About the Contributors

David Cruz-Uribe, OFS, is professor of mathematics and chair of the department at the University of Alabama–Roll Tide! He has been happily married for 30+ years, and has three adult sons. David is a member of the Secular Franciscan Order. He frequently described himself to his confessor as a “wretched sinner” since he is a) a sinner, and b) not very good at it. On the American political spectrum and in the Catholic Church he tends to break either left or right, depending. He is interested in the history of liturgy, immigration, the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, anarchism and the personalism of the Catholic Worker movement.

Mark Gordon is a businessman, nonprofit leader, and writer. In addition to managing his own web development firm, he is president of the SVDP Rhode Island, an independent, lay Catholic organization that provides person to person assistance to the poor. Mark has written extensively for Catholic and other publications, both digital and print, and is the author of Forty Days, Forty Graces: Essays by a Grateful Pilgrim. He has been married for 35 years to Camila Casey. They have two grown children and a newborn granddaughter.

Jeannine M. Pitas is a teacher, writer, academic researcher and Spanish-English translator currently living in Dubuque, Iowa, where she teaches English and Spanish at the University of Dubuque, and Toronto, which she visits as often as she can afford. Among her publications are two poetry chapbooks and two book-length translations of Uruguayan poets Marosa di Giorgio and Pablo Galante.

Brett Salkeld is Archdiocesan Theologian for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and also serves the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Canadian national Catholic – Evangelical Dialogue. Brett is the author of two books, the award-winning How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating (Novalis, 2009; co-author actually) and Can Catholics and Evangelicals Agree about Purgatory and the Last Judgment? (Paulist Press, 2011). The second is a version of his Master’s thesis. Brett hopes to publish his doctoral dissertation (on transubstantiation in ecumenical dialogue) before the second coming. He also blogs at sAsk-a-Theologian and is the co-host of the podcast “Thinking Faith!“. Brett and his wife Flannery live in Regina with their six children.

Julia Smucker is a Mennonite who has come into full communion with the Catholic Church, or a Catholic profoundly and gratefully shaped by her Mennonite heritage (depending on who she’s talking to), and has been involved for several years with the ecumenical group Bridgefolk. She holds an MA in Systematics from Saint John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota, where her classmates dubbed her the Anti-Dichotomy Queen. In addition to Vox Nova, she has also contributed to Christian Democracy, Life Matters Journal, Feminists for Life, Pro Ecclesia, and Solidarity Hall’s inaugural publication Radically Catholic in the Age of Francis, as well as currently serving on the board of the Consistent Life Network. She lives and works in Portland, Maine as a French interpreter and translator.

Matt Talbot, a regular commenter at Vox Nova, blogs over at The Hopeful Populist and lives in Berkeley, California. He describes himself as an ordinary sinner who believes “a saint is a sinner who keeps trying.”

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Subscription Support Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In

Follow Patheos