Even longtime readers of America may be unaware of the origins of this periodical. It was born in April 1909, during the worst days of the anti-Modernist crusade in the Catholic Church. Hysterical paranoia ran rampant, and Catholic intellectuals and writers were one after another accused of heresy b

François de La Rochefoucauld, a 16th-century French aristocrat, made a name for himself by writing tough-minded epigrams that he called maxims. In one of these philosophical wisecracks he noted: “Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.” All the same, there are some people wh

We get lots of stuff at America: press releases from Catholic colleges, books from Catholic publishers and, of course, letters from subscribers both pleased and angry at what we publish. Mostly the letters are friendly, charitable and pleasant. Only rarely are they vituperative. Still, even nasty le

Deafness as a gift--that is how Paul Fletcher, a profoundly deaf British Jesuit, sees his situation in a world of mostly hearing people. I met Paul when he visited my Jesuit community in Manhattan before returning to England after completing his studies at Weston School of Theology in Massachusetts.

C. S. Lewis wrote of “Hamlet” that it was best to read the play like a small child. Children never tire of hearing stories over and over again. They relish atmosphere, and they never forget details that seem insignificant to adults. One of the joys of growing older, I find, is hearing an

Something important happened a few weeks ago, though you didn’t read about it in any newspaper, see it on television or hear about it on the radio. In fact, you didn’t hear about this at all: a small brass key was handed over to my mother by her neighbor across the street. But it was big