Outside The Walls With Timothy Putnam

Timothy P. O’Malley is the Director of Education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where he also serves as Academic Director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy. He teaches and researches at Notre Dame in the areas of liturgical-sacramental theology, catechesis, and aesthetics. He is a member of the executive planning team for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Eucharistic Revival. His new book, ‘Becoming Eucharistic People: The Hope and Promise of Parish Life’, is published by Ave Maria Press as part of the Engaging Catholicism series from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University Notre Dame. 

Simone Rizkallah is currently the Director of Program Growth for Endow Groups. She is also an Institute of Catholic Theology Fellow, a Witherspoon/John Jay Institute Fellow and an Acton Institute Fellow. She has led local chapters of the ecclesial movement of Communion and Liberation in Virginia and Arizona and the Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization In Defense of Christians. She is also a member of Women Speak For Themselves. As the daughter of immigrants from the Armenian Diaspora in Cairo, Egypt, she has a particular interest in matters of religious freedom and culture. In her free time she enjoys teaching RCIA, speaking and writing. She has been published in ChurchPOP, Aleteia, Verily, CatholicU, and Ethika Politika and was featured as a Guest Contributor in the book Road Signs for Catholic Teens published by Our Sunday Visitor. She blogs at www.culturalgypsy.com. We talk today about the Catholic Intellectual Life, the Feminine Genius, and the importance of community.

Jordan Daniel Wood is a Catholic theologian and stay-at-home dad of four young daughters. He holds a PhD in Historical Theology from Boston College. His first book was published in 2022, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (University of Notre Dame Press). He is currently translating Maximus’s Letters for Catholic University of America Press, and is co-translating F. W. J. Schelling’s Original Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation, a project that recently received an NEH grant. He’s also at work on a book for Wipf and Stock’s Cascade imprint entitled A Shadow of Things to Come: Christian Life with St. Maximus Confessor. He has taught in university, seminary, and high school settings.

Fr. Sean Hagerty, SJ, is the vocation promoter for the UEA Province. That means that Fr. Hagerty is responsible for accompanying men who are discerning a life in the Society of Jesus. He joined the Jesuits in 2012, after having served in the U.S. army. He has ministered in prisons, campus ministries and hospitals, and conducted research into just war, moral injury and the reintegration of soldiers into the Catholic community. He was just ordained a priest in 2022. We spoke with him about the process of discernment live from St. Louis at SEEK23 put on by FOCUS. 

Michael Lofton, host of the youtube channel Reason and Theology, joins us to continue our focus on the incarnation, providing us with an Eastern Catholic perspective. Listen and share!

Derek Rotty (derekrotty.com), joins us to talk about a recent series of pieces using art to meditate on the Incarnation. You can find The Art of Advent series at https://catholicexchange.com/author/derekrotty/. Listen and share.

Joe Heschmeyer, staff apologist at Catholic Answers, joins us to talk about the mystery of the Incarnation.

Dr. Timothy Muldoon, pastoral theologian at Boston College and author of a number of books on Ignatian spirituality, the theology of the laity, and marriage and family, joins us to talk about his new book published through Orbis Books entitled How to Remake the World Neighborhood by Neighborhood. The book tells how Community Renewal International built a movement to heal racial tensions, create bonds of friendship, and cure the loneliness and depression that blights our communities in cities across the United States and Africa. 

Allison Gingras joins us to talk about her new book on Ave Maria Press, Signs of Faith: My Unexpected Journey with Sacramentals, the Saints, and the Abundant Grace of God.

Dr. Leonard DeLorenzo, from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, joins us to talk about his new book Our Faithful Departed: Where They Are and Why It Matters available on Ave Maria Press. This book explores the Communion of Saints rooted in Catholic anthropology and incarnated through personal experiences. We talk about how to wrap our minds around this mystical communion and how to strengthen that communion through communal practices.   

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio (“Dr. Italy”), Co-founder and Director of The Crossroads Initiative, is the author of five books and hundreds of articles. In 2019, Dr. D’Ambrosio published the groundbreaking Bible study on the life of Jesus Christ filmed in the Holy Land, Jesus: The Way, the Truth, and the Life, presenting alongside Jeff Cavins and Dr. Edward Sri. In 2022, he became the co-author and co-presenter of What We Believe: The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, together with Dr. Andrew Swafford and Sarah Swafford. Dr. D’Ambrosio is currently a Professor of Theology at the Catholic Distance University.

Matthew Benfield has had an eventful year. He was confirmed in the Catholic Church, completing a 10-year journey of faith, completed a consecration to the Sacred Heart, to Jesus through Mary, and runs a popular TikTok account (TheologiaViatorum). We talk about his conversion, the importance of living compassionately, and communicating the Gospel effectively.  

In Living Beyond Sunday: Making Your Home a Holy Place, married couples Adam and Haylee Minihan and David and Pamela Niles share what has helped them make their homes a place of encounter with God–a place where saints are being made. This book goes beyond the aesthetic or surface-level attributes of a Catholic home. Beyond that, it shares how to foster holiness in all the little moments in Catholic family life.

Bo Bonner, Co-host of the Uncommon Good (https://theuncommongood.simplecast.com), joins us to talk about the various modes by which we approach the Bible and through which we receive Sacred Scripture.

Dr. Mark Giszczak, Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute, recently wrote the book “Bible Translation and the Making of the ESV Catholic Edition.” In this book, He covers the conversations that preceded the ESV project and the promulgation of the Vatican document on translation, Liturgiam authenticam (2001). The meeting of the minds represented by the ESV translation philosophy and the Vatican’s own translation norms is remarkable.  Dr. Mark Giszczak specializes in Old Testament Wisdom Literature as well as biblical theology and Catholic biblical interpretation. He blogs at https://catholicbiblestudent.com/    

JonMarc Grodi, Executive Director of the Coming Home Network and Host of The Journey Home on EWTN, joins us to talk about the continual call to conversion that leads us to a life of Virtue. Patrons can access extra segments - Learn more and listen at https://www.patreon.com/posts/72900101. 

Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP was recently named the editor of Our Sunday Visitor, the weekly national Catholic newspaper found at OSVNEWS.COM.  Father Patrick comes to OSV from the English edition of Aleteia.org, the global Catholic news and spirituality website, where he served as editor-in-chief. This spring, Father Patrick was nominated to serve as a Eucharistic Preacher, a work he has undertaken to support the USCCB-led National Eucharistic Revival, and along with his Dominican brothers, he hosts the podcast Godsplaining, and he co-authored the book Saint Dominic’s Way of Life: A Path to Knowing and Loving God (OSV Books).

Paul Fahey, co-founder of Where Peter Is, has recently written a necessary and helpful article on recognizing and preventing spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church called "The Place Where you Stand is Holy Ground."  This type of abuse is not often talked about, but leaves lasting scars, and is a major contributor to the "rise of the nones." 

Have we been conditioned to act on our gut instinct, our first impression, or do we take the time to look beyond our primary instinct and to our second thought? So often Jesus saw beyond the immediately obvious and into underlying motivations. As scripture says, "man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart." Kristin Putnam and I discuss what it might look like to reconsider our polarized impulses and ponder situations and circumstances more deeply.

Rachel Bulman is a regular contributor to the Word on Fire blog, an author with two forthcoming books, and co-hosts the Youtube show “Meet the Bulmans” with her husband, Dcn Jason Bulman, who was recently ordained to the Diocese of Orlando. They join us on-air to talk about their practice of hospitality and their expression of vulnerability as a part of a lifestyle of evangelization.