AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Jesuit priests Fr. Paddy Gilger and Fr. Eric Sundrup are the hosts of a wonderful new YouTube show called "Jesuit Autocomplete" from America Media. In each episode, Paddy and Eric answer a different set of Google’s most popular questions about Jesuits, the Bible, Pope Francis, and more. After talking about the series, host Mike Jordan Laskey and Paddy and Eric draft teams of five saints each in an NBA-style selection process. You'll have to judge for yourself who ended up with the best team, but when it comes to saints, there are no bad choices. Thanks for subscribing to AMDG wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you’re feeling generous, please leave us a nice review on iTunes. Watch "Jesuit Autocomplete" at America Media's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/americamedia

This is our second of two episodes with a university president as we celebrate the beginning of the academic year. Be sure to check out our last conversation with President Tania Tetlow from Loyola University New Orleans. Today, we welcome Dr. Mike Lovell, the president of Marquette University in Milwaukee. Like President Tetlow at Loyola, Dr. Lovell is the first-ever layperson to serve as president of Marquette. A man of deep faith, he shares the story of prayerfully discerning the call to accept the pressure-packed position. Dr. Lovell is an engineer and an inventor by trade, but one of his biggest passions in higher ed is working to address childhood trauma and the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Host Mike Jordan Laskey talks with Dr. Lovell about that important work and how a university can be both responsive to trauma and committed to academic freedom. Dr. Lovell also describes what it’s like to be in a cage underwater surrounded by hungry sharks, so listen for that. Please subscribe to AMDG wherever you listen, and if you’d be so kind, leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts.

Tania Tetlow is a trailblazer. She is the first female president in the history of Loyola University New Orleans. She is the first layperson to serve in that role. And her first job was working for Representative Lindy Boggs, who was the first woman to represent the state of Louisiana in Congress. As President Tetlow’s second academic year in leadership gets underway this month, host Mike Jordan Laskey asked her about the challenges Loyola New Orleans is facing and what makes the university special. She describes unique career path from federal prosecutor to university president and how Loyola draws on its diversity as a major source of strength. And stay tuned until the end for our 20 Questions segment, when President Tetlow reveals what she’d say to Pope Francis if she only had time for one sentence. Please subscribe to the show wherever you listen, and if you could, leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts. America Magazine story by Cokie Roberts mentioned in the interview: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/06/14/how-my-mother-helped-mentor-first-female-president-loyola-university

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM, took the world by storm as the chaplain for the 2018 Loyola Chicago Final Four men's basketball team. She turns 100 on Wednesday, August 21! In this conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey and guest host Deanna Howes Spiro of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Sr. Jean reflects on turning 100, her instant rise to fame last year, and what advice she might offer new college students starting this fall.

Last month, Matt Wooters, a Jesuit brother from the Midwest Province, decided he was going to try and swim six miles for a birthday fundraiser benefiting the immigration legal aid group RAICES. The only problem was he only had a few weeks to train and it’s not like he was doing long-distance swims all the time. But as Brother Matt is wont to do, he just went for it. His effort struck a cord, and the the fundraiser blew up on social media. With an original goal of $1000, he blew past that right away and ended up raising over $23,000 for RAICES. Host Mike Jordan Laskey chats with Matt to ask him about the swim, his thoughts on why he thinks the fundraiser did so well, and how his experience working with immigrant families has affected his view of our political discourse around migration. Matt was also the first participant in a new segment on the show, which we’re calling 20 Questions, so stay tuned for that at the end of the episode. As we continue to grow here at AMDG, we’d really appreciate it if you could leave us a nice review on iTunes, subscribe to the show wherever you listen, and tell your friends and family about it.

If you’ve been to Catholic Mass in the United States at some point over the past few decades, you’ve probably sung at least one piece of music by a group of five composers called the St. Louis Jesuits. Here, I’ll quiz you. How many of these song titles do you recognize? Be Not Afraid. Here I Am, Lord. Come to the Water. City of God. One Bread, One Body. Lift Up Your Hearts. Though the Mountains May Fall. I bet you’re humming at least one of them already. While the St. Louis Jesuits have gone their separate ways over the years, all writing and playing music independently, they are reuniting in September for one final concert together – a 50th anniversary celebration of their partnership. Host Mike Jordan Laskey spoke with two of the members of the group, Fr. Roc O’Connor, SJ, and Dan Schutte, about five of the group’s greatest compositions, one by each member, and had a lot of fun walking down memory lane.

When best-selling author and public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell announced he was doing a three-part podcast on thinking like a Jesuit, we had to learn more. Host Mike Jordan Laskey chats with Malcolm about the origins of the series, what surprised him in his deep dive into Jesuit moral reasoning, and why most every modern political problem could use a dose of St. Ignatius. This is the first official episode of AMDG, a new podcast from the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. Please subscribe and tell your friends! Connect with us at jesuits.org.

The Women’s World Cup is in full swing in France, with more elite teams vying for the championship than ever before. One of the biggest soccer fans around is Pope Francis, who recently said that sports “can foster a culture of dialogue and respectful encounters.” We wanted to use the occasion of the World Cup to dig into the spiritual and character-building dimensions of sports, so our guests are two people who have been connected to the game of soccer for four or five decades between them: Shannon Hartinger is the girls' varsity soccer coach at Loyola Academy, a Jesuit high school in in Wilmette, Illinois. She played in college at North Carolina State University, where she was a two-time captain and an all-conference scholar-athlete. James Millikan, SJ, is a Jesuit in formation who is studying philosophy, social sciences and math at ITESO, the Jesuit University of Guadalajara in Mexico. James played goalkeeper at Whitman College in Washington State and has also coached high school soccer.

Every minute, 24 people are forced to leave their home because of war, persecution or violence. Experts estimate that there are more people who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict than at any other point since World War II. We are in midst of a global refugee crisis. In over 50 countries where the crisis is the worst, the Jesuits are there. Jesuit Refugee Service, which was founded in 1980 by then-Jesuit superior general Pedro Arrupe, serves over 640,000 people around the world each year. June 20 is World Refugee Day, which is celebrated annually to lift up refugees and raise awareness of the challenges they face. Our guest is Giulia McPherson, the director of advocacy and operations for Jesuit Refugee Service USA, who shares about JRS' work and how we can get involved in support of their incredible mission. Connect with JRS: https://www.jrsusa.org/ Giulia's bio: https://www.jrsusa.org/about-us/our-team/#giulia Produced by the Office of Communications and Vocation Promotion of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. Hosted by Mike Jordan Laskey. Edited by Marcus Bleech. Theme music by Kevin Laskey.

If you had met Fr. Ted Penton, SJ, right before turn of the millennium and told him he’d be ordained a Jesuit priest in 2019, he wouldn’t have believed you. Ted was an atheist when he decided to go on a retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand while traveling after college. His experience there changed everything, and led him on a path back to the Catholic Church, the spiritual home of his childhood. Fr. Ted is one of the newest Jesuit priests in the world. He ordination was just a few weeks ago in Toronto, one of the 22 Jesuits set to be ordained to the priesthood this year. In this conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey, Ted opens up about his faith journey, his ordination, and how he went about writing the homily for his first Mass as the presider when the Gospel for the day wasn’t his all-time favorite passage.