There are photos to prove it: Bob Dylan in the Vatican, shaking hands and sitting down for a chat with Pope Leo XIV. How did this happen? And what did they discuss?
James T. Keane
James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
The Catholic writing of Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso
Corso wrote in a 1958 letter to Kerouac that “I don’t regret my Catholic upbringing. There is something in me that is still very Catholic, I think it’s that only-we-see-the-face-of-God conceit.”
Posted inExplainer
Why are Catholics divided over the Prayer to St. Michael?
The Prayer to St. Michael has been in Catholic news for a while now. What is its history and why is its recitation after Mass a point of dispute?
Posted inCatholic Book Club
The ‘horrors and sorrows’ of an American genius: Edgar Allan Poe
While Edgar Allan Poe never enjoyed much commercial success during his short and troubled life, his reputation as an American original has only increased in the 175 years since.
Posted inScripture Reflections
The temptation to follow idols
A Reflection for Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time, by James T. Keane
Posted inCatholic Book Club
A century of ‘The Sun Also Rises’: Hemingway’s ‘Lost Generation’ turns 100
Ernest Hemingway’s breakthrough novel was published 100 years ago this week. ‘America’ didn’t have much to say about Hemingway then, but in the years since, he’s been a favorite topic.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
‘Speak, O Muse, of that ingenious woman’: Anne Carson wins the Nobel Prize
Though she was raised Catholic and a formative book in her childhood was an illustrated Lives of the Saints, Anne Carson does not have much time for the institutional church.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
‘Catcher in the Rye’ at 75: America magazine’s critiques (and defenses) of the classic novel
America more or less atoned over the years for its initial dismissal of Catcher in the Rye.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Remembering Peter Henriot, a Jesuit scholar who helped put Catholic social teaching on the map
While U.S. Catholics might remember Peter Henriot, S.J., best for his social justice advocacy, he was better known in the minds of many for his decades of service to the church in Africa.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Annie Dillard: Our 20th-century Thoreau, nature writer and theologian
Annie Dillard on converting to Catholicism: “You go to a Catholic church, and there are people of all different colors and ages, and babies squalling. You’re taking a stand with these people. You’re saying: ‘Here I am. One of the people who love God.’”