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
Life in Death in Life, with Robert Cording
“Nothing new can happen between my son and me. And while I have taught the parable of the prodigal son many times, these days I feel not just why, when the lost is found, there is great cause for celebration, but how truly the zest goes out of ...
Life is changed but something ended, with Stephanie DePrez
We are developing a mini-series here on Church Life Today about the relationship with our beloved dead. We’re talking about death, grief, longing, hope, and a lot more. This is connected to a project I myself am working on between the McGrath I...
Heaven in the Midst of Death, with Laura Kelly Fanucci
“Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us,who remain?”Those questions are animating a project I’m working on between the McGrath Institutefor Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press as part of th...
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, with Luke Burgis
What do you want? We get asked a question like that often: when you order at a restaurant, when generating a Christmas list, when at a crossroads in a dating relationship. But of course, there are differing levels of seriousness to that questio...
New Pathways for Catholic Schools After the Pandemic, with Kati Macaluso
“While the shift to at-home learning has underscored the ubiquity of learning, [especially since March 2020, it has also cast into sharp relief [a crucial but suddenly imperiled dimension of education, which is] the distinct gift of teachers an...
My Techwise Life, with Amy Crouch
What if your decisions about how to use technology were based on your fundamental beliefs about what it means to be a human being, and what human flourishing is? Now, what if your children also made their decisions about technology in that way?...
Introducing the St. Thomas More Academy, with Margaret Blume Freddoso
When we educate our children, what are we educating them for? In the Catholic tradition, the end of education has always been sanctity: to form truly free, wise, virtuous disciples who love God and their neighbor. This kind of education concern...
“Relocatio” with Thomas Curtin
Would you ever consider moving thousands of miles for the primary purpose of living in a committed and passionate Catholic community? Of course, people move all the time for jobs and other reasons, but to make the pursuit of a Catholic environm...
Becoming the Adult in the Room, with Sarah Pelrine
When we are young, we need the guidance of mentors. We never really outgrow that need for guidance, but at some point, a change must take place if we are to reach maturity. Instead of always being the one who is guided and mentored, we become t...
Praying into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with Fr. Joe Laramie
The heart of the Christian is not his own. Instead, our hearts belong to Christ. Our lives as Christ’s disciples are an ongoing formation to love what he loves, to care for those whom he cares about, and to join him in offering our hearts to th...
The Real Presence, with Tim O’Malley
“The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.” But do we, as Catholics, really understand what the Eucharist is? Let me rephrase that: do we really understand who the Eucharist is? Actually, let me try one more time: Do we full...
Evangelizing through Film and Television, with Doug Tooke
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. You’re familiar with that, aren’t you? But have you ever really thought about what that is saying. God loved the world. This world. This world that does not love God very well, and in f...
There is no such thing as winning at life, with Elizabeth Klein
“Life, for the vast majority of humans, is not very glamorous. It involves doing a lot of boring and tedious things like paying taxes, cooking dinner, and sweeping the floor. And yet, these everyday tasks seem to vex Millennials; this generatio...
How the Sciences Train You for Faith, with Sofia Carozza, Part 2
The desire for Truth. The Passion for discovery. The education of reason. The fundamental claim about what it means to be a human being. Being formed as a person of faith through the rigors of the scientific method. All these things and more we...
How the Sciences Train You for Faith, with Sofia Carozza, Part 1
“Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I’m a scientist. A Catholic scientist.” That might be how we would imagine an introduction in a support group for people who share a common problem. In this case, the problem would be being a person of faith in a field o...
Guiding Young Adults from Affiliation to Leadership, with Nicole Perone
According to one recent study, fully half of the twentysomethings who were raised Catholic no longer practice the Catholic faith or name themselves as Catholic. Half. That’s troubling, isn’t it? Other recent studies have tracked the rates of di...
The Questions of Jesus as Lenten Pilgrimage
If you want to remain comfortable, do not let Jesus ask you questions. I learned this the hard way a few years ago when I decided that as a Lenten practice, I would spend time each day reflecting on and praying with the questions that Jesus ask...
Helping Busy Parents Pray through Lent, with Maria Morrow
To be a parent is to be busy. We often start by wanting to get everything just right but end up just trying to hold things together. And then Lent comes around, and we either dream up fantastic spiritual regimens for ourselves, or we think, “Go...
The Church’s Call to Foster Care with Holly Taylor Coolman
“We have to imagine a people so deeply committed to their neighbors that they would risk their lives for them—and risk their lives perhaps not even to save them, but simply to be present and perhaps to speak to them of another life. As we imagi...
The Irruptive and Enduring Role of Technology in Higher Education, with Elliott Visconsi
In the blink of an eye, digital technologies went from supplemental and exploratory in education to primary and necessary for continuing instruction during a global pandemic. This has been true in higher education as much as anywhere else. But ...
The Lord of the Rings, Sickness, and Health with Dr. Kristin Collier
Over the past year, I have been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my two younger boys, now age 7 and 9. We were into the third volume––called “The Return of the King”—and had just concluded the chapter entitled “Houses of Healing.” ...
Jill Alexy on Seeing the Sacred
If you were to see the sacred, what would you see? Would you see beauty, light, color, form, simplicity, complexity, joy? One thing we can be sure of is that what we would see would be immersive and full-bodied. To really see the sacred is not ...
Phil Sakimoto on "All Creation Gives Praise"
If you could see the full expanse of the universe, do you think that might change your perspective? That probably seems ludicrous to even consider, but I gotta tell you: it happened to me. In 2006, I walked into a digital planetarium, and a cou...
Joshua Mitchell on Identity Politics and "American Awakening"
In a world where forgiveness seems less and less possible because transgressions are rendered more and more permanent, how can there be a tomorrow? Or maybe we need to ask that question another way: Is there a Christian way to have a tomorrow? ...
Mary O’Callaghan on Disability Selective Abortions
Every child is a mystery, but as scientific advances in prenatal testing grow, so does the temptation to know more and more about our unborn children. Will they be healthy? What are the chances they will have a disability? With questions like t...