I was startled. One of my Jesuit confreres had just introduced me to a fellow graduate student, not by name but as “our superior.” We were classmates; we lived in a small community, but somehow I had turned from Drew into “Father Superior.” I was no longer an individual. I wa
Drew Christiansen
Drew Christiansen, S.J., served as the editor in chief of America from 2005 to 2012. He was a Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Human Development at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He was co-editor with Carole Sargent of A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown, 2020).
Posted inOf Many Things
Of Many Things
Pilgrimage has rarely been easy. Storms and shipwrecks, robbery and kidnaping, wars and illness were endured, not to mention the self-imposed disciplines: walking barefoot, fasting, begging for hospitality or passage. In his day, after enduring three and a half months of storm-tossed travel while re
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Blocks in the Road
The 10th anniversary of the signing of the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel occurred on Dec. 30, 2003. David-Maria A. Jaeger, O.F.M., has served on the Holy See’s delegation to the negotiations with Israel since 1992 and is widely credited as the principal dra
Posted inBooks
Elusive Peace
With the approval of a new Palestinian cabinet led by Mohammed Qureia the publication of two model peace plans by leading Israeli and Palestinian peace activists and the recommendation by four former heads of Israeli internal security Shin Beth of a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the West
Posted inFrom Our Archives
An Empire in the Name of Peace
With formal hostilities ended in Iraq, it is time to take up again the hard questions posed by the U.S. war on terror. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, may not have “changed everything,” as the overheated rhetoric of the day had it, but the experi
Posted inFrom Our Archives
A Campaign to Divide the Church in the Holy Land
In Rome and Jerusalem, proposals have been made to divide the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and to establish alongside it a church jurisdiction for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel. This new jurisdiction would be directly dependent on Rome and independent of the local Latin (Roman Catholic) pat
Posted inExplainer
Whither the Just War?
Today, Catholicism adheres to a rich theology of peace, of which the just war is only part.
Posted inFrom Our Archives
An Exchange of Gifts
Almost 18 years ago I sat on the terrace of a Berkeley coffee bar waiting to meet John Howard Yoder, the well-known Mennonite theologian and ethicist. I was about to leave Berkeley to join the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where since Vietnam War days Yoder had taught a course on military
Posted inFaith, Of Many Things
Of many things: Longing for nature
When I returned last fall to New York City after 30 years away, what demanded the most adjustment for me was the absence of light. “Welcome to New York,” I was told. The deprivation of daylight is one of the things New York apartment-dwellers have to endure.
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Living Stones of the Holy Land
Beatitude, the al-Aqsa intifada has gone on now for more than two years. In September you declared it has been “a catastrophe” for the Palestinian people. What did you mean? The conditions of life imposed by the Israeli military are simply inhuman. The whole population, more than th