Busted Halo » Bill McGarvey

Survival Story

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:05:47 +0000

On the eve of the publication of their book, co-authors Nora Bradbury-Haehl and Bill McGarvey discuss how, over the course of six years, an evening of candid conversations between college students and high school seniors grew into The Freshman Survival Guide: Soulful Advice for Studying, Socializing and Everything In Between. Bill McGarvey: Do you remember [...]

Alabama Homeboys

Bill McGarvey — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:38:19 +0000

For over 20 years, Homeboy Industries has offered a way out of gang life for thousands of young people in Los Angeles. Established by Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, in 1988, Homeboy has garnered national recognition and become a model across the country for helping people transition out of gang life. Their many programs include job [...]

Moral Dilemma #3: The Drummer and the Drug Rep — The Wrinkle

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:52:33 +0000

Now we'd like to complicate the story just a bit more by telling you what happened next...

Kara tells Robert to stay where he is and makes him promise not to do anything to hurt himself. She gets in her car and immediately heads over to Robert's apartment. While in the car she decides that she will ask one of the doctors she knows to see Robert and -- if the physician believes Robert needs medication -- she will provide the samples.

Robert is clearly glad to see her when she arrives. Kara offers to take him to the emergency room but Robert tells her that he feels better now that she is there. As far as Kara can tell, he does seem calmer and less desperate than he was on the phone but she is uncomfortable leaving him by himself right now. She sits down on his couch and begins to talk with him about what he's been going through...

Moral Dilemma #3: The Drummer and the Drug Rep

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:05:21 +0000

After struggling to put herself through college, Kara landed a good job as a drug representative for a large pharmaceutical company. The job required her to travel to doctor's offices throughout her "territory" in the northeastern part of Washington State and remind physicians about the various medications her company makes and how they benefit patients. Because most of the doctors she deals with are very busy, her visits usually entail a quick hello to the doctor to drop off a few samples of the prescription medications she represents.

Looking Back and Moving Forward…

Bill McGarvey — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:05:36 +0000

When I took over as editor-in-chief of Busted Halo in May 2004 we were still living in a web 1.0 world. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist and updating this site involved working with a content management system that—compared to what we use today—might as well have been designed by Fred Flintstone. So much has [...]

Moral Dilemma #2: The Best Friend and the Bridesmaid — The Wrinkle

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 07:05:02 +0000

Now we'd like to complicate the story just a bit more by telling you what happened next...

The Wrinkle

After a few moments silence Michelle tells Beth that she can’t in good conscience stand up in a church before God and support a marriage that she so clearly feels is wrong and unhealthy.

On the other end of the phone she hears Beth start to cry and Michelle begins to feel sorry that she has hurt her close friend so badly. When Beth composes herself, she tells Michelle that she hasn’t had nearly as much dating experience and that she “exaggerated those incidents with Thomas” partly out of inexperience and also in part because she kind of enjoyed the drama and it made her feel like she finally had something to share with Michelle in terms of relationships. Now she’s concerned that Michelle will never give Thomas a fair chance.

Time for you to decide again. What's the right thing to do now?

Moral Dilemma #2: The Best Friend and the Bridesmaid

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:05:29 +0000

As Beth and Thomas' relationship became serious, Michelle began to be troubled by some of the things Beth would tell her.

Few of us are ever faced with making the sorts of life or death decisions we routinely hear about in the news. And yet there are decisions we face every day that -- whether we realize it or not -- have very real moral implications.

Part trivia game and part reality show, Busted Halo's Moral Dilemmas feature is intended not only to raise some moral issues for our readers but also to ask you to participate in resolving them. After reading the story below about Beth, Michelle and Thomas please tell us through a one-question quiz, linked to at the bottom of the page, what you think is the "right thing to do."

Alabama Homeboys — Additional Text

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:04:37 +0000

BH: One of the great things in the movie that I think is very powerful is when Luis is holding that little baby; you’re smiling as broad as the day and that’s a really great shot. Was it a problem that most of these kids were black and you guys are Hispanic? Like, who are [...]

Moral Dilemma #1: The Banker and the Beggar — The Wrinkle

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 01:50:43 +0000

Now we'd like to complicate the story just a bit more by telling you what happened next...

THE WRINKLE

Jason takes a deep breath and tells the man that he'd be willing to buy him some hot food and call to make sure he gets taken to a shelter that night.

The homeless man says that the shelters are more dangerous than the streets and that he doesn't want to lie to him: what he needs is some money so he can buy a cheap bottle of whiskey that will help keep him warm during the cold winter night.

Time for you to decide again. What's the right thing for Jason to do now?

Moral Dilemma #1: The Banker and the Beggar

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:05:37 +0000

Few of us are ever faced with making the sort of life-or-death decisions we routinely hear about in the news. Fortunately, most of us are spared from navigating the complex ethical terrain that headline-making cases sometime raise. And yet there are decisions we face everyday that — whether we realize it or not — have [...]

Finding Common Ground at Ground Zero

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:05:29 +0000

A few months following the September 11 attacks in New York City, Eboo Patel—like countless other Americans—visited ground zero and prayed in memory of those who were murdered. Nearly a decade later Patel—a Muslim-American who is the founder of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) —now sees that prayerful moment through a different lens. “It’s a little bit shocking” he says “for me to think that my prayers, because they happen to be in Arabic, would have been unwelcome by some people.” His reconsideration of that memory was catalyzed by the current controversy surrounding the proposed construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near ground zero. Patel’s interest in interfaith relations has its roots in his experience working and living at several Catholic Worker houses during his college years. He went on to obtain a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. Since then he founded IFYC, a Chicago-based institution dedicated to building the global interfaith youth movement. Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Patel is also a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships as well as the author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and a Washington Post blog "The Faith Divide."

The Patron Saint of Baby Boomers

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:05:17 +0000

As the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa of Calcutta on August 26, 2010 approaches, David Van Biema -- former chief religion writer at TIME and the author and editor of TIME Mother Teresa: The Life and Works of a Modern Saint -- sat down to discuss the life and legacy one of the most iconic human beings of the 20th Century.

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Lesbian, Catholic and Celibate

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:00:57 +0000

At a time when the issues of homosexuality and religion are creating enormous rifts and clearly defined factions within many faith communities, Eve Tushnet is a category unto herself. The freelance writer and blogger became aware that she was gay at around age 13 and felt very supported by her parents. (Dad is a Harvard [...]

Eve Tushnet interview outtakes

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:00:35 +0000

« Return to main interview Busted Halo: It sounds like this was not a huge issue to your family when you came out of the closet, right? Eve Tushnet: They were very, very supportive but also able to set boundaries and rules. Sort of basic stuff that I think they would do with any teens [...]

The Modern Priest as Bridge Builder

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:00:13 +0000

Fr. McGarry discusses his years in the Holy Land and his extensive work on Jewish-Christian relations. The Los Angeles native also touches on the divisions he sees in both American politics and the Catholic Church in this country and how the fundamental question that drew him to the Paulists back in 1965, "Can a Priest be a Modern Man?" is still as relevant today as it was 45 years ago.

One Parent’s Demand for Justice

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:14:54 +0000

When I met David Spotanski at a conference on leadership in the Catholic Church in 2007, my first impression of the Belleville, Ill., native was that he was like so many of the Midwesterners whom I’ve known and worked with over the years: friendly, approachable, and not in the habit of taking himself too seriously. [...]

Busted: Mary Karr

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:15:54 +0000

Considering the harrowing stories of her Texas youth — plagued by the alcohol, drugs, violence and general mayhem she recounted in The Liars’ Club (1995) and Cherry (2000) — it is a minor miracle that Mary Karr lived to tell her tale. The fact that she still has more stories of tumult and survival as [...]

George Carlin’s Last Words

Bill McGarvey — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:30:02 +0000

When George Carlin died in 2008 at the age of 71, American comedy lost one of the sharpest and truest voices it had ever known. Over five decades, Carlin forged a body of work that is awe-inspiring in terms of its breadth, intelligence and relevance. The Irish Catholic kid from Corpus Christi parish in Harlem–with [...]

Busted: Mary Gordon

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:12:24 +0000

Having spent more than three decades chronicling Catholic life as an author of novels, short stories, essays, memoirs and biographies, Mary Gordon decided to take what some might consider a radical leap for a Catholic: she actually read the bible. In Reading Jesus, Gordon attempts to understand the rise of fundamentalism by engaging the Gospels [...]

Where’s God? ep4 — 66 Chevy Impala

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:00:22 +0000

Faith, spirituality and religion are too often looked upon as the province of “experts” who spend all their time in places of worship with their noses buried deep in holy books. At BustedHalo.com we frequently hear from readers who desperately want to explore their spiritual questions but feel alienated from traditional faith communities. The fact [...]

A Queer Conversation

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:00:21 +0000

Growing up just south of Los Angeles, Sr. Bernadette (Mary) Reis would see her cousin Paul Mages when her family took vacation trips to visit his family in the Milwaukee area. For the first 25 years after she entered the convent with the Daughters of St. Paul at the age of 14, Sr. Bernadette and [...]

The Saint and the Sultan

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:37:36 +0000

As the former city editor and senior religion writer for Newsday, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Moses is well aware of what it takes to get the facts right on an important story. But when the story you’re researching is 800 years old, things can get pretty complicated. In the wake of September 11, Moses [...]

Unholy Waterfront

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:00:49 +0000

With a shock of sandy blonde hair that perpetually seems to be on the verge of revolt and a conversation style that is best described as a benign form of rapid-fire free association, it’s easy to picture Professor Jim Fisher, 52, as the young taxicab driving college dropout living in Hoboken, N.J., that he once [...]

Finding God in All Things

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:21 +0000

If you were able to conduct a free association exercise among Catholics, the term “Jesuit” would most likely evoke responses like “educators,” “intelligent,” “worldly” and perhaps even “liberal.” But as the largest male religious order in the Catholic church, the Society of Jesus—as the Jesuits are officially known—has nearly 20,000 members spread out across 112 [...]

God Doesn’t Like Ugly

Bill McGarvey — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:00:28 +0000

Throughout the side chapels and the interior of St. Paul the Apostle Church in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, the historically significant artwork on permanent display now shares space with a compelling and eclectic mix of contemporary pieces. God Doesn’t Like Ugly, as the exhibition is titled, is the third major group exhibition presented [...]

The Family that Plays Together

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:27 +0000

In the white-hot glare of worldwide celebrity there are no shadows, there are only outsized figures of triumph or scorn. They are presented to us as fully formed creations, media amplified surfaces without depth who occupy our fantasies until something else inevitably takes their place. This strange and rare sort of fame — which basketball [...]

Busted: Deanna Witkowski

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:38:08 +0000

Busted: The Stoning of Soraya M.

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:33:48 +0000

In the few days since we published our interview with Jim Caviezel, events surrounding the election in Iran have added special resonance to his new film, The Stoning of Soraya M. (opens June 26). In the movie, based on an actual event that occurred in Iran in 1986, an Iranian woman is the lone voice [...]

Busted: Jim Caviezel

Bill McGarvey — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:19:02 +0000

Being at the center of one of the highest grossing movies of all time can be both a blessing and a curse for an actor. The world now recognizes their name and face, but a role can be so iconic that they’ll have trouble breaking free of it in audiences’ minds (Mark Hamill as Luke [...]

They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Denunciation

Bill McGarvey — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:03:18 +0000

For some it was the shot heard round the world. When Cardinal Francis George got up to preach on a cold Saturday evening more than a decade ago his message was even more bracing than the Chicago weather outside Old St. Pat’s church. “Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project” he said. “Essentially a critique, even [...]