Kudos to my friend and colleague Bill McGarvey over at BustedHalo for snagging an interview with author Richard Russo I m a big fan of Russo who is one of the funniest writers around Straight Man made me laugh as much as Lucky Jim Well almost as much Perceptive readers of Russo s fic

Just in time for his feast day Xavier Missionary and Saint an hourlong documentary written directed and produced by Jesuit scholastics Jeff Johnson S J and Jeremy Zipple S J will show around the country on PBS starting this week and continuing throughout December You can check the Web

In an ideal world, a presidential election campaign would be a time to consider competing visions of the most important challenges that now confront the United States. How to respond to the continuing threat of international terrorism assuredly is one of those challenges. Unfortunately our present p

Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” uses social commentary to hold health care in the United States up to shame. Though Moore neither adequately diagnoses nor prescribes treatment for the patient he observes—our health care system—his film prods viewers into thinking seriously

Much of Mexicos drug-related violence has roots in the United States, our peoples insatiable demand for illegal drugs. State of Siege, a report by the nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America, notes that the United States shares responsibility for drug-connected violence because the level of con

On presiding at a Latin liturgy

Francis Xavier, meet Ignatius Loyola: re-imagining a famous encounter

Professor Akbar Ahmed a genial Pakistani scholar trained in Britain and now established at Washingtons American University as holder of the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies took a study trip with three undergraduates through much of the Muslim world in the spring semester of 2006 Journey Into

Vatican Diplomat Questions Relations With Israel With new problems over visas for foreign priests and the long, ongoing negotiations needed to resolve the tax status of Catholic institutions in Israel, the Vaticans former ambassador to that country said, To be frank, relations between the Catholic

When protesters in Belgrade converged on the patriarchal headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church last April, they were angry about proposed liturgical reforms. The reforms included an instruction to priests to recite aloud some previously silent prayers and to leave the holy doors in the icon sc

In late August a group of theologians gathered at America House in New York to celebrate a colleague and friend who was retiring from his position as vice president and senior editor at Continuum International publishers. He edited some of us first in the early 1980s, others in the 90s, and several

To Leonard, few of the secrets are given.

In his provocative new book The Stillborn God the historian Mark Lilla tackles the centuries-old debate about the nexus between politics and religion After 1 500 years during which religion and government were inextricably intertwined political philosophers began to question the wisdom of that

No News... When Pope Benedict allowed wider use of the Latin Mass last July, he explained that he did not expect as a result any extensive return to the Tridentine rite. Rather, he said, he intended to heal rifts with traditionalist groups and allow young people attracted to the rite to experience i

In the beginning, God ran the grains of the embryonic earth through creating fingers and dreamed a dream: that every one of these grains might become, in Gods love and power, a being capable of reflecting something of the mystery from which it springs; that each grain might become what it is destine

A report from an ecumenical congress in Europe

The aspirations Isaiah voices are ours: for freedom, justice, liberation, and peace.

Facing the Truth Of Many Things, by Drew Christiansen, S.J., (10/29) is a perfect example of why I subscribe to America. It was beautiful writing about a very painful subject that we all must face someday, the end of a parents life. What is really important in life is the individual human spirit and

Ignore the Robin-Leach-like subtitle this is not an ogling survey of mega-moneyed celebrities Robert Frank writes a weekly column and daily blog called The Wealth Report for The Wall Street Journal and he offers us an informative guided tour around an astonishing American landscape Most of its i