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: 

“Turning Out, Tuning In? I left the Church, but now my twenty-something kids seem drawn to it”

Vice President Vance: Thank you for making headlines about the bishops’ care for immigrants

JD Vance suggests U.S. bishops only care for immigrants to protect ‘their bottom line’

Trump executive order will strip funds from Catholic Charities, White House says

New Vatican document on A.I. warns against ‘creating a substitute for God’

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