Of Many Things

For my grandmother, “The President” was always understood to mean John F. Kennedy.

Thanks be to God, this has been an autumn of firsts for America. In September we published a groundbreaking interview with Pope Francis; in October, our 56-page special issue on women in the life of the church marked the first time that we published an issue written entirely by women—except fo

I am a “stranger in a strange land,” a Bosox fan living in New York countless Yankee fans.

In this issue America examines some of the personal, political, liturgical and social-justice issues that are most relevant to Catholic women today. We have asked several writers to consider those aspects of faith and church that sustain them, as well as those aspects that challenge. These

Recent events suggest we are experiencing a kairos moment in the life of the church.

The Society of Jesus and China have a long and complicated history, one that goes back to the very beginnings of the order. One of the co-founders of the Jesuits, the great St. Francis Xavier, died during his attempt to reach the Chinese mainland. Thirty years later, in 1582, Matteo Ricci, S.J., suc

Some say it all started with Bill Clinton’s feel-your-pain politics, others with Oprah’s daily pseudo-psychology. Still others say it began with MTV’s “The Real World,” the first in that ingeniously banal and now omnipresent genre called reality television.Whenever it s

Organizations as old as America rarely do anything completely unprecedented. For every “new” idea, there’s a pretty good chance that it’s been done before, in one way or another, during the course of 104 years of weekly publishing. This issue of America, however, is truly a f

Father John Courtney Murray’s work is lucid, imaginative, even daring.

In 1963 John LaFarge, S.J., witnessed the culmination of his efforts for racial reconciliation.