This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley discuss a, if not the, big question hanging over the synod: Can it change church teaching?

James Dickey's public persona of fighter pilot, champion athlete and hard-drinking woodsman who wrote of “country surrealism” gave him an everyman appeal, even as he was perhaps the nation's greatest poetic talent.

What message does it send to women when the first synod to include them as full, voting members opts to forgo an actual vote in favor of approval by applause?

'Remembering the Forgotten Merton' is a brief biography of Thomas Merton’s brother John Paul, whom Merton fans know primarily through the powerful elegy that Merton composed to mark his brother’s death as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston is urging local Catholics to contribute resources for migrants arriving in Massachusetts, calling the situation a "major humanitarian and societal crisis."

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time, by Kerry Weber

Throughout past two decades, America's editors have repeatedly called on political leaders to envision a future in which Israelis and Palestinians can flourish side by side.

It will not be enough to read any document that comes from the synod; Catholics must experience the synod, must do synod. The best place to do this is in your parish.

The Rev. Clarence Devadass, a Malaysian priest and synod delegate talks with hosts Colleen Dulle and Gerard O'Connell about the Asian delegation's contributions at the synod and the challenge of unifying such diverse experiences in a document.

Gabon military leaders claimed that electoral malpractice was one of the reasons for the coup, but another surely must be the growing frustration of the general public with a ruling elite who live in luxury while life for average Gabonese, despite its oil riches, remains a struggle.