L rsquo Osservatore Romano the official Vatican newspaper has praised mdash wait for it-- ldquo The Blues Brothers rdquo the 1980 comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd as a classic Catholic film As moviegoers of a certain age will remember the film focuses on Jake and Elwood Blu

Kudos to David Alire Garcia for his enlightening article ldquo The Greening of Detroit rdquo As a Detroit resident I have not only witnessed the impact of community gardens on various neighborhoods but I have experienced it first hand as well My wife and I tend a plot in a Detroit community g

Aside from hiring 400 000 workers to carry out the federal census which is a happy coincidence of timing more than make-work the Obama administration has not initiated any national employment programs like Franklin Roosevelt rsquo s administration did in the New Deal No Conservation Corps to plan

Well I guess he disagrees with me nbsp nbsp Actually he disagrees with M Cathleen Kaveny professor of theology and law at the University of Notre Dame who wrote nbsp on Dotcommonweal nbsp here about the excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride nbsp He also disagrees with nb

A Kinsley gaffe named for writer Michael Kinsley who coined the term is when a politician inadvertently says the truth what he or she really thinks but it lands them in hot water So when then-candidate Barack Obama made his remark about people who cling to their guns and religion he commit

I recently learned of Dr Maureen O Brien s timely and important research project and have her permission to put a call for interested persons here on the America magazine blog Dr O Brien Duquesne is in the process of gathering together a group of Catholic lay ecclesial ministers for theologica

Pundits have mused that Al Gore needs to produce an imperative sequel to his documentary An Inconvenient Truth In this second version he would explain why mdash given the great even overwhelming convergence among scientists on the primarily human caused global warming--so few people seem to r

In a Letter to the Editor of The London Tablet Ladislas Orsy S J professor of canon law at Georgetown University has weighed in on the excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride and has declared it based on canon law null and void nbsp The Tablet has graciously provided us with the

I know that some people do not like the terms rightwing and leftwing In some cases such terms are imprecise and you could write a doctoral dissertation on their use and misuse Such terms also depend on the context for example what we call conservative economics here in the U S is generally

This week we are happy to feature numerous online exclusives Two are worth special mention Douglas W Kmiec writes movingly about his father s death in the June 21-28 issue of America On this week s podcast he reflects on the pope s trip to Malta where Kmiec serves as U S ambassador Listen to

One of the more depressing aspects of BP s petro-pocalypse in the Gulf of Mexico has been the readiness even eagerness of many to turn this national catastrophe into just another opportunity for hyperventilating nbsp partisanship You would think that this moment of crisis could have been a chance

A delightful essay by David Dudley in the New York Times ldquo The Mercury Class rdquo garnered my curiosity About a particular series of cars it pointed to the realm of the mind and the spirit at least in my thoughts Dudley writes about his father rsquo s strivings to become a full professo

ldquo All charges dismissed rdquo said the judge this past June 1st when Dan Berrigan and his co-defendants appeared in a Manhattan court to respond nbsp to charges of disorderly conduct on Good Friday The charges stemmed from Dan rsquo s and others with him a dozen in all attempting to diss

The new President of the Catholic University of America was introduced to the university community at a well attended gathering on campus yesterday Professor John Garvey previously the Dean of the Law School at Boston College will take up his duties at the 15th President of CUA later this summer

Today nearly four decades after the terrible events on Bloody Sunday in Derry Ulster the British government has finally come clean somewhat The Saville report 12 years and pound 190m in the making acknowledges what had been pretty much self-evident to most of the world outside of Great Brita

Katrin Bennhold recently wrote a tantalizing snapshot in the New York Times of Sweden s success in encouraging fathers to take leave from work to care for children In the process it seems masculinity itself undergoes revision Sweden is not alone in paying men to take time off to be with their yo

The Catholic Health Association received a videotaped message from President Obama yesterday that acknowledged the decisive role the organization played in getting the health care reform bill across the finish line He singled Sr Carol Keehan for special praise The President rsquo s words may have

In our current June 21-28 issue Peter Heinegg reviews Bonhoeffer Pastor Prophet Martyr Spy a new biography of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer written by Eric Metaxas Almost immediately after Hitler s ascension to power in 1933 Bonhoeffer then just 27 distinguished himse

On this day 18 years ago Dan Quayle famously misspelled potato leading the 12-year-old child whom he corrected to later comment to David Letterman I know he s not an idiot but he needs to study more Do you have to go to college to be vice president Garrison Keillor has the story at the bot

P op Quiz for new parents how much will it cost you to raise your newborn nbsp According to a government study released last week and reported on Planet Money NPR rsquo s finance blog ldquo a middle-income two-parent family will spend 222 360 on average to raise a baby born in 2009 rdq