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What Would Jesus Listen to?
To Hell with the Devil, they proclaimed, dressed in black and yellow spandex, with hair that hung below their shoulders. They stood in that rock star pose that all adolescent boys from the 1980s knew how to emulate: legs apart, leaning back slightly, arms raised triumphantly, with an aggressive and
Faith in Focus
Musings of an Old-Time Confessor

I heard my first confession shortly after my ordination in the summer of 1959. It was a much different era from that of today’s church.

Arts & CultureFilm
To Change the World: Michael Apted’s ‘Amazing Grace’
‘Amazing Grace’ attempts to depict Wilberforce’s life while also capturing a sense of the labyrinthine journey of a simple moral issue through the thickets of political intrigue and compromise.
Letters
Letters

Understanding the Journey

To Embrace the Other, by Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. (4/16) speaks with clarity and hope. The title itself is hopeful: To Embrace the Other, not To Embrace the Self, which seems to be the problem at times.

Cardinal Walter Kasper is right on target when he says, Either the ecumenism of the future will be a spiritual ecumenism or it will cease to be. Recommending a new elementary vocabulary toward this spiritual ecumenism will help a greater number to understand that journey and why it is good for all concerned. We must remember that Christ is the center and that we best carry out Christ’s mission by calling, inviting, encouraging and challenging one another.

Sometimes the gap between differences seems impossible to close, but when the conversation turns to Jesus and what he was about, it does not seem great at all.

Leonard Marie Lichinchi, C.S.J.

Editorials
The World Is Watching
The massacre at Virginia Tech drew shocked comment not only in the United States, but from the media in other countries as well. Canada’s Globe and Mail, for example, noted that even as deadly a massacre as the one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 failed to bring about a n
News
Signs of the Times
Papal Visit to Conference in Brazil Begins May 9Pope Benedict XVI is making his first trip to the Western Hemisphere in mid-May, traveling to Brazil to open a strategizing session with Latin American bishops. The May 9-13 visit begins with a string of pastoral events in São Paulo, where the pope wi
Columns
Broken Promises
Jesús is a 22-year-old Colombian who was forced from his home by the decades-old civil war. He and others in his village were captured by the paramilitaries in 2005. They were massed into a forced death march. At gunpoint, they were made to dig graves for the dead. Jesús said, I never knew when I
Advice for College Grads -- Part II
You Are a Child of God British A. Robinson is the director for public-private partnerships in the Office of U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the U.S. Department of State and the former director of social and international ministries for the Jesuit Conference in the United States.   In his inaug
Prenatal Testing
Recently, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that all pregnant women receive prenatal testing for Down syndrome. When Down syndrome is identified during pregnancy, however, the pregnancy termination rate grows to an estimated 90 percent, which leaves those of us who
Letters
Letters

Unaccountable Journalism

Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, writes in his book An Ordinary Man, Words are the most powerful tools of all, and especially the words that we pass to those who come after us. In a speech at Wake Forest University on April 4, 2007, Mr. Rusesabagina reiterated this point. With that in mind, I agree with America’s recent Current Comment, Unrepentant Media (4/30), which appropriately speaks of the shallow moralism that drives media coverage of the news here in the United States. Lives, reputations, hopes for a future with truth and reconciliation are too often disrupted and sometimes even crushed by the irresponsible reporting and the inappropriate use of words that has become all too commonplace in the U.S. media today. I applaud America for asking the talking heads...to take a hard look at themselves and the harm wrought by today’s unaccountable journalism of personal destruction. Words are powerful tools! I implore the media to use these powerful tools more responsibly, and I thank the writers and editors of America for doing just that.

Michael Lorentsen, O.F.M.Conv.