The late Thomas Clarke SJ once suggested to me that one of the most important questions we should ask in our quest for understanding is What time is it I ve been thinking about Tom s comment as Pope Benedict XVI begins his first visit as pontiff to the United States and remembering the fir

I told you so but I did Back in the third week of January http americamagazine org blog entry cfm blog id 2 id 9D26AE9A-3048-887F-8F45813D8C1D5293 I urged Barack Obama to introduce a family friendly approach to immigration reform This would perfectly illustrate the kind of transformative lea

Pope Benedict has arrived here in the Imperial City of Washington and all manner of road closings and television specials have been announced But the quietest notice came at the gym this morning I work out at the Catholic University gym and there were no pick-up games of basketball The main gy

Michael Sean Winters a dedicated blogger for In All Things will--like many of America s contributors--be doing the media rounds for the papal visit In addition to Michael s piece for Slate which Fr Jim Martin blogged about earlier this week he took questions from readers on the Washington

Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us The disciples hearts were on fire during this sacred conversation And that fire was so hot that it indelibly seared their souls with the intimate knowledge peace and love of the resurre

Pope Benedict decided to end speculation about whether he will discuss the abuse crisis even before he lands Aboard the plane en route to Washington D C he said this according to the Associated Press It is a great suffering for the Church in the United States and for the church in general

This is my third and final post on the Triduum at the Casa in Scottsdale Arizona Click on my name above to read my previous entries When I heard that the Casa was putting on a passion play in the afternoon of Good Friday I mentally thought I might skip it I had studied the sordid history of

Today Pope Benedict s profound theological vision comes up against the whirlwind of America s 24 7 media culture and is indeed at the mercy of that culture A man not know for soundbites will be the subject of soundbites Instead of encyclicals and books and homilies the Pope s message wil

Here s Associate Editor Matt Malone SJ on NPR today along with a seminarian from St Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia Pa on All Things Considered considering the shortage of priestly vocations and why a person would choose to enter a seminary or religious life Besides bein

As Fr Jim Martin noted last week America s editors will be fanned out across New York this week to cover the pope s visit To supplement their coverage we re expanding our roster of bloggers to include more perspectives from both New York and DC Also thanks to Catholic News Service we

It is hard for the congregation to take the homily more seriously than the preacher takes it Anon Speakers exhibit visual and verbal signs that prompt their listeners to make judgments about their right to communicate R Kennedy quoting King Power and Communication If we ap

Equal time for Senator McCain After a plea to our readers to provide In All Things with a list of the Republican Senator s Catholic Advisors a kindly soul pointed us to this link McCain s Catholics We would list all the personages as we did below with Senator Obama but Mr McCain

Cambridge MA I am sure I am not alone in having mixed feeling about Pope Benedict s coming visit to the United States Of course I share the respect and even reverence due to the Papacy in general and to this holy Pope in particular and of course I share in the prayers of all those hoping tha

The R Word Regulation. The word you thought would never cross Republican lips has been uttered by a cabinet-level official. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. announced March 26 that it is time for “us all to think more broadly about the regulatory and supervisory framework” for fin

What Sam Harris might learn from the mystics

A husband's journey through grief

By now, Senator Barack Obama’s talk, “A More Perfect Union,” delivered at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center on March 18, has been analyzed to death. For my part, I thought it a politically astute and important speech that merits reading by everyone, even though it will not s

The former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson widely credited with authorship of such George W Bush catchphrases as ldquo axis of evil rdquo and ldquo the soft bigotry of low expectations rdquo is no stranger to big ideas And here he has assumed no small task In Heroic Conservatism Ge

Few industries can boast that they serve the public good and also post a healthy profit. Yet that is what newspapers in the United States succeeded in doing for much of the last century. Flush with advertising dollars and comfortable atop the media food chain, newspapers managed to please both their