With the death of Frederick Buechner earlier this month, the nation lost one of its most profound novelists—as well as a spiritual writer of great depth and range.
Catholic Book Club
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Father Carl Kabat & the Plowshares Eight: What do we risk to speak the truth?
Father Kabat, who called himself “a fool for Christ,” spent more than 17 of his 88 years in prison for his activism against the U.S. nuclear weapons program. He died on Aug. 4.
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How does a book reading turn into an attempted murder? The threat against Salman Rushdie has been decades in the making
A violent assault on a famous author revives an ugly history: the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
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Look back: America magazine’s love affair with J.F.K.
America’s editors shy away from endorsing political candidates—but J.F.K. proved a hard case, both during his life and in the decades since.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Parish priest, sociologist, novelist: The many imaginations of Father Andrew Greeley
The Rev. Andrew Greeley had an enormous impact on the American Catholic Church—including through his many contributions to this magazine.
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Joan Didion, Wendell Berry, Sally Rooney: Summer review for the Catholic Book Club
A very sunburned literary editor looks back on some Catholic Book Club columns of yore.
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We live in the age of anti-heroes. But few can top John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly.
John Kennedy Toole’s only novel was published after his death—but quickly became a classic of American comic fiction.
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Alice McDermott and the Brooklyn Irish Catholic community that inspired her writing
In her eight novels and many short stories, Alice McDermott has brought a distinctly Catholic imagination to her fiction—but not in the same way as her forebears.
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The greatest American Jesuit you’ve probably never heard of
One of the great Catholic thinkers of 20th-century America is too often overlooked: William F. Lynch, S.J.
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Lessons from John Courtney Murray for a country divided on abortion—and just about everything else
Noted primarily for his work on religious liberty, John Courtney Murray, S.J., provided much of the basis for theological and political reflection on the relationship between church and state on these shores through his voluminous writings.