File this post under crotchety dad if you must but I hope it is more than that Today I went with my nearly-five-year-old daughter to see the new Disney movie Toy Story 3 I did not know the storyline or the characters from the first two Toy Story movies but looked up the trailers and read

I recently learned of Dr Maureen O Brien s timely and important research project and have her permission to put a call for interested persons here on the America magazine blog Dr O Brien Duquesne is in the process of gathering together a group of Catholic lay ecclesial ministers for theologica

Katrin Bennhold recently wrote a tantalizing snapshot in the New York Times of Sweden s success in encouraging fathers to take leave from work to care for children In the process it seems masculinity itself undergoes revision Sweden is not alone in paying men to take time off to be with their yo

For the past many years as each summer begins and I have the privilege of sitting quietly with the summer ahead of me and imagining what should be accomplished when but all the while able to float these accomplishings in the balmy soup of summer relaxation and then I remember that this is a

At Fordham University on Saturday our venerable commencement speaker and a recipient of an honorary doctorate was the Irish president Mary McAleese I was a faculty marshal carrying the mace for the Graduate School of Religion which meant among other things that I got to sit up on the s

Last week for four days I was in Kananaskis Alberta about 90 minutes from Calgary I was speaking at the annual Blueprints conference an extraordinarily well-coordinated gathering for principals of Catholic schools and their trustees I returned to the close of the Fordham school year utterl

Today a friend and fellow born-in-1969er sent me the new article by critic A O Scott in the New York Times on the midlife crisis of Generation X or more specifically the Generation X male Let me immediately add that I presume that this material will only be potentially interesting to those

In an introductory course on practical theology that I teach for undergraduates at Fordham spaces are left open in the syllabus to focus on the practical-theological questions arising from their lives in college culture Once they as a class identify some shared questions I help them fill in the

Dietrich Bonhoeffer remarked in his famous prison letters about his gratitude for life among prisoners who were not pious noting his surprise at what life was like with them In a very different context I too have found compelling the desacralized spaces of secular culture In rock culture

Recently I came home to hear my four year old daughter listening to a CD which has entranced her making her memorize words melodies song order It turns out she is also memorizing poetry A relative bought for her the new Natalie Merchant record Leave Your Sleep Music critic Jon Pareles