Gordon Zahn’s influence on Catholic views toward state-sponsored violence, conscientious objection, pacifism and discipleship reached far beyond American shores in his long career of activism.
Literature
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Why Pope Leo’s new encyclical quotes Gandalf: Literary images of hope and faith in ‘Magnifica Humanitas’
Throughout “Magnifica Humanitas,” the two images used to represent the choice before us are of the Tower of Babel and Nehemiah’s slow reconstruction of Jerusalem. You can guess which one our Augustinian pope prefers—along with folks like J. R. R. Tolkien.
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Bob Dylan at 85: Forever young?
Bob Dylan will be 85 this week. While ‘America’ didn’t always offer him the coverage he deserved, many of our writers have found much to love in his music and other artistic works.
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‘Father, forgive me’: James O’Toole on Confession in America
In his artful account of American participation in the sacrament of confession, ‘For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America,’ James O’Toole offers a succinct analysis of when and why American Catholics partake of the sacrament.
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Review: Mario Vargas Llosa’s final book approaches the question of nationhood
His final work, published now for the first time in English, Mario Varvas Lloisa approaches the question of nationhood not in the abstract terms of a sociologist or philosopher, but obliquely, through a kind of literary ventriloquism, in a hybrid form combining the novel and essay.
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Review: A saintly variety show
In ‘Canticle,’ a page-turner of a debut novel by Janet Rich Edwards, the reader is offered the Catholic equivalent of a monster truck rally: Just when you think the story has settled into one track, it delivers a fresh surprise.
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What America’s editors said about communism and the Berlin Blockade
In 1948, the Soviet Union initiated a blockade of the Western zone of the city of Berlin. ‘America’’s contributors and editors took that conflict very, very seriously.
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Review: A Vatican journalist on seeing the church behind the church
In ‘Struck Down, Not Destroyed,’ America’s Vatican correspondent Colleen Dulle offers a powerful testament to her own commitment to the church—a commitment where scrutiny and critique go hand in hand with reverence.
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Mexico’s James Joyce: Remembering Carlos Fuentes on a complicated holiday
Carlos Fuentes, sometimes called “the Joyce of Mexico,” “the Balzac of Mexico” or “the Faulkner of Mexico,” was a wizardly innovator of language and narrative and is universally recognized as one of Latin America’s literary giants.
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The poets, priests and politicians of Ireland’s Easter Rising, 110 years later
110 years after the Easter Rising, Ireland’s history and literature of resistance still inspire.