Episode 27: Mary Ellen Konieczny

Daily Theology Podcast

Hello again from the Daily Theology podcast! Today we bring you episode 27, featuring Steve Okey’s conversation with Dr. Mary Ellen Konieczny of the University of Notre Dame! They talk about how Prof. Konieczny’s experience working for the Archdiocese of Chicago led her to study the sociology of religion, her research into religious practice at the US Air Force Academy, and why the real problem of polarization is not conflict but lack of engagement.

Prof. Mary Ellen Konieczny is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, and she holds the Henkels Family Collegiate Chair. She is also currently a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and a faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society. She earned her BS from Notre Dame, her MDiv from Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Spirit’s Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among American Catholics (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the forthcoming Service before Self: Organization, Cultural Conflict, and Religion at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Along with Charlie Camosy and Tricia Bruce, she is the co-editor of Polarization in the US Catholic Church: Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal (Liturgical Press, 2016). Her next project, “Our Lady of Kibeho: Exploring Marian Devotion in East Africa,” will take her to Rwanda for research on the interplay of post-genocide reconciliation and religious practice. She can be found on Twitter, for which she credits Charlie Camosy.

Special thanks to Tara Durheim of Liturgical Press for helping to arrange this episode.