John Dougherty

1 week ago | americamagazine.org | John Dougherty

The year before he entered the seminary, the young man who would become Pope Francis went to see a movie. That film, Federico Fellini’s “La Strada” (1954), moved him deeply and became his favorite movie of all time. Last year, dressed in papal white, Francis recorded a video . “As a boy, I watched many of Fellini’s films, but ‘La Strada’ has stayed in my heart,” he said. Throughout his papacy he referenced it in homilies, interviews and public addresses.

2 weeks ago | americamagazine.org | John Dougherty

Long before rock and roll claimed the title, blues was “the devil’s music.” Black preachers denounced it as a gateway to licentiousness and drunkenness. White commentators condemned it as vulgar even as white crowds packed the clubs and white artists appropriated its style. To its critics, the blues was too profane, too sensual—and too Black. As always, we demonize what we fear. The blues is the lifeblood of “Sinners,” the astounding new horror film from writer-director Ryan Coogler.

1 month ago | americamagazine.org | John Dougherty

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the sympathetic Pharisee Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:8). This metaphor is meant to explain an earlier statement: that in order to enter the kingdom of God, one must be reborn in the Spirit.

1 month ago | americamagazine.org | John Dougherty

People do funny things when they’re grieving. Take Tom (Martin Sheen), protagonist of “The Way”: a successful, if tightly-wound, ophthalmologist who has a strained relationship with his free-spirited son Daniel (Emilio Estevez, Sheen’s actual son, who also wrote and directed the film). When Daniel dies in an accident while walking the famed Camino de Santiago, Tom decides to complete the pilgrimage in his stead, spreading his son’s ashes along the way.

2 months ago | hernandosun.com | John Dougherty

By John A. Dougherty, Dougherty Investment AdvisorsWe’ve seen the headlines: Washington is in turmoil. Bureaucratic chaos. Constitutional crisis. The end of democracy. Meanwhile, the stock market has mosied along quite nicely with a rather stable rise of 3% this year. How can this be? And what on earth is happening? To understand the answer, we have to set the backdrop.