Krispy Kremes and The Da Vinci Code
The movie fades up to the hushed tones of violins, the camera moving dreamlike through long hallways in an enormous, darkened museum. A guard walks in the distance. We pause; the camera pans left. Before us, next to a sign written in French, is the “Mona Lisa.” She looks down on us with
Why Don’t Catholics Share Their Faith?
In these pages in the spring of 2004, John C. Haughey, S.J., noted that many of his non-Catholic students are not shy about making personal faith statements, both in the classroom and outside. Catholic students, on the other hand, seldom do so (“Church-ianity and Christ-ianty,” 5/24/04).
A Letter to Young American Catholics
My dear younger brothers and sisters: I write, as an older brother, to encourage you. Last month more than a million young Catholics gathered with Pope Benedict XVI in Cologne for World Youth Day. Twenty-five thousand of them were from the United States. The Lord entrusts the future of the church to young people like…
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
"We’ve lost everything, and I mean everything. We’ve lost contact with some family members." Kenneth Cain, a New Orleans construction worker, was describing the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina to The Los Angeles Times. When I read about Mr. Cain, I thought of a friend I k
Letters
Letters
Legacy
James Ross should be commended for placing a spotlight on prison abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantnamo Bay in Bush, Torture, and Lincoln’s Legacy (8/15). But he loses credibility when he extols our 16th president as a model of restraint and humanistic principles. Has he never heard of Sherman? Of Lincoln’s abolishing of habeas corpus?…
Editorials
Just after the storm, our editors weighed in on the government’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina
The citizens of the United States must insist that our leaders confront with uncompromising honesty the fault lines of American society revealed by the damage wrought by Katrina.
Loss and Gain
As a new academic year begins, generalizations about American Catholic elementary and secondary education are risky, because there are signs both of losses and gains. Losses because with the closing of many financially strapped schools the system is smaller than it once was. Forty years ago, the pop
Faith in Focus
The Secret Gift That Comes From Compassion
After I spent 30 years raising children full time, an unexpected change in our family’s circumstances made it necessary for me to obtain employment so that my family of seven could be provided with health insurance. In spite of my college degree, I quickly learned that I was undesirable for em
Books
Believing What They Need To
A generation ago the rock band The Who venerated and mocked their spiritually restless Baby Boomer peers in their song The Seeker bragging that I rsquo ve got values but I don rsquo t know how or why According to a major new study of teenagers and religion spiritual seekers have all but vanished
What Separates and Unites
ldquo But what if Scola becomes pope rdquo Such was my e-mail response to America rsquo s request that I do this book review John Paul II had just died Benedict XVI had yet to be elected And Angelo Cardinal Scola was on the papabile list Needless to say Scola the patriarch of Venice…
It Worked With Woolf, but
The novelist Michael Cunningham leapt into the spotlight with The Hours 1998 a meditative spinoff of Virginia Woolf rsquo s Mrs Dalloway Cunningham rsquo s book won the Pulitzer Prize and enjoyed a successful second run in a filmed version four years later Now he has written another trio of in
Film
On the Rocks: March of the Penguins
Can you find a connection between these three statements? 1. Hollywood complains that box-office is way down this summer. 2. When I was looking around for material for another film column that might interest America readers, I was driven to a month-old documentary about penguins. 3. Even with the ma
The Word
Don’t You Know Who I Am?
In which specific area of your life must you set aside privilege for the sake of others?
Faith
Don’t You Know Who I Am?
In which specific area of your life must you set aside privilege for the sake of others?
News
Signs of the Times
Katrina Chronicle
Pope Benedict XVI has announced he will send Archbishop Paul Cordes to the United States to express solidarity with the victims of Hurricane Katrina which ravaged the Gulf Coast. Cordes is president of the Holy See’s global charities agency Cor Unum, which means one heart.
Pope Benedict, speaking at the midday Angelus on Sunday, Sept.…
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