Thomas Dyja explores the cultural foundations of the ldquo American century rdquo in this engaging fast-paced and original account of mid-century Chicago The city was the breeding ground of American modernity from 1930 to 1960 according to Dyja Chicago was not only the country rsquo s railroad

In the years following World War II and continuing after the Second Vatican Council, to be an American Catholic novelist often meant to be lapsed.

Without a Claim Grace Schulman rsquo s dazzling seventh poetry collection immerses us in a richly textured world where ldquo dread-and-joy rdquo are neighbors ldquo Charles Street Psalm rdquo and nothing is truly ours ldquo We rent borrow or share even our bodies and never own all that

Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian has been one of the most important and controversial figures in modern Chinese Catholicism Born into a Catholic family in Shanghai in 1916 he was educated by the French Jesuits in that city and became a Jesuit himself living through a tumultuous time in China rsquo s hi

Dozens of well-known American and British actresses have portrayed religious women in film Some of them mdash Jennifer Jones in ldquo The Song of Bernadette rdquo and Susan Sarandon in ldquo Dead Man Walking rdquo mdash won Academy Awards for their performances There have been nuns who broke i

There have been many famous letters and letter-writers in history One thinks immediately of Cicero who made it an art form Then of course we have St Paul who filled his letters to early Christian communities with advice and doctrine news from the front and occasional scoldings One also thin

When speaking against the death penalty to secular audiences I try to work in a plug for the unborn So once as a guest lecturer at Princeton I lamented the passing of Paul Ramsey a Princeton ethicist who demanded that abortion at any gestational stage be distinguishable from infanticide I equa

Voltaire remarked that all Christology is somehow autobiographical Geza Vermes born into a Hungarian Jewish family converted to Christianity political refugee Catholic priest who later returned to the Judaism of his ancestors first professor of Jewish studies at Oxford died on May 8 2013 at

It is the 1941 baseball season and Joe DiMaggio is not content Fans idolize him He enjoys a record-breaking hitting streak His wife gives birth to a son Yet DiMaggio is moody and saturnine besieged by guilt that he is not the hero his fans expect him to be...

Many people claim that baseball is the ldquo thinking person rsquo s sport rdquo but I now believe that claim rightly applies only to spectators After reading Daniel Callahan rsquo s most recent two books one a memoir and the other a collection of essays spanning almost three decades of his ca

Written at the height of American affluence half a century ago the singular sociological insight of Michael Harrington rsquo s The Other America still rings true ldquo The other America the America of poverty is hidden today in a way that it never was before Its millions are socially invisible

Michael Novak’s autobiography is another remarkable American success story.

ldquo J F Powers 81 Dies Wrote about Priests rdquo So read the stark headline of this great Catholic writer rsquo s obituary in The New York Times in 1999 Powers did write about priests in most of his short stories and both of his novels including his comic masterpiece Morte d rsquo Urban

Caron E Gentry is a lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrew rsquo s in Scotland She is also a student of theology who has taught a course on international relations and Christianity This volume is the outcome of her effort to join the two disciplines The

Religious freedom We were against it before we were for it The papacy at one time unreservedly condemned religious freedom as ldquo madness rdquo but now U S bishops condemn any restrictions on it Earning interest on a loan The Vatican condemned this practice then it allowed the idea and s

Charity is a book that gives away with one hand even while it takes back with the other On the one hand the book written by a Scripture scholar who is the Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Notre Dame underlines the urgency and the prominence of almsgiving in both patri

Marie Arana’s stirring biography, 'Bolívar: American Liberator'

Mary Oliver in her poem ldquo The Morning Paper rdquo wants to know ldquo What keeps us from falling down our faces to the ground ashamed ashamed rdquo after we read through countless news stories of ldquo disasters the unbelievable yet approved decisions rdquo One way of both groundin

A revolution has taken place in the Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of the Bible.

Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie first appeared on Broadway in 1945, beginning what would be a wave of great American plays about troubled families. Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” and “Death of a Salesman,” William Inge’s “Picnic,” Eugene