Church Life Today

Arising from the McGrath Institute for Church Life, the Sullivan Undergraduate Saints Fellowship forms Notre Dame students as leaders in the study and spirituality of the saints. We launched this fellowship in 2025 with an inaugural cohort of 12 students selected from a pool of many, many applicants. As part of their fellowship, our saints fellows completed a course this past semester (with yours truly) on praying with the saints. ...

Hi everyone. For today’s episode I do not have a guest joining me; instead, I am just going to share with you directly. You see, my dad died a few weeks ago and just last week we celebrated his funeral Mass. I’ve written a few books over the years and I dedicated one of those books to my dad, who raised me. That book is about fostering communion with our beloved dead. The beloved dead now include my dad. So what I wanted to do toda...

In our previous episode of Church Life Today, I was joined by Professor Christie Kleinmann of Belmont University, who talked with me about her fascinating and truly original course on Strategic Public Relations for the Inklings (specifically, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers). This is a follow up to that previous excellent episode where things get even better because today I am joined by three of Professor Kleinman...

“Habemus Papam.” We have a pope. We have a papa. We have a father. 

 The announcement of a new pope is a startlingly joyous and even spellbinding moment, when not just the faithful but also many who seemingly have no interest in the Church stop and cheer together. What is being proclaimed? What is the significance of the pope for the Church and, through the Church, for the world? What are we all struck by when the announcement echoe...

Have you ever thought about becoming a brand expert for C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien? On the one hand, these seem like authors who need no introduction. On the other hand, how many people today really know the work of these towering 20th Century authors, beyond what made its way onto the silver screen? And what about one of the authors closely associated with them – Dorothy Sayers – who is far from well known in the general publ...

When we say the name “God”, have we assumed too quickly that we know what we mean? We use that word quite regularly, without much strain or prolonged consideration, as if the meaning of the word were self-evident. But what if you had to explain – indeed, translate – the word “God” into a language that had no such concept? That would force you, I think, to really reckon with what you mean and what you assume when you use that word: ...

By his wounds. His wounds are the source of healing. Our wounds are the wounds that are healed by his wounds. Our wounds may even become the source of healing for others because we have been healed by his wounds. What an unimaginable mystery. Wounds heal. Healing from wounds. Have we considered the magnificence or the near-unbelievability of this reality?

Let’s put that question another way: “By what means may I understand and exper...

How should Catholics think about UFOs? How can the Church respond to evolving scientific discoveries? What are the boundaries for Catholic belief?

These are the kinds of questions at the heart of a new documentary short film produced by The McGrath Institute for Church Life. "Edge of Belief: UFOs, Technology & The Catholic Imagination," explores the outer limits of belief.

Today, the film’s producer, who is also my frie...

 The McGrath Institute for Church Life, together with the John S. and Virginia Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics, is hosting a homily contest on preaching the Blessed Virgin Mary. We invite ordained Catholic bishops, priests, and deacons to submit a five-to-seven-minute homily (in either English or Spanish) for one of three Marian solemnities: the Annunciation (March 25), the Assumption (August 15), or the Immaculate Conce...

Thirty years ago, in both Evangelium Vitae and his Letter to Women, John Paul II issued a clear call for the genius of women to be “more fully expressed in the life of society as a whole, as well as in the life of the Church” (Letter to Women 10). Throughout his papacy, in fact, JPII emphasized women’s “prophetic character,” calling on them to be “witnesses” and “sentinels” — guardians of the sacred gift of life and the order of lo...

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...

“The Gospel is not some vague palliative, it’s a man raised from the dead.” The Pro-Life Movement has, for several decades now, remembered the dead, principally those children lost to abortion, with a hope for a new culture of life raised from those tragedies. And yet the story of the Pro-Life Movement is primarily told by its enemies, who regularly reduce the movement to caricatures and sound-bites, leveling into a collection angr...

Agentic AI is a term that will be new to many people. If we were to think of artificial intelligence in waves, the first wave was about making predictions and the second wave was about generating content. This third wave, known as Agentic AI, is far more sophisticated. It is about AI agents performing complex tasks and making decisions. That might sound like the beginning of a dystopian novel or an apocalyptic film, but in reality ...

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 Pagl...

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 Rethin...

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 n...

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, artific...

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 t...

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 t...