Despite my early considerable fondness for Sarah Silverman the potty-mouth comedian and now star of The Sarah Silverman Show something has always irked me about her meta-humor nbsp Silverman specializes nbsp in what might be temed the mocking of the mocking of minorities nbsp nbsp You la

I am always looking out for good Lenten spiritual reading What I look for especially are books about conversion repentance deeper prayer transformation mdash all core Lenten themes It turns out a Jesuit housemate of mine Dan Kendall S J edited recently some earlier from 1975 lost writi

Here at America magazine various colleagues have already called attention to the rightwing attacks on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development the anti-poverty effort of the U S Catholic Bishops Conference and most recently the attacks on Mr John Carr who has served as the USCCB pointman on

An article in The Washington Post features good news for parents who hope to find Catholic schools capable of providing services for children with disabilites Forty-two percent of Catholic elementary schools in the United States had a resource teacher to help students with special needs in 2008-09

This week online Bill McGarvey of BustedHalo returns to America to discuss this year s Oscar contenders with myself and culture editor Father Jim Martin Will Avatar triumph or can The Hurt Locker squeak out a surprise win What do Up and Up in the Air have to say about detachment and what

We re frequently frequently nbsp accused of being too NewYorky here at America magazine what with all of our Of Many Things columns nbsp about New York and its environs and occasional mention of events that happen at or visitors who frequent nbsp America House our office-cum-residence nbsp

From all reports it sounds like both parties are planning their best impersonation of Madonna the singer not the Blessed Virgin at the health care summit at Blair House on Thursday Her 1990 song Vogue was all about striking the right pose My sympathies are of course more with the President

Israel rsquo s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that two religious sites in the West Bank will be added to the country s national heritage list The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel s Tomb in Bethlehem will now be included in a 107m Israeli restoration plan Anyone unfam

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning has served as a spokesperson for St Vincent rsquo s Catholic hospital in Manhattan since 2006 and he plans to continue this work mdash but from now on he rsquo s doing it for free The New York Post reported that Manning will no longer accept compensation f

This weekend I popped in on Turner Classic Movie rsquo s 30 Days of Oscar and caught the last 15 minutes of Steven Spielberg s Close Encounters of the Third Kind nbsp Have you seen it lately If not put it in your queue nbsp It holds up amazingly well This scene of the scientists trying to com

The health care plan President Obama released yesterday is not the plan I would have written Nor is it clear to me that releasing a plan in advance of the bipartisan health care summit on Thursday was the way to go Better to have held the summit and then announced a plan that included significant

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York spoke to a packed bar in midtown Manhattan Monday evening for the city s first Theology on Tap lecture of the year His topic of choice was the papacy in honor of the feast of the Chair of Peter and the talk was filled with a number of interesting and entertain

High-school drama departments often are known for being creative mdash although not necessarily their hiring methods But Providence High School a Catholic institution in Burbank California recently attracted attention from the Los Angeles Times after it chose to hire two professional actors ra

Two reports from Britain s Independent Catholic News and Fides indicate how difficult even dangerous it has become to be a Christian in the Middle East and why the pope s call for reciprocity remains so important The first story relates the increasingly precarious position of Christians in Iraq w

The New Liturgical Movement a liturgy website has gathered together some of the new translations of the Propers for Mass here in this online article nbsp 1st Sunday of AdventCollectGrant we pray almighty God that your faithful may resolveto run forth with righteous deeds to meet your

In light of Austen Ivereigh s strong post below on the Irish bishops and his favorable mention of Diarmuid Martin the archbishop of Dublin whose suggestion that the Irish bishops resign did not carry the day here is a long piece by David Gibson on Martin s career and example in the midst of a c

At the CPAC convention last week Congressman Ron Paul won the straw poll in a presidential preference contest Paul was a candidate for president last time round but he failed tow in a single primary although the popularity of his views with some young people created a veneer of enthusiasm that ea

Look at the statements and homilies made by some of the Irish bishops yesterday following their two-day meeting with Pope Benedict XVI and one thing will be perfectly obvious they just don t understand the problem There is plenty there about sin and repentance God s loving and healing mercy and