Fr. Theodore Hesburgh's somewhat idiosyncratic relation to St. John Henry Newman’s capacious mind on Catholic higher education.

Darkness and light are but one, the psalmist tells us. Our lives are filled with both. Sugar and skulls. Flowers and dust. Love and loss. You cannot embrace one without allowing the other.

Listeners of Jesuitical offer their own answer to the podcast's recurring question.

As Cummings notes, our future saints, some of whom have already passed beyond the veil, will disclose to us as much about ourselves and our church as they will about their own heroic virtue.

John Paul II canonized more saints (482) than the popes from the previous 500 years combined, and Pope Francis is more than keeping up.

Like Newman, I am a convert to Roman Catholicism, but it is the way Newman converted that is most important to me.