Of Many Things

Down through the centuries, church bells have served a number of purposes: to warn the community of impending dangers, to mark celebratory occasions like weddings and sorrowful ones like death. With death by execution in mind, Dorothy Briggs, O.P., in Medford, Mass., has begun a national ecumenical

Once a month in the late afternoon, I take the subway uptown to Spanish Harlem. There, I celebrate Mass for a small community of sisters—the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The subway leaves me at East 116th Street, and I walk on for several blocks through a world very different from m

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

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

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

Everyone knows what a diary is, but a house diary? In earlier times, Jesuit communities kept handwritten records of the comings and goings of their members-their apostolic work, their daily lives, their neighborhoods. The Nativity Jesuit community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has preserved a

In late March, New York City's Catholic Workers hosted a Sunday afternoon presentation by two human rights workers from Colombia. After celebrating the noon Mass at Nativity Church, I walked over to nearby St Joseph House to hear them speak of the negative impact there of U.S. military aid. Regu

Back in December of 1994, when John Salvi opened fire at two abortion clinics in the Boston area, killing two and wounding five others, both Gov. William F. Weld and Cardinal Bernard Law called for talks between the two sides of the abortion debate in order to deescalate the rhetoric. But given the

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

If ever there was a city of parades, it is New York. Working at America House, just a block from Fifth Avenuethe parade route par excellenceI occasionally walk over to watch. The biggest and oldest Fifth Avenue parade of all takes place on St. Patrick’s Day. March 17 this year fell on a Saturd