Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Voices
The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.
James Martin, S.J.
When I left the World Trade Center in October 2001, after working there for several weeks alongside fellow Jesuits and other volunteers, I wondered what would become not only of the physical site but of the people we had met. One ironworker, who spent long days at Ground Zero cutting apart the steel
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
Now I get it. Or at least part of it. The prospect of not raising children was not a big deal for me when I entered the Jesuits. It wasn’t a deal at all, really. And, over time, while I calculated (almost daily) the difficulty of going through life without one special person to stand by my sid
Television
James Martin, S.J.
Over the Memorial Day weekend I visited a friend who lives with his large family and who owns, improbably, a horse--a retired police horse, to be exact. As we ambled through the stables, my friend’s 13-year-old daughter said, "Do you like Taylor Hicks?" Somehow the look on her face t
James Martin, S.J.
The real-life group with the biggest complaint about the movie The Da Vinci Code is surely Opus Dei, the Catholic organization founded to promote lay spirituality. One of the film’s main plot devices centers on Silas, the albino Opus Dei monk who moonlights as an assassin. That Opus includes n
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
"Pas de vitesse," said our instructor in Italian-accented French. Then in English, "No rushing." I was one of several men being trained to work as a volunteer in the baths at Lourdes last month, and I was worried. This was my third visit to the French town of Lourdes, where the V
"The Kiss of Judas," by Giotto
FaithFeatures
James Martin, S.J.
Saints and theologians, not to mention authors and poets, have long debated this thorny question: Why did Judas do it? To answer that we need to know something about the man himself.
Faith
James Martin, S.J.
I knew almost nothing about the town, except that it had some vague connection with Joan of Arc.
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
We have a policy at America of not running many obituaries. The practice saves the editors from agonizing over who gets one and who does not. Of course there are some obvious people who deserve obituaries or appreciations. Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa, for example. Over the last year the theo
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
"Spots of time" is what the poet William Wordsworth called those places that imprint themselves so deeply into our minds that simply remembering them can lift our hearts - in other words, holy places. I thought about that phrase as I left Kentucky last month after visiting the Abbey of Get
Portfolio
James Martin, S.J.
Members of the Society of Jesus are often accused of excessive pride in their order and its history. This can be a fair critique. Sometimes, for example, Jesuits speak as if St. Ignatius Loyola were the first Christian to discover prayer. Not long ago at a retreat house, I gave a talk about Ignatian