Archbishop Emeritus Alfred C. Hughes has been Bishop of Baton Rouge and Archbishop of New Orleans.

He now serves at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. He is the author of

several things, including priests in love with God and eager to witness the gospel. And now a new volume,

Spiritual Masters, Living and Praying in the Catholic Tradition. That's our topic today. Welcome, Your Excellency.

Thank you, Mark. It's good to join you and our audience. Wonderful. We jump right into the book

on this show. We're focusing on the books, not current events, except as far as the book book focuses on those. In the opening pages,

you lament the narcissism of contemporary life, but you note that, quote, a self-indulgent

style of life seems to be running its course.

Maybe some signs of optimism there.

Well, what are some of the signs of a slowdown of contemporary narcissism?

What do you see?

Well, you know, first of all, Mark, thank you for taking seriously the introduction,

because that does set the stage for all that I attempt to do in the book. But now, more specifically to your question, you know, there are many

lights that we don't often see covered in the media and therefore may be unaware of.

I find, for instance, what's happening in the ecclesial movements in the church to be truly

striking. These people are bringing, coming together as families to support one another

in living the gospel message seriously and to encourage one another in bringing the gospel values

into whatever walk of life,

members of those families are involved in.

I suspect in the long run we're going to experience an increase of vocations through them

to many of these ecclesial movements.

Here in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, we have... to many of these ecclesial movements.

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