Faith and Culture Leaders Series
National Review Institute’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society is pleased to offer virtual programming! Our Faith and Culture Leaders Series is part of NRI’s Virus-Free Forums and includes podcasts and special conference calls with innovative leaders in the faith community, hosted by Kathryn Jean Lopez.
Free to Foster Friday Series
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Kathryn talks with Fr. Harrison Ayre and Michael Heinlein, authors of Finding Christ in the Crisis: What the Pandemic can Teach Us
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Kathryn talks with Sisters of Life Magdalene Teresa and Mary Casey about gratitude in the midst of a difficult year.
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Kathryn talks with Louis Brown, Alexandra Snyder, and Joseph Meaney about the importance of our sacramental needs during the crisis and how we can take care of the most vulnerable.
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Kathryn talks with Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P and Beth Lynch at the North American Martyrs Shrine in Auriesville, NY
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Kathryn talks with Louis Brown, executive director of the Christ Medicus Foundation.
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Kathryn speaks with Gary Jansen author of Station to Station: An Ignatian Journey through the Stations of the Cross. It is a meditative walk through the suffering of Christ in the Passion. Jansen, executive editor at Loyola Press, with longtime experience in religion publishing, is the latest conversant in this occasional “virus-free” offering with faith, culture, and civil-society leaders during these coronavirus times.
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Naomi Schaefer Riley is the latest guest on our virus-free forum series. Naomi has made herself a leading expert on child-welfare issues in recent years. She is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. Among other things, she’s author of six books.
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This week Kathryn interviews Charlie Camosy who has been one of the most persistent and consistent voices calling attention to the dangers of rationing in these coronavirus times. Camosy, who is an associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University, is author of Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People and Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation.
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Kathryn talks with Sharen Ford, who has been working in child welfare for decades and currently runs the foster care and adoption programs at Focus on the Family. She talks about some of what it takes to be a foster parent, and the other roles we can play in helping children, especially older children, who are the hardest to place. This is National Foster Care Month, and it’s also a time when there’s a great danger that we are being culturally conditioned to be suspicious of other people.
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Can we welcome a child who needs a home into our home? Kelly and John Rosati have done that five times. Their family includes children with serious mental illness, so days are far from perfect, but there is love. Kathryn talks to Kelly about her experience as an adoptive mom and life in advocacy.
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Podcast #8 features a conversation with Luanne Zurlo. She’s the executive director of the Brilla Charter school network. Brilla and Seton Education Partners provide character education and opt-in religious education after school in buildings that were former Catholic schools. The schools are in the South Bronx, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country and the hottest of the hot spots for coronavirus. The teachers are not only about distance learning but about keeping tabs on how families are doing.
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Podcast #7 features a conversation with Sr. Magdalene Teresa and Sr. Mariae Agnus Dei from the Sisters of Life about their life and ministry. Listen to their conversation that includes honest sharing about life in these times.
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Podcast #6 features a conversation with two adoptive mothers, Lisa Wheeler and Elizabeth Kirk, about life in self-quarantine. Many people have been unexpectedly behind closed doors with their families for a month or longer now. That’s challenging for any child, for any marriage, and even more so if you have children who have experienced past trauma.
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On podcast #5 Kathryn interviews Jonathan Reyes, Senior Vice President for Evangelization and Faith Formation at the Knights of Columbus. Over the course of the conversation, they talk about practical family reality under quarantine, the videos, what the Gospel looks like under social distancing, and more.
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National Review Institute’s Virus Free Forums: Faith and Culture Leaders Series podcast #4 focuses on those on the frontlines of caring for the elderly during the COVID-19 crisis. Kathryn interviewed Sr. Constance made who talks about her experience with life behind the walls at the Little Sisters’ convent in Delaware.
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National Review Institute’s Virus Free Forums: Faith and Culture Leaders Series podcast #3 focuses on the importance of helping children who are in vulnerable situations due to the COVID-19 crisis. NRI Senior Fellow, Kathryn Lopez interviews Nathan Bult and Cheri Williams of Bethany Christian Services. Both have extensive experience in child protection and public policy and offer suggestions on how you can help.
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Kathryn Lopez and Fr. John Maria Devaney, a Dominican priest who ministers as a hospital chaplain in New York City, talk about what it’s like living in the epicenter of this crisis. A member of the Province of St. Joseph, USA, he is currently assigned to the Priory of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City where he is a staff chaplain and ethicist for the Dominican Friars Health Care Ministry of New York. You can follow him on Instagram for a look into his experience on the frontlines in New York City. You can follow him on Instagram.
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This conversation, taped during a conference call, centers around Nicholson’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “A Coronavirus Great Awakening?” A former U.S. Marine and a 2012-13 Tikvah Fellow, Robert founded The Philos Project in 2014. His advocacy focuses on spreading the vision of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Middle East based on freedom and rule of law.
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As we are living through this strange time, Kathryn interviewed Sr. Mary Catharine (Perry) of Jesus, O.P. for advice about how to deal with this Holy Week and Easter — a time when the thought of singing Alleluia on Saturday night and Sunday may seem such a foreign thought. Sr. Mary Catharine is a cloistered Dominican nun in Summit, N.J and recently wrote an op-ed with advice on “social distancing” and how not to lose your soul in all of this.