From the America archives a look at the religious works of Dave Brubeck the jazz legend who died earlier this week Dave Brubeck is recognized as a gifted jazz pianist and composer His use of innovative techniques like the unique time signatures showcased in the breakthrough album Time Out

Last month on a cold November night in Times Square Police Officer Lawrence DePrimo who had been assigned there as part of a counter terrorism unit noticed an old man He was clearly homeless and even more obviously barefoot Officer DePrimo asked the man his shoe size He then went into a nearb

Flannery O rsquo Connor would have proudly owned the noun and the two adjectives most commonly associated with her name It rsquo s hard to imagine an ldquo author rdquo who could have been more ldquo Southern rdquo or more ldquo Catholic rdquo even though she lived at a time when those two a

In July Fr William Rowe 73 pastor of the St Mary Parish in southeast Illinois received an email from his bishop Edward Braxton telling him he had been removed as pastor and taking away his faculties to say Mass and offer the sacraments Most likely Rowe had seen it coming Braxton had complain

Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter today choosing the handle Pontifex and amassing hundreds of thousands of followers in just a nbsp few hours all without composing a single tweet the inaugural tweet will be published next Wednesday The New York Times reports Benedict rsquo s posts will go ou

Cambridge MA I am sure that every reader has by now seen the picture accompanying this blog of the New York policeman kneeling down to give a homeless man poor and cold and barefoot on a winter rsquo s night a warm pair of shoes that he had bought with his own money The story was told with sim

The instructor a Presbyterian called my choice to preach about Mary ldquo bold rdquo We were asked to choose a piece of scripture and then deliver a ten-minute sermon Because it was the start of Advent I chose the annunciation from Luke rsquo s gospel To me Mary rsquo s calm and passive ac

I had occasion earlier this month to spend a day with over a hundred representatives of Catholic health systems I had been invited to give a talk to the Illinois Catholic Health Association on the topic of religious liberty What I came away with from that meeting however was a heightened sense o

We have long lived in an area of the mountains where we often lose our power during winter storms The wind howls the snow slices the air sideways and our electricity goes out The first power outage of the season usually catches us off-guard After that we know to have flashlights and candles ha

My brothers and sisters America welcomes your comments When making comments I implore you to heed the principle message of our recent editorial and converse with one another in a spirit of fraternal charity and humility I ask this not simply in the spirit of the editorial but in the spirit of t

My friend a pastor received an irate email from a parishioner a Eucharistic minister At one of the previous weekend rsquo s Masses one too many ministers had arrived at the altar to distribute Holy Communion As the last to ascend he had been asked to return to the pew Understandably the eve

Fr. James Martin, S.J., writes "desire is a key way that God speaks to us, whether in Advent or the rest of the year."

We rsquo re approaching that time of year when oversensitive atheists lash out against nativity scenes and oversensitive Christians reply by raging on about the supposed War on Christmas One name I was surprised to see added to the list this year was the Holy Father himself Pope Benedict XVI whos

Last Thursday morning my mother and I headed to upstate New York for our Thanksgiving visit with her sister rsquo s family Van Morrison accompanied our conversations as he so often does in my mother rsquo s car It is a trip we have made many times in many different states of mind Last year the

When I heard the news that the U S Bishops had heartily endorsed the advancement of the sainthood cause of Dorothy Day at their annual Fall General Assembly in Baltimore my heart leapt for joy that this remarkable 20th century Catholic lay woman was at last being recognized as a true model of holi