America Magazine - In All Things

Vuillard at the Jewish Museum

Karen Sue Smith

I have long found that looking at art provides welcome relief from the headaches and “spirit aches” of polarized politics and the culture wars that preoccupy me all weeklong. The art scene in New York City offers so many opportunities for viewing art from around the world—current, modern and past—that I am seldom at a loss for respite. This could be said of many other cities as well, from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago and St. Paul, of course. (So take a look at what is on exhibit near you, if you suffer from a surfeit of n

More Help Needed for Kids with ASD

Kevin Clarke

If you’re a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, surely a chronic worry must be your child’s future, beginning with that will happen to your child once whatever supports you have been able to cobble together from your local school system time out in the late teens. Even young people with “mild” autism or Asperger’s syndrome face significant problems in dealing with the everyday world, navigating morning routines and social interactions other people can take for granted. With an apparent epidemic of autism spectrum disorder troubling families across the country—overall one in 88 kids now is diagnosed with ASD and one in 54 boys—how well is U.S

Life, Death and Facebook

Tim Reidy

From Joe Simmons, S.J., over at The Jesuit Post:

Is Facebook dying? If it died, would you miss it?

I asked my students these questions a few weeks ago in class, after I read the piece “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” by Stephen Marche in the May issue of The Atlantic. (Tim O’Brien beat me to the punch on it by writing this excellent piece a week or so ago.)

declared, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” His public support for gay marriage followed Joe Biden’s remarks a few days prior, in which the Catholic vice-president said that he had a change of heart over the years and felt compelled to support same-sex marriage. During his int

Changing the Church? Let Peter Meet Cornelius (Again)

Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Cambridge, MA. It is no easy thing to change the Church. In part this is because we who are the Church do not change easily, and in part because the institution as institution thrives on settled ideas and fixed ways of acting, is loathe to change in new circumstances, and fights off possibilities of change. Yes, caution is often the wisest course, but sometimes things need to change: but still we find that we cannot change, not because we are bad or the Church wicked, but because our good habits and strong beliefs give us no way to imagine things differently.

So on this sixth Sunday of Easter, it was good to hear a section of Acts 10 for the first reading. It is a story a

Thomas J. Reese, S.J., on Sex Abuse

James Martin, S.J.

Thomas J. Reese, S.J., senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Georgetown and former editor in chief of America has sent us his keynote address to the Clergy Abuse Conference in Santa Clara University today:

I am not an expert on the crisis, but rather a journalist, commentator and priest. Perhaps my contribution can be first to congratulate and thank Kathleen and Tom and all of the contributors to the book, Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis 2002-2012 (Praeger, 2012). The book makes a genuine contri

Pope Declares Hildegard of Bingen a Saint

James Martin, S.J.

VATICAN CITY (Catholic News Service) -- Although she was never canonized, St. Hildegard of Bingen is to be added to the Catholic Church's formal list of saints, and Catholics worldwide may celebrate her feast day with a Mass and special readings by order of Pope Benedict XVI.

The Vatican announced May 10 that the pope formalized the church's recognition of the 12th-century German Benedictine mystic, "inscribing her in the catalogue of saints." The same day, the pope advanced the sainthood causes of 19th-century U.S. Bishop Frederic Barag

Test of Fire: The Video

Dave Nantais

A good friend sent me a link to this video—he included no descriptive comments that could have biased my opinion. In fact, I had no idea what it was about prior to viewing. As it began, I immediately thought this was either a trailer for the next mediocre Marvel Comics fi

Thomas J. Reese, SJ, on Sex Abuse

Thomas J. Reese, SJ, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Georgetown and former editor in chief of America has sent us his keynote address to the Clergy Abuse Conference in Santa Clara University today:

I am not an expert on the crisis, but rather a journalist, commentator and priest. Perhaps my contribution can be first to congratulate and thank Kathleen and Tom and all of the contributors to the book, Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis 2002-2012 (Praeger, 2012). The book makes a genuine contribution to a better understanding of the crisis.&

Interviewing Sister Helen

Valerie Schultz

It was my honor to interview Sister Helen Prejean during her recent visit to Bakersfield for two talks that took place May 4-5. Sister Helen is well known as the “Dead Man Walking” nun, the face of the global movement to end the death penalty. I met with her at the home of her local hosts, who were gracious and welcoming. “REJOICE,” said the flag outside the door, a most appropriate greeting for this lovely spring morning.

Because a face-to-face conversation with one’s hero is surely a cause for joy. As I arrived for th

Archbishop: Why deny full American DREAM?

Michael O'Loughlin

A couple months ago I wrote about immigration and the presidential contest at the website BustedHalo.com, where I touched on the DREAM Act:

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops went on record in favor of the DREAM Act, with Los Angeles’s Archbishop Jose Gomez writing:

The United States is a great country because it is a land of opportunity

Bishop Sartain and LCWR Leader Profiled

James Martin, S.J.

(Links fixed). Here are two profiles (both sympathetic) of two church leaders whose approach to dialogue and authority will be key factors in the ongoing Vatican review of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The first is a short piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Florence Deacon, OSF, the president-elect of the LCWR. The second, a longer piece by John L. Allen, Jr.,

Bullying

John Coleman, S.J.

I recently saw the excellent documentary film, Bully, which I found both quite absorbing and equally disturbing. It documents several victims of bullying in mostly rural school settings. I agreed with several of the leading film critics I checked out on the web site, Rotten Tomatoes, that the film should be made required viewing in schools but I also agreed with those critics who said that the film is a bit one-sided by only looking at kids who have been bullied and does not helpfully focus on the cognate issue of what makes someone a bully and what being a bully does to them.

The main characters in the f

"The Other America" Today

Raymond A. Schroth

I live in what is one of the more wealthy neighborhoods in the world. By wealth I don’t necessarily mean the income of the rich persons who live in the all the local apartment houses which block out our sky, but the New York institutions clustered here that pull together a steady traffic of the movers and shakers of our economy and cultural life.

On one early-morning walk I can stride past the skyscraper housing a once mighty law firm, which recently notified its partners to look for jobs somewhere else, because, according to the New York Times, they had been over-payin

Clerical sexual abuse and the future of Catholics

Sidney Callahan

Catholics today are confronting horrible revelations of clerical abuse. Will this ongoing scandal change our church? Yes, undoubedly this encounter with dreadful home truths is already changing us.

The sickening revulsion we have felt toward accounts of distant concentration camps, torture chambers, serial murders and genocides is now induced by descriptions of sexual abuse of vulnerable children and adolescents. As the stomach heaves with disgust, the mind flinches and protests—no, oh no.

Priestly sexual abuse and its cover up by church authorities are forcing us to admit that corrupt evils exist inside our community an