listen to a few tracks with me. We talk about what they...

Every so often on this show, I set the conversation aside and simply read something. This is one of those episodes. Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. And in paragraph 213, in the middle of an argument about the small and steadfast acts of fidelity that stand as a bulwark against dehumanization, the pope quotes a wizard. The wizard is Gandalf, and this is what he says: "It...