Now that your Christmas gifts are stored away (or returned), the Christmas tree ornaments are tucked away (or broken), and the Christmas tree needles are successfully vacuumed from your carpet (or not—in my family we’re still discovering in our shag, recreation-room carpet the needles fr
James Martin, S.J.
The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.
Posted inTelevision
Television After Sept. 11
In light of the events of Sept. 11, television seemsif this is possibleeven more banal than before. Despite the estimable Walter Cronkite's pronouncement at the much-delayed 2001 Emmy Awards that television helps to unite us and heal us and blah, blah, blah, it's hard not to look on the majo
Posted inFaith in Focus
St. Jack, Pray for Us!
In a trenchant article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998, the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox argued that the God of contemporary culture was The Market. Think about it, wrote Professor Cox: The Market moves in mysterious ways, it is believed to be omniscient, it boasts its own caste of pr
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
World Trade Center Journal: Part Two
Friday, Sept. 14On my second day at the site that the press now calls ground zero, it has become more difficult to gain access, even in a Roman collar. Today at Chelsea Piers, a sports arena turned supply warehouse, I hitch a ride in a huge tractor-trailer with two ironworkers from New Jersey. Becau
Posted inFrom Our Archives
The Laying Down of Life
Two days after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, I made my way to one of the emergency trauma centers in Manhattan. It had been hastily set up in a cavernous sports facility called Chelsea Piers, on the Hudson River. I had been there earlier, on the evening of Sept. 11, still stunned f
Posted inTelevision
The Year in TV
Over the past few years, leaning and loafing at your ease, as Walt Whitman would say, when you pondered the coming of the year 2001, what came to mind? Did you imagine yourself strapping on your personal jet pack, à la George Jetson, and zooming off to a high-tech job in some space pad? Or did you
Posted inOf Many Things
Of Many Things
My Jesuit province is in the process of “discernment,” as St. Ignatius liked to say. We’re attempting to map out the future of the Society of Jesus in New England—praying together about where God might be calling us, considering new ministries and evaluating our traditional o
Posted inOf Many Things
Of Many Things
Not long ago I stumbled upon a book by the late Bruce Chatwin, called What Am I Doing Here, a collection of essays about the most unlikely topics: North African politics, art curation, the experience of nomadic peoples, Peruvian archeology and the like, connected only by a single strand—Mr. Ch
Posted inOf Many Things
Of Many Things
My job at America is so enjoyable that sometimes I’m amazed that I get paid for it. Well, I don’t actually get paid for it, or rather, technically I do, though my salary is applied to the Jesuit community by virtue of my vow of poverty and, well…you know what I mean.Anyway, it’s
Posted inOf Many Things
Of Many Things
Sometimes it seems that it takes a layperson to understand religious life. Recently I had the chance to read a superb new book entitled For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun, written by, of all people, a senior writer at GQ magazine, who was raised with no religious training