Commonweal articles from August 2004

Commonweal archives from August 2004

Rethinking celibacy.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... Congratulations on your fine issue on priests (July 16), especially the honest and insightful article by Msgr. Harry J. Byrne about his fifty-nine years as a celibate ("One Man's Vocation"). Byrne rightly questions the Vatican's imposition of...

Elder statesman.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... Harry Byrne's essay on his fifty-nine years as a priest marks him as a true elder among the U.S. clergy. And God knows we priests thirst for the wisdom of the elders in our midst. Few of our official elders--that is, our bishops--write with the...

The gift of celibacy.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... The three articles on celibacy in your July 16 issue were provocative, interesting, but, in the end, disappointing. Over the years, Commonweal has displayed a gift for puncturing both liberal and conservative balloons. In this issue, the...

My son, at war.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... I found "My Son, the Soldier" (July 16) to be eerily familiar. Our son is also stationed in Iraq. When we do not hear from him, we know that it is because he is either engaged in combat or on a mission--or because someone in his unit has been...

Young American.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... Jo McGowan's "In Custody" (July 16) contained an instance of hyperbole that I found particularly rankling. She reports that on reading of the Abu Ghraib abuses, her daughter announced herself "ashamed to be an American." This sort of excess is...

Reducing abortions.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... You say that "abortion is an especially complex legal and political issue," but you ask John Kerry to stick his neck out and criticize abortion practice and take steps "to reduce the number of abortions" ("Kerry, the Catholic," June 18). Once...

Communion rights?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... Catching up on past issues of Commonweal, I was flabbergasted to find this throwaway remark in John Garvey's usually careful column: "no one has a right to Communion, rights being a stupid category where the sacraments are concerned, and...

Young Catholics.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2004... John Hagen claims that Leslie Tentler is stuck in the 1960s in her opposition to church teaching on contraception ("Humanae Vitae's Legacy," June 4.) According to Hagen, "many young Catholics," persuaded by "the 'theology of the body' lucidly...

Dear Senator Kerry ...(John Kerry)
August 13, 2004... As the first Roman Catholic nominated for the presidency by either major party in forty-four years, your candidacy has raised much interest and considerable controversy within the hierarchy as well as among Catholics in the pews. Even Rome has...

... Dear bishops.(Catholic Church's stand on abortion)
August 13, 2004... Some of you have told Senator John Kerry and other prochoice Catholic politicians not to receive Communion in your dioceses. Others have gone so far as to say that Catholics who vote for a prochoice politician should not consider themselves in...

Watch your mouth: sage advice from St. James.(Of Several Minds)
August 13, 2004... It wouldn't be hard to compile a "Greatest Hits" album of recent official Catholic teaching on moral questions. Sexual Ethics (Humanae vitae), human rights (Gaudium et spes), abortion and euthanasia (Evangelium vitae), just-war theory (The...

The lessons of Frankenstein: nature, nurture, & what lies between.(Of Several Minds)(a multiyear study funded by the Ford Foundation called," Altering Nature: How Religious Traditions Assess the New Biotechnologies")
August 13, 2004... How far should we go in our efforts to alter nature, including human nature? As stewards of God's good creation, what are our responsibilities? What are the implications of recent theological emphases on human beings as "created cocreators"...

Keep it to yourself: the Supreme Court on religious freedom.
August 13, 2004... The Supreme Court term ended in late June with an avalanche of headline-grabbing decisions. The justices announced important, even landmark, rulings in cases involving police interrogation tactics, criminal-sentencing procedures, Internet...

Economic injustice for most: from the New Deal to the raw deal.
August 13, 2004... America has always had an ambivalent attitude toward equality. In contrast to the social democratic regimes of Europe, the only officially endorsed equality Americans have historically embraced is the narrow sense of equality of opportunity--as...

The road from Kermanshah: how Parviz came to die.
August 13, 2004... My Uncle Parviz died of lung cancer at 9:50 in the morning on a beautiful December day. It was Tuesday. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun shining, atypical for this suburb of Los Angeles. It had been like that for some days. It was great...

The Dialectical Development of Doctrine: A Methodological Proposal.(Book Review)
August 13, 2004... If Christianity--including Christian faith and theology--is to avoid becoming totally out of touch with the world--a museum piece at best, a force of baleful reaction at worst--it must constantly update itself by constant interaction, dialogue,...

At war: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' & 'Control Room'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
August 13, 2004... When Cannes bestowed the Palme d'Or on Fahrenheit 9/11 last May, it wasn't all that surprising, a political paint bomb lobbed from Europe toward the White House. But the question remained, how would the film play in Peoria? To packed houses, we...

Bloodhound: Helen Mirren in 'Prime Suspect'.(Media)(Television Program Review)
August 13, 2004... In the great video store in heaven, the shelf of Prime Suspect episodes is infinitely long. After all, who could demand more from a television mystery than this steely British police procedural, shot with a lightning-rod attentiveness to detail...

One of a kind.(Books)
August 13, 2004... Eugene McCarthy The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism Dominic Sandbrook Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95, 397 pp. During Eugene McCarthy's first major political campaign, to become the 1948 Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee...

Last wrongs.(Books)
August 13, 2004... Caring for the Dead Your Final Act of Love Lisa Carlson Upper Access, $29.95, 640 pp. Rest in Peace A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America Gary Laderman Oxford University...

Breaking barriers.(Books)
August 13, 2004... Cooking with Grease Stirring the Pots in American Politics Donna Brazile Simon & Schuster, $23, 322 pp. Some people grow up wanting to be firemen. Some want to be doctors, or astronauts, or lawyers, or journalists, or even...

A reporter's story.(Books)
August 13, 2004... Pull Me Up A Memoir Dan Barry W.W. Norton & Company, $24.95, 325 pp. Like many of us in the journalism dodge, Dan Barry has spent much of his career piecing together the shards of wrecked lives, sidling up to tragedy and then...

Forever young.(The Last Word)
August 13, 2004... A few months back, Neil Young and his band, Crazy Horse, came to the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford, Connecticut, and my daughter and I went to see him. She is seventeen. I am fifty. For her, Young is a rock icon. For me, he is a poet of my...