Special Guest: Rev. Gregory Pine, O.P..

Links:

• Video: "Training the Tongue" with Rev. Gregory Pine, O.P., and Angela Knobel — Rev. Gregory Pine, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) and Angela Knobel (University of Dallas and dCEC 2025–26 Myser Visiting Fellow) share a conversation on Father Pine’s forthcoming book, "Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech." In this work, Father Pine directs the readers' attention to the primary purpose of speech—communion with God and each other—and considers a range of methods to develop our humanity in service of that end.
• Book: "Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech" — "Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech" promises to help us attain verbal virtue. As this brief book shows, by cultivating healthy habits, we can effectively crowd out sinful speech and experience the gift of our tongue as God intended.
• Book: "Your Eucharistic Identity: A Sacramental Guide to the Fullness of Life" — Father Pine’s sacramental guide to the fullness of life—at once thought-provoking and practical, ancient and new—offers Christians a simple, clear guide for their path.
• Godsplaining Podcast — Godsplaining is a Catholic podcast hosted by four Dominican friars of the Province of St. Joseph. In each episode, we help you to deepen your faith, pray with confidence, and tackle today’s difficult issues. Taking ideas from the Church’s Scriptures and tradition, we bring them to bear on life’s most urgent questions. So tune in, as we converse to convert.
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Special Guest: Gary Anderson.

Links:

• Gary Anderson: Faculty Page — Notre Dame Department of Theology
• That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative — The Tabernacle Narrative comprises passages in Exodus and Leviticus that detail the construction, furnishing, and liturgical use of the tabernacle. Given its genre and style, the narrative is often passed over by those reading Scripture for theological insight. But what can these complex passages reveal about Christ? Gary Anderson shows how these passages shed light on incarnation and atonement both in ancient Israel’s theology and in Christian theology.
• Does God "Break Bad" in the Old Testament? - dCEC 2017 Fall Conference — Keynote address given at the 2017 Notre Dame Fall Conference by Gary Anderson (Notre Dame).
• From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church — In this book, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, give their brother priests, and the whole Church, a message of hope. They honestly address the spiritual challenges faced by priests today, while pointing to deeper conversion to Jesus Christ as the key to faithful and fruitful priestly ministry and genuine reform.
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Special Guest: Sofia Carozza.

Links:

• The Pilgrim Soul Podcast — A podcast about the journey of faith in the world of today.
• Sofia's writing at Church Life Journal
• 2019 Notre Dame Valedictory Address by Sofia Carozza — Sofia Carozza, who earned a Bachelor of Science with a major in neuroscience and behavior with a supplemental major in theology and a minor in philosophy, politics and economics, delivers the Valedictory Address at the 174th University of Notre Dame Commencement Ceremony on May 19, 2019.
• Communion and Liberation — Communion and Liberation, in its essence, is a proposal for education in the Catholic faith. It is an education that doesn’t end at a certain age, but lasts a lifetime because it is always being renewed and deepened. The same is true of the Gospel, which reveals new discoveries even after we’ve heard it a thousand times. The same is true in the experience of love, of artistic creativity, and even in the simplicity of everyday life. The search for what is true, beautiful, and good, and for happiness is never-ending. This is Christianity: the adventure of life, not a kind of training for life.
• Theme song: "I Dunno" by Grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

Special Guest: Leonard J. DeLorenzo.

Links:

• Lenny's Homepage — I’m Leonard and I’m glad you’re here.
• The Chronicles of Transformation: A Spiritual Journey with C. S. Lewis — The Chronicles of Transformation, edited by University of Notre Dame professor Leonard J. DeLorenzo, is a collaborative work between scholars and artists, aimed to open adult readers' eyes and hearts to the transformative power of Lewis' Narnia, book by book. Jesus teaches,"Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." The Chronicles of Narnia, read anew, can help us do just that.
• McGrath Institute for Church Life — The McGrath Institute for Church Life partners with Catholic dioceses, parishes, and schools to address pastoral challenges with theological depth and rigor. By connecting the Catholic intellectual life to the life of the Church, we form faithful Catholic leaders for service to the Church and the world.
• Church Life Today Podcast — Digging deeper than soundbites and hot-takes, I talk with scholars and pastoral leaders about the most important theological, social, and ministerial issues in the Church and the world.
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Special Guest: Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC.

Links:

• Fr. Matthew on Twitter
• Fr. Matthew on Instagram
• Fr. Matthew on Facebook — I ♥ Jesus. Jesus ♥ us. I help you experience him & become his apostle. I'm a religious priest with the Legionaries of Christ. I post inspirational stuff.
• Fr. Matthew on Licensing the Catechism — Eight Years ago, Brandon Vogt had a long piece on how much trouble it is that the Catechism and NAB (Bible translation used at Mass) are so expensive, and how hard they are to distribute. I think he is mainly right but I suggest maybe one slight variation. This came up as an issue as people were talking about Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Catechism in a year. Someone noted how initiatives to read the catechism had been stifled in the past by rules around publishing it.
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Special Guests: Daniel Philpott and Jessica Keating.

Links:

• "Apologists, Catechists, Theologians: Wake Up!" by Bishop Robert Barron — After perusing the latest Pew Study on why young people are leaving the active practice of Christianity, I confess that I just sighed in exasperation. I don't doubt for a moment the sincerity of those who responded to the survey, but the reasons they offer for abandoning Christianity are just so uncompelling. That is to say, any theologian, apologist, or evangelist worth his salt should be able easily to answer them. And this led me (hence the sigh) to the conclusion that "we have met the enemy and it is us."
• Eden Invitation Homepage — Celebrating personal integration and promoting solidarity beyond the LGBT+ paradigm. Eden Invitation is rooted in the belief in everything contained in the word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed. We firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Catholic Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.
• Webinar: Racism Is a Life Issue — A moderated discussion on racism and the culture of life with distinguished panelists G. Marcus Cole (Dean, Notre Dame Law School), Sen. Katrina Jackson (Louisiana State Senate), Ernest Morrell (University of Notre Dame), Gloria Purvis (EWTN Global Catholic Radio), Jacqueline Rivers (Harvard University), and Benjamin Watson (NFL Legend).
• Barron muses on evangelization, Bob Dylan and the infield fly rule — Barron is an endlessly smart, engaging, and articulate guy, and the fruits of our conversations are in the new book "To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age," published by Image Books and on-sale today.
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Special Guest: Anja Renkes.

Links:

• Theology, studio art, and Irish studies come together in undergraduate’s creative research project on Ireland’s holy wells — The Grotto is one of the most beloved places on campus for many students, but for junior Anja Renkes, it’s where her passions and purpose combine. “An important part of my identity that I bring here is my love of the outdoors and God's creation,” she said. The open-air, prayerful environment of the Grotto captures her desire to stay active — she enjoys hiking and backpacking and is a member of the women’s rowing team — while its significance as an outdoor Catholic shrine, set in the landscape, represents her academic interests in theology, landscape art, and Irish culture.
• Fiat Fine Art on Facebook — My artwork explores the magnificent beauty of simplicity, demonstrated in the humility of Catholic popular piety at holy wells in Ireland. Variously intimate and vast landscapes help dispose both pilgrim and passersby to look outside of themselves. Upon returning to their own conscious breath, the experience of mysterious Love communicated in the beauty of the environment and humble devotions of those who have come before helps one to experience awe and wonder at what is freely given and received by the nature of human experience in Christ. May we follow in the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin Mother’s fiat, her yes to the will of God.
• Fiat Fine Art on Instagram
• The Irish Taught Me How to Say Thank You — When I arrived at the ferry in Galway, I knew I was meeting a man who would be carrying a walking stick. That was pretty much all I knew. This fairly limited preparation characterized much of my research and travel over the course of two months in Ireland, which unfolded by the grace of God and His radical mercy and attention to detail. I had to learn how to be dependent, and receive gifts.
• Theme Song: "I Dunno" by grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

Special Guest: Fr. Terry Ehrman, C.S.C..

Links:

• Department of Theology: Fr. Terry Ehrman, C.S.C.
• Book: Man of God: Lessons for Young Men About Life, Sex, Friendship, Vocation, & Loving with the Heart of Christ — In Man of God: Lessons to Young Men About Life, Sex, Friendship, Vocation, and Loving with the Heart of Christ, Fr. Ehrman draws on his experiences counseling men who are struggling to live in the world but not be of the world. In the form of emails written to a former student, he offers a plan for ongoing conversion that is both wise and practical, high-minded yet real.
• Article: A professor responds to the pope’s call for an ‘ecological conversion’ — "It was a simple assignment: Observe a tree on campus in silence for 10 to 15 minutes each week of the semester. Still, the requirement was initially met with skepticism by some of my colleagues and students as a hokey, hardly academically rigorous, “tree-hugging” activity. "And yet the natural world has a subtle power and attraction to draw even the reluctant observer into a realm of wonder—which can ultimately lead to an awareness of God’s existence and immanent presence in something as unnoticed as a tree."
• Theme Song: "I Dunno" by grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

Special Guest: Therese Cory.

Links:

• Therese Cory's homepage
• News: ND philosopher appointed to Vatican academy of St. Thomas Aquinas — Therese Cory, the John and Jean Oesterle Associate Professor of Thomistic Studies in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Philosophy, has been named a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas by Pope Francis. Cory is one of 50 total members and one of two women — the third in the academy’s history — to be so honored.
• Book: Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge — Self-knowledge is commonly thought to have become a topic of serious philosophical inquiry during the early modern period. Already in the thirteenth century, however, the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas developed a sophisticated theory of self-knowledge, which Therese Scarpelli Cory presents as a project of reconciling the conflicting phenomena of self-opacity and privileged self-access. Situating Aquinas's theory within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature, Cory investigates the kinds of self-knowledge that Aquinas describes and the questions they raise.
• Book: The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (by Fr. Stephen Brock) — If Saint Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian, it is in no small part because he was a great philosopher. And he was a great philosopher because he was a great metaphysician. In the twentieth century, metaphysics was not much in vogue, among either theologians or even philosophers; but now it is making a comeback, and once the contours of Thomas's metaphysical vision are glimpsed, it looks like anything but a museum piece. It only needs some dusting off. Many are studying Thomas now for the answers that he might be able to give to current questions, but he is perhaps even more interesting for the questions that he can raise regarding current answers: about the physical world, about human life and knowledge, and (needless to say) about God. This book is aimed at helping those who are not experts in medieval thought to begin to enter into Thomas's philosophical point of view.
• Lecture: Muslim Philosophers and the Christian Middle Ages — This lecture was offered by the University of Texas chapter of the Thomistic Institute in Austin on February 20th, 2019.
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Special Guests: Fr. Anthony Sciarappa, Fr. Harrison Ayre, and Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP.

Links:

• Pursued By Truth — Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble is at the forefront of reviving the ancient discipline of memento mori (“remember your death”). She was inspired by her order’s founder, Blessed James Alberione, who kept a skull on his desk to remind him of his inevitable death. After a spiritual retreat in 2017, Sr. Theresa Aletheia received a ceramic skull from one of her sisters and she has been meditating on death daily ever since.
• Clerically Speaking Podcast
• YouTube Playlist: I Have Called You Friends — Videos from the dCEC's 20th Annual Fall Conference are posted to our YouTube channel playlist, including plenary keynote sessions and many of the individual panel discussions.
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• The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary — While the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are understood to be related texts, the sacred scripture of Islam, the third Abrahamic faith, has generally been considered separately. Noted religious scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds draws on centuries of Qur'ānic and Biblical studies to offer rigorous and revelatory commentary on how these holy books are intrinsically connected.
• The Emergence of Islam — This brief survey text tells the story of Islam. Gabriel Said Reynolds organizes his study in three parts, beginning with Muhammad's early life and rise to power, showing the origins and development of the Qur an with a distinctive, if unique, juxtaposition between the Qur'an and biblical literature, and concluding with an overview of modern and fundamentalist narratives of Islam's origin, which reveals how those who represent Islam's future begin by shaping its past.
• Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices — Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices offers a survey of Islamic history and thought from the formative period of the religion to the contemporary period. It examines the unique elements which have combined to form Islam, in particular, the Qurʾān and perceptions of the Prophet Muḥammad, and traces the ways in which these ideas have interacted to influence Islam’s path to the present. Combining core source materials with coverage of current scholarship and of recent events in the Islamic world, Bernheimer and Rippin introduce this hugely significant religion, including alternative visions of Islam found in Shi’ism and Sufism, in a succinct, challenging, and refreshing way. The improved and expanded fifth edition is updated throughout and includes new textboxes.
• Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty — As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.
• Minding Scripture Podcast — Minding Scripture is a podcast series where divine word and human reason meet. We explore questions that believers and skeptics alike ask about the Bible and the Qur’an. Minding Scripture is moderated by Gabriel Reynolds, co-hosted by Francesca Murphy, Tzvi Novick, and Mun'im Sirry, and sponsored by the World Religion World Church program in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
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Special Guest: Gilbert Meilaender.

Links:

• Not By Nature, But By Grace: Forming Families Through Adoption — Working from within the contours of Christian faith, this book examines the relation between two ways of forming families—through nature (by procreation) and through history (by adoption). Christians honor the biological tie between parents and children, for it is the work of God in creation. Yet Christians cannot forget that it is adoption, and not simply natural descent, that is at the center of the New Testament’s depiction of God’s grace. Gilbert Meilaender takes up a range of issues raised by the practice of adoption, always seeking to do justice to both nature and history in the formation of families, while keeping at the center of our vision the truth that it is not by nature but by grace that we can become adopted children of the one whom Jesus called his Father.
• Catholic Ideas for a Secular World - NDCEC Book Series with UND Press — The purpose of this interdisciplinary series is to feature authors from around the world who will expand the influence of Catholic thought on the most important conversations in academia and the public square. The series is “Catholic” in the sense that the books will emphasize and engage the enduring themes of human dignity and flourishing, the common good, truth, beauty, justice, and freedom in ways that reflect and deepen principles affirmed by the Catholic Church for millennia. It is not limited to Catholic authors or even works that explicitly take Catholic principles as a point of departure. Its books are intended to demonstrate the diversity and enhance the relevance of these enduring themes and principles in numerous subjects, ranging from the arts and humanities to the sciences.
• Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics — Certain relationships are of profound importance for human life and of great significance for the moral life. In Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics, Gilbert C. Meilaender explores some of the tension which Christian experience discovers in one such relationship, that of the bond of friendship. These tensions help to explain why friendship was a more important topic in the life and thought of the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome than it has usually been within Christendom.
• Working: Its Meaning and Its Limits — _Working: Its Meaning and Its Limits _enables any reader interested in understanding the moral and spiritual significance of work in our lives to enter into a conversation not only about what we do but who we are. The wide range of readings proposes different ways of thinking about something most of us do every day—work. As part of the Ethics of Everyday Life series, these readings are an invitation to reflection and conversation. They focus not on rules for the workplace or on dilemmas in business ethics but on one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence in every time and place.
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Special Guest: Randall Smith.

Links:

• Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide — Preaching was immensely important in the medieval Church, and Thomas Aquinas expended much time and effort preaching. Today, however, Aquinas's sermons remain relatively unstudied and underappreciated. This is largely because their sermo modernus style, typical of the thirteenth century, can appear odd and inaccessible to the modern reader. In Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas, Randall Smith guides the reader through Aquinas's sermons, explaining their form and content. In the process, one comes to appreciate the sermons in their rhetorical brilliance, beauty, and profound spiritual depth while simultaneously being initiated into a fascinating world of thought concerning Scripture, language, and the human mind. The book also includes analytical outlines for all of Aquinas's extant sermons.
• Theme Music: "I dunno" by Grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque