Clergy

Griswold, who died March 5, presided over the ordination of the church's first openly gay bishop. That was one of the issues which nearly caused a schism in the church. Originally broadcast in 2006.

In 2019, Houston Chronicle journalist Robert Downen helped break the story about sexual abuse within the SBC. That led the church to commission its own independent study, which suggested a coverup.

John Michael McDonagh's new movie stars Brendan Gleeson as a priest who must eventually face off against a killer. It's excruciatingly obvious and inept, but Gleeson brings it alive.

The director's latest cinematic meditation on the meaning of life stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko and Javier Bardem and revolves around the question of how we might locate the presence of God in the everyday and how we can accommodate ourselves to our expulsion from the Garden.

Solomon Burke, the Grammy Award-winning singer who wrote the hit track "Everyone Needs Somebody to Love," died Sunday at 70. Fresh Air remembers the "King of Rock and Soul" with excerpts from a 1986 interview.

The film version of John Patrick Shanley play is a heavy slab of dramaturgy: It's dark, somber, yet unbelievably intense. Even on screen, it has the compressed quality of great theater.

Our guest, Father John Barkemeyer, left a parish on Chicago's South Side to become an Army chaplain in 2003, the year U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq. There's a shortage of Catholic priests in the Army, and for much of his current tour in Iraq, Barkemeyer has been the service's only Catholic chaplain in the province of Anbar.

Episcopalian minister Barbara Brown Taylor's new book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, describes her decision to leave her job after 15 years as a full-time minister.

Our book critic reviews The Most Famous Man in America, by Debby Applegate. Applegate offers insights about the charismatic Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The idea that priests, like all men, are not perfect might seem like a tame one. But NBC's effort to translate the premise into a TV series has brought protests that the show is anti-Christian. Jack Kenny is the creator and executive producer of The Book of Daniel.

Bill Manseau 's wife, Mary, left the convent in the late 1960s. But Bill Manseau believed then, as he does today, that he was called to be a married priest -- and his actions might help to end the requirement of celibacy. The church felt otherwise.

Father Joseph Fessio. He is Provost of Ave Marie University and Editor-in-Chief of Ignatius Press. He is a longtime personal friend and former student of the Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

A gay priest (who will go unnamed). His superiors have asked him not to give his name, though he has been given permission to speak about his work. He is in active ministry and works in a parish. In a few weeks the Vatican is expected to issue a ruling banning gay men from entering the seminary.

Father James Martin has written a new memoir about his spiritual journey from the corporate world to the priesthood. His book is In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity and Obedience (paperback, Sheed & Ward). Martin is associate editor of America, the national Catholic magazine and is the winner of three Catholic Press Association Awards. Hes also the author of This Our Exile: A Spiritual Journey with the Refugees of East Africa.

He left the priesthood after 22 years to marry and has been married now for 25 years. Kennedy believes that celibacy should no longer be an absolute condition for the priesthood. Hes the author of the new book, The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality (St. Martins Gr

Parish Priest John McNamee. For twenty five years he's lived and worked the poorer neighborhoods of Philadelphia. His book, "Diary of a City Priest" (Sheed & Ward) documents his struggle to keep faith, when surrounded by poverty and despair.

Film critic John Powers of the L.A. Weekly reviews "The Best intentions," a three-hour film based on Bergman's parents' troubled relationship.

Reverend Joseph Ingle. He directs the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons and ministers to death row inmates. "Last Rights," published by Abingdon.

Father Ralph Beiting's ministry serves the poor of the Appalachian region, which he says was overlooked by the reforms and social programs of the 1960s. He links poverty to the degradation of family life. Despite the difficulties associated with his work, Beiting has fallen in love with the area and its people.

Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest who for the past 20 years has been at the forefront of the peace movement. He has been arrested and spent time in prison many times for his acts of civil disobedience. Berrigan was one the Catonsville 9, who protested the Vietnam war in 1968 by destroying draft records, and a member of the Plowshares 8, who damaged nuclear warheads in 1980. He now works at an AIDS hospice in New York City. Daniel Berrigan recently completed his autobiography; it's titled To Dwell in Peace.