Church Meets World: The America Magazine Podcast

Church Meets World: The America Magazine Podcast

This is where the Catholic Church meets the most interesting and consequential issues of our time. Each episode explores a different topic through immersive stories told by America’s editors. “Church Meets World” is the best of our award-winning magazine content reimagined in podcast form. It’s not only what you read in our pages but how you hear it. Presented by Maggi Van Dorn and Sebastian Gomes.

  1. 12/22/2021

    Introducing: Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols

    Church Meets World is proud to share the latest podcast in the America Media family: Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. Subscribe to the entire Hark! podcast series online, on apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It is hard to imagine a midnight Mass on Christmas Eve without Silent Night. Musicians may treat it differently—singing it a cappella, with spare chords on the organ in the background, or to the gentle picking of a guitar as its creators intended—but it is universally cherished. Its basic three-chord structure makes it a cinch to play and its lilting rhythm is perfect to soothe a congregation and lull a baby to sleep—even to sing to a president breathing his last. But it has also been usurped for evil. Join host Maggi Van Dorn on this final episode of “Hark!” as she plumbs the historical and emotional depths of this Austria-born classic with Jesuit priest Ed Schmidt and Rusty McDermott, the songbird mother of another Jesuit. To pull apart the chords and arpeggios of Silent Night, we invited back Colin Britt, the composer and conductor we spoke to in episode three about “Hark! the herald angels sing.”   Special thanks to the Liturgy Arts Group at Boston College, One Hope Project, Harpa Dei, Portsmouth Cathedral Choir; Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Convivium Records and the Ignatian Schola for allowing us to play their recordings of Silent Night.  To support the production of “Hark!” and to access other great Advent reflections from America Magazine staff, please subscribe at americamagazine.org/subscribe.  Related articles: Ed Schmidt, S.J. : Is ‘Silent Night’ the greatest Christmas song ever?

    41 min
  2. 08/07/2021

    What Catholics still don’t understand about the abuse crisis

    Three years ago, a Pennsylvania Grand Jury report described in graphic detail the abuse of over 1,000 minors at the hands of more than 300 priests. Then, Theodare McCarrick, an influential cardinal in the American Church, was found credibly accused of abusing minors and adult seminarians. For survivors, the news was painful, yet validating. How did this second wave of scandal–the news of both abuse and cover up–affect the Catholic faithful more broadly? What do they  believe caused the crisis? Did the Grand Jury report and news about McCarrick impact their faith and affiliation with the Catholic Church? Maggi Van Dorn, the host of the Deliver Us podcast, unpacks a new and ground-breaking survey conducted by America magazine and CARA in the latest episode of the “Church Meets World” podcast. *Audio correction: Only 33 percent of respondents said their parish actually helped them process the sex abuse crisis. The word “percent” was mistakenly omitted from the original file.  Related articles: Editorial: How you see the sexual abuse crisis Three years after the 2018 ‘summer of shame,’ what do American Catholics think about the sex abuse crisis? AWAKE Milwaukee Related episodes from the Deliver Us podcast: Episode 2: How’s Your Celibate Life Going? What is the cause of the sexual abuse crisis? Does it happen more in the Catholic church than other institutions? Episode 4: Are the reforms working? How has the Catholic Church dealt with the abuse crisis?

    40 min
4.3
out of 5
102 Ratings

About

This is where the Catholic Church meets the most interesting and consequential issues of our time. Each episode explores a different topic through immersive stories told by America’s editors. “Church Meets World” is the best of our award-winning magazine content reimagined in podcast form. It’s not only what you read in our pages but how you hear it. Presented by Maggi Van Dorn and Sebastian Gomes.

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