Commonweal articles from April 2002

Commonweal archives from April 2002

To the Editors.
April 5, 2002... Right balance Kudos to Commonweal for your editorial on the sad subject of the handling of pedophilia in the church ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8). It was the best and most thoughtful I've read anywhere. I only wish it could have been...

The whole story.(investigating allegations of sexual abuse by catholic priests)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... It is extremely difficult to judge the extent and depth of the Catholic Church's sex-abuse crisis. What started as a stinging newspaper expose of Cardinal Bernard Law's handling of the case of one diabolical sexual predator in Boston has...

ET CETERA.(Liska and Associates Inc. replaces Commnweal's cover illustrator Christopher Young)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... No cover-up * Christopher Young, who has designed Commonweal's covers since 1999, has decided to turn his considerable talents and energies to other projects. High on Christopher's list of ambitions is the restoration of his Chelsea apartment,...

Continuing the conversation.(child sex abuse by clergy)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... A pastor speaks out The following remarks appeared in the parish bulletin of Saint Joseph's Church, Mendham, New Jersey, on March 10; it was written by the pastor, the Reverend Kenneth Lasch. Recently one of our parishioners asked me when I...

MUD IN YOUR EYE : The sex-abuse scandal as seen from the pews.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... I have spent a fair amount of time over the past ten years, both in print and at cocktail and dinner parties, defending unfashionable ideas such as hierarchy, the celibate male priesthood, restrictions on abortion, sacramental religion, and the...

CANONIZING JUAN DIEGO : Mexico City politics.(Pope John Paul II's forthcoming visit to Mexico)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... Mexico City--Amid a squall of controversy, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, President Vicente Fox, and Mexico City Mayor Andres Manual Lopez Obrador are fervently praying that failing health will not prevent John Paul II from making his fifth visit to...

ONE REPORTER'S START : Why I hired Danny Pearl.
April 5, 2002... The letter was incredible. Never had I read more flattering, in-your-face cajolery. This kid was telling me he'd enjoyed my article, believed everything I'd written, and would give his right arm to work for me. "Geez, you can't be...

CLASS PARTICIPATION : Report from Beijing.(teaching political philosophy in China)
April 5, 2002... Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, I am teaching political philosophy at Beijing's Renmin (People's) University of China this year. My students are all rather silent in class. I attribute this mostly to difficulty in understanding English or...

THE 'MANDATUM': NOW WHAT? What does conscience require?(theology teachers at Catholic universities must obtain a mandatum)
April 5, 2002... By June 1, 2002, Catholic theologians who teach in Catholic colleges and universities are supposed to have received and accepted a mandatum from the local bishop. (In this article, I will use "universities" to include all these institutions.)...

A BAPTIST LOOKS AT 'EX CORDE' : A lesson for Catholics?('ex corde ecclesiae')
April 5, 2002... Why should Catholics care about what goes on among the Baptists? Odd as it may seem, Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics may have more in common than first meets the eye. The new revised Southern Baptist Convention sometimes looks more like...

STAGING DEATH ROW : 'Dead Man Walking' as opera.(Critical Essay)
April 5, 2002... When Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean's passionate story about ministering to condemned prisoners on death row, bowed in operatic form in October 2000 at the San Francisco Opera, the work's plausibility surprised many. It turned out to be...

SURFING BELIEFNET.COM : Soybeans & other religious enthusiasms.(Beliefnet.com Website designed for people interest in religion shows commercial links and advertising in every block of text)
April 5, 2002... Religious people like soybeans. That's the first lesson I gleaned from Beliefnet (www.beliefnet.com), the intriguing, potentially addictive, and occasionally horrifying Web site that caters to the devout. Designed to be a virtual community for...

They are us.('Medieval Children')
April 5, 2002... Medieval Children Nicholas Orme Yale University Press, $39.95, 387 pp. Happily, the history of medieval childhood has grown beyond its infancy. Nicholas Orme's book offers a social and cultural history of children in England from...

BREAKING THE SIXTH.('A Multitude of Sins')
April 5, 2002... A Multitude of Sins Richard Ford Alfred A. Knopf, $25, 286 pp. Five years ago Richard Ford, fresh from the success of Independence Day, his second novel about Frank Bascombe (it was preceded by The Sportswriter), published a...

Marooned.('Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island Working with Troubled Boys - A Teacher's Memoir')
April 5, 2002... Crossing the Water Eighteen Months on an Island Working with Trouble Boys--A Teacher's Memoir Daniel Robb Simon & Schuster, $24, 287 pp. Over the roar of a boat's diesel engine, during a traverse of Massachusetts's Buzzards Bay,...

A WILD & SECRETIVE THING.('Conscious and Verbal')(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... Conscious and Verbal Les Murray Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $23, 94 pp. Les Murray has brought out this new collection of poems little more than a year after his Learning Human: Selected Poems, a watershed in Murray's recognition of...

A CATHOLIC CANON.('Dante to Dead Man Walking: One Reader's Journey Through the Christian Classics')
April 5, 2002... Dante to Dead Man Walking One Reader's Journey through the Christian Classics Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Loyola Press, $19.95, 242 pp. One Sunday last summer, while driving to the beach, I came upon a book sale on the side of the road....

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE.(completing essays on college admissions applications)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2002... My friend Vinnie is trying to test out of Computer Applications class. It is a required course for high school graduation. He's miserable. I listen to his stories about learning how to center text and make spreadsheets. I listen to his stories...

Last chance.(Enough is Enough, the Middle East)(Brief Article)
April 19, 2002... Enough is enough." Thus, President George W. Bush summed up his current thinking on the carnage between Israelis and Palestinians. Does his phrase sound a note of weary exasperation or express a sturdy resolve to engage the two sides in...

SECOND CHANCE? A new view of purgatory.(foregiveness in the Spirit)(Brief Article)
April 19, 2002... We will not meet Nazis in heaven, argues Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, because of the "objective terribleness" of their crimes. Oh yes? Then what about clerical pedophiles, inquisitors, and crusaders? Surely those members of the church who harmed...

WAR POLITICS : Bush looks to McKinley.(George W. Bush and William McKinley)(Brief Article)
April 19, 2002... Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's resident political genius, has long had a fascination with another Republican president, William McKinley. In his first election in 1896, McKinley defeated the legendary populist Democrat, William Jennings...

LAW & MORALITY : Divorce, the death penalty & the pope.(in the Spirit)
April 19, 2002... I like Justice Antonin Scalia and I love John Paul II, so I hesitate to disagree with both of them in the same essay. Each recently addressed an issue of special concern to me--how Catholic lawyers and judges should reconcile the conflicting...

THE CHURCH'S SEX-ABUSE CRISIS : What's old, what's new, what's needed--and why.(Catholic Church)
April 19, 2002... There are scandals and then there are scandals. Most are ugly, absorbing, and quickly forgotten. A few change history. The current flood of revelations about Catholic priests sexually preying on minors and the failure of Catholic officials to...

WAKING MICHAEL CAINE : 'Last Orders'.
April 19, 2002... While some movies treat the theme of aging movie stars with playful self-consciousness--remember Tough Guys, with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster?--others use it more implicitly, as a quiet intensifier. In Last Orders Michael Caine, who turns...

Illuminated manuscripts.(various; Stories from the Bible)
April 19, 2002... Here's the assignment: Read the story of Cain and Abel (King James version please). With the text reprinted on lovely thick stock, draw one marginal illustration. Here's what you probably will not draw: Two young men seated facing each...

Who's in charge here?(Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security)
April 19, 2002... Soldiers and Civilians The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security Edited by Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn MIT Press, $28.95, 545 pp. Few events in American history have so fundamentally changed public life as the...

REBOOT.(in the Spirit)(Brief Article)(Column)
April 19, 2002... It is Fernando again. "Are the computers fixed yet, mister? Can we get onto the Internet now?" Fernando is twelve years old, one of thirty-four young people mandated by Juvenile Court to attend our afterschool center in Stamford, Connecticut....