Father Donald Cozzens is the author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest's Crisis of Soul. He is president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. He is also the editor of The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest. Father Cozzens will talk about the church's current sexual abuse scandals, and other crises facing the priesthood.
Bishop Leonard Blair talks about his Vatican-ordered assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents 80 percent of Catholic sisters in America. He says the LCWR is promoting a "new kind of theology that is not in accordance with the faith of the church."
John Mulaney spent five years as a writer on SNL. He won an Emmy for writing his 2018 comedy special Kid Gorgeous, which was recorded live at Radio City, and is streaming on Netflix. In the animated series Big Mouth, about adolescence and puberty, Mulaney voices the character Andrew.
Father Donald Cozzens is the author of the new book Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church (Liturgical Press). Father Cozzens is president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. He is also editor of The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest. His previous book is The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest's Crisis of Soul.
His new feature film, The Magdalene Sisters, is based on the real-life laundries run by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order in Ireland near the end of the 19th century. Girls considered wayward or unruly were sent there as punishment for their sins and forced to do labor under sweat-shop conditions. The last of the laundries was shut down in 1996. Mullan's film follows the lives of four young women and takes place from 1964 to 1969. Before writing and directing, Mullan was best known for his acting and starred in The Big Man, Riff-Raff, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.
Steinfels is a former senior religion correspondent for The New York Times. He now writes the Beliefs column for the paper. Steinfels is the author of the new book, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America.
The film version of John Patrick Shanley play is a heavy slab of dramaturgy: It's dark, somber, yet unbelievably intense. Even on screen, it has the compressed quality of great theater.
A gay priest (who will go unnamed). His superiors have asked him not to give his name, though he has been given permission to speak about his work. He is in active ministry and works in a parish. In a few weeks the Vatican is expected to issue a ruling banning gay men from entering the seminary.
Author Garry Wills. The Pulitzer Prize winner has written a new book criticizing the Catholic Church. It’s called “Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit.” (Doubleday) Wills is a practicing Catholic and studied with Jesuit priests, though he was never ordained. In Papal Sin, Wills describes a papacy that seems unable or unwilling to admit its mistakes. He writes, “Given so much to hide, the impulse to keep hiding becomes imperative, automatic, almost inescapable.” He addresses topics such as birth control, the ordination of women, and views on the Holocaust.
Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle has spent 30 years working in LA with gang members and young people transitioning out of prison. His new book is Barking to the Choir.
Book critic John Leonard reviews Ken Kesey's account of traveling the country in his bus Further during the 1960s. Leonard says it details Kesey and the Pranksters' many trips, but fails to explain their countercultural worldview.
Bill Manseau 's wife, Mary, left the convent in the late 1960s. But Bill Manseau believed then, as he does today, that he was called to be a married priest -- and his actions might help to end the requirement of celibacy. The church felt otherwise.
Cathleen Schine's new novel explores how one character's physical and mental decline ripples out to affect his whole family. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a mix of "fun and bad behavior."
Allison Pearson follows up her 2002 best-seller, I Don't Know How She Does It, with I Think I Love You, a novel about a teenage girl's obsession with teen star David Cassidy. The book wasn't hard for Pearson to write. When she was growing up, she was madly in love with Cassidy too.
Sheed wrote the text for The Kennedy Legacy, which features photographs of the late president. He joins Fresh Air to discuss his work as a critic and author. Sheed grew up interested in sports; a bout of polio turned him into an avid reader. His parents ran one of the largest Catholic publishing houses.
His new book is The New Great Game. The book is about the battle over the world's largest reserve of untapped oil and gas resources, located in the Caspian Sea and surrounding Central Asian republics. The oil alone is said to be worth $4 trillion. Kleveman claims that the United States, China, Russia and Iran are now engaged in a power struggle for control of the region's vast reserves and pipeline routes. Lutz Kleveman was born in Germany and studied at the London School of Economics.
