Domestic Policy: Can the church help women achieve a better work-life balance?
As one of the early entrants into the “women can have it all” sweepstakes during the 1970s and ’80s, I am shocked both by how much has changed with regard to motherhood over the last 40 years and how little. Mothering in the modern world is still a charged topic. The media stories
Paradise Lost: What happens when we disassociate love and sex?
What happens when we disassociate love and sex?
United in Christ: Appreciating the diversity of women’s spiritualities
Our world is increasingly diverse in terms of understandings, ideas and beliefs. In what can be called a global repositioning, countries once colonized by Western powers have begun to chart their own courses. Alongside this trend, women and persons of color have worked to distinguish themselves and,
A Promising Path: Building ‘a profound theology of womanhood’ for the 21st century
Kathleen Sprows Cummings on building ‘a profound theology of womanhood’ for the 21st century
Growth Opportunity: The importance of supporting women in developing nations
Bibi is illiterate, and she expected Nisa, her 9-year-old daughter to always be illiterate, too. In the Herat province of Afghanistan where they live, there is little reason to learn to read and write. There is always other work to be done.But when an education team from Catholic Relief Services cam
Everything Is Yours: Self-gift as a framework for ministry
Breyan Tornifolio approached the Mass with a full yet heavy heart. It was her last time worshiping at Ryan Hall, where she served as a minister for students at the University of Notre Dame since the building’s opening in 2009. At the end of Mass, after Tornifolio blessed the graduating seniors
Carmen Cervantes on ministry, machismo and meaningful leadership
“When a Hispanic woman wants to be up front, people don’t know how to deal with it.”
The Invisible Woman: Seeing migrant women through the eyes of Christ
Sexual harassment is an epidemic in the fields of the food we eat. On June 25, PBS and Univision debuted a documentary in the series “Frontline” entitled “Rape in the Fields.” This report exposed the hidden reality of sexual abuse of women who supply American tables with appl
I’ve been meeting with Vatican cardinals about women in the church. Here’s what needs to change
Without these highly talented, accomplished women, the whole church is impoverished.
Open the Doors: Vacant convents offer a new opportunity for service
Vacant convents offer a new opportunity for service
At the Ambo: The unique perspective of women preachers
The unique perspective of women preachers
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
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
Letters
Reply All
A Lay InterviewRe “A Big Heart Open to God,” by Antonio Spadaro, S.J. (9/30): It is one thing for two Jesuits to share their discussion around matters of faith, laity and the future of the church and put it out there for the world to analyze. How would it be for Pope Francis to have…
Editorials
Conscience of ‘America’
‘America’ needs the voices and gifts of women to fulfill our mission
Faith in Focus
Love, Naturally: Reflections on natural family planning
When I first learned in college about natural family planning, I was surprised by how exotic and marginalized it was as a family planning method. There was a stereotype that NFP is only for the most devout Catholics who were willing to have big families. There was also a common belief among those in
Life on the Margins: Charismatic principles for modern religious
This week is the first-ever National Catholic Sisters Week! Here Mary Pellegrino, C.S.J., discusses charismatic principles for modern religious.
Bolt From the Blue: Encounters with everyday annunciations
On the Feast of the Annunciation, Helen Prejean, C.S.J., reflects on encounters with everyday annunciations.
Ideas
Wounded Beauty : Confessions of a horror fan
I love horror movies because they show me the sublime. I love them for a lot of other reasons too, I admit, depending on my mood. I don’t believe in a grand, unified theory of horror, or of any other genre of film; most genres are a welter of traditions and counter-traditions. Sometimes you wa
Books
After Ecstasy
The enthusiastic reaction to Jorge Mario Bergoglio rsquo s choice of the name Francis underscores the ongoing power of the saints in shaping the Catholic sacramental imagination The new pope implicitly suggests that the things that mattered to St Francis mdash concern for the poor care of creatio
The Jewish Martyr
In the opening paragraph of Beyond the Walls Joseph Palmisano S J advances a startling claim Edith Stein rsquo s forced removal from her Carmelite monastery in 1942 and her subsequent murder at Auschwitz stand before us as ldquo a lsquo prophetic sign of our times rsquo rdquo and a model fo
The Word
The Small Matter of Sin
The passage from the Book of Wisdom about God ldquo overlooking rdquo sins has a wry humor when juxtaposed with little Zacchaeus too small in stature to be seen That is not true of course for no matter where Zacchaeus was standing hidden among the crowd or walking away from Jesus God ldquo
Columns
The Country of Mercy
Both Plath and O’Connor were painfully aware of the demands their craft made on them.
Current Comment
Current Comment
Handshake Diplomacy, Swimming Upstream and Save Our Seas
Faith
Bolt From the Blue: Encounters with everyday annunciations
On the Feast of the Annunciation, Helen Prejean, C.S.J., reflects on encounters with everyday annunciations.
Signs Of the Times
Palestinians Need Access
More than half the land in the West Bank, much of it agricultural and resource rich, is inaccessible to Palestinians, because of Israeli security restrictions. The first comprehensive study of the potential economic impact of this “restricted land,” released by the World Bank on Oct. 8,
Synod to Discuss Families
The predicament of divorced and remarried Catholics will be a major topic of discussion when bishops from around the world meet at the Vatican in October 2014. The Vatican announced on Oct. 8 that an extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops will convene from Oct. 5 through Oct. 19, 2014, to dis
U.S. Church: Growth in Multicultural Parishes
The percentage of multicultural parishes in the United States is on the increase, according to research by the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (C.A.R.A.). C.A.R.A. estimates there are approximately 6,700 multicultural parishes in the United States, many loca
Global Development: Progress on Poverty, But 1.2 Billion Still Live on the Extremes
The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world has sharply declined over the past three decades, but in 2010 it still included roughly 400 million children, according to a new World Bank analysis that for the first time gives an in-depth profile of the poorest people in the world.Th
Salvadorans Protest Legal Aid Closing
Social organizations in El Salvador demonstrated outside the Metropolitan Cathedral on Oct. 6 to demand that Archbishop José Escobar Alas clarify the fate of thousands of documents containing information on human rights violations. The documents have been in limbo since the archbishop’s decis
News Briefs
A class action lawsuit was filed on Oct. 9 in a New York State court against the United Nations on behalf of victims of a cholera epidemic in Haiti that has infected 650,000 and killed more than 8,300 people since October 2010. • Paolo Dall’Oglio, a Jesuit priest and peace activist k
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts