Church Life Today
Hosted by Dr. Leonard DeLorenzo, of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame (http://mcgrath.nd.edu), Church Life Today features conversations with pastoral leaders and scholars from around the country and covers issues that matter most to Church life today. Church Life Today is an OSV Podcasts partner.
Episodes
268 episodes
Preparing for First Communion, Part 1: Abundant Bread and Feeding of the Five Thousand
In a 2019 study, the Pew Research Center found that just
Oppenheimer, with Ted Barron and Phil Sakimoto
In 1965, in an NBC News documentary, J. Robert Oppenheimer reflected on his role in leading the Manhattan Project that yielded the first nuclear weapons by saying this:“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed; a few...
“Say my name”: Self-Deception, Transparency, and Redemption in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, with Ken Craycraft
To deceive yourself is easy, but to stop deceiving yourself is hard. This truth is more apparent to each of us when we look to other people than it is when we look to ourselves. Why? Because we tend to believe the lies we have told ourselves, s...
2023 SCOTUS: Religious Liberty and More, with Rick Garnett
It probably comes as a surprise to no one that cases with issues of religious liberty regularly make their way before the Supreme Court. What might surprise many, however, is that there is a lot of agreement if not unanimity among justices when...
Meth, Money, and Marriage, with Gary Anderson
Once when my eldest son was about five years old, we happened to be reading the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel when we came upon the account of a man with an unclean spirit. My son asked me what that meant. I didn’t know how to answer so I said...
Men and Women in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, with Francesca Murphy
Parental Notice: Adult language quoted in the episode.The study of moral choice, character, and identity in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul was unprecedented in TV drama. Many experienced the two TV series as...
Rekindling Eucharistic Amazement, with Jem Sullivan
“Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God – the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ” (...
The Passion, with J.J. Wright
The impact of Jesus: he changes everything, he changes us. The first to receive him were his mother and those disciples who walked with him in Galilee and Judea. They were there when he entered Jerusalem the final time. The twelve were there wh...
Elucidating the Synod on Synodality, with Sr. Marie Kolbe Zamora
In initiating the Synod on Synodality, which is set to run through 2024, Pope Francis sought to lead the whole Church into a time of prayer, listening, and discernment. His hope is to foster these dispositions and habits within the Church as th...
Transhumanism and Human Nature, with Mary Harrington
The desire for the deathless extension of existence. The desire for autonomy without impediments. The desire for consciousness without bounds, for self-determination without exhaustion, for individual benefits without costs. Desires such as the...
The Eschatological Imagination in Literature, with Judith Wolfe
We live toward what we assume to be our ends. Some of us hold such assumptions consciously, others do not, but either way the ends we seek shape the lives we live and the societies we build. The Christian eschatological imagination is concerned...
Model of Faith: Reflecting on the Litany of Saint Joseph
“O God, who in your inexpressible providence were pleased to choose Saint Joseph as spouse of the most holy Mother of your Son, grant, we pray, that we, who revere him as our protector on earth, may be worthy of his heavenly intercession. Throu...
Women Are Not Fallen Males, with Angela Franks
After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, a wide array of commentators bemoaned how much more support would now be needed for women who become pregnant when abortion is no longer available, or less readily available. What that implies, of course, is t...
Questioning the Authenticity of the Synod on Synodality, with Mark Regnerus
You may remember in the last couple years the listening sessions that took place in dioceses and parishes as a first step in the Church’s “synod on synodality.” Maybe you participated in one of these listening sessions, or even helped to host o...
Reclaiming Catholic Unity, with Charlie Camosy
In his high priestly prayer, Jesus prayed to his Father that “they may all be one.” He meant us, his disciples. As he entered into his passion, Jesus began to offer himself for our unity in him, with him, through him––sharing in his union with ...
The Twelve Steps and the Sacraments, with Scott Weeman
Scott Weeman wants to help empower the body of Christ to heal the body of Christ. His organization, Catholic in Recovery, intentionally brings together the Twelve Steps recovery process with the sac...
Redeeming Vision from Pornography, with Steve Pokorny
In 2011, Steve Pokorny founded Freedom Coaching: a one-to-one mentoring system aimed at helping those with an attraction or compulsion to pornography. This isn’t merely about learning how to avoid por...
The Search for Dignity across America, with Chris Arnade
“We had compassion for those left behind but thought that our job was to provide them an opportunity (no matter how small) to get where we were. We didn’t think about changing our definition of success.” Those words come from Chris Arnade. His ...
Catholic Colleges and Pregnant Students, with Renée Roden
Choose life. Building a pro-life culture means, among other things, making it easier for women who are pregnant to choose life. But is it easy to choose life if you are a college student, even a Catholic college student, maybe even at a Catholi...
The Genesis of Gender, with Abigail Favale
“There is much in life we can’t control, such as when we are born and where––the family, country, and history we inherit as time-and-place-bound beings. We enter the story of the world in media res. We don’t choose our sex or the path ...
The First Mexican American Saint? Meg Hunter-Kilmer on the “Bishop of the Barrio”
The first Mexican American Saint may very well end up being the man they called the Bishop of the Barrio. The cause for canonization of Alphonse Gallegos was opened in 2005, and in 2016 Pope Francis authorized the bishops and cardinals of the C...
Forming Catholic Leaders for Mental Health, with Beth Hlabse
Fiat. So spoke the Virgin Mary to the angel Gabriel. This is a word of creation––“let it be”––one that echoes the command of the Creator, who said Fiat lux, “let there be light”. With her fiat, Mary gave all she had t...
From Catholic Founding to Global Mission, with Catherine Arnold
By royal charter, St. Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge is to take on the mission of advancing education, religion, learning and research in the University of Cambridge and “to promote and facilitate contributions from the Catholi...
National Study of Catholic Priests, with Stephen White
Are priests and bishops in the United States flourishing? How well do priests trusts bishops, or, more to the point, their own bishop? To whom do priests turn for support?––on whom do they rely? What are priests’ views of the policies and proce...