Michael Sean Winters: Ave Atque Vale

Tomorrow we will bid farewell on this blog to Michael Sean Winters, one of our most indefatigable and most popular bloggers, and someone well known to the readers of America.  Michael, author of Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats, is a well-known Catholic commentator and essayist.  Over the past year, he has written extensively on political matters, church issues and more broadly social issues.  He was one of our first (and most regular) bloggers, someone we relied upon for timely, hard-hitting looks at the issues of the day, and someone who usually drew a lot of "traffic" to our site, and who was often quoted in the MSM.  Michael, who has written for the print edition as well, will continue to write for the magazine--in print and online we hope--but will be blogging more or less regularly for the National Catholic Reporter.  Michael helped us immeasurably when "In All Things" was in its infancy.  Now that the blog is off and running, and we have more of our associate editors blogging daily, we will be relying more on "in-house" talent.  But we are exceedingly grateful to Michael for his terrific contributions, we wish him well at NCR, and we look forward to future contributons in America.  By the way, for those Vaticanologists who wish to read some hidden meaning into this farewell being penned by the culture editor, rather than our editor in chief or our online editor, some facts: both are away. But both join me, and the rest of the staff here at America, in thanking Michael Sean Winters.

James Martin, SJ