Podcasts

Associate Editor Kevin Clarke outlines the issues at stake leading up to the January 9 referendum in Sudan. If the populace votes in favor of independence for the South, civil war could break out again, as forces in the North seem unwilling to allow their fellow citizens to form their own nation. The referendum was […]

Fr. Guido Gockel, former director of the pontifical mission for Palestine, describes the Christmas customs in Bethlehem, including the marathon of liturgies at the Basilica of the Nativity that begin on Christmas Eve. Fr. Gockel, a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries, also describes his current work for the Catholic Near Eastern Welfare Association, which […]

Drew Christiansen, S.J., first began reading the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., as a novice, and the French Jesuit’s thinking served as a formative intellectual and spiritual influence. Discussing his essay, “On the Slope with Teilhard,” Father Christiansen explains Teilhard’s fascination with matter, and how matter can help the spirit to flourish.

John Howard Griffin is known primarily as the author of Black Like Me, a seminal book in the history of the civil rights movement in which a white man dressed up as a black man and wrote about his experiences in the segregated south. But Griffin was also a war hero, a convert to Catholicism, […]

In a discussion of his book, The American Catholic Revolution, Mark S. Massa, S.J. introduces the major moments and figures of the 1960s, including Frederick McManus and the liturgical changes introduced by Vatican II, Charlie Curran and and the resistance to Humanae vitae and the political activism of Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Scroll to minute 15:50 […]

Deborah M. Jones discusses her book, The School of Compassion: A Roman Catholic Theology of Animals, and her work with the Catholic Concern for Animals. Dr. Jones has sought to build a theology of animals around the catechism’s dictate that “animals are God’s creatures. By their mere existence, they bless him and give him glory. […]

Matt Malone, S.J., blogger and former associate editor at America, analyzes the midterm results.

When he was first summoned to meet with Pope John Paul II, Sir Gilbert Levine was surprised to find himself led to the pope’s private library, and felt sure it was it was a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. That first conversation in 1988 gave birth to a 17-year relationship between the two men–an unlikely pairing of a […]

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., reviews the life of the controversial priest and politician Robert F. Drinan, S.J. When Fr. Drinan ran for Congress in 1970, he was among a dozen priests and religious seeking higher office. By the time Drinan was forced to leave in 1980 by order of Pope John Paul II, that number […]