When people hear about the undergraduate theology program at the University of Notre Dame they are genuinely astonished. They had no idea that that many students were choosing to study theology. Each year, the number of students grows. What is going on? Why are students so interested? What does this tell us about evangelization, and hope for the Church, in the Church?My guest today is my friend and colleague, Professor Anthony Pagliarini, who is the director of the undergraduate theology prog...
For years now, modern-day sexual ethics has held that “anything goes” when it comes to sex—as long as everyone says yes, and does so enthusiastically. So why, even when consent has been ascertained, are so many sexual experiences filled with frustration and disappointment, even shame? The truth is that the rules that make up today’s consent-only sexual code may actually be the cause of the sexual malaise—not the solution. In Rethinking Sex, reporter Christine Emba shows how consent is a ...
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 thi...
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...
Notre Dame professors Melissa Moschella and Joshua McManaway 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. The encyclical is a call to renew our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and, thereby, to become more fully, more completely, more authentically human, especially in our love for God and love of neighbor. This conversation is the first of two that we will host on our show with my faculty colleagues in...
In her 1936 book, The Secret of Childhood, Maria Montessori writes that “We must wake up to the great reality that children have a psychic life whose delicate manifestations escape notice and whose pattern of activity can be unconsciously disrupted by adults.” The approach to education that Montessori established sought to remove such unnecessary disruptions while cultivating a fruitful environment wherein children could discover the world, grow toward the maturation of their God-given capaci...
The Vigil Project is a nonprofit Catholic apostolate and collective of musical artists dedicated to leading people to an encounter with God through music. Their work stretches from the liturgy to everyday life, from Sunday worship and Feast Days to Tuesday afternoons waiting in a carpool line. Their goal is to offer and support excellence and reverence in music in all of these moments. The Vigil Project has ten albums available, they create communities for Catholic musicians, and they offer r...
College students really love The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. Both Josh McManaway and I have taught this book in undergraduate courses, with great success. Josh has used this book in a theology course on “Conversion,” and I have used it in a course on “The Catholic Imagination.” Since Josh and I really enjoyed creating an episode earlier this year about C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, we wanted to create this episode about another book we both love, and our students love, too. So here...
Purpose and meaning, healing and growth, community and fellowship—these values have traditionally been found in church. Though they are leaving the pews in droves, young adults are still seeking these spiritual benefits. Based on five years of qualitative and quantitative research,Defiant Hope, Active Love offers practical recommendations for making faith communities more hospitable to the next generation. The editor of the book and lead researcher in the project joins me today to talk about ...
Wouldn’t it be fascinating if the most current social science research discovered not some new and unheard-of things but rather ancient and even biblical truths? The nonprofit organization Communio is reporting that this is indeed what is happening. Through their Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships, they have found that family structure is the most important indicator for the religious commitment of those raised in that home. Alongside that, of course, we regularly find people who do ...
“The call to parenting will never be an easy one. To have your heart walk around outside your body means that your heart will be bumped and bruised along the way. It is not a vocation to be pursued in isolation. What parents need is a network of support, a village.” So begins the epilogue of Holly Taylor Coolman’s new book, Parenting: The Complex and Beautiful Vocation of Raising Children. What she presents in her wise, practical, and spiritually enriching work is a vision for cherishing chil...
In this special episode, we share nine practical tips for how to prioritize faith when you go off to college. This is different than just trying to “keep your faith,” which is itself possibly a losing proposition. Rather than trying to “keep” something you are afraid of losing, focus on stretching, enriching, and building on what you already have, just like you stretch, enrich, and build on what you learned in high school classes when you go into college classes. While this episode is di...
“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 authorit...
“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”, w...
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 wi...
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 gra...
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 o...
You can’t take a souvenir from Hell into Heaven; likewise, you can’t fit the realities of Heaven into Hell. That is Gospel truth for C. S. Lewis, especially as he imagines the separation between Heaven and Hell, vice and virtue, corrupt loves and the fullness of joy in his brief, brilliant eschatological novel, The Great Divorce. As we make the turn from Lent and Passion Week to the glory of Easter, Josh McManaway returns to the program to share a conversation with Leonard DeLorenzo abou...
Because of Christ, the spiritual life is practical, and the practical life is spiritual. The Incarnation guarantees that. In this special episode, Leonard DeLorenzo shares some of the fruits of his newly published work, In Search of a Full Life: A Practical and Spiritual Guide. This book is especially well suited for young adults, perhaps upon Confirmation or graduation from high school or college. It also bears promise for those who are unsure about their spiritual life, who are seeking dire...
Suffering is universal. But how do we understand suffering? Does it have meaning? Can it have meaning? And most of all, what is the meaning of suffering in Christian life? Questions like these inform the work of my guest today, Dr. Mark Giszczak, author of the new book Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know. Dr. Giszczak is Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology, where he teaches a course on the Theology of Suffering that gave rise to this new...