The project

How do we as Christians navigate our increasingly post-Christian times, living in the world but not of it?

How do we present an authentic Christian witness, balancing a bold proclamation of the Gospel with pastoral mercy, when so many of our contemporaries see our beliefs as embodying hatred, intolerance, and oppression?

How can we interpret the events that swirl around us day by day with the eyes of faith, and respond effectively to spread the light of Christ rather than the heat of our own emotional reactions?

These are some of the big questions that face Christian disciples in our time, and indeed any time. And they are the kinds of questions I tackle here.

I believe it is imperative that we think deeply about the challenge of discipleship and evangelization today. We need to take seriously the call to “renew our minds” with the Gospel. But we can only do that by clinging to the tradition of faith passed down by saints, sinners, fathers, and mothers over two millennia and safeguarded in the bosom of the Church.

You could describe my project here as an experiment in learning to think with the Church about the events of contemporary life.

So that, in the vaguest and most general of terms, is what I have in mind.

Now, a bit about me.

I’m a trained philosopher, specializing in St. Thomas Aquinas. For both apostolic and practical reasons I spent eleven years working at a Catholic media organization.

I dove into this work right out of my undergrad, working as a journalist researching governmental, cultural, and ecclesial institutions that were, in one way or another, undermining or compromising the right to life and the natural family. Within a few years I became a full-time editor, and eventually was managing our organization’s editorial, marketing, and video production teams.

I left this job in August 2020 to pursue graduate studies in theology as an open-ended segue into new fields of apostolic work.

My wife Jenna and I were married in 2008, the summer before my last year of undergrad, and our first son was born nine and a half months later during my final exam in Greek. (Yes, I postponed it.) Thirteen years and four more kids later, we are happily still “in the trenches” of raising young children and trying to carve out a life of faith and witness in our home.

I’m currently studying at Dominican University College in Ottawa, researching St. Thomas Aquinas’ theology of the Church, and in particular his approach to the thorny issue of ecclesial reform. This research is directly pertinent to the larger questions that I explore here: questions about how the Church should engage with the contemporary world; how she should go about her mission of evangelization; and the manner in which the Church can adapt herself towards accomplishing that mission while remaining faithful to her tradition.

As many of us do, I have concerns about the impact of the new media on our societies, families, and personal spiritual lives. But the Church needs to be in the public square, and today that is largely and increasingly in the digital sphere. So far as possible without compromise, I’m convicted that we need to use the best tools at our disposal to engage effectively in the modern Areopagus of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

So, my plan here is to write about the challenge of faith, family, and evangelization. I hope that you’ll join me for the ride. If you’re interested, you can sign up for my newsletter below and I’ll email you any new content I post.

I’d be delighted to hear your feedback, ideas, suggestions. You can reach me at patrick@patrickcraine.com.

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