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Is there an article in America you would like to reprint in your parish bulletin or other periodical? Looking to make photocopies for a class, conference, or discussion group?

For these requests, please contact our Reprints Office by phone at 212-581-4640 or by email at reprints@americamagazine.org.

Permission to reprint photographs and other art from America must be obtained directly from the copyright holder.

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Are you organizing a conference, leading a parish discussion group, or teaching religious education? Would you like to distribute copies of an issue of America featuring an article relevant to your theme?

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Single copies of back issues are also available for purchase.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Letters to the editor can be e-mailed to letters@americamedia.org, faxed to 212-399-3596 or sent via postal mail to: 

America Magazine
1212 Avenue of the Americas, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10023

All letters should be brief (200 words or less) and include the name, mailing address and phone number of the author.

America will also consider the following for print publication: comments posted below articles on America's Web site and posts on Twitter and public Facebook pages.

All correspondence may be edited for length and clarity.

America is a weekly Catholic journal of opinion that has appeared continuously since April 17, 1909. The founder was John J. Wynne, S.J. (1859-1948), who also conceived the idea of the Catholic Encyclopedia, the first volume of which appeared in 1907 under his direction. From 1892 Wynne edited a devotional Catholic monthly, The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Determined to publish materials less devotional and more wide-ranging, so that readers might "find God in all things," he had by 1902 divided that earlier journal in two: The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, which remained the organ of the Apostleship of Prayer, and The Messenger, a Catholic magazine of more general interest. He wanted The Messenger to be yet "more solid and serious," and by 1909 the improved version appeared as America. This title was meant to show the new magazine's scope, and the subtitle "Catholic Review of the Week" specified its point of view.

From the beginning the magazine has been the work of Jesuits from across the United States, and this breadth of origin was reflected in the first editorial board, composed of Jesuits from all the U.S. provinces of the Society of Jesus then existing. Wynne himself, a peremptory if industrious character, lasted only a few months as editor of America, but the editorial formula he devised lasts to this day--editorial comment, short articles and reviews of arts and letters.

Issues and stances that have characterized the history of the publication would include the following. It promoted racial and social justice from the 1930s through the 1960s with the contributions of longtime editors like John LaFarge, S.J., and Benjamin Masse, S.J. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-38), the magazine was sympathetic to Spanish Catholics and therefore tended to support the Catholic aspects of Franco's cause, and on this issue the magazine parted company with liberal U.S. journals with which it is sometimes compared. On the other hand, America in the early 1950s, under the editorship of Robert Hartnett, S.J., criticized Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was often championed by Catholics of that day for his supposed anti-communism, and the magazine and its editor suffered for that principled stand. In the 1960s the magazine enthusiastically reported and supported Vatican Council II, and America Press Inc. published the first available English edition of council documents. Between 1960 and 1970, C. J. McNaspy, S.J., one of the associate editors, enlivened the magazine's appreciation of liturgy, music and the fine arts. A review of the magazine's history or of any given issue reveals that America strives for balance, preferring analysis to ideology. A historical example was its editorial of August 17, 1968, carefully dissenting from that part of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae which said all forms of artificial birth control are inherently evil.

America retains a loyal readership, especially among the hiererchy and other leaders and managers of the Catholic Church in the United States, lay and religious. During the post-Vatican II period, the editors have consistently promoted conciliar reform, but they have struck a balance between the extremes of liberal and conservative opinion in the reforming Church, acting as a bridge for Church dialogue. This opens the magazine to the criticism that it is bland or uncommitted, but it adheres to an analytical rather than crusading tone, and it consistently wins prizes from the Catholic Press Association.

The balance favored by these editors has given the magazine a reputation for temperateness that its founding editor did not always share. But such steadiness has enabled the magazine to fulfill throughout the twentieth century the vision of its founder, who wrote in the first issue: "The object, scope and character of this review are sufficiently indicated in its name--America: A Catholic Review of the Week."

Thomas H. Stahel, S.J.

From The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History

America welcomes thoughtful, respectful and well-reasoned comments from all of our readers. Our aim is to promote a civil and charitable discourse about topics of the day. To that end, we have a few rules:

1. Introduce yourself. We ask commenters to engage as themselves, not under (potentially anonymous) usernames, by setting up your user profile with your name. And remember that you’re in conversation with other real people.
2. Be brief. Keep your comments to a reasonable length (200-300 words should be the maximum). If you need to write more than that, you’re writing an article, not a comment, and those can be submitted here.
3. Keep on topic. Squarely address the topic of the article. Do not use comments as a soapbox for your favorite issues or causes.
4. Be charitable. Comments are for discussion, not for shouting down points you disagree with. Mercifully, it is not your responsibility, nor anyone else’s, to stop everyone who is wrong on the internet. Refrain from ad hominem attacks on authors and your fellow contributors. Be charitable even about those public figures with whom you may disagree.
5. Use your own words. Do not copy and paste long quotes from secondary sources. A link, or brief citation, will suffice. (To reduce the likelihood of spam, comments with links are likely to require approval by a moderator.)
6. Choose your spots. You should not comment on every article where comments are open, nor more than one or two times per article. Let other readers have their say. If you’re engaging in a long back-and-forth discussion with another commenter, consider shifting to email or direct messages on a social media platform.
7. Don't soapbox. Engage the article and other commenters about the article. Don't use the article as a jumping off point to deliver a lecture on the article's topic or to rattle off a set of talking points.

There are a number of different reasons that your comment may be automatically held for moderation before it's posted publicly. Comments posted after hours and on weekends may not be moderated until the next business day. Any questions about moderation should be directed via email to comments@americamedia.org rather than posted via the comments box — they will only be removed and may increase the likelihood of the system automatically holding your other comments for moderation.

Comments that do not follow this policy may be removed at the editors’ discretion. Ignoring the spirit of these guidelines (especially by being uncharitable or dominating the conversation) may lead to your comments being held for pre-moderation before being posted. Repeated violations will lead to commenting privileges being suspended for a time or removed permanently.

Comments submitted on this website may be considered for publication wherever America features responses from our community (letters to the editor, articles collecting reader responses, etc.). We reserve the right to edit posts for length or clarity.

Comment System Features

Comment Notifications

Want to be notified when another reader replies to your comment? You can turn on notifications for this and more in the “My Profile” tab at the top of the comments. (This is not the same as the “My Profile” found under “My Account” in the menu bar.) When you first turn this on, you’ll need to verify your email so the comments system can send you notifications. Click “Verify your email now” and check your inbox for a link. After that, you can choose to be notified when your comment has a reply, has been approved for posting, is replied to by a staff member or has been featured. 

Ignore

You also have the ability to “ignore” other commenters. To do so, click on their name.

You can undo this later from the “My Profile” tab.

Respect

Sometimes someone writes a comment that really moves the conversation along and adds to everyone’s understanding. That’s what the “Respect” feature is for. It doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with the comment or “like” it. But you do respect it. We don’t call it the “like” button because experience has shown it’s important to use a different word in a discussion than we use in social media feeds.

Report

Despite our best efforts, sometimes comments that violate our comments policy will slip through the moderation cracks. If you think we’ve missed one, please click the “Report” button on a comment to directly flag it for our attention. Again, this is for comments that violate our comments policy, not comments that you personally disagree with.

If you run into problems

Please report them to comments@americamedia.org.

We recognize that not everyone neatly fits into one of our digital subscription options (which can be found here). Below are some additional options for getting access to an America subscription. Above all, if you do not see yourself or your situation represented below, please get in touch.

• If you are part of a religious community or group that shares a household print subscription, you can link that subscription for unlimited digital access. If you have an issue with linking your subscription, please reach out to customer support.
• If you’d like to arrange a group digital subscription for your community or household, or have any other questions, please get in touch with us.
• If you are a Jesuit, please send us an email to find out about your subscription options.
• If you cannot afford an America subscription, we are here to help. Please send us an email and we will be in touch.

Dear Friends:

This letter is not a subscription renewal notice or a solicitation for support. I am writing to you from my heart about the crisis in the American church.

This is an agonizing time for the church in the United States. Catholics across the country are reeling from the recent disclosures of past sexual abuses committed by members of the clergy and the catastrophic failure of many of the church’s leaders to protect the most vulnerable among us.

I want you to know that we at America share your feelings of anger, sorrow and fear. As I keep reminding the editorial team, however, we have the luxury of being able to do something in the midst of our sense of helplessness: We can do our jobs. That is what we’ve been doing this summer and what we will continue to do in the weeks, months and years ahead.

In short, America is here for you. We don’t think of ourselves as just a magazine or a website. America Media is a ministry. As journalists, evangelists, as your fellow Christians, we promise to accompany you through this trial, to do everything in our power to provide you with the news, analysis and spiritual resources you need. Above all, we will strive every day to be faithful to our mission and motto to “Pursue the Truth in Love.” We need to listen to the truths of the victims and survivors above all. We need to help them tell their stories. And we need to pursue the truth about the cover-ups and failures, no matter where it leads.

But in order to do all of that, we also need a reason to keep the faith. Many people are asking right now why anyone would remain a Catholic in light of this scandal. It’s a fair question. I’ve heard from a lot of good, honest people who, looking at the record of crimes and cover-ups, ask how we can still talk about God or the church in any meaningful way.

In a recent Gospel reading at Mass, we were told that many of Jesus’ disciples were abandoning him. He asked the Twelve Apostles if they were going to leave too. Peter responds, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” As one of our executive editors said the other day, for those of us who choose to stay, Peter’s words are the life raft we cling to amid the wreckage of the American church.

But Peter’s story doesn’t end there. You know it well: Peter abandons Jesus, denying him three times. Yet after the resurrection, Jesus comes back for Peter, asking him three times, “Do you love me?” When Peter says “yes,” Jesus replies: “Feed my sheep.”

The summer of 2018 is not the first time that our faith has been tested. It will probably not be the last time, either. But the Gospel tells us that even when the church fails to be faithful to God, God never ceases to be faithful to us.

God is loving us even now. The pain of abuse and betrayal is real, but so is the healing power of love and reconciliation.

Jesus Christ still lives. Thus faith, hope and love will never die.

We are praying for you. Please pray for us.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Rev. Matthew F. Malone, S.J.
President & Editor in Chief

P.S. You can access all of our news, analysis and resources about this crisis at www.americamagazine.org/abusecrisis.