Jesuit School Spotlight
How Catholic high schools can address the teen mental health crisis
Life-threatening mental health concerns affecting U.S. teens have reached a crisis point, complicated by a laundry list of social issues.
Of Many Things
What my next stage of Jesuit formation means to me (and to America magazine)
Spending three months away is not a usual move for someone recently installed as editor in chief of a magazine and media ministry. Please be assured that I will continue to accompany you in prayer in tertianship.
Your Take
‘Many of us have lived this’: Our readers on why you should take your kids to Mass
Readers respond to Sherry Antonetti, who wrote about the challenges she faces as a mother when taking her teenagers to Mass. Many readers had similar experiences.
Editorials
One year after the end of Roe v. Wade: The hard, slow work of changing hearts and minds
Our society lacks the moral conviction that the unborn deserve protection in law. Pro-lifers must work to show that opposition to abortion is part of a moral vision, not mere political alignment.
Short Take
My daughters have hard questions about the church. Are women deacons the answer?
The movement for restoring women to the diaconate is steeped in love and faith, not activism or anger. It is not just a “women’s issue” but a human issue.
Dispatches
Catholic outdoor weddings? What Baltimore learned from changing a long-standing rule
Weddings historically had served as an opportunity to “evangelize and re-engage” young couples, but that chance was being lost when brides and grooms bypass the church altogether when planning their ceremony.
Jesuit human rights advocates in Mexico targeted by state-sponsored spyware
Mexico’s military has been one of the most prolific users of Pegasus spyware since 2011, having “targeted more cell phones with spyware than any other government agency in the world.”
Zimbabwe bishops warn against political violence during upcoming elections
Zimbabwe bishops condemned “heinous violent crimes” after videos circulated of opposition political supporters being attacked by suspected supporters of the ruling Zimababwe African National Union Patriotic Front.
A new Catholic ministry brings the Eucharist to survivors of sexual abuse
Starting in March 2023, victims of sexual abuse in Saint Paul-Minneapolis who still wish to receive the Eucharist but find it too traumatic to enter a church can have the sacrament brought to them.
Features
Bishop Dolan: How losing family to suicide led me to start a mental health ministry
I am a bishop, but before anything else, I am a human being who understands the severe toll of mental illness, especially when it is left untreated.
Elizabeth Johnson: What does it mean to believe in an ecological God?
The Earth is in trouble. How can religious traditions like Christianity be bearers of wisdom and help lay out a roadmap for ecological care of the planet?
Faith and Reason
Confession: the underappreciated sacrament we need to build a listening church
It is within the sacred space of the sacrament of reconciliation that someone can come to be heard.
Does ChatGPT have a soul? A conversation on Catholic ethics and A.I.
New forms of A.I. raise pressing ethical and philosophical questions that must be addressed by Catholics and, for that matter, all people of good will.
Faith in Focus
The Covid pandemic is officially over. What will we still hold onto?
Four editors on the official end of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to consider what lessons we might take with us into the future.
What I’ll tell my children about how Covid-19 turned my young adulthood on its head
One day, Covid-19 will be a story, one that we package and deliver to people who never lived through it.
My Corona Diary, by Thomas Carthusia
Writing this marginally insane diary was a reminder to me that, no matter what disasters strike us, and no matter what destruction they wreak, we can at least find ways to diminish their soul-destroying power. We can at least laugh.
How my 3-year-old’s epiphany in a drug store shaped my view of the pandemic
Can something really be over if you can still feel it in your bones?
What I’m Putting in My Covid Time Capsule
What will we hold onto from the pandemic? Perhaps the videos we watched and experiences we had, mostly virtual, in connecting with other people.
Books
Review: Life and death, reconsidered
In ‘Sister Death,’ Beatrice Marovich explores the connections between living and dying in a way that seeks to refute the concept of death as enemy while not accepting it as something that is good or desirable.
Vatican II: Rupture or reform?
George Weigel’s new book, ‘To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II,’ is a defense of the council against those who think it created a rupture with tradition (for better or for worse).
Review: Faith and activism in the City of Angels
‘City of Dignity,’ by Sean T. Dempsey, S.J., tells a story of how progressive religious leaders, organizations and institutions worked to shape Los Angeles into a city where dignity flourished through their grassroots organizing and activism in the decades after World War II until the mid-1990s.
Review: Violence and hospitality in a seaside town
In ‘Vigil Harbor,’ Julia Glass shares a complex tale about a town’s history of close encounters with violence, but also about the open and helpful community that unintentionally enables some of the calamities that ensue.
The ‘holy whodunits’ of G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Ralph McInerny
For Chesterton, Christie and McInerny, a mystery story was the perfect device for showing how even dramatic sins, like murder, spring from the fallen condition that all human beings share.
Molly Shannon, of SNL and ‘Superstar’ fame, is the Catholic school girl in all of us
More than the costumes and settings, it is that humanity at the heart of Molly Shannon’s comedy which makes it Catholic to the core.
Poetry
2023 Foley Poetry Winner: Letter to Myself While Learning to Read
as if you are a child lost on the water in a boat cast off from its lines
Building a world and inviting us in: the 2023 Foley poetry contest
I am grateful for all the poets who submitted their work for the contest. Every year we get poems from all over the United States, and even across the world, about any number of topics.
Last Take
An open letter to America about gun violence, from a very concerned Irishman
I was a teenager at the time of the Columbine High School shooting. No one could mistake suburban Dublin for anyone’s utopia, but even then my friends and I could recognize that we might as well live in a different galaxy.
Faith
Bishop Dolan: How losing family to suicide led me to start a mental health ministry
I am a bishop, but before anything else, I am a human being who understands the severe toll of mental illness, especially when it is left untreated.
How Catholic high schools can address the teen mental health crisis
Life-threatening mental health concerns affecting U.S. teens have reached a crisis point, complicated by a laundry list of social issues.
Elizabeth Johnson: What does it mean to believe in an ecological God?
The Earth is in trouble. How can religious traditions like Christianity be bearers of wisdom and help lay out a roadmap for ecological care of the planet?
What my next stage of Jesuit formation means to me (and to America magazine)
Spending three months away is not a usual move for someone recently installed as editor in chief of a magazine and media ministry. Please be assured that I will continue to accompany you in prayer in tertianship.
‘Many of us have lived this’: Our readers on why you should take your kids to Mass
Readers respond to Sherry Antonetti, who wrote about the challenges she faces as a mother when taking her teenagers to Mass. Many readers had similar experiences.
Confession: the underappreciated sacrament we need to build a listening church
It is within the sacred space of the sacrament of reconciliation that someone can come to be heard.
The Covid pandemic is officially over. What will we still hold onto?
Four editors on the official end of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to consider what lessons we might take with us into the future.
What I’ll tell my children about how Covid-19 turned my young adulthood on its head
One day, Covid-19 will be a story, one that we package and deliver to people who never lived through it.
My Corona Diary, by Thomas Carthusia
Writing this marginally insane diary was a reminder to me that, no matter what disasters strike us, and no matter what destruction they wreak, we can at least find ways to diminish their soul-destroying power. We can at least laugh.
How my 3-year-old’s epiphany in a drug store shaped my view of the pandemic
Can something really be over if you can still feel it in your bones?
What I’m Putting in My Covid Time Capsule
What will we hold onto from the pandemic? Perhaps the videos we watched and experiences we had, mostly virtual, in connecting with other people.
Catholic outdoor weddings? What Baltimore learned from changing a long-standing rule
Weddings historically had served as an opportunity to “evangelize and re-engage” young couples, but that chance was being lost when brides and grooms bypass the church altogether when planning their ceremony.
My daughters have hard questions about the church. Are women deacons the answer?
The movement for restoring women to the diaconate is steeped in love and faith, not activism or anger. It is not just a “women’s issue” but a human issue.
A new Catholic ministry brings the Eucharist to survivors of sexual abuse
Starting in March 2023, victims of sexual abuse in Saint Paul-Minneapolis who still wish to receive the Eucharist but find it too traumatic to enter a church can have the sacrament brought to them.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts