Commonweal articles from December 2002

Commonweal archives from December 2002

To the editors. (Correspondence).
December 6, 2002... A glorious inheritance Apropos Peter Quinn's engaging discussion of "The Catholic Novel" (November 8): The attempt to use a "mark" of the church--namely Catholicity--to characterize a class of novels might turn out to be too equivocal to...

The state of war.
December 6, 2002... Will Iraq comply with the rigorous demands of UN inspections? Hopes are high that Saddam Hussein's resolve to stay in power will override his desire to conceal nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons sites. If so, the Bush administration's...

Et cetera.
December 6, 2002... Exploiting the bishops * From Bishop Wilton Gregory's November 11 presidential address to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: "There are those outside the church who are hostile to the very principles and teachings that the church...

The virtue & vice of deadlines: the last 900 words. (Of Several Minds).
December 6, 2002... Hail and farewell, fellow readers. I am quitting the column business--cold turkey. Total abstinence is the only way. As in other addictions, the build-up of tension followed by the release of handing in 900 words on deadline produces a...

`Los dos amigos'? Vicente Fox & George W. Bush.
December 6, 2002... Until September 11, Mexico's President Vicente Fox and George W. Bush were soul mates. They called themselves the "two amigos," exchanged muscular bear hugs, and trumpeted a new era in bilateral affairs. With an eye on propitiating the swelling...

Faith & government: what religion demands & pluralism requires.
December 6, 2002... I have been asked to reflect upon the experience of elected officials who try to reconcile personal religious convictions while serving a pluralistic American constituency. In discussing the matter I don't pretend to be a theologian or...

Forgive us our sins: but how?
December 6, 2002... For the past twelve years, I served as the pastor of a large parish in the heart of Chicago. Because the parish was in the downtown area (where there were more than four thousand registered dwelling units and hundreds of visitors each week) we...

The note Judas left.
December 6, 2002... The Note Judas Left But I knew something, you see: martyrdom required a kiss. This silver was just incidental and had to be offered and taken in the scheme of things. I heard a voice saying: "Do it for the world....

Standup guy: `comedian'. (Screen).
December 6, 2002... Is it true, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked, that there are no second acts in American life? Few celebrities are better positioned to find out than Jerry Seinfeld, whose first act defined the pop-culture Zeitgeist for a decade and...

The godfather: the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara--the play. (Culture Watch).
December 6, 2002... A few drops of water sprinkled on a child's feverish forehead and the words of baptism secretly muttered by a servant girl unsure of the rite. What incident could be more meager? Yet the words were muttered and the forehead moistened in a...

Critics' choices for Christmas: Laura Sheahen.
December 6, 2002... If baby-boomer Catholics have been puzzled by their younger Gen-X counterparts lately, they need look no further than Colleen Carroll's excellent new book for an explanation of what's up with Gen-X Christians. The New Faithful: Why Young Adults...

Critics' choices for Christmas: Bernard Bergonzi.
December 6, 2002... One doesn't want to be made to think too often in life, but now and then it can be salutary. This was my response to Sara Maitland's Awesome God: Creation, Commitment, and Joy (the American edition is called A Joyful Theology, Augsburg, $11.99,...

Critics' choices for Christmas: W. Shepherdson Abell.
December 6, 2002... I don't read many novels but one I have greatly enjoyed is Mark Salzman's Lying Awake (Alfred A. Knopf, $12, 192 pp.). The protagonist is a Carmelite nun who is gifted with visions and who writes inspiring (and best-selling) poetry about them....

Critics' choices for Christmas: Madeline Marget.
December 6, 2002... When Kathryn Harrison's memoir The Kiss (HarperCollins, $11, 207 pp.) was published in 1997, I didn't want to read it. Reviews described it as the story of a young woman's sexual relationship with her father; it sounded self-exploitive to me....

Critics' choices for Christmas: Tim Townsend.
December 6, 2002... If you're offended by graphic descriptions of bestiality, incest, Satanism, sodomy, racism, and rape, you may want to look elsewhere for your Christmas reading. Recent books by three of the country's best magazine writers are, perhaps, not your...

Special delivery. (The Last Word).
December 6, 2002... For the last several years, my wife and I have led a weekly Communion service at the local nursing home. It makes me very uncomfortable, as it always brings me too close to my own mortality. We backed into doing it quite by accident. Soon after...

To the editors. (Correspondence).
December 20, 2002... Stay in touch This is just to congratulate you on the November 8 fall books issue. It was such an enjoyable read, but also soulful, challenging, and enlightening enough for even this fussy reader! Margaret O'Brien Steinfels: thanks for...

After law.
December 20, 2002... It is not easy to read newspaper accounts or watch TV news stories concerning the release of more than two thousand pages of internal Boston archdiocesan documents dealing with sexual abuse and other crimes by priests. Some of the incidents...

Et cetera.
December 20, 2002... Payback time * Rodger Van Allen, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, writes concerning the U.S. bishops' recent failure to respond to an appeal from major Catholic donors: Erica John, an heiress to the...

Tax the poor! Another brilliant Republican idea. (Of Several Minds).
December 20, 2002... Prepare yourself for the latest cause of the political right: You are about to hear a great deal about how working Americans at the bottom of the economy are not paying enough in taxes. I am not making this up. The Wall Street Journal's...

Family connections: Monsignor O'Brien's Daytop Village. (Of Several Minds).
December 20, 2002... I went for my first helicopter ride the other day. Naturally, I was apprehensive about buzzing around thousands of feet above the ground in a contraption that seemed more closely related to a lawn mower than to an aircraft. But the experience...

Not just a game: soccer as the Argentines play it. (Of Several Minds).
December 20, 2002... It's more than an hour before kickoff, but Augusto's Pizzeria in the heart of La Boca, a proud working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires, is already packed with men, women, and children sporting blue-and-gold-striped jerseys. Those are...

The church still in crisis: can we tell the truth?
December 20, 2002... We have had good reason this year, which has produced the greatest crisis in the history of the U.S. Catholic Church, to remember a man who faced the clerical sexual-abuse crisis over a decade ago, both institutionally in Chicago and personally...

Maurice Greene, the Fastest Man Alive, Is Asked the Secret of His Success.
December 20, 2002... Maurice Greene, the Fastest Man Alive, Is Asked the Secret of His Success He answers almost before the question's out, neither jumping the gun, nor waiting around for the undulation of sound to lap him, but, surging...

Harriet Tubman.
December 20, 2002... Harriet Tubman Lights out at nine, Mother says. It's nine-ish but as always I'm dying to finish the book I'm reading; as always nine comes at some delicious passage--Harriet Tubman breaking out! Freedom! I charge,...

Music of the invisible: Messiaen's `Saint Francis'. (Music).
December 20, 2002... Saint Francois d'Assise, Olivier Messiaen's only operatic work, received its world premiere in Paris in 1983. It has rarely been performed since, partly because of the sheer scope and audacity of the project, but also because of its subject...

Fast & easy: pop music invades Broadway. (Stage).
December 20, 2002... Deep wisdom dwells in the oeuvre of Billy Joel. Such, at least, is the implication of Movin'Out, the bizarre dance-theater concoction that opened on Broadway in October to a cavalcade of hype--from blurbs on rock radio stations to a Richard...

The president's bioethicist.
December 20, 2002... Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity The Challenge of Bioethics Leon R. Kass Encounter Books, $26.95, 300 pp. Leon Kass, who currently chairs the President's Council on Bioethics, has for more than thirty years been a perceptive and...

Sumptuous images.
December 20, 2002... Great Altarpieces Gothic and Renaissance Caterina Limentani Virdis and Mari Pietrogiovanna Vendome, $150, 421 pp. Looking at church architecture closely can teach a person a good deal about theology and liturgical practice. Early Christian...

Bully in the pulpit.
December 20, 2002... Leadership Rudolph W. Giuliani with Ken Kurson Talk Miramax Books, $25.95, 407 pp. Two months after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Rudolph Giuliani found himself assailed by New York City firefighters who charged that their mayor...

Metropolitan diary. (The Last Word).
December 20, 2002... I've seen Caravaggio's The Incredulity of Thomas only in reproduction. Three apostles have come to the resurrected Christ. Their four bowed heads come together like the arms of a cross, or the petals of a wilted flower. The painting is all...