To walk where the young Henry James once walkedthat is what you can do if you are lucky enough to visit Linwood, a spiritual center near Rhinebeck, N.Y. The mid-19th-century owner of the property was Augustus James, Henry’s uncle. During his boyhood, Henry used to spend some of his summers the

Criminal justice is on the agenda of the U.S. bishops at their annual fall gathering in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13-16. They will be discussing the draft of a pastoral statement entitled Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice. Their comm

Maine ModestyI read with interest Of Many Things (10/21), which mentions my native city and tells the story of a golden boy by the name of Ian Crocker. I recently heard another amazing story about this ordinary Olympian. It seems he was working before he left for Australia this summer and mentioned

When, in early August, I had to back out of a social engagement on Long Island because I was heading to Philadelphia to cover the Republican National Convention, neither my prospective host nor any would-be fellow guests were particularly impressed. In fact, some insinuated that there was a more nef

On Nov. 17, 1953, the secretary of the Holy Office, Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, sent a letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bernard Griffin. Graham Greene’s book THE POWER AND THE GLORY, it began, published in London in 1940 and afterwards translated into several languages, has be

Autumn is the most ambiguous of seasons. Throughout the centuries poets have used it as a symbol for either maturity or decay, much like a good news-bad news joke. But rather than wear oneself out trying to resolve this ambiguity, it seems wiser to submit to perplexity and agree with the 11th-centur

This year’s fall TV roundup was surprisingly simple to, well, round up, since there have been relatively few good shows introduced this season. And after all, does it take a media savant to predict that one is probably not going to enjoy a show called Freakylinks? Or that a show called Cursed

If you are like me, you resent having your name on everyone’s mailing list, receiving direct mail of all sorts, mostly junk, and sometimes having your dinner hour interrupted with telephone solicitations. The scrupulous among us, however, not wanting to miss out on that one, real, authentic of

One of the first words my 20-month-old son learned was show, as in his favorite, eternally recurring program Barney. That most of what he watches is similarly innocuous doesn’t relieve our discomfort as he points to the television every morning and demands, Show! Show! Not that we deny him his

Scholars Say Vatican’s Published Material on Holocaust InadequateAfter a yearlong study, a commission of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars said that published Vatican material on World War II leaves unanswered many important questions about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. In a report m

Facing the challenges and accepting the gifts offered by homosexual priests in the Catholic Church

Avery Dulles rsquo s first article for America appeared in the issue of May 5 1951 It was already five years since he had published his first book A Testimonial to Grace a narrative of his conversion to Catholicism while an undergraduate at Harvard For half a century Dulles has continued to tur

Kosovo is a land in need of a voice. And the only one I can hear, or even imagine, is Sylvia Poggioli of National Public Radio. As I ride along on the bus I hear her describing the shattered houses and ruined streets. I wait for her to tell me about the tragedies peppered all over the sometimes-beau

The jacket of Robert Putnam’s new book, Bowling Alone (2000) has an illustration on the front cover that depicts a solitary bowler. On the back flap is a photograph of the bowling team the author belonged to in about 1955. Putnam takes his title from the fact that although about 91 million Ame

On Friday evening, Sept. 29, poets, musicians, theologians and friends gathered in the James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to celebrate the life and work of the Orthodox priest Alexander Men. Among other delights, we heard from Father Men’s son Mikhail, currently vice g

Last spring I ran a seminar on the contemporary Catholic imagination in America and at the end I asked my students to write about their own religious imaginations One found a surprise she discovered she had a religious imagination But she shouldn rsquo t have been surprised everyone has onea se

American bishops discussed research describing changing parish staffing patterns at their national convocation in Milwaukee on June 15-17. The three-hour deliberation considered data showing that the number of priests continues to decline, while parishes are hiring more and more lay ministers. Archb

Laity May Fill Communion Cups; Indult ProposedClearing up some of the confusion surrounding the revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the U.S. bishops have received a Vatican ruling permitting extraordinary eucharistic ministers to pour consecrated wine into chalices for Communion. The bi