A few weeks ago, our guest was the sociologist of religion Tricia Bruce, who talked about what we know about the state of the American Catholic Church today. On this episode, host Mike Jordan Laskey is pursuing the same questions but from a different angle. Our guest is Scott Moringiello, and he’s an associate professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. In that role, he teaches a rather large course called Introduction to Catholicism, which he has taught multiple times. Over the years, he has taught hundreds of Gen Z kids from all sorts of religious backgrounds about the foundational basics of the Catholic faith. He’s gotten to learn about the students’ own experiences with faith and what energizes them or keeps them distant.

Scott was also an academic mentor of Mike’s almost 20 years ago. He was a graduate assistant in a phenomenal liberal arts seminar Mike took, which he still considers the greatest intellectual experience of his life. One way you can tell the power of that class is the fact Scott and Mike are still friends all this time later. So they talked a bit about what made that class so incredible and how it informed Scott’s own approach to education. They also discussed some of his Scott’s mentors from Regis High School in New York City, his Jesuit alma mater that’s still near and dear to his heart.

Finally, Mike also asked Scott the role of the liberal arts and college education in the world of ChatGPT. They had a wide-ranging conversation that feels a bit like old friends getting together over a meal or a libation.

Scott Moringiello: https://las.depaul.edu/academics/catholic-studies/faculty/Pages/Scott-Moringiello.aspx

AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.

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