Opening Day is a reminder that there are, to quote Bill Veeck, only two seasons: winter and baseball.
History
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
Los Angeles and what makes a great city
From 1957: Los Angeles is a large city. In some ways it is an important city. But it is not (yet) a great city.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1973: Walker Percy on Wilfrid Sheed
In 1973, the famous novelist (and sometime America book reviewer) Walker Percy offered this long review of Wilfrid Sheed’s ‘People Will Always Be Kind.’
Posted inFaith, News
The keeper of the Vatican’s secrets is retiring. Here’s what he wants you to know.
The Vatican has been trying for years to debunk the idea that its vaunted secret archives are all that secret. But a certain aura of myth and mystery has persisted — until now.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
Netflix’s ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ is the perfect Gen-X nostalgia trip
An in-depth look at the making of “We Are The World,” Netflix’s new documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop” is an intimate look back at a unique moment in music history.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
The History of Hell
Where did our modern conception of hell and its torments come from?
Posted inFaith, Features
A little-known Jesuit’s battle for racial justice in the Deep South
How Louis J. Twomey, S.J., overcame his own prejudice to become one of the most outspoken white allies of New Orleans’s Black community.
Posted inFaith, Features
Archbishop Ireland’s ambitious plan for Catholic schools failed in his day. Could we resurrect it today?
From a Catholic perspective, it is fair to say that Archbishop John Ireland put Minnesota on the map. But he failed in his most cherished project: a new model for Catholic education.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The art of Jesuit mapmaking
Mirela Altic’s ‘Encounters in the New World’ tells the story of Jesuit cartography during the Age of Exploration—when Jesuit missionaries played a crucial role as conduits among cultures, becoming bridges that allowed knowledge to flow between Europeans and Indigenous Americans.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Cardinal Bernardin’s ‘Consistent Ethic of Life’ still divides Catholics 40 years later
Depressingly, 40 years since Cardinal Bernardin first proposed the consistent ethic of life, the ethic remains mired in the same senseless, polarized partisanship that Bernardin proposed the ethic to overcome.