Last Thursday I had the pleasure of going to a “Theology on Tap” at Bad Abbott‘s in Quincy, MA, to hear Cardinal Sean O’Malley offer a few words for young adults. The Cardinal gave an excellent speech and Q&A, which covered his early priesthood, the need for courage and discipleship, the need for Catholic community, and quotes from Graham Greene and St. Augustine.

The local media coverage of this event (check out WBZ’s coverage here) tended to simplify the Cardinal’s excellent talk – “Cardinal Sean goes to local bar, tells kids to turn off the TV and go to Church.” While it’s impossible to condense all of the Cardinal’s speech into a single sound bite, I think the media tended to portray the event as Cardinal Sean’s attempt to simply “revive attendance at Church” (as Keller says in the clip above). Most of the media didn’t mention that a lot of the young adults were already pretty dedicated to the church and asked some excellent and thoughtful questions, rather than being surprised at a cardinal in their local watering hole.

I was fortunate to sit in the front row, and I took a few video clips of his speech. Here are some links:

Intro: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=5817752200747168297&hl=en

Speech: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2718382783437944078&hl=en (Speech is about 40 minutes long but is excellent)

Q&A 1: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=5417439106441473392&hl=en

Q&A 2: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-3159251886096866001&hl=en

Q&A 3: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1238687512562623979&hl=en

Q&A 4: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=902358379646954255&hl=en

Q&A 5: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-4574755861908795577&hl=en

Visit Cardinal Sean’s blog for other great photos and video from Cardinal Sean. I especially like his pictures of the Orthodox churches in St. Petersburg.