Catholic Information Center

Mario Enzler, a former Swiss Guard, honors the centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II by sharing his experiences of intimate contact with the Pope during his service and how it led him to deepen his Catholic commitment through the cultivation of Christian virtue.

Jennifer Fulwiler told herself she was happy. Why wouldn’t she be? She made good money as a programmer at a hot tech start-up, had just married a guy with a stack of Ivy League degrees, and lived in a twenty-first-floor condo where she could sip sauvignon blanc while watching the sun set behind the hills of Austin. Raised in a happy, atheist home, Jennifer had the freedom to think for herself and play by her own rules. Yet a creeping darkness followed her all of her life. Finally, one winter night, it drove her to the edge of her balcony, making her ask once and for all why anything mattered. At that moment everything she knew and believed was shattered. Asking the unflinching questions about life and death, good and evil, led Jennifer to Christianity, the religion she had reviled since she was an awkward, skeptical child growing up in the Bible Belt. Mortified by this turn of events, she hid her quest from everyone except her husband, concealing religious books in opaque bags as if they were porn and locking herself in public bathroom stalls to read the Bible. Just when Jennifer had a profound epiphany that gave her the courage to convert, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition-and the only treatment was directly at odds with the doctrines of her new-found faith. Something Other Than God is a poignant, profound and often funny tale of one woman who set out to find the meaning of life and discovered that true happiness sometimes requires losing it all.

Dawn Eden speaks about healing the memory, looking towards the Jesuit spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola and Pope Francis. This lecture is especially recommended for family and friends of survivors of trauma and abuse. About Dawn Eden: Dawn Eden is the author of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints (Ave Maria Press, 2012) and The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (Thomas Nelson, 2006). Born into a Jewish family in New York City, Dawn lost her faith as a teenager and became agnostic. During her twenties, in the 1990s, she was a rock journalist in New York City, interviewing performers such as Elton John and Brian Wilson. She went on to work on the editorial staff of the New York Post and the Daily News. When Dawn was thirty-one, she experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity that ultimately led her to enter the Catholic Church. Her first book, The Thrill of the Chaste, became a surprise hit, published in four languages. In My Peace I Give You, Dawn offers a Catholic spirituality of healing for adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. She has shared its message throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia. My Peace I Give You has been published in Spanish and Slovak translations, and is soon to be published in Polish. Father James Brent, O.P., Director of the Dominican Friars’ Angelic Warfare Confraternity, wrote in a letter to confraternity members: “For anyone who has suffered from sexual abuse, Dawn’s book is a must read. The testimonies of victims who have read it are powerful testimonies indeed. But in my opinion, anyone who suffers from the wounds of sexual sin in any way whatsoever will also find in this book a powerful aid for healing and renewal.”

As the Church prepares to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Dominic, Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP and Fr. Jacob Bertrand Janczyk, OP join the CIC to launch and discuss their new book, “Saint Dominic’s Way of Life: A Path to Knowing and Loving God.” Few Catholics today know much about Saint Dominic, who died August 6, 1221. Unlike Teresa of Ávila or Ignatius of Loyola, Dominic did not leave a deposit of writings to be examined and built upon. Yet this medieval Spaniard still has much to teach us today, and we see this in the way of life he left to the Church. Dominic offers a rich approach to Christian living, not just for members of the Order of Preachers, the religious order he founded, but for all Catholics. His dedication to prayer, penance, and the Word of God, and his love of neighbor, form the deep foundation of his project of being conformed to God. By following in Dominic’s footsteps, we too can discover how to live with a heart that is undivided, seeking God first in all things.

With raw and intimate stories from both her personal life and public activism, Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action and the face of the millennial pro-life movement, presents a guidebook for becoming a force for good in a broken world.