Priests

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.

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

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

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.

Father Michael Doyle. He's the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Camden, New Jersey, which sits in the center of a rundown neighborhood in one of the most depressed cities on the East coast. A deeply religious man who over the years has had his differences with the church hierarchy, Fr. Doyle has committed his church to social change and helping the poor.

Don Novello, a.k.a Father Guido Sarducci, the Vatican gossip columnist of "Saturday Night Live" fame.