You can’t talk about the Catholic Church in the United States without talking about Latino Catholics. About half of the Catholic population in the United States is Latino, which includes U.S.-born Hispanics and about the one million Latino immigrants who arrive here each year. And very few people if any know more about U.S. Latino Catholicism than Professor Hosffman Ospino, an associate professor of Hispanic Ministry and Religious Education and the chair of the Department of Religious Education ...
Aug 09, 2023•46 min
As we turn the corner into the second half of summer, you might be wondering to yourself: When do I get a chance to rest and recharge? It’s been nothing but go, go, go. If that sounds like your summer days, then today’s episode is a treat. Spiritual director and award-winning author Vinita Hampton Wright returns to the pod to talk about her newest book from Ave Maria Press, “Set the World on Fire: A 4-Week Personal Retreat with the Female Doctors of the Church.” These four women are your guides ...
Aug 02, 2023•53 min
The Society of Jesus’ 71st Congregation of Procurators, which was held in Loyola, Spain. Over 100 Jesuits gathered for the congregation, one from each province in the world plus Jesuit Superior General Fr. Arturo Soca and his assistants. So what exactly is a Congregation of Procurators? It sounds like old-fashioned Church speak. A brief explanation: There are two types of big global congregations the Society of Jesus holds. The first and more famous type is called a General Congregation, in whic...
Jul 26, 2023•54 min
Sr. Rose Pacatte was the keynote speaker at the 2023 Catholic Media Conference. She talked about how artificial intelligence and the spiritual life intersect, how social media can — and cannot — spread the Gospel, and how we’re all called to media literacy as part of our lives as Christians. Today, Sr. Rose joins us to reflect on all these things: AI, Threads, pop culture, media literacy and her own vocation at the intersection of media and religious life. Sr. Rose, a member of the Daughters of ...
Jul 19, 2023•36 min
John Herreid is the creative mind behind a new publication from Ignatius Press called “The Catholic Home Gallery.” This stunning volume is made up of 18 works of art by contemporary Catholic artists, each of which is removable from the book and suitable for framing. The images are accompanied by short essays on the artist and their work. John is a graphic designer for Ignatius Press and a talented artist in his own right. He’s also a passionate student of art history and deeply faith filled. Hos...
Jul 12, 2023•40 min
What makes a prayer “feminist?” Shannon Evans — author, retreat facilitator, and the spirituality and culture editor at National Catholic Reporter — is back on the pod today to reflect on exactly that question. She has a great new book out, a compilation of prayers, called “Feminist Prayers for My Daughter: Powerful Petitions for Every Stage of Her Life.” And let me assure you, this book is for everyone. Not only does it provide spiritual accompaniment, but also demands that we ask questions lik...
Jul 05, 2023•34 min
A vivid definition of the Catholic Church is attributed to the literary giant James Joyce: Catholic means “here comes everybody.” Never in recent history has that felt more accurate than during the current Synod on Synodality. Lots of AMDG listeners have been active in the synod, participating in this global process of spiritual conversation and consultation. The synod comprises several stages, from the listening sessions in local churches all the way to the upcoming gatherings of the Synod of B...
Jun 28, 2023•41 min
This past April, French bishops voted to open the sainthood cause of 20th century Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac. If you had a time machine and went back to the 1950s and told Fr. de Lubac this news, he probably wouldn’t believe you. In those years, the church was so nervous about de Lubac’s scholarship that he was prevented from teaching theology and his books were removed from Jesuit libraries. He experienced a rehabilitation within his own lifetime and was even named a cardinal by Pope John...
Jun 21, 2023•40 min
There are so many theories about why young adults are leaving the Catholic Church today. Maybe our parishes aren’t welcoming enough, or maybe they’re watering down the faith. Maybe young people are being asked to do too much to be part of the community. Or maybe they’re not being asked to do enough. Maybe they’re angry at the church’s positions on social issues. Or maybe they just drift away because they don’t find anything relevant at church. It can be challenging to offer grand, sweeping theor...
Jun 14, 2023•48 min
If you were going to make a list of the most inspiring things the Catholic Church is doing in the world, the work of Caritas Internationalis would be right there near the top. Caritas is a global confederation of Catholic charities working to alleviate poverty, promote social justice and advocate for the rights of the marginalized. With members organizations spread across about 200 countries and territories, Caritas is one of the biggest humanitarian networks in the world. Here in the US, the Ca...
Jun 07, 2023•37 min
There’s always the temptation for religious orders to lionize their founder. To point to a single person and say, “There! That’s the way to live the Christian life! Just do what they did.” Despite the number of parishes and programs and centers named for Ignatius of Loyola, the man himself was pretty resolute on the need to have your own experience of God. His experience was exactly that: his experience. The unique way God was at work in his life. Ignatian spirituality and the Spiritual Exercise...
May 31, 2023•32 min
Often in the story of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we zero in on the “cannonball moment.” It’s the instant in Ignatius’ story when everything changes—even if the would-be saint hasn’t yet fully realized it. But even more important than that war wound is the eleven months that follow, that long, tedious period of recovery and reflection and reading. It’s then that Ignatius encounters a book on Jesus Christ, and through that book, the God of Jesus Christ, the God who had been loving him all along—and s...
May 24, 2023•35 min
“Lodge 49,” a comedy-drama TV series that ran on the channel AMC for two seasons, is about an ex-surfer named Dud (Wyatt Russell) who’s drifting through life after the loss of his father and the closing of his family’s pool supply store. He stumbles into a rundown old fraternal lodge belonging to a group called the Order of the Lynx. (Think of the freemasons or the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.) At the Lodge, he meets a luminous knight of the order named Ernie (Brent Jennings) who’s a...
May 17, 2023•47 min
As you probably know, the global Catholic Church is in the middle of a three-year synod process on the topic of synodality. The synod has featured thousands of listening sessions with the faithful all over the world, the biggest consultation process in the history of the church. Maybe you’ve been involved in one or more of these meetings yourself. One of the key themes that has emerged again and again in the reports on these meetings is women’s leadership in the church. Here’s how the document s...
May 10, 2023•39 min
Most of us probably don’t stop to reflect on our use of technology and how the devices and apps we use affect our lives and society as a whole. What is it doing to our brains and our souls that we reach for our smartphones mindlessly hundreds of times a day? What do we say on social media that I wouldn’t say in real life, and how does our behavior online make the world better – or, more likely, worse? Today’s guest, L.M. Sacasas, is an incredible thinker and writer who has devoted his career to ...
May 03, 2023•55 min
In 2021, two Jesuits who had just been ordained priests were missioned to serve migrant communities on the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas. Soon after they arrived, Father Brian Strassburger and Father Louie Hotop agreed that there were so many incredible people and stories they were encountering that they just had to share them with the world through a podcast. They asked our communications team at the Jesuit Conference for help producing it, and the result has been one of the most ins...
Apr 26, 2023•51 min
For many of you listening, the idea of spiritual reading is probably a familiar concept. You might have a book or two on your bedside that you pray with each night: something on the lives of the saints or new insights into old spiritual practices. Next to that pile of spiritual books might be a bible, and each day you read a passage, slowly, prayerfully. It's not hard to look for the Holy Spirit at work in books you find in the spirituality section of your local bookstore. But what about in the ...
Apr 19, 2023•38 min
Fr. Ed Dowling is a Jesuit priest you might never have heard of before. After hearing his story, you might find yourself wondering how this holy man isn’t more renowned. Thanks to a new book by Dawn Eden Goldstein, Fr. Ed is finally getting his due. Goldstein is the author of “Father Ed: The Story of Bill W’s Spiritual Sponsor,” which is the first biography of Father Edward Dowling, SJ, a Jesuit from St. Louis who became a close friend and spiritual mentor to Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoh...
Apr 12, 2023•54 min
When Susan Bigelow Reynolds was studying theology in grad school at Boston College, she saw an advertisement for free housing at St. Mary of the Angels Church in the Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. In exchange for the place to live, she’d have to provide a few hours of parish work per week. That seemed like a good deal, so she moved right in. Little did she know that her decision would come to shape her academic focus, lead to six years of ethnographic research in the parish, and bring about the ...
Apr 05, 2023•54 min
There’s nothing better than the Easter Triduum – from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday through the bitter, heavy celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday to the unparalleled drama of the Easter fire and baptizing new Christians at the Vigil on Saturday night. The one big danger this time of year: We’ve heard the stories of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection so many times now that it’s easy for them to go in one ear and out the other. To paraphrase the words of T.S. ...
Mar 29, 2023•44 min
One of the most interesting Jesuit universities in the world is Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon. Founded in 1875, Saint Joseph is the only Jesuit university in the Arab World. On its incredibly impressive list of alumni are seven presidents of Lebanon. The former Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, earned his doctorate there and then joined the faculty. Saint Joseph has a medical and a law school and five total campuses in all in the capital city. In the middle...
Mar 22, 2023•36 min
Here in the American Jesuit universe, we’re in two parallel holy seasons at the same time: Lent and March Madness. Nine Jesuit teams between the women’s and men’s tournaments are in the Big Dance this year, and you can read all about them on our website at Jesuits.org/basketball. Today’s guest didn’t quite make it to the NCAA tournament this year, but he led one of the biggest success stories in all of college basketball this season. And this was his first year as a head coach at any level. Keit...
Mar 15, 2023•39 min
Ten years ago, on March 13, 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope. Do you remember those first hours and days? We found out he was from Argentina, the first Pope from the Global South. Then we heard his name would be Francis the First…or maybe just Francis? Then we saw him step to the window above St. Peter’s Square, looking fairly calm but probably also a bit overwhelmed, and he asked the pilgrims thronging below to pray for him before he offered his first papal blessing. He seemed hu...
Mar 08, 2023•49 min
The Academy Awards are coming up March 12th, so we wanted to recommend a couple of Oscar-nominated movies that fans of the podcast might enjoy. And there was one person host Mike Jordan Laskey was hoping to interview for this episode: his favorite film critic of all time, Alissa Wilkinson from the website Vox, where she’s the senior culture writer. Nobody writes on the intersections of cinema and theology and spirituality like Alissa does. Over and over again, she finds angles that no other crit...
Mar 01, 2023•38 min
You may have never heard the name Fr. Clarence Rivers before today. Fr. Rivers was a renown composer and liturgist, among other things, and he was helping people better understand—better see themselves—in the liturgy long before the Second Vatican Council made such actions the norm. Fr. Rivers was also the first Black priest ordained in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and his own heritage and lived experience greatly informed his approach to the liturgy and to his own priestly ministry. But Fr. R...
Feb 22, 2023•56 min
Lent is just around the corner, and there are so many vivid symbols of this liturgical season. You’ve got ashes and palms and purple stuff everywhere. No Alleluias, no Glorias, no meat at the Friday fish fry. One of the best Lenten symbols is the CRS Rice Bowl, those little cardboard boxes we fill with cash to support the work of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) overseas. It’s easy to grab a Rice Bowl, fill it up, turn it in without thinking twice about where our money is going. Today’s guest can ...
Feb 15, 2023•47 min
On this week’s AMDG, host MegAnne Liebsch talks to historian Nicholas Lewis about his research into the history of Jesuit-run boarding schools for Indigenous children. These schools were part of a larger U.S. government attempt to assimilate Indigenous peoples into white European culture from the 1820s to as late as the 1970s. Indigenous families were compelled to send their children to boarding schools, effectively stripping children of their language, culture and community. Jesuit leadership i...
Feb 08, 2023•41 min
One of the big challenges in higher education today is polarization in the classroom, which of course reflects the polarization of the country at large. Professors like Dr. Amy Uelmen are trying to figure out how to encourage their students to speak and listen to each other across divides on complex social issues where there are no easy answers. Amy is a professor at the Georgetown Law Center, where she’s also a special assistant to the dean and the director of mission and ministry. Just in case...
Feb 01, 2023•41 min
A disturbing trend over the past couple of years has been the rise of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks antisemitic incidents, says 2021 was the worst year in decades and that 2022 will look similar once the numbers are tabulated. We’re in a five-year upswing overall. Let’s not give any more oxygen to acts of hate. Instead, we are thrilled to be sharing this conversation host Mike Jordan Laskey recently had with Dr. Phil Cunningham and Dr. Adam Gregerman, two scholars who ha...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 5 min
If you’ve spent much time reading about Ignatian spirituality, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the work of Jim Manney. He has a great book on the Examen called “A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer” that often serves as introduction for many to this all-important part of Ignatian spirituality. Jim has this way of boiling down his vast—and it is vast!—array of Ignatian knowledge in a way that is accessible, powerful and practical. His writing stays with you. And so, his newest book, which esse...
Jan 18, 2023•42 min
