Graham Greene crafted some of English-language literature’s finest works, part of a fascinating life marked by bouts of uncertainty and the certainty of doubt.
Catholic Book Club
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Ron Hansen’s liturgical novels make great Lenten reads
Throughout a long career as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, poet and screenwriter, Ron Hansen has regularly explored questions of faith and religious belonging.
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Langston Hughes: Communist, Christian—or both?
Langston Hughes, the great Black poet, playwright, journalist and author, had a nuanced and not easily categorized religious life.
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This liberation theologian was once silenced by the Vatican. In the Laudato Si’ era, he’s getting a second look.
After the publication of “Laudato Si’,” rumors circulated that Pope Francis had personally asked Leonardo Boff for his input on the writing of the encyclical. It marked an ironic turn in the theologian’s long career.
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Who’s in hell? Hans Urs von Balthasar had thoughts.
Is hell empty? Pope Francis hopes so. Among the thinkers of the past century who speculated it could be so was Hans Urs von Balthasar, a favorite of the past two popes and a prominent theologian of his time.
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John W. Donohue: an ascetic Jesuit and bane of Christopher Hitchens
John W. Donohue, S.J., an associate editor of America from 1972 to 2007, was described by one Jesuit on staff as “a living rule. Were the Society of Jesus ever to lose its Constitutions, we would need only look to him to see how our life should be lived.”
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Jesuit George Dunne loved a good fight—and hated injustice
George Dunne, S.J., never backed down from a fight or a perceived injustice in a long career as a priest, academic and activist.
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C. S. Lewis wasn’t a writer of fantasy. He was a teller of hard truths.
C. S. Lewis was gifted with an expansive imagination—but much of his spiritual writing doesn’t flinch from the hard realities of life.
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There are lots of interesting Jesuits in America magazine’s history. C. J. McNaspy might take the cake.
Was there ever a scholar of more varied interests and fields of expertise than C. J. McNaspy, S.J.?
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Mary Karr and the art of the spiritual memoir
Though Mary Karr might not consider herself a conventional writer of spiritual autobiography, her three memoirs have made this poet and professor a standard-bearer in the genre.