Jesuit School Spotlight
An inspiring teacher leads a student renaissance at Creighton Prep
“The arts are crucial to Jesuit education. Our arts programs are a home for students at Creighton Prep, but they also inspire the expansion of heart and imagination—elements that are indispensable to Ignatian practice.”
The Weekly Dispatch
The Vatican’s moral objection to the global surrogacy industry
The global surrogacy market, valued at $14 billion in 2022, is projected to reach $129 billion by 2032. That’s a lot of bucks and a lot of babies and a lot of young women renting their bodies to other people.
Of Many Things
Campus Protests and the Temptation of an Enemy You Can Detest
The Gaza campus protests reveal the nature—and danger—of righteous anger.
Your Take
How are Catholics reacting to ‘Dignitas Infinita’?
“If you are not challenged somewhere in your own moral thinking by reading [“Dignitas Infinita”], then you most likely have not read it thoroughly enough,” wrote Sam Sawyer, S.J., America’s editor in chief, in his Of Many Things column last month.
Editorials
We stand in solidarity with migrants and asylum seekers.
No just law can stop solidarity at the arbitrary line of a border, nor can a just government require the church to condition the works of mercy on the immigration status of those in need.
Short Take
Frontline caretakers understand the holiness of vulnerable strangers better than anyone
Many professionals who care for strangers are not religious workers, but they play a pivotal role in reinforcing the imago Dei, the notion that all people are made in the image of God.
Dispatches
Jesuit Father Gregory Boyle and Nancy Pelosi to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
The two high-profile Catholics are among a diverse group of 19 individuals to be honored by President Biden for making “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States.”
Abortion access is expanding in Europe. Is the end of Roe v. Wade the cause?
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in 1973, has provoked supporters of abortion access in Europe to press for liberalization of abortion laws across the continent.
Pope Francis accepts invitation to 2024 G7 summit—the first pope ever to attend
“His presence brings prestige to our nation and to the entire Group of 7. It is the first time that a pope will participate in the work of the G7,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said.
Features
When a Catholic hospital becomes for-profit
Do Catholic hospitals have to choose between mission and the market?
What every family grieving a miscarriage or stillbirth deserves from the church
The church helped me heal after my miscarriage. That’s what every grieving mother deserves.
Faith and Reason
Migration has always been at the heart of Christianity
I would argue for two axioms. First, Christian mission induces migration, and, conversely, migration fulfills Christian mission. Second, there is a reciprocal cause-and-effect relationship between Christian mission and migration.
The danger of turning ‘brain death’ and organ donation into culture war issues
A new statement on end-of-life care threatens established Catholic tradition.
Faith in Focus
How St. Ignatius’ Examen helped me understand my obsessive-compulsive disorder
The examen carved a space between me and the compulsion, just enough to breathe, to think and to make a deliberate choice.
Living on Scan Time: My life after a cancer diagnosis
What surviving cancer—for now—taught me about life.
Ideas
Eugenics was everywhere 100 years ago. We still live with its legacy today.
Of the many things that the history of eugenics should teach modern society, two stand out. First, not all questions are good questions. Second, statistics can be warped to tell you pretty much anything you want.
Books
Review: America’s two-front dilemma in World War II
Books about World War II are ubiquitous in the nonfiction section, but “Hitler’s American Gamble” is the rare recent work with a genuinely new contribution to make, not just to our understanding of the past but also to our understanding of the present.
Review: A heroine’s journey
Lauren Groff’s new novel inverts Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” by casting a girl—and only briefly, much later on in the novel, the woman—as its heroine.
Review: Integralism, liberalism and the future of Christendom
In “All the Kingdoms of the World¸” Kevin Vallier engages with Catholic integralists, but he opens a bigger question: Is there such a thing as a Catholic politics?
Review: Mary Beard on Roman imperial power
An account of “what it meant to be a Roman emperor,” Mary Beard’s new book is also a sustained exploration of tradition embodied by an individual ruler.
Poetry
2024 Foley Poetry Prize: The Patron Saint of Sliding Glass Doors
If we could see the invisible saints watching over houses, whether imagined or not
The 2024 Foley poetry contest: art that pierces and disrupts
Poems like these at the very least deserve more eyes on them, and we are more than happy to make that happen.
Last Take
How poll workers are defending democracy
WIthout free and fair elections because we cannot effectively address any of the issues mentioned in “Faithful Citizenship,” from protecting the unborn to creating a more just economy.
Faith
When a Catholic hospital becomes for-profit
Do Catholic hospitals have to choose between mission and the market?
Migration has always been at the heart of Christianity
I would argue for two axioms. First, Christian mission induces migration, and, conversely, migration fulfills Christian mission. Second, there is a reciprocal cause-and-effect relationship between Christian mission and migration.
An inspiring teacher leads a student renaissance at Creighton Prep
“The arts are crucial to Jesuit education. Our arts programs are a home for students at Creighton Prep, but they also inspire the expansion of heart and imagination—elements that are indispensable to Ignatian practice.”
How St. Ignatius’ Examen helped me understand my obsessive-compulsive disorder
The examen carved a space between me and the compulsion, just enough to breathe, to think and to make a deliberate choice.
Living on Scan Time: My life after a cancer diagnosis
What surviving cancer—for now—taught me about life.
How are Catholics reacting to ‘Dignitas Infinita’?
“If you are not challenged somewhere in your own moral thinking by reading [“Dignitas Infinita”], then you most likely have not read it thoroughly enough,” wrote Sam Sawyer, S.J., America’s editor in chief, in his Of Many Things column last month.
What every family grieving a miscarriage or stillbirth deserves from the church
The church helped me heal after my miscarriage. That’s what every grieving mother deserves.
Pope Francis accepts invitation to 2024 G7 summit—the first pope ever to attend
“His presence brings prestige to our nation and to the entire Group of 7. It is the first time that a pope will participate in the work of the G7,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said.
The danger of turning ‘brain death’ and organ donation into culture war issues
A new statement on end-of-life care threatens established Catholic tradition.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts