Welcome to the eighteenth episode of season 2 of What Matters Most. I spoke to Alex Martins from his office in Milwaukee in February and have been waiting to get this episode to you for the past two months.  Alexandre A. Martins is a theologian and bioethicist from Brazil; he is also a nurse. He received a Ph.D. in theological ethics/bioethics from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (USA) where he studied bioethics and global public health from a liberation approach. He then received a Post-Doctorate Degree in Democracy and Human Rights from the Human Rights Center at the Law School of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is a specialist in health care ethics and social ethics, especially in the areas of public health, global health, community-based health care, and Catholic social teaching, which you will hear about on this episode. As he tells us in this episode, citing Pope Francis, “you have to listen to the poor,” specifically in terms of health care, to move away from dependency, to sustainability, to local agency. As a healthcare provider and global health advocate, he has served in middle and low-income countries throughout the world, such as Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti, and Uganda. Currently he is an associate professor at the Department of Theology and the College of Nursing at Marquette University in Wisconsin, where he is also director of undergraduate studies for the theology department, and William J. Kelly, S.J., Chair in Theology (2023-2026). He also serves as Regional Coordinator of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church for Latin American and Caribbean region, and Vice-President of the Brazilian Society of Moral Theology. There is so much you will learn about Alex’s life in this podcast that is moving, inspiring, and generative of love for the other. At the end of the podcast he says, “let the suffering of the other touch us and let the touch generate a response that puts ourselves with them.” Before we get to that powerful ending, we will learn about basic ecclesial communities in Brazil, his life as a teenager on his own in Sao Paulo, liberation theology, agricultura familiar, Paulo Freire, Paul Farmer, global health, Gustavo Guttierez, and what Christology has to teach us about health care. Here are some links for books and articles written by Alex and others who have influenced his thought. In the Company of the Poor was written by Fr. Gustavo Guttierez and Paul Farmer. I mentioned the book about Paul Farmer by Tracey Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains and it is a beautiful introduction to his work and that of Partners in Health. The method of teaching that Alex mentioned was pioneered by Paulo Freire, whose best-known book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Leonardo Boff is a Brazilian liberation theologian who ran afoul of the Vatican in the 1980s and 90s for his book Church, Charism and Power : Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church. He ultimately left priestly ministry. Also, you might want to look into basic ecclesial communities and agricultura familiar in Brazil. Alex’s scholarship has been broad. He is widely published, and he has lectured in various countries, including Canada. Please check out his lecture for the CCE at on Care for the Sick in Catholic Healthcare. I will mention only a few of his books and I will link to them: Christology and Global Ethics: Encountering the Poor in a Pluralist Reality (Mahwah, NJ.:  Paulist Press, 2023) A Prophet to the Peoples: Paul Farmer’s Witness and Theological Ethics, co-edited with Jennie Weiss Block, OP and M. Therese Lysaught, (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications by Wipf & Stock, 2023). Covid-19, Política e Fé: Bioética em diálogo na realidade enlouquecida (São Paulo, SP: O Gênio Criador, 2020) The Cry of the Poor: Liberation Ethics and Justice in Health Care (Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books, 2020) For his other writings, please check out his Marquette University website. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me or Ms. Fang Fang Chandra at cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Let us know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! Upcoming Episodes: And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes: Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University; Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC; Dr. Jaime Waters, Boston College; Dr. Sara Parks, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Finally, some upcoming events: May 17, 2024 Sister Damien Marie Savino will be offering the second annual Laudato Si’ lecture, Educating for Laudato Si at St. Mark’s College. Please keep your eyes out for more information – it is coming soon. May 16, 2024, Sister Damien Marie Savino will also be doing a workshop on Laudato Si’ at St Joseph the Worker church in Richmond, B.C., so if you are local please look for that information. Finally, the CCE is presenting a conference in 2025, The Promise of Christian Education: Past, Present and Future,  MAY 1-3, 2025, at ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, VANCOUVER, CANADA. I will link to the CFP in the show notes, so please consider sending in a proposal for a paper. If you are a graduate student and we accept your proposal to present a paper, we will cover your conference registration fees and the cost of the conference banquet. Consider joining us in Vancouver in 2025. We will announce the names of our plenary speakers soon, but I can say that 3 out 4 of the speakers are now confirmed. John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

A note before the significant stuff:  you will notice that the intro and outtro are noisier than usual. I was not able to record at home in my home office with my regular equipment, but had to record in my office at work. It's a different location, and a worse microphone, and I will make sure to record at home again. And always.  The episode itself sounds great!   Welcome to the seventeenth episode of season 2 of What Matters Most. I spoke to Dr. Joanna Leidenhag of the University of Leeds, who is currently Associate Professor in Theology and Philosophy at Leeds. She brings such a keen mind to the study of Christian theology, delving into topics like science and theology, creation, panpsychism, neurodiversity, pantheism, panentheism, and classical Christian doctrine. In general, Leidenhag  is a Christian theologian interested in interdisciplinary engagement with analytic philosophy and with the natural and psychological sciences. She engages with Christian doctrines such as doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the incarnation, the resurrection of the body with the metaphysics of panpsychism.  Panpsychism holds mind and matter together. Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is not unique to human beings or even animals, but comes in gradients as a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. Leidenhag argues convincingly that such views are not odd and not at odds with Christian theology classically construed, but a way to understand creation’s value and its relationship to the creator. It’s also a way to keep matter and mind, consciousness, together, to solve the problem of mind-body dualism problem. How are we conscious and material? There are connections with this view of panpsychism and religions of the east such as Buddhism and Hinduism, but this I think is a positive feature of panpsychism and something to be welcomed. Leidenhag also successfully, for me, explained the ways in which panpsychism is related to pantheism and panentheism, and how scientific theories, such as evolution, helps us understand consciousness and its development. Finally, in one of the most interesting aspects of our conversation regarding language and metaphor, Joanna Leidenhag explained how panpsychism helps us to understand passages of Scripture in which nature sings the praises of God. As a biblical scholar, I found this compelling. In fact I loved the idea of the mountains singing in joy and the rivers clapping their hands as metaphor that reflects the reality of all creation calling out in the consciousness of God best suited to each aspect of their unique creation. We also discussed toward the end of our conversation neurodiversity, and autistic people, and what people with autism can teach theologians and the church about what it means to be human, a child of God, and members of the body of Christ. Joanna Leidenhag has published three articles on autism and theology to date, which I will link in the show notes:  ‘The Challenge of Autism for Contemporary Theological Anthropology,’ International Journal of Systematic Theology (2020) ‘Autism, Doxology, and the Nature of Christian Worship,’ Journal of Disability & Religion (2021)  ‘Accountability, Autism and Friendship with God,’ Studies in Christian Ethics, Vol. 34, Is. 3 (2021).  She is also working on a new research project, which she discussed in the podcast, God, Language and Diversity: Spiritual Flourishing in Neurodiverse and Multilingual Communities. I look forward to this new work. She has also written Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation, and her short popular level book called Creation and Ecology that introduces readers to the Christian doctrine of creation. In addition, she co-wrote with Dr John Perry, Science-Engaged Theology, which explores how theologians can use science and empirical studies as a resource within their work. And one more link you will find: Joanna co-edited a special issue  in the journal Modern Theology on this topic, also called Science-Engaged Theology. I love the work she is doing and the doors she is opening to collaboration and to rethinking theology.  For more of her research, please do check out her academia.edu site and her webpage at Leeds.  This is theology in conversation with ideas old and new, theological and scientific, and I just love the work she is doing. Her research opens up a world of wonders, a world alive with consciousness at every level, and it is exciting. Who would not want to be a part of this?  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me or Ms. Fang Fang Chandra at cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Let us know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! Upcoming Episodes: And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes: Dr. Alexandre Martins of Marquette University on healthcare justice and his life that began in poverty in Brazil;  Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University; Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC; Dr. Jaime Waters, Boston College; Dr. Sara Parks, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Finally, some upcoming events: May 17, 2024 Sister Damien Marie Savino will be offering the second annual Laudato Si’ lecture, Educating for Laudato Si at St. Mark’s College. Please keep your eyes out for more information – it is coming soon. May 16, 2024, Sister Damien Marie Savino will also be doing a workshop on Laudato Si’ at St Joseph the Worker church in Richmond, B.C., so if you are local please look for that information. Finally, the CCE is presenting a conference in 2025, The Promise of Christian Education: Past, Present and Future,  MAY 1-3, 2025, at ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, VANCOUVER, CANADA. I will link to the CFP in the show notes, so please consider sending in a proposal for a paper. If you are a graduate student and we accept your proposal to present a paper, we will cover your conference registration fees and the cost of the conference banquet. Consider joining us in Vancouver in 2025. We will announce the names of our plenary speakers soon, but I can say that 3 out 4 of the speakers are now confirmed. John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

Welcome to the sixteenth episode of season 2 of What Matters Most. I spoke to Dr. Emilce Cuda, an Argentinian theologian, university professor, and Roman Curia official.  In 2021, Pope Francis appointed her to serve the Holy See as an official in the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, first as head of the office and then as Secretary.  In the spring of 2022, Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and to the Pontifical Academy for Life.  She views her mission as assisting the Holy Father in preaching the gospel by building bridges that are about the peripheries. Born in Buenos Aires, Emilce completed a cycle of studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina that resulted in Bachelor, Master, Licentiate, and Ph.D./STD degrees. She also studied philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires.  She has an MBA from the Commercial and Economic Sciences University.   In December 2022 the National University of Rosario in Argentina bestowed upon her a Doctorate of Humane Letters in honoris causa. She has taught in various professorial capacities in a number of Argentinian universities, Boston College, DePaul, Northwestern, the National University Arturo Juaretche, and others. Emilce is married with two adult children.  She is one of the very few lay women to hold executive office in the Roman Curia.  She has been based at the Vatican since September 2022.  I first met Emilce Cuda in Vancouver when she gave one of the keynote lectures at the Pope Francis conference in May 2023. She is a speaker who brings the fire, which aligns with the nickname Pope Francis gave her, the Vatican pepper. I was also able to spend time with her at CELAM in Bogota, Columbia when I was invited as a Canadian representative for a conference comprising mostly South and Central American and Caribbean theologians and artists discussing theology of the peripheries. On this episode, you will get a sense of what she means by theology of the peripheries and closely related terms such as theology of the people and liberation theology.  It’s a joyous occasion to speak with Dr. Emilce Cuda and I hope you find that same joy listening to her. Emilce Cuda asks people who want to understand Pope Francis in North America to read the encyclicals, read Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, read Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia, where our mission is described as in the Gospels to touch the suffering flesh of humanity.  She also directed us to her and Pope Francis’s professor, the late Juan Carlos Scannone, S.J., an Argentinian theologian and his work on theology of the people, though I have not been able yet to determine which book of his she was referring to. I will add that to the show notes when I hear back from Emilce, but in the meantime the link above is a nice overview of his theology. Emilce Cuda also noted the work of another Jesuit, Juan Luis Segundo, S.J. and I have linked to an overview of his life and work from the Boston College website.  This was a great conversation because it encapsulates for me what Christian theology should be. It’s good to know Dr. Cuda is at the Vatican doing her work because for me she is a model theologian, paying attention to all of the theologians out there who do not write books but need to be heard.   What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me or Ms. Fang Fang Chandra at cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Let us know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! Upcoming Episodes: And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes: Dr. Alexandre Martins of Marquette University on healthcare justice and his life that began in poverty in Brazil;  Dr. Joanna Leidenhag of the University of Leeds, who spoke to me about panpsychism;  Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University; Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC. Finally, a recent lecture is now available on YouTube: On February 29, Dr. Niigaan Sinclair joined us from Winnipeg to speak about the Pope’s apology and what are the necessary next steps in truth and reconciliation.  This lecture was dynamite and challenging. Watch it!   John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

Regular listeners know that this episode is late! I apologize for that but blame a nasty norovirus that has run amok through our extended family. And directly through me. It seems right, then, that the fifteenth episode of the second season focuses on health and public health with Fr. Myles Sheehan, SJ.      Fr. Sheehan is a Jesuit priest, physician, and, since December 2020, the Director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, where he also serves as Professor of Medicine and the David Lauler Chair of Catholic Health Care Ethics. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, he trained in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, practiced in these fields, and served until 2009 as the Senior Associate Dean at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and the Ralph P. Leischner Professor and Chair of the Leischner Institute for Medical Education. On this episode we discussed Myles Sheehan’s life as a medical doctor and a Jesuit priest. We discuss green bioethics, how to make healthcare sustainable, and how to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, something we in the West both have in abundance and take for granted, while accepting that others have little access to, especially in the US. On the other hand, there are countries and regions that simply have little access to basic healthcare that would preserve numerous lives. Myles Sheehan places all of this in his role as a priest and in the Gospel of Jesus.  Myles was in Vancouver for a lecture on January 25, 2024 and you can find that by clicking on the St. Mark’s YouTube channel here. The lecture features a PowerPoint presentation that makes it a bit easier to follow up on the names of scholars and theories.   But one scholar Myles’ mentioned in the podcast, and the lecture, is Cristina Richie, not the actress, but an academic engaged with green bioethics and a graduate of Boston College. Her book is titled Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Health Care.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!   Upcoming Episodes: And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes: Dr. Alexandre Martins of Marquette University on healthcare justice and his life that began in poverty in Brazil;  Dr. Emilce Cuda, of the Vatican, secretary of the Pontifical Commission on Latin America;  Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University; Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC.   Finally, a recent lecture is now available on YouTube: On February 29, Dr. Niigaan Sinclair joined us from Winnipeg to speak about the Pope’s apology and what are the necessary next steps in truth and reconciliation.  This lecture was dynamite and challenging. Watch it!   John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the fourteenth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Grant Ikuta.  Since 2008, Grant has been the minister at Steveston Buddhist Temple outside of Vancouver. From April 2011 to April 2013, he served as Bishop of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temples of Canada. He was educated at the University of Alberta, holding a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in biology. In 1987, he attended a year of Ryukoku University Bekka (Foreign Student) program and received Tokudo (Basic) Ordination in the fall of 1988. He enrolled at Central Buddhist Academy (Chuo Bukkyo Gakuin) in April 1989 and graduated from Central Buddhist Academy Honka level (Primary level) in 1990. He entered Ryukoku University Post Graduate studies in April 1990 and received Kyoshi (Higher) Ordination in May 1990. In February 1992, he completed the Master’s Program in Shinshu (Pure Land Buddhism) Studies at Ryukoku University. On this episode we discussed Reverend Ikuta’s life as pastor and a pastor’s son and grandson, just like Reverend Mark Kleiner in the Lutheran tradition, something which we discussed on a previous episode. And like Mark, Grant was not sure he wanted to follow in his Father’s and Grandfather’s footsteps. We also discussed celibacy in Buddhism, just as we discussed with Fr. Nick Meisl in the context of the Roman Catholic tradition. Celibacy is not common in Japanese Buddhism, but it is throughout much of the Buddhist tradition. We discussed a number of figures and places in the history of Japanese Buddhism and Japan in general. I link to a number of these topics below. Key figures in the development of Pure Land Buddhism include Honen and Shinran. They were instrumental in the formation and history of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism. A significant place for all of Japanese Buddhism is  Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. If you have never been to the temple in Nara and seen the massive Buddha statue there, please do check out this link. It is an incredible site and sight. If you have a chance to go to Nikko,  a shinkansen ride north of Tokyo, and see the many temples and shrines, I highly recommend it! A significant place for the development and growth of Pure Land Buddhism in the west is the Hongpa Hongwangi Temple in Honolulu. On the Christian converts to Pure Land Buddhism in Hawaii, Zorn and Hunt, please see the book Immigrants to the Pure Land.  Locally, of course, for those in the Vancouver area, is Reverend Ikuta's Steveston Buddhist Temple. For some of the history of Christianity in Japan, especially in Nagasaki, and the story of the Jesuits in Japan, please click on this link. This history was sometimes painful and involved persecution. Shusaku Endo's novel Silence offers a powerful literary representation of this early period of Christian history in Japan and the novel was also made into a motion picture by Martin Scorcese. Both the novel and movie are excellent. For the story of the internment of Japanese Canadians in Canada during World War II, please do read the moving novel by Joy Kogawa, Obasan.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the thirteenth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Father Nick Meisl.  Fr. Nick Meisl is an Assistant Professor at Corpus Christi and St. Mark’s Colleges where he teaches the Bible. In addition, he is Pastor of St. Peter’s Parish in New Westminster, BC. He completed his License from the Pontifical Biblical Institute and is currently a PhD candidate at Durham University working with Dr. John Barclay on 1 Corinthians and celibacy.   I asked Nick onto the podcast to talk about celibacy, both in the Church as a whole, his own life, and how it emerged in Jewish and Christian antiquity, because celibacy has a long history in the Christian tradition. Our conversation was spurred, however, by a recent interview given by Archbishop of Malta Charles Sclicuna about ending mandatory celibacy for RC priests. It’s a fascinating and complex topic. And Scicluna is an important voice on this matter as  an archbishop, someone involved in the Church’s fight against clerical abuse, and adjunct secretary to the the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Some of the important texts dealing with celibacy in the early Christian appear in the New Testament. Fr. Nick and I discussed Matthew 19 , Mark 12:18:-27, 1 Corinthians 7. See also 1 Corinthians 9 for other discussions on marriage and celibacy.  This chapter is also a passage that some scholars believe points to the possibility that Paul might have been married previously. Fr. Nick also discussed how Genesis 2 might play into Paul's own thought. We also discussed the deutero-Pauline passages in 1 Timothy 3 and 5 and the development of marriage and celibacy in the early Church. For further reading on the background of celibacy in 1 Corinthians, please see Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7 (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, Series Number 83)  If anyone is interested in the Jewish context regarding celibacy and Jesus' own singleness, please see my article, "(Why) Was Jesus Single?" in The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World. I would be happy to send people a PDF of the article if they are interested.  We also discussed the current Church teaching on celibacy and you can find a short summary of its theological justification on the Vatican website.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This is the twelfth episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Mark Kleiner from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Mark is open, vulnerable, and honest, about the role of the Gospel in his life, his past struggles with alcoholism, his rock n’ roll life, and his passion for men’s health. As Mark said in the podcast, and as you can find on the Christ Church website, he is the son of the son of a preacher man, with both his grandfather and father serving as Lutheran pastors and as professors at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. That same website says that “Pastor Mark Kleiner spent much of his youth trying to chart a path far removed from the ‘family business’ of ordained ministry. Following a spectacularly disastrous attempt at rock n roll stardom on the West Coast in the 1990s, Mark returned to his prairie roots in Saskatoon and eventually attended theological school. “To my surprise, and initially to my horror, I realized I actually wanted to be a pastor,” he now says. In 2011 Mark received a call to St Paul’s Anglican Parish and Redeemer Lutheran Church in Biggar, SK, where he lived and served until receiving and accepting the call from Christ Church in 2016.” I’m not sure Mark’s attempt at rock n roll stardom was “spectacularly disastrous,” because the songs are great and the feedback I get from people who saw his bands and heard him play was that it was terrific music. The songs today say the same thing. A 2019 story from Vancouver is Awesome remembers him as an indie pop hero about town. But stardom itself was not to be and alcoholism accompanied the rock n’ roll, something that Mark is open and gracious about discussing. The 2019 story remembers Mark as “one of the all time great characters from the 1990s Vancouver music scene, who often served as the hilarious and wasted ringmaster of the house parties.” He has battled alcoholism through twelve step programs. Those of you who remember the Dawn Eden Goldstein episode on this podcast where we discuss her book Fr. Ed will remember that one of the first twelve step programs, AA, has deep spiritual roots, much of which came through Fr. Ed, the spiritual mentor and guide for Bill. Kleiner took his last drink of alcohol on April 6, 2002. About his show in 2019, the story says, “for Kleinz’s musical disciples, his rare upcoming Vancouver show this weekend is nothing short of biblical. For the first time ever, it involves incarnations of all of Kleinz’s former bands on one bill. Fittingly, it’s at Kleinz’s former hall of worship, where he first started to see the light at the end of the ’90s: Spirit of Life Lutheran Church at 375 West 10th Avenue.”  By the way, the band name Jungle came from a Dwight Twilley Album, and Sister Lovers came from a Big Star album. If you have not listened to these bands and singers, you should! Track them down. Some Dwight Twilley tunes you should listen to right now: Looking for the Magic; I'm On Fire; Why You Wanna Break My Heart; Darlin'. Big Star, and its leading force Alex Chilton, recorded some great albums. Take a listen to these songs: In Love with A Girl; and When My Baby's Beside Me. The Cowsills had a few big hits, apart from inspiring the Partridge Family TV show, but the biggest was The Rain, The Park, and Other Things (Love the Flower Girl). Mark also is a Monkees expert and you can find his podcast on the Monkees at this link.  Here are links to a few songs by Mark Kleiner himself. One is Beautiful Slide, another is Fell in Love With the Girl, and Good to See You, all of which deserve to be hits, though I have no idea how Fell in Love with the Girl did not become a hit. And if you listen to the Mark Kleiner Power Trio’s version of Baby It’s You, a Phil Seymour song – Phil was a part of the Dwight Twilley Band before striking out on its own and one of my favorite rock n’ roll vocalists of all time – I am certain Mark’s vocals transcend the great Phil Seymour’s. Amazing. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!   John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode is the eleventh episode of the second season of What Matters Most and features Reverend Dr. Mark Miller. Fr. Mark is currently the visiting scholar in health care ethics for St. Mark’s College and Providence Health Care in Vancouver for the academic year of 2023-2024. Fr. Mark Miller, C.Ss.R., was ordained in 1975 as a Redemptorist priest after studies in Winnipeg, Toronto and West Germany. Fr. Mark worked with young people for six years followed by the preaching of parish missions for seven years. After receiving a doctorate in moral theology from the University of Notre Dame (1992), he spent 16 years as a clinical bioethicist at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon and for the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan. In 2008 he moved to Toronto as part of the leadership team of the Redemptorists but continued his work in Catholic healthcare ethics at the Centre for Clinical Ethics (St. Joseph’s Health, St. Michael’s Hospital, Providence Health). He has taught and provided workshops at Catholic Colleges, in adult formation programs, for Catholic teachers, and many health care practitioners. He also gave an excellent lecture for the CCE in December 2023; please listen to it here.  Fr. Miller mentioned a number of thinkers, Margaret Farley and her book Just Love, James Keenan, Richard A. McCormick, Charles Curran, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna. Many of these scholars have died, but their work is still available for consultation. Mark also noted the Catholic World Forum on Ethics, which is actually called Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, but he told us he had a hard time remembering the name!  The recent document from the Vatican on blessing people in same-sex or other non-marital relationships is Fiducia Supplicans.  My recent piece in America Magazine on mercy and Pope Francis is available at the link.  As to "moral distress" and "moral residue," I was not familiar with these terms prior to our discussion, so I am linking to an article I found online, but I am not certain that I am linking to the best discussions of these terms. Please let me know if you know of better articles on this matter. On MAID in Canada, please go to this Government of Canada link. On the Catholic response to MAID, please see the documents at the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Catholic Church remains opposed to the intentional taking of human life.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

This episode, the tenth of the second season of What Matters Most, features Dr. Cristina Vanin, an associate professor of theology and Director of the Master of Catholic Thought program at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario.  I invited Cristina on the podcast to discuss Laudato Deum, Pope Francis’s newest apostolic exhortation, released in October 2023. Laudato Deum was released just prior to COP 28 in Dubai, which Francis was unable to make due to illness. Those close to him said he was genuinely upset that he could not travel as it is a significant aspect of his pontificate and close to his heart. In addition, we discuss Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s encyclical letter of 2015.  Both of these documents are concerned with the natural world, the environment, and with all of creation, including the place of human beings in creation. If you do not know these documents, you might not be aware of how important climate change and our need to care for the environment are to Pope Francis. Listen to this podcast to get some insight into these documents and then click on the links above to read them. The official versions in a number of languages are freely available online.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  Thanks to Martin Strong and Kevin Eng for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

Our guest on today's episode of What Matters Most, the ninth episode of our second season, is Dr. Matthew Anderson.   Matthew Anderson holds a Gatto Chair in Christian Studies at St FX in Religious Studies. He is also an affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University, Montreal. Matthew was born to settlers on Treaty 4 territory. His PhD in Religious Studies is from McGill University (1999). His most recent books are Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul  (McGill-Queens University Press, 2023); The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails (University of Regina Press, 2024); Our Home and Treaty Land (with Ray Aldred, 2022); and Pairings: The Bible and Booze (Novalis, 2021; in French as Apocalypse et gin tonic). Matthew is an ordained Lutheran minister of the ELCIC Eastern Synod. His research interests are Pauline studies, pilgrimage studies, gender, and decolonizing/aware-settler biblical studies. Matthew has walked thousands of kilometres on pilgrimage trails in Europe and North America. Matthew’s public-facing scholarship has resulted in over 300,000 reads of his articles for Narwhal, The Tyee, Salon, and The Conversation: Canada. In 2020 Matthew was named a  “Newsmaker of the Year” by Concordia University Montreal. Matthew is a recipient of a SSHRC grant for his research “Before the Fact: How Paul’s Rhetoric Made History.” He is also recipient of two Canada Council grants, in 2020-21 and 2021-22, for emerging fiction. In 2016 Matthew was asked by CBC Radio One Montreal for a feature interview as a “Canadian Creative” and asked to share his favourite playlist. The interview can be found here. Please enjoy our wide-ranging conversation! What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!  John W. Martens

Today's episode Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the eighth episode of our second season is Dr. Jill Hicks-Keeton.  Jill Hicks-Keeton (PhD, Duke) is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches courses on biblical literature. In 2024, she will begin a new position, as Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. Hicks-Keeton’s book Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2019) was awarded the 2020 Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She is also the author, with Cavan Concannon, of Does Scripture Speak for Itself? The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her most recent book is Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves (Fortress, 2023).  Hicks-Keeton has been awarded the Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar Award and has served as a Humanities Forum Fellow, a Risser Innovative Teaching Fellow, and Honors College Presidential Teaching Fellow at the University of Oklahoma.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!  John W. Martens

Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the seventh episode of our second season, is Dr. Hans Gustafson, Director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, where he also teaches courses in the study of religion and theology for the Theology Department.  Today we are going to discuss his book published by Fortress Press in 2023 Everyday Wisdom: Interreligious Studies in a Pluralistic World, but also we discuss more generally the field of interreligious studies and interfaith studies, including interreligious dialogue and interfaith dialogue. Hans is current President of the Association for Interreligious / Interfaith Studies (AIIS), serves on the steering committee for the Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and has published numerous articles and a few books in the field. His current project is a short book on the theory and practice of humanizing dialogue across difference. Interreligious and Interfaith Studies is a field that in our increasingly diverse and pluralistic world is essential for all of us. One of the surprising pieces of data that I learned in Hans’ book is that the world is getting increasingly religious not less religious as we might think. The number of people in the world who identify as religious has now reached 86%. This might seem off to those of us who live in the North America or Western Europe, especially those of us who live in Vancouver or Cascadia more generally, where more people identify as spiritual than religious, but religion matters to more people than not. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want to suggest that those who do not identify as religious do not have rich spiritual lives or are not in their own way religious, even if not associated with a formal or traditional religious tradition. This means that Hans’ call for interreligious phronesis – that is “practical wisdom” – is more important than ever. As Hans says in the podcast, “we all orient around religion in some way and everyone exists in some state between and among religious spaces, and so it seems to me that the more predominant view is that interreligious and interfaith encounter includes everyone, because we all have a religious identity..."  Another great piece of data: American "Nones" are more religious than European Christians. This is precisely why I invite you all to participate in this podcast and to engage with these issues. We are open and welcoming to all people and to all religious and spiritual questions. Hans mentioned a number of other authors and thinkers and I want to link to some of those writers here. Apart from Hans' book, he mentioned Rabbi Rachel Mikva and her new book Interreligious Studies: An Introduction,  Krister Stendahl, Eboo Patel, Stephen Prothero, God is Not One, and Raimon Pannikar. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!  John W. Martens

This episode with Charles Gallagher, S.J. takes us into some dark history concerning Nazis and the Christian Front, a Catholic lay organization, in Boston and New York in the 1930s and 1940s just prior to and during the early stages of World War II.  The story of Frances Moran, head of the Boston National Front and his Nazi handler, the German consul in Boston, Herbert Wilhelm Scholz is a depressing story. That neither of them ever paid a real price for their espionage and treason makes it more depressing.   The only person who really comes out of this with any sense of goodness is Francis Sweeney, the unknowing British agent, who led the American-Irish Defence Association. Her organization fought anti-semitism and fascism and was funded, Gallagher says, by British intelligence. She was recruited by an American handler, someone Charlie Gallagher believes in later years was an advisor in the oval office. Charlie's research speaks to the rise of Christian nationalism today and how to respond to it. He spoke of Steve Bannon and the audience he commands and how it is important not to simply write off that audience by thinking of them as "nutcases." How should we respond? We certainly need to engage with the concerns of those who are attracted to autocratic and anti-democratic movements, which does not mean we need to grant their solutions or encourage them in their fears. Charlie points us to the law of love as the antidote. Combined with that essential response, in times of rising hatred and terrorism, we need to name Islamophobia or anti-semitism, or any other hatred, call it out, and find ways to enact love in the midst of human complexity and suffering. If you want to know more about Charlie’s work, please check out his webpage at Boston College, linked above. There you can read about his education and his many publications. I want to mention a bit about his own history here though before we wrap up.  Charlie formerly worked at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2010, where he was a visiting fellow, teaching undergraduate and doctoral courses on religion and international relations. From 2004 to 2006, he taught in the History Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2008, he published Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), which won the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic historical Association. In 2017, he was the William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocuast Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  Thanks to Martin Strong and Kevin Eng for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC

Dr Amy Lindeman Allen is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indianapolis and only a couple of weeks ago was appointed to an endowed chair, the Indiana Christian Church Chair in Biblical Studies at CTS. Amy is also an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Allen earned her doctorate in New Testament and Early Christianity from Vanderbilt University, where she studied with distinguished postcolonial scholar Fernando F. Segovia. In this episode, we focus on her latest book, The Gifts They Bring: How Children in the Gospels Can Shape Inclusive Ministry, which combines her expertise in the study of ancient children and childhood, with her passion for inclusive ministry including the place and role of children in the Church today. This book is written to be accessible for a broader audience, including churchgoers, families, and others.  I also want to mention Amy’s first book For Theirs is the Kingdom: Children in the Gospel According to Luke (Lexington/Fortress, 2019), which emerged from her doctoral research. For people who want to explore the field of children and childhood in the biblical world more extensively, please check out a few collected volumes as a start: T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World, edited by Sharon Betsworth and Julie Faith Parker; Shawn Flynn’s volume, Children in the Bible and the Ancient World: Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children; and Children and Methods Listening To and Learning From Children in the Biblical World, edited by Kristine Garroway and me. There’s a lot of material out there, but this will introduce you to many of the major themes and writers. Amy’s work is a part of this burgeoning field of research.  Scholars in the field of ancient childhood define the research as childist criticism, seeking to locate and reclaim the voices of children from the biblical and other ancient texts, trying to understand their value and vulnerability.  Dr. Allen’s scholarship and ministry emphasize the importance of acknowledging children’s presence, voices, and contributions in religious spaces. It is about more than just preparing them for the future; it’s about recognizing and celebrating their gifts here and now. Those of us who work in this field of biblical studies seem to all share a belief in the value of our work for current children today not just historical children and you will hear that in my conversation with Amy, who shares the core belief that children are not just the future of the church but an integral part of its present. After the podcast, I told Amy I thought her book was a unique contribution to the study of children. She demurred and directed me to a book by Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder called When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective. This book was influential on her own work. Amy also mentioned Heather McGhee’s book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together with respect to the way in which black children in the USA are so often treated differently than white children, not allowed to be children, though the book is much broader than that. With respect to parthenos, the Greek word translated as virgin, I recommended Lauren Caldwell’s book Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity and Giulia Sissa’s book Greek Virginity. These are helpful books for understanding the construction of girlhood in antiquity and how that still has repercussions today. These books are definitely, though, academic treatises.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! Thanks so much for listening and remember what matters most. John W. Martens

Today's guest on What Matters Most, Imam Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Marzuq, is from Ghana. Imam Marzuq introduces us in this episode to the country of Ghana generally and to the interfaith situation in the West African country specifically.  Imam Marzuq is the assistant to the Chief Imam of Ghana, Shaikh Dr. Osman Nuhu Sharubutu who is 104 years old. Marzuq belongs to the Tijaniyyah tariqa, or order, a branch of Sufi Islam. Islam is not the majority religion in Ghana, that is Christianity, at around 71% of all Ghanaians, but Islam has been a significant presence in Ghana for a long time alongside a smaller contingent of people who belong to indigenous religious traditions. Imam Marzuq discusses how Ghana has been successful in countering the religious violence of Boko Haram, ISIS, and Al Qaeda in their country, unlike some of their neighbours such as Burkina Faso and Nigeria. Marzuq also sees national security as an interfaith matter, in which religions work with the government to forestall the potential rise of religious violence.  He spoke particularly of the Ghana Christian Council and the Office of the Chief Imam working together to create peace.  Imam Marzuq is a is a bit of a renaissance man, as a lecturer, journalist, and researcher on issues in language, education, and religion.  He is a multilinguist in Arabic, English, and French. If you want to read his writing, he writes the column Literary Discourse on myjoyonline.com and Language Agenda on modernghana.com.  Apart from being an Imam, he holds a PhD in English as a Second Language (ESL), an MA in Adult Education (ESL Specialty), and a BFA in TV Production. Schools he attended include National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI), University of Ghana, Legon, and Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Currently, Imam Marzuq lectures in Functional English and  and Academic Writing at the University of Applied Management, Ghana. He is also a member of the Governing Board of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) and a member of the Governing Board of Ghana Library Authority (GhLA).  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seeks to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens

Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the second (new) episode of our second season, is Dr. Massimo Faggioli, a full professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia).  Massimo is one of the most prominent Catholic theologians working today in North America and Europe.  Massimo is a friend and was a colleague of mine at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota between 2009 to 2016, where we both worked together in the Department of Theology. Massimo Faggioli is a married lay Roman Catholic. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and their two children. He was born, raised, and educated in Italy, as he will discuss in the podcast. He studied in Ferrara, Bologna, Tübingen, and Turin, where he got his PhD in 2002. He taught at the University of Bologna, at the Free University of Bolzano and at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia. He worked at the John XXIII Foundation for Religious studies in Bologna between 1996 and 2008 under the mentorship of the founder of the Bologna School Giuseppe Alberigo. Massimo was the founding co-chair of the study-group “Vatican II Studies” for the American Academy of Religion between 2012 and 2017. He has a column in La Croix International and is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and the Italian magazine Il Regno. He is co-editor with Bryan Froehle of the new series “Studies in Global Catholicism” for Brill Publishers (first volume scheduled 2023). His books and articles have been published in more than ten languages. His latest books are Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Liturgical Press 2017), and The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis. Moving Toward Global Catholicity (Orbis Books, 2020), and Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Bayard 2021).  He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II (Oxford University Press, 2023) with Catherine Clifford, who has also been a guest on this podcast.  Massimo has written 15 books, and I have linked to all of them through his Amazon page above, but he suggested in the podcast that the two book he thought might be a good introduction to his thought were his two books on the new Catholic movements and I will link to them specifically here: The Rising Laity. Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II (Paulist Press, 2016). Sorting Out Catholicism. A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements (Liturgical Press, 2014). I should also mention that Massimo gave one of our keynote addresses at our Pope Francis conference in May 2023 and that lecture will soon be appearing on our St. Mark’s YouTube channel. I mentioned a number of other books and documents, which I will link to here also, including Laudato Si’, a new part two of which is due soon, Fratelli Tutti, the International Theological Commission document on the upcoming synod, and Micah Kiel, Reading the Bible in the Age of Francis. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!  John W. Martens

Our first guest on the second season of What Matters Most is Rev. Dr. Robert James, Associate Professor, Anglican Formation and Studies at VST.   Rob James is an Anglican priest who was ordained in the Church of England and worked as a parish priest in Gloucestershire and then as Canon Chancellor of Wells Cathedral, Somerset, before coming to Canada. Before he was a parish priest, he worked in intelligence for GCHQ, the agency formerly known as Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing worked and where the Enigma code of the Nazis was broken. Rob and his wife Jean came to Canada in 2022 when he took up his post at the Vancouver School of Theology, on the campus of the University of British Colombia. He also is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He holds six degrees from five universities, including a PhD from SOAS, London. Most of his research in recent years has been in Biblical studies, including a book on the Gospel of Luke called The Spiral Gospel. He has a number of academic articles published, with a forthcoming one in the Journal of Theological Studies on Luke and the Syriac Gospel tradition, a subject of ongoing research for him. In this episode we are talking Christian theology – incarnation, soteriology, exclusivity  inclusivity, pluralism, particularism, universalism, Nostra Aetate, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Nestorius, Origen, Karl Rahner, John Robinson,  purgatory. This is a deep dive, so get your notepad and questions ready! Feel free to send them to me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Perhaps you'll also come up with ideas for other topics and guests.  For those of you who are regular listeners, you already know that What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC.  Welcome to the second season of the podcast. I'm glad you have joined us. If you enjoy what you hear today, please recommend it to your friends, even your enemies if you want!  Dr. John W. Martens Professor of Theology Director of the Centre for Christian Engagement St. Mark's College at UBC

As What Matters Most prepares to begin its second season in September 2023, I thought we should return to the first episode with Fr. Jim Martin, released on October 7, 2022. Many of you were not listening to the podcast when this episode was released, so to prepare you for the upcoming season, this is a taste of what's on offer. I will say that a number of tweaks have taken place since Fr. Martin's episode was released, especially with the Intros and the Outros, and beginning with a bit of the conversation at the beginning of each pod. Still, this gives you a real sense of what we do here at  What Matters Most. As I wrote at the time, "In this episode, I discuss with Fr. Jim Martin, a Roman Catholic priest based in New York City, his outreach to the LGBTQ community and his associated book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of  Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.  We also talk about his pilgrimage to Israel and Jesus, which lead to his book, Jesus: A Pilgrimage.  The conversation ranges widely, though, discussing his early life and how he became a priest.  Fr. Martin is the editor-at-large at America Magazine and the author of many other books, including My Life with the Saints and Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone. Please enjoy this encore epsiode with a priest who has a huge social media following and is clearly a major Catholic public figure, but who in person is as warm, kind, and pastoral as his public image. He receives a lot of vitriol and anger online, but my own experience has always been of a good man and a good priest. John W. Martens Professor of Theology Director of the Centre for Christian Engagment St. Mark's College at the University of British Columbia

Welcome to What Matters Most.  On this episode I speak with the Interfaith Amigos, who are Imam Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don MacKenzie, and Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan. Rabbi Laura replaced the recently retired Rabbi Ted Falcon as a part of this interfaith trio. When you listen to the episode you will notice that I did not start with saying, "A Rabbi, an Imam, and a Minister walk into a bar..." This is either a missed opportunity or a sign of great restraint on my part. They did however come into a terrific Zoom session and a wonderful podcast resulted.  The podcast was recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People. We are thankful for their welcome to us so that we can live, learn, and pray on their land. It has been a while since I have released an episode due to our Pope Francis conference in early May, which was a smashing success, and the death of my father John Martens on May 18 at the age of 92, a couple of weeks prior to his 93rd birthday on June 5. Death and funerals certainly turn one’s mind and heart to What Matters Most. This is our final episode for the year, though I will re-release episodes during July and August. I also hope to be taping episodes in July and August to be released in September. Now let me turn to our podcast. I think many people will find this episode challenging, as it asks serious questions about the nature of religious traditions, beliefs, practices, and scriptures. What’s at the heart of a religious tradition? What are core teachings? What’s the purpose of a religion? Must a religion be exclusive? How inclusive should or can a religion be before it is not one’s own tradition? Who are the (original) Interfaith Amigos? Imam Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Rabbi Ted Falcon taught together starting in 2001 until Ted's recent retirement, speaking and leading workshops in the United States and Israel-Palestine. Jamal's personal experience as a Muslim after 9/11 moved him to share more of the substance of Islam. Ted stepped more visibly into the larger community, teaching how a healing spirituality emerges within Judaism. Don concluded his position as minister of University Congregational UCC to devote more time focusing on the ways a true spirituality supports us in bringing healing to our world. Together they have explored an inclusive spirituality to promote healing that expresses as concrete environmental, social, and political action. They brought and bring a message of deep hope and profound possibilities for healing on both a personal level and a planetary level. Their work comprises a dialogue of the mind, the heart, and the hands, encouraging greater understanding, compassion, and social action in the world. For more on the group, please see this old New York Times article about the group.  Their book, Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-opening, Hope-filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and a an Imam, was released in July 2009 by Skylight Paths. Additional books include, Religion Gone Astray: What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith and Finding Peace Through Spiritual Practice - The Interfaith Amigos Guide to Personal, Social, and Environmental Healing. All three books received Spirituality & Practice Book Award as one of the Best Spiritual Books in the year of publication 2009, 2011, 2016.  The Amigos (and one Amiga): Don MacKenzie: Rev. Dr. Donald Mackenzie, a minister of the United Church of Christ, is a graduate of Macalester College, Princeton Theological Seminary and New York University. He taught at Princeton Seminary, and was a minister at Nassau Presbyterian Church, Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, and University Congregational Church in Seattle. Since 2001, he has been part of the Interfaith Amigos, with whom he has co-authored three books. Don is also an accomplished country musician. He currently lives in Minneapolis. Jamal Rahman: Jamal Rahman is a popular speaker on Islam, Sufi spirituality, and interfaith relations. Along with his Interfaith Amigos, he has been featured in the New York Times, CBS News, BBC, and various NPR programs. Jamal is co-founder and Muslim Sufi minister at Interfaith Community Sanctuary and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. He is a former co-host of Interfaith Talk Radio and travels nationally and internationally, presenting at retreats and workshops. In addition to the books he has co-authored with the Interfaith Amigos, he is also author of three books on Sufi spirituality, most recently Sacred Laughter of the Sufis. Laura Duhan-Kaplan: Laura Duhan-Kaplan is Director of Inter-Religious Studies and Professor of Jewish Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue. She has won many awards for her teaching of religion and philosophy, including the Carnegie Foundation’s prestigious U.S. Professor of the Year. Rabbi Laura is the author of Mouth of the Donkey: Re-Imagining Biblical Animals and Shechinah, Bring Me Home: Kabbalah and the Omer in Real Life. She has also collaboratively authored four books on interfaith topics including friendship, reconciliation, othering, and hope. She states that she is delighted to be part of the Interfaith Amigos, after admiring their work for many years. If you want to hear more from Laura, please check out episodes one and two with her on What Matters Most. During our conversation, I asked my guests for recommendations for reading and spiritual practice. Jamal recommended Rumi, the great Sufi mystic.  I have linked to one translation of his poems, but there are many others to explore. Don recommended Marcus Borg, and I have linked to one of his books, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, but there are many others. Laura noted her doctoral supervisor Rabbi Marcia Prager, the Path of Blessing, a book I am excited to read. There was so many things mentioned, and I might forget something, but I wanted to link to a book Jamal mentioned, American Grace. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! This episode I think makes it clear why this name of this podcast is What Matters Most, as what matters to us leads to behaviors and practices that seek out the good of the planet and its people or that lead to destruction and anger. Keep in mind what Rabbi Laura said about gratefulness: what can you be grateful for today? What gives you hope? What can you do today that helps preserve the planet or that helps you get along better with your neighbour? Thanks so much for listening. Peace, John W. Martens

Today’s guest on What Matters Most is Sam Rocha, associate professor of philosophy of education at University of British Columbia. This was a wide-ranging conversation and as I say at in the intro to the podcast, I am still processing all of it because we covered so much territory.  Sam is the author of a number of books, including A Primer for Philosophy and Education with Cascade Books, Folk Phenomenology: Education, Study, and the Human Person,  and The Syllabus as Curriculum: A Reconceptualist Approach. His website contains more information on his writing, music, and other interests.  ​I should mention, though, that Sam is an author who has been published widely in popular Catholic media including First Things, Commonweal, America, Our Sunday Visitor, The Catholic Herald, and Church Life Journal. Previously he wrote online for Vox Nova and Patheos on the Catholic channel. Sam also has a pugnacious presence on Twitter, engaging especially with the Catholic Twittersphere and calling out racism in the Church and hypocrisies of various sorts. He’s a terrific follow. He also has his own podcast, Folk Phenomenology that I encourage you to check out also.  In this conversation we spent a lot of time talking about his upbringing in Texas and Mexico as the son of lay Catholic missionaries in the charismatic renewal and the precarity of that life.  He mentioned a number of groups such as Sword of the Spirit, Bread of Life Community, Cursillo, and Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Latin America. Sam also mentioned a great number of people, including authors and their works, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ivan Illich, John Stuart Mill, Gloria Purvis, George Weigel, Fr. Michael Scanlan, and Alasdair McIntyre. I also mentioned Nicky Cruz, Run, Baby Run, and David Wilkerson, Cross and the Switchblade. I also mentioned an article of mine on Jesus' teaching on marriage in Journal of Moral Theology with a long title “But from the beginning it was not so”: The Jewish Apocalyptic Context of Jesus’ Teaching on Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. We also spoke a lot about Pope Benedict and Pope Francis. Sam is giving a paper at the Pope Francis conference coming up this week at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. Join us and the 45 other speakers coming to Vancouver in early May 2023.  You can register at the website. The document I mentioned that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote about the German professor who was not able to teach New Testament any longer ( Friedrich Wilhelm Maier) was Relationship Between Magisterium and Exegetes.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help this podcast by letting people know about What Matters Most. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring conversations and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens