My job at America is so enjoyable that sometimes I’m amazed that I get paid for it. Well, I don’t actually get paid for it, or rather, technically I do, though my salary is applied to the Jesuit community by virtue of my vow of poverty and, well...you know what I mean.Anyway, it’s

Sometimes it seems that it takes a layperson to understand religious life. Recently I had the chance to read a superb new book entitled For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun, written by, of all people, a senior writer at GQ magazine, who was raised with no religious training

Currently, the best show on television may not be The West Wing, E.R., Sex in the City or even The Sopranos, a series that The New York Times, in an uncharacteristic burst of critical hyperbole, called the most significant work of popular culture in the last 25 years. No, the most satisfying show on

Widely regarded as the dean of American Catholic theologians, Avery Dulles, S.J., was created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II at a consistory in Rome on Feb. 21. He is the first U.S. theologian to be named to the College of Cardinals, as well as the first American Jesuit to receive this honor. The s

Certainly one of the most surprising revelations in my life has been my experience with women religious. Before entering religious life I cherished the same notions about sisters that much of the American public does. They were - as I understood from the media, popular culture and even popular Catho

It is a truism that Americans spend more than we need to and consume more than we have to. But doesn’t it seem that our desire to consume superfluous goods has lately grown to alarming proportions? The other day, for example, I caught a TV commercial for Fit. In case you’ve not yet been

One thing that no one told me before ordination was that I would start having what a Jesuit friend refers to as Mass nightmares.Mass nightmares are similar to the dreams everyone seems to experience during school years, and sometimes beyond. For example: you’re sitting unsuspectingly in a clas

As I write this column, my Jesuit community is preparing to celebrate a number of jubilees, or anniversaries, for three Jesuit priests. The evening’s celebration will consist of what some wags refer to as an L.S.D., that is, liturgy, social and dinner.Apparently, one must be advanced in years

This year’s fall TV roundup was surprisingly simple to, well, round up, since there have been relatively few good shows introduced this season. And after all, does it take a media savant to predict that one is probably not going to enjoy a show called Freakylinks? Or that a show called Cursed

Facing the challenges and accepting the gifts offered by homosexual priests in the Catholic Church