Commonweal articles from August 2006

Commonweal archives from August 2006

Pfaff's lament.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... William Pfaff's long lament on the evils of Western modernism ("Clash of Cultures," June 16) contains a valuable, if common, critique of the "dominant culture and the political culture of the United States today." According to Pfaff and others,...

Christianity & moral progress.(Letters)
August 11, 2006... I found William Pfaff's careful analysis of the conflict between Western modernity and the "values, assumptions, and ways of life of the nonmodern world" quite insightful. I was seriously disappointed, however, by his conclusion that humanity...

What about mao?(Letters)
August 11, 2006... While reading William Pfaff's engaging if overly broad exegesis of the cultural and historical framework of current global conflict, I came across this risible assertion: "the present U.S. government... In its treatment of enemies has reverted...

Why i'm Episcopalian.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... In "The Chosen" (June 16), Luke Timothy Johnson writes: "We [Catholics] genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament, make the sign of the cross, say the blessing before meals, attend the Eucharist, fast during Lent, and do a thousand other shared...

Saintly behavior.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... Let me add my voice to the well-deserved accolades accorded Sr. Rose Thering, including Judith Banki's touching tribute to her ("Pivotal Figure," June 16). When the time comes to nominate Sr. Rose for beatification, I'll be happy to give...

Catholics & the Shoah.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... Thank you for your fine editorial, "Benedict at Auschwitz" (June 16). Your analysis of this visit, which was filled with ambiguity, is very much to the point. I disagree only with your conclusion. In response to Benedict's "heartfelt cry to...

No easy answers.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... In "Could the Church Have Gotten It Wrong?" (July 14) Cathleen Kaveny asks regarding slavery: "Why did it take us so long to see the truth?" I would ask instead: Why should the church have a view on every moral question? Focusing on these...

Doctrinal development.(Letters)(Brief article)
August 11, 2006... Cathleen Kaveny neglects to mention that the church permitted torture as a method of truth telling as late as the nineteenth century. Today all forms of torture are considered intrinsically evil. There has been an evolution in human knowledge,...

Married with children.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2006... John Garvey's column on "Family Values" (June 2) misses the point. All human associations are full of perverse patterns of feeling and behavior, including traditional families, same-sex partnerships, blended families, and the free-form...

Catholic swingers.(From the Editors)
August 11, 2006... Recent polls show voters deeply dissatisfied with Congress and the president, a situation that has Republican Party strategists scrambling to retain control in Washington, especially in the House of Representatives. Even in the aftermath of the...

Cosmically unfair: what is the point of suffering?
August 11, 2006... I was at a wake for the mother of a parishioner when a boy, maybe ten or eleven, asked, "I have a question: If God loves us so much, why did he create death?" I answered--after an absolutely necessary long pause--that God wants us alive, alive...

No exit? Violence in the Middle East.
August 11, 2006... The present American and Israeli attempts to put an end to terrorism continue to empower it in a manner unforeseen by Washington and Jerusalem. President George W. Bush has called this the "long war." It may prove much shorter, and end more...

Unions and immigrants: no longer enemies.
August 11, 2006... For over a century the challenge of immigration has vexed organized labor. In the late nineteenth century, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), led by cigarmaker Samuel Gompers (himself an immigrant from Europe who, in his own words,...

Feeding Bees.(Poem)
August 11, 2006... Feeding Bees "Like a swarm of bees which one moment enflower themselves and the next return to where their work acquires savor." (Si come schiera d'ape che s'infiora una fiata e una si ritorna la dove suo laboro.) ...

A changing church: nothing to be afraid of.
August 11, 2006... On the day Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told CNN how delighted he was with the selection: "What you saw is an affirmation by the cardinals that the church is not going to change, even though maybe Europe and...

The fantasy man: the strange brilliance of John Crowley.
August 11, 2006... When I was nineteen, I bought a paperback copy of John Crowley's Little, Big in an English bookstore. I had been reading a lot of the Victorian fantasist George MacDonald, and was searching for copies of his fairy tales in the science fiction...

Heart (2).(Poem)
August 11, 2006... Heart (2) The heart is an old man mouthing obscenities. Muttering, muttering. On the echo monitor each beat becomes an aurora borealis, and the valve flaps like the top of an old cartoon stovepipe. You house these tunnels-- put...

Nerd Heaven: 'WORDPLAY' & 'A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION'.(National Public Radio)
August 11, 2006... Something odd happened in film theaters this summer: National Public Radio went to the movies. Or, at any rate, some of its stars did. Will Shortz, the crossword-puzzle editor of the New York Times and weekly Puzzlemaster on NPR's Sunday...

Can We Say No to a Friend?(Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy )(Brief article)(Book review)
August 11, 2006... Scars of War, Wounds of Peace The Israeli-Arab Tragedy Shlomo Ben-Ami Oxford University Press, $30, 354 pp. "The Israel Lobby" John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt London Review of Books, March 23, 2006 In Europe...

Say Cheese.(Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today)(Book review)
August 11, 2006... Smile of the Buddha Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today Jacquelynn Baas, with a foreword by Robert A. F. Thurman University of California Press, $45, 312 pp. In the twenty-first century there remains...

Reason Limps.(Legends of Modernity: Essays and Letters from Occupied Poland, 1942-43)(Book review)
August 11, 2006... Legends of Modernity Essays and Letters from Occupied Poland, 1942-1943 Czeslaw Milosz Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 266 pp. He was "among those members of humankind who have had the ambiguous privilege of knowing and...

The Long March.(Oracle Bones: A Journey between China's Past and Present.(Book review)
August 11, 2006... Oracle Bones A Journey between China's Past and Present Peter Hessler HarperCollins, $26.95, 488 pp. Peter Hessler's rich and varied new study of China takes its title from the discovery, in 1899, around the ancient city of...

You say potato, I say ...(english translations of scripture )
August 11, 2006... A benefit of Catholicism's long historical perspective is its ability to discern the difference between the essential and the inessential, between the constant dustups that win headlines and God's slow and silent work in the world. The...