"From Rock Music to Theology": a new podcast interview

At Cafe Atlantique, Milford, CT, 11/2/25

I'm grateful to Father Jack Bentz, SJ, for giving me the opportunity to speak about my faith and life on his podcast Catholics in Ordinary Time. Click here to hear or download the episode.

Vatican newspaper reviews my book on the Sacred Heart

The review of my book as it appears on L'Osservatore Romano's website

What a joy to discover that today's L'Osservatore Romano features a review of my book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times! Many thanks to Osservatore culture editor Giulia Galeotti and reviewer Silvia Gusmano for this beautiful essay. It makes me very happy to know that Pope Leo XIV is reading about my book today!

Here is an image of the page of L'Osservatore with the review (click to enlarge). If the review makes it into the English-language edition or Vatican News, I'll update this post with a link to the translated version.

New podcast interview for Australian national radio: "Can celibacy actually make us purer and closer to God?"

 

Hoboken, NJ, September 27, 2025. Photo by Chuck Connelly.

Recently the Australian Broadcasting Company invited me to appear on its Sunday radio show "God Forbid!" as part of a panel of scholars discussing religious understandings of celibacy. I greatly enjoyed the conversation and I hope you do too. Listen on Apple Podcasts or on the ABC website (but ignore the truly dire clip-art image there). 

I write for Jesuit Media Lab on Brian Wilson’s spiritual outlook

Many thanks to Jesuit Media Lab for giving me the opportunity to remember Brian Wilson (pictured with me in 1988) with an essay: "Only God Can Make a Tree: The Cosmic Dreams of Brian Wilson."

Remembering Lou Christie

Lou Christie and I reconnected in the Facebook era on March 14, 2022.

This has been a rough week for me with deaths of great musicians I cared about and interviewed, first Brian Wilson and now Lou Christie. Lou's death hit me harder because I knew him better, and, unlike Brian, whose mind suffered considerable damage from substance abuse, trauma, and psychological illness, Lou was one-hundred-percent present when I interviewed him.

I interviewed Lou a couple of times in early 1993 for what he and his manager envisioned would become an "as told to" memoir. Sadly those plans fizzled—I'm not sure why (though my youth and inexperience as an author probably had something to do with it)—but I did write a brief press bio that his manager used as liner notes to a privately pressed CD of his hits. 

Lou was a supremely talented, terrifically gracious man who loved his fans. He was also a gifted lyricist who wrote songs that told stories—remarkable stories, sometimes with unreliable narrators. Listen to "If My Car Could Only Talk" and you'll feel for the poor soldier coming home from leave to his beloved girlfriend, only to suffer "a flash of suspicion: 'you learned a new way of kissin.'" Or "Rhapsody in the Rain," where he sings about the windshield wipers that once seemed to say "forever/forever" and now only say, "never, never."

Like so many fans, I was in love with "Lugee," and meeting him (chastely) did nothing whatsoever to remove his mystique. There are not a lot of artists of whom I can say that. Lou Christie was a star in the old Hollywood way, though his fame had come with the help of Philadelphia's "Idolmaker," Bob Marcucci. He was big; it's the screens and speakers that got small. I am grateful to have basked in the brief and brilliant glow of his lightning.

Hear me remember my times with Brian Wilson on the Waves and Words video podcast

With Brian at the Hotel Pierre in Manhattan, August 1988. Black-and-white photo taken with my camera (probably by Eugene Landy's assistant, Kevin Leslie) and hand-tinted by Nancy Leigh. A color photo from the same meeting can be seen on my LinkedIn page.

I will always be grateful to have interviewed Brian Wilson twice during my career as a rock-and-roll historian. Katie Webb recently interviewed me about Brian for her Beach Boys podcast, Waves and Words. Click here to watch it on YouTube.

I speak about Pope Leo XIV on The Lead with Jake Tapper

I had the great joy this evening of appearing on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper to discuss Pope Leo XIV's election. Later on, I hope to write about the Holy Father's namesake on my Substack, Matters Twomey, which chronicles my work on a biography of the great labor priest (and friend of Martin Luther King) Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ.

I explain to CNN that Church law bars lobbying conclave cardinals

Today on the CNN website, Vatican Correspondent Christopher Lamb's article on an effort by outside organizations to influence cardinals voting in the papal conclave includes a quote from me on what canon law has to say about the matter. In addition to the quote Lamb used in the piece, I told him that Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution governing conclaves, Universi Dominici Gregis, makes it quite clear that anyone who tries to exercise such influence is automatically excommunicated. To borrow a phrase used by the Canadian Prime Minister to the US President today, the Church is not for sale.

What does St. Joseph have to do with devotion to the Sacred Heart? Watch and find out!

A screenshot from my Sacred Heart talk at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill

Tonight I had the joy of speaking on my new book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times at my home parish, St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Here is a a link to a brief clip of me speaking about its patron Joseph's love for Jesus. The full-length video appears below. (Some sound problems come up about eleven minutes in, which are resolved after a short while).

I would love to speak about The Sacred Heart in your town! If you would like to bring me to speak, write me at dawneden @ gmail.com.

“Father, I think we have a pope!” Where Peter Is publishes my reflection on Pope Francis

That's me in the pink scarf, awaiting the announcement of the new pope alongside students and a professor at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, DC, March 13, 2013. Photo by Genevieve Plaster.

At two in the afternoon of March 13, 2013, I popped into the office of a Dominican priest-professor at the Dominican House of Studies to make confession. From where I sat, facing Father’s desk, I could see the bell tower of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, just across Michigan Avenue. 

After Father absolved me, we chatted a bit. Suddenly, as the priest was speaking, the Basilica’s bells started pealing as though summoning the faithful for Mass. But I knew it wasn’t the time for Mass.

“Father!” I interrupted. “I think we have a pope!” 

I have never seen a Dominican run so fast as that priest dashed out the door, sputtering an excuse as he headed to watch the TV in the cloister, his white scapular aflutter. ...

Read the rest in "Francis Remembered: Bishop Richard Umbers and Dawn Eden Goldstein" at Where Peter Is.

Come hear me share the message of my new book on the Sacred Heart

I am excited to have a number of talks lined up to share the message of my new book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times, including events in Washington, DC; New Jersey; and West Virginia. Please visit my Upcoming Talks page for details. To bring me to speak in your town, write me at dawneden @ gmail.com.

Watch me remember Pope Francis on CNN International

Early this morning, I had the joy of honoring Pope Francis's memory on CNN International. I am grateful to the producers and to host John Vause for giving me this opportunity. Click here to watch my interview.

Grateful for the life of Pope Francis (updated with additional info)

I met Pope Francis in October 2019 and gave him copies of my books My Peace I Give You and Remembering God's Mercy in Italian and Spanish translations.

In 2023, Pope Francis thanked me for the copy I sent him of my biography of his fellow Jesuit Father Edward Dowling, SJ. He included prayer cards with novenas to St. Joseph and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

I am grateful for the life of Pope Francis, for his papacy, his deep faith, his inspiration, and his great love for every human being. When I met him in 2019 and struggled to speak in broken Spanish, he grasped my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said warmly in English, "Pray for me, I pray for you!"

"Always!" I exclaimed.

On the day of Pope Francis's election, I wrote that he would be the "Pope of Divine Mercy." Later on, I wrote a book, Remembering God's Mercy, on his spirituality for healing from trauma. At the start of chapter 1, which you can read online, I describe how, when he was a seminarian, a near-death experience led him to a new understanding of how Jesus meets us in our pain.

More recently, I praised how Francis brought the world together to pray at the darkest hour of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Please join me in praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for those participating in the papal conclave, so that the new pope too will radiate the light of Christ to the world as Francis did during the time he was with us.

Listening to the Sacred Heart

The Sacred Heart tops the Audible chart, April 11, 2025

Today I had the joy of finding that the Audible edition of my new book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times was at the top of the list of new releases in Christian Saints & Sainthood at Amazon.com.

Another way to hear the message of The Sacred Heart is through the webinar that I gave last week, which was hosted by my publisher, Loyola Press—see below. Please watch, listen, and share! Thank you and God bless you.

 

"If you’re a Catholic, you don’t just choose your own adventure"

I am grateful to Washington Post reporter Peter Jamison for quoting me in his new article on a Catholic politician who has antagonized the U.S. bishops. Jamison approached me for comment after I wrote an article for Where Peter Is on a related topic, "A Tale of Two Converts."

Walker Percy's Jesuit inspiration

I just posted to my Substack, Matters Twomey, an exciting new revelation about how Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ, whose biography I am writing, helped inspire a character in Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman. 

Hear me share the message of The Sacred Heart, online and in person

I'm excited to have several events coming up to promote my new book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times. They include a free webinar this Wednesday, April 2, at 3 p.m. Eastern time (sign up at IgnatianSpirituality.com) and a talk this Friday, April 4, at Holy Spirit Parish in Avon Lake, Ohio. Visit my Upcoming Talks page for information on these and other events, including the lecture I'm giving on April 8 in Philadelphia on "Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.'s Spiritual Sponsor." 

Bye-bye to The Bad Place

I loved Twitter. X, not so much. I am sorry to leave my friends who are still there, and hope to see them again on BlueSky (or, better still, in real life).

My new book, The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times, is out today!

A quote from my new book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times

What a delight to have my latest book, The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times, published today by Loyola Press! Please write me at the email address listed at the bottom of my Biography/Contact page if you'd like a review copy or if you'd like to interview me about it. I also want to speak about it at any venue that will host me, so reach out if you'd like to bring me to share the message of the Sacred Heart in your town.

Remembering Lyle Brooks

My dear friend Lyle Brooks, nephew of Allen Ginsberg and grandson of Naomi Ginsberg, has died. I wrote a remembrance of him on Facebook. My hope is that someone will write an obituary of him that describes his twenty years as volunteer coordinator for Beyond Morning Sickness and the HER (Hyperemesis Education & Research) Foundation. He was an extraordinary human being. I can hardly expect in this life to meet anyone who has done more to help desperately ill women on an individual level to get the medical help, peer assistance, and true empowerment that they need. Thousands of women and their children are healthy because of his work.

Update: Funeral arrangements and a tribute page for Lyle are now online.

If you knew Lyle and would like to be in touch with me and others who remember him, please write me at the email address at the bottom of my contact page.