In Goodfaith

Rebuilding Communion in a Divided World: Insights from the Communion Project
In this episode, Jonathan Lewis, Mission Strategy Officer with the Paulist Fathers, joins us to discuss the groundbreaking Communion Project. This is a fresh initiative aimed at fostering real unity within parish communities and beyond. As society grapples with polarization and division, this work reminds us of our call to embody gospel values through active dialogue, relationship, listening, and prayer.
Key Topics
The origins and mission of the Paulist Fathers, with a focus on American faith and identity
The impact of polarization on both societal and church life, and how it hinders effective ministry
The concept of communion in Catholic social teaching, and its importance in healing divisions
Practical ways to cultivate community, rooted in virtues like patience, kindness, and listening
The significance of small groups, accompaniment, and spiritual direction in building lasting relationships
The role of media, algorithms, and social platforms in shaping perceptions and divisions
Strategies for parish engagement: from awareness to action, starting with the basics
How broader societal issues—history, injustice, and the common good—intersect with faith efforts
The importance of patience, discipline, and virtue in long-term cultural and spiritual transformation
Timestamps00:00 - Introduction to the Communion Project and its significance2:09 - Reflection on the history of the Paulist Fathers and American identity4:24 - Addressing polarization as a crisis affecting ministry and witness5:58 - The Catholic vision of communion—unity amidst diversity8:35 - The roots of American ideals connected to Catholic social teaching10:00 - When did American Catholics start separating faith from the common good?12:08 - Prophetic witness versus thermometer: setting the cultural tone14:04 - The role of accountability and acknowledging historical complicity16:18 - Reaffirming our call to see and respect human dignity18:32 - The power of virtues like patience, kindness, and self-control in community-building22:22 - Building genuine relationships beyond superficial parish hopping25:27 - Recognizing the impact of algorithms and social media on division30:28 - Developing moral muscles: listening, holding tension, and conflict resilience36:45 - The importance of belonging, being known, and parish identity42:31 - Moving from passive participation to relationship and belonging46:48 - Practical resources: head, heart, and hands framework for building communion54:30 - The importance of listening, dialogue, and prophetic witness in justice58:07 - The patience needed for long-term cultural change and faith growth60:42 - The call for the church to be a field hospital—living the virtues in action65:28 - Connecting parishes with the Communion Project—how to get involved67:38 - The role of spiritual accompaniment and direction in fostering unity68:17 - What gives us hope amid challenging days?69:06 - Final encouragement: start small, stay rooted, and walk together in good faithResources & Links
Communion Project — Official site with resources and ways to get involved
Connect with Jonathan Lewis:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Additional Recommendations
Watch The West Wing episode on division and reconciliation (recommended homework for a deeper cultural context)
Explore Conflict Resilience by Dr. Bob Bourdone for skills on holding conflict and building resilience
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In this episode of In Goodfaith, we’re joined by Dr. Jeff Thompson and Dr. Mayra Thompson, a husband-and-wife physician team who are reimagining what healthcare can look like when it’s rooted in dignity, accompaniment, and faith.
Jeff and Mayra were recently featured in an article in America Media. They founded the St. Paul Medical Clinic in Lancaster, Texas. The clinic serves uninsured and underinsured neighbors—many of them migrants—through volunteer-driven, relationship-centered primary care.
Our conversation moves from their unlikely love story (Chicago, medical school, and a lot of persistence) to their shared call to serve, and ultimately to the question that changed everything: Why were we traveling overseas on mission trips when the need was right in our own community?
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In this episode of In Goodfaith, we continue our parent series The Confessional, with an honest and hope-filled conversation about parenting, faith, and making room for every family in the life of the Church.
We’re joined by Millet LoCasale, Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry at St. Catherine Drexel Parish, longtime Goodfaith partner, and mother of two daughters.
Millet shares her winding vocational path, from a career in engineering to nearly two decades in ministry, and how motherhood reshaped not only her work, but her understanding of success, listening, and trust in God. She reflects candidly on raising a high-achieving teenager alongside her younger daughter, Mia, who is neurodivergent and whose life has been marked by challenges, resilience, and grace.
Millet also shares how her parish community supports families of children with special needs through faith-based parent groups, and offers encouragement to parents who feel isolated or unsure whether the Church can be a home for their family.
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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We're grateful to be joined by John Grosso, digital editor at National Catholic Reporter, to reflect on faith, journalism, and the moral responsibility of Catholic witness in a time of deep national and ecclesial unrest.
John joins us in the wake of his widely circulated editorial criticizing Vice President Vance's response to the killing of Renée Nicole Goode in Minneapolis. The piece resonated far beyond Catholic media and ignited conversation across the secular press. He shares how the phrase “a moral stain on our collective witness” emerged, why this moment demanded prophetic clarity, and what it means to speak truth to power when silence feels safer.
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In this episode of In Goodfaith, we’re continuing our parent series--"The Confessional"--with Mike Jordan Laskey and Genevieve Jordan Laskey. We hope you enjoy this warm, honest conversation about parenting, faith, and joy in everyday life.
Rather than offering advice or formulas, Mike and Gen reflect on how faith is formed through ritual, imagination, and presence—bedtime prayers children won’t let you skip, liturgical seasons lived at home, and traditions shaped by touch, sound, story, and repetition. They remind us that faith is often caught rather than taught, and that children learn most by watching how we live.
We also hear about Down By The Bagel, their family band, a creative and joyful project that has become a shared outward expression of connection, hospitality, and sacred joy. Through music and creativity, their family practices something deeply spiritual: creating together and welcoming others in.
This conversation invites us to see parenting not as a project to perfect, but as a relationship rooted in love, surrender, and showing up—again and again.
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
Stay tuned for more episodes of the Parent Series!
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In this episode of In Goodfaith, we continue our Parent Series. These conversations don’t offer parenting advice so much as create space for reflection, honesty, and the messy beauty of raising a family in faith.
We sit down with one of our longtime friends and founding board members, Mary Vanderhoof, a mom of three grown daughters and grandmother to eight young grandchildren, to talk about what it means to pass on faith across generations.
Mary shares how her Irish Catholic roots and her father’s work in the early labor movement shaped her lifelong commitment to justice and the Gospel call to love our neighbor. She reflects on the joys of raising faith-filled children and grandchildren, and how small, simple acts—like making First Communion “books of remembrance” or glitter-covered Good Friday crosses—can keep faith alive at home.
Together, we talk about what it looks like to live our faith authentically in a changing Church, to model justice and compassion for our children, and to find joy in the ordinary, sacred moments that form a family’s spiritual life.
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
Stay tuned for more episodes of the Parent Series!
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What does it look like to truly discern as a family—not just in theory, but in the real, complicated choices of work, money, parenting, and faith?
In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, we welcome back Keith Cieplicki, Executive Director of the Jail Ministry in Onondaga County, New York. You may remember Keith from our earlier episode on accompanying the incarcerated. This time, Keith joins us for our Family Discernment series to reflect on the radical, uncomfortable, and deeply faithful decisions that reshaped his family’s life.
Keith shares the story of leaving a successful Division I basketball coaching career to work in a homeless shelter and eventually lead a jail ministry—choices that required profound trust, sacrifice, and ongoing discernment within his marriage and family. Together, we explore how values take shape in everyday decisions, how fear can quietly drive parenting choices, and how faith sometimes calls us not toward comfort, but toward transformation.
This episode is especially for parents and caregivers navigating big and small decisions: careers, youth sports, financial security, presence with children, and the courage to say both yes and no with intention.
In this episode, we explore:
What family discernment really looks like in practice
Letting go of status, security, and consumerism for a faith-rooted life
Trust, doubt, and learning to “breathe underwater”
Parenting beyond grades, achievements, and cultural pressure
The freedom found in simplicity, presence, and relational love
Why the Gospel often calls us to become uncomfortable
How children grow when they see faith lived, not just taught
Along the way, Keith reflects on the influence of saints like Dorothy Day, the tension between fear and freedom, and the enduring invitation to “live church” every day.
As Keith reminds us, discernment doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being willing to take the next faithful step.
“Be not afraid.”
 
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Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In this episode of In Good Faith, we're joined by two people we deeply admire — Cecilia Flores and Jonathan Lewis — for a rich, wide-ranging conversation about Dilexi Te, the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV.
This document has been sitting with us since its release. While it doesn’t introduce new principles of Catholic social teaching, it does something arguably more important: it re-centers them — unapologetically, historically, and pastorally — as the beating heart of the Church’s mission. We wanted voices who could help unpack both the theology and the lived reality behind the text, and Cecilia and Jonathan bring exactly that.
Cecilia Flores is the Executive Director of the Catholic Volunteer Network and a longtime leader in community organizing and faith-based justice work. Jonathan Lewis serves as Mission Strategy Officer for the Paulist Fathers. Both bring deep experience from Rome, the Vatican, and grassroots ministry — and both read this document with eyes wide open.
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In this solo-hosted episode, Maggie talks with Allison Beyer, a multidisciplinary artist, minister, and contributor to Goodfaith’s Family Matters program. Allison shares the story behind her Jesse Tree Advent ritual, which was born during the pandemic as a creative, prayerful practice for her young children.
Together, they explore how art, ancestry, and faith shape the season of Advent, and how remembering the “family tree” of our spiritual tradition can ground us in belonging during difficult times. Allison also reflects on the religious communities that formed her and why beauty and creativity keep us spiritually awake.
The conversation turns toward the current climate around immigrants in the U.S., where both Maggie and Allison name the hope they’re finding in bold, clear leadership from the Church. Maggie also shares a personal story of loss and healing, offering a gentle reminder that Advent meets us exactly where we are.
This episode invites listeners to return to the simple rituals that steady us, trust the God who is with us, and begin again.
Instagram: @allisonbeyermakesart
"Emmanuel!" by Allison Beyer
Jesuit Media Lab
Goodfaith YouTube: Works of Mercy & Five-Finger Examen
 
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
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In Part Two of our conversation with Ike Ndolo, we dive even deeper into the fire at the heart of Ike’s work: reclaiming the Jesus who stands with the poor and the oppressed.
We talk about how Ike’s social media presence grew out of heartbreak and awakening, beginning with the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. He shares what it was like to speak out publicly when so many in his own ministry circles stayed silent, and how telling the truth cost him gigs and jobs, but also connected him to a wider community of justice-minded Christians who refuse to look away.
 
Together, we explore:
How Ike’s justice formation “woke back up” during the Ferguson uprising
Why speaking about race, violence, and Catholic social teaching online still feels radical
How algorithms shape the false “Jesuses” people encounter
Why WWJD needs an update—and why “What did Jesus do?” is the better spiritual mirror
The cost of telling the truth in church spaces (and the freedom that comes with it)
The 100+ day vigil behind God in the Rubble—and why Ike won’t stop singing until Palestine is free
The role of music in liberation movements, justice work, and spiritual imagination
Ike’s new vision for teaching and mentoring through Ike’s Music Makers
The story and heart behind his new single “City of God”
There’s laughter, lament, resistance, and hope in this episode. Ike’s honesty invites us to re-anchor ourselves in the Gospel, rather than the algorithm, and to remember that following Jesus means standing where He stands.
 
Ike's Songs Featured in Pt. 1 & 2
🎵 God in the Rubble
🎵 City of God (new release)
Connect with Ike
Website: www.ikendolo.com
Instagram: @ikendolo
Facebook: facebook.com/ikendolo
Spotify: Ike Ndolo on Spotify
 
Join the conversation:
We want to hear from you! What questions or challenges are you facing as a parent or caregiver trying to nurture faith in your family? Share your thoughts and help shape the series by submitting questions through the link or on social media.
Stay tuned for more episodes of the Parent Series!
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