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JesuiticalFebruary 04, 2025
A camper bows his head in prayer during Mass at Camp Quo Vadis at St. Anthony's High School in South Huntington, N.Y., July 10, 2021. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

This week’s episode of “Jesuitical” features a conversation with journalist Helene Stapinski and her son, Dean Jamieson, a fiction writer from Brooklyn who, now in his 20s, finds himself drawn to the Catholic Church his mother left behind two decades ago because of the sex abuse crisis. 

Zac, Ashley, Helene and Dean discuss: 

  • Helene’s faith journey, from a “cradle Catholic” and member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to a mom disillusioned by the church’s sex abuse scandal and culture-war stances
  • How Dean became “Catholic curious” in college and started attending Mass, drawn to the aesthetics, anti-consumerist values and sense of community he found in the church
  • How the priest at Dean’s local parish in Brooklyn has sought to actively engage young adults and welcome them (and sometimes their parents) back

In Signs of the Times, Zac and Ashley discuss Vice President JD Vance’s accusations that the U.S. bishops were being critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration because it would hurt their “bottom line”; the threat to Catholic Charities by Trump’s directive to freeze federal financial assistance programs; and the Vatican’s latest document on “the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence” that addresses the ethical challenges raised by AI and warns against “creating a substitute for God.”

Links for further reading: 

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