Reese, Father Tom — Pope Francis & the Catholic Church: A Discussion with a Priest, Part Two

What this episode covers

Marriage, divorce and the role of women in the Catholic church are some of the topics of this edition of Radio Curious, the second of two visits with Father Tom Reese, a member of the Society of Jesus. In the first visit, we discussed his view of Pope Francis, the role of prayer, and the possibility of opening the priesthood to women. Father Tom Reese entered the Jesuits in 1962 and was ordained in 1974. Currently he is a senior analyst with the National Catholic Reporter. He was appointed by President Obama to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal commission that reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. Martha McCabe, our guest host, is a retired higher education legal counsel and civil rights attorney with masters degrees in history and creative writing. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, she graduated from Jesuit Santa Clara University and is now a secular Buddhist. As a novelist, she was a guest on Radio Curious in 2006. When Martha McCabe visited with Father Tom Reese by phone on August 14, 2015, she began their conversation by inquiring about marriage in the Catholic Church. While the Vatican views marriage as a sacred pact between two people, it forbids its priests from entering into that union. The book Father Tom Reese recommends is “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on climate change. Click here to listen to the program or on the media player below. Click here to listen to part one.

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