Church Life Today

​​There was a time before the Second Vatican Council, and there is a time after. The time before is old, outdated, stodgy, stale, and lifeless. The time after is modern, progressive, adaptive, active, and alive. Out with the old and in with the new. That, at least, is the way Vatican II has often been portrayed, as a breaking point between liberals and traditionalists, between those who want to be relevant and those who want to be ancient.But maybe by interpreting Vatican II that way, we are seeing something that isn’t true. We are perhaps seeing a false image of the council, rather than seeing the council itself. That, in part, is what my guest on today’s show has to say to us, and he wants to help the Church and the world to rediscover the Second Vatican Council for what it truly is, not for what we have been led to think about it, one way or another.Fr. Blake Britton is the author of Reclaiming Vatican II: What It (Really) Said, What It Means, and How It Calls Us to Renew the Church. Fr. Blake is a priest of the Diocese of Orlando, frequent writer for the Evangelization & Culture blog and journal, and cohost of the The Burrowshire Podcast.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

A good number of the students I have taught in theology courses at Notre Dame have gone on to medical school. Many of these students feel called to the practice of medicine, and would even speak of their professional pursuits as a vocation. But I often hear from the graduates a grave sense of disappointment in what they encounter in medical school. These are the kind of people who are most committed to their Catholic faith and to seeking out a Catholic approach to healthcare and the understanding of the human person and their own role as healers, They learn a lot in med school and they are prepared well for the technical practice of medicine, but they feel like their way of seeing the world and other human beings is often under strain in the course of their studies. We might think this is the inevitable result at public, secular medical schools, but it turns out that many students who attend the few Catholic medical schools tend to feel similarly. Which leads us to this question: How ought we form young Catholics––as Catholics––for the healthcare professions?The students have become the teachers in this regard, and today one of my former students is my guest to talk about her own vocation as a doctor and how to form Catholics for healthcare. Dr. Maggie Skoch Musso is a psychiatry resident at Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. She completed her MD and a concurrent MA in Bioethics at the Loyola Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, and she is a 2016 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she studied Theology. While at Notre Dame, Maggie served as the president of the Notre Dame chapter of NAMI––the National Alliance on Mental Illness––and for her work and advocacy on behalf of those suffering with mental illness, Maggie has received numerous awards at both her alma mater and through national organizations.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What happens online does not stay online. The borders between the digital world andthe flesh and blood world have become rather porous. The ways we think, speak,and act in the digital environment bears meaning for how we think, speak, andact offline, and vice versa, at least to some extent. When we search around inmedia for Catholic voices, or for how Catholics engage with each other in thedigital space, what we find is conduct that is often far from charitable, andcontent that leads more readily to polarization than communion. What is theimpact, then, of digital media and the ways of being that are fashioned indigital space on concrete Catholic communities, like the parish?My guest today is paying close attention to these phenomena and workingto help develop ways and habits of communicating that are more conducive to theGospel. Deacon Matthew Kuna is a transitional deacon in the Diocese ofAllentown, who is finishing up his study and formation for the priesthood atSt. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He is also a member of theinaugural cohort in the McGrath Institute for Church Life’s ChurchCommunications Ecology Program, where pastors, lay ministers, and educators arecalled to respond to the myriad pastoral challenges raised by life in thedigital age. He joins me to talk about the ways in which our environments shapeus––especially the digital environment––and how we might create betterconditions for disciples to be formed for healthy, responsible, and discerningengagement in our increasingly digital world.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

​​“O God, smash the teeth in their mouths!”“Make their eyes so dim they cannot see.”“May his children be fatherless, his wife, a widow.”Who prays like that? Well, we do: Christians. Those petitions––those curses––that I justrecited come from Psalm 58, Psalm 69, and Psalm 109. But we don’t hear themvery often: not in the public liturgy as at Mass, not in the liturgy of thehours that we might pray alone. What is being lost by not praying things likethat, in just those words: the words of Scripture––the Psalms?These are examples of the imprecatory psalms. My guest today says we need to bring backthese psalms into the regular of the Church. He wrote an essay for our ChurchLife Journal with the very direct title, “Bring Back the Imprecatory Psalms.”This is the voice of Christ himself, who in praying the psalms took on eventhese cries, which the abused and oppressed offer up to God against theirvictimizers and the wicked.Timothy Troutner is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at Notre Dame, where hefocuses on the doctrine of creation and the place of language. He is here totalk about this call to bring back the imprecatory psalms, especially now inthe wake of scandals in the Church and the seeming prosperity of the wicked atthe expense of the lowly across the world today.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What does it take to create a world? Well, you might think it requires you to be God. So why don’t we ask the question about a literary world, but nevertheless a complete world, with a comprehensive vision, an atmosphere and a history and languages, customs, and traditions. We might think few people are capable of creating such things, and we are definitely right in thinking that. Yet there are some authors––some artists––who manage such a feat, and one such figure who stands perhaps above just about any other in the powers and fruits of creation is J. R. R. Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings. So let’s ask our question again: What did it take for Tolkien to create Middle-earth? And that is where today’s episode comes in. Many might think that Tolkien was a stand-alone genius, to whom ideas and images came complete unto themselves and without precedent. We might think his work is something like “pure originality” in that he conjures things up out of nothing, as if he were quite a bit like God who is indeed an uncreated creator. Or we might think that any influences Tolkien had, however dim they might be, are all located in the past, which accorded more with his special area of scholarly expertise. But today, we will consider the modern influences on Tolkien’s creative imagination, and in so doing we will think about what a creative imagination is and how a Catholic like Tolkien exercises his imagination.To guide us on our quest, Dr. Holly Ordway joins us today. Dr. Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Fellow of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, whose recently published book is Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When a Catholic parish is being what is called to be, what does that look like? What are the marks of healthy and vibrant parish life? If we really tended to questions like these, we might find ourselves changing our perceptions of what it is we want from our parishes. And that, my friends, may very well mean that we have to change what we ourselves give to our parishes.My guest today invests her time and energy in helping parishes realize their mission, especially through forming Catholics for lives of vibrant discipleship. Katherine Coolidge is Director for Parish and Diocesan Services at the Catherine of Siena Institute. She joins me today to talk about where we are in parish life, where we should be, and how we get from one to the other.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“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 with such a loss. There is no word for the pairings of emotions one feels in grief—the enormity of love mixed with the enormity of sorrow.”Those words come from Robert Cording in an essay he published in the Image journal with the title, “In the Unwalled City.” In this remarkable essay, he puts into words what cannot be contained in words: his grief for the death of his son Daniel, his desire to keep communion alive with his son, and his duty of remembrance that raises his son to life in his own life. I reached out to Professor Cording after reading his essay and he graciously agreed to join me here on our show today.If you’ve been listening to recent episodes of our show, you know that I am working on a project between my own McGrath Institute for Church Life and Ave Maria Press about our relationship with our beloved dead. This is part of a book I am writing on this topic. As part of the project, I’ve been talking with people about their memories of and their hopes for their beloved dead. I’ve asked a few of those people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so you can listen in, too. This is the third of these episodes––on the previous two I hosted Laura Kelly Fanucci and Stephanie DePrez.My guest today––Robert Cording––is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross. His most recent poetry collection is Without My Asking (CavanKerry). You can find some of his other recent work in the Georgia Review, New Ohio Review, Hudson Review, and The Common.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

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 Institute for Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press, which is a book on this topic. Animating that project are questions like “Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us, who remain?”I have been talking with people about their experiences of the death of loved ones and their desire for communion with them. I’m not recording all of these conversations, but I have asked a couple people—and maybe I’ll ask more––if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so that you can listen in, too. This is the second of those episodes, the first of which appeared under the title “Heaven in the Midst of Death.”My guest today is my friend Stephanie DePrez, a professional opera singer, a comedian, a voice coach, an artist. I’m so grateful to her for her willingness to talk with us today about her mom, Susie DePrez, and her own grief, desire, and hope.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“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 the EngagingCatholicism series. To help with this project, I have asked a few people ifthey would talk with me about their experiences of grief, about their hope forcommunion with loved ones who have died, and about their images of Heaven. I’mnot recording all of these conversations, but I am asking a couple (or maybethree) people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show sothat you can listen in, too.Today is the first of those couple or maybe three episodes. My guest is Laura KellyFanucci, a writer and speaker who has worked extensively on grief and longingand hope and vocation. But she’s also got a story you’ve got to hear. Thanksfor listening in.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

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 question: sometimes it is what do you prefer or what strikes your fancy, and sometimes it is what do you really want. In other words, what do you desire? It is hard to think of a more piercing or demanding question than that: what do you desire? What do you really want? But then again, there is another question that goes right along with that one that most of us don’t confront even if we do take seriously the question of what we want. That other question is how do we want… how do we desire. And it is precisely that hidden question of “how do you desire” right alongside the slightly more evident question of “what do you want” that my guest on today’s show takes utterly seriously, and helps us to take seriously, too. Luke Burgis teaches business at the Catholic University of America, where he is also Entrepreneur-in-Residence. An entrepreneur himself, he has co-created and founded four companies in wellness, consumer products, and technology. Now he is managing partner of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator that he started to build, train, and invest in people and companies that contribute to a healthy human ecology. On the basis of his extensive experience along with his equally extensive classical training, research, and spiritual formation, Luke has authored a book filled with stories of woe and transformation, analysis of the mysterious workings of desire, and proposals for beginning to lead a healthier, more creative, truly human life. His book is Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. You can find an excerpt of the book in the Church Life Journal in an article titled, “The Joy of Hate Watching.”Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.