Commonweal articles from December 2005

Commonweal archives from December 2005

Democrats, Judaism & Togo.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 2, 2005... NO LITMUS TEST Mark Stricherz's article on Catholics and the Democratic Party ("Goodbye, Catholics," November 4) was both fascinating and instructive, but I believe his analysis of where the Democratic Party stands today is too simplistic....

Duped by the gop.(Letters)
December 2, 2005... Many thanks for Daniel Finn's nuanced and intelligent observations regarding the way the Republican Party has used voters of faith for its own ends. I am tired of single-issue conservative Christians--not just Catholics--who support Republican...

A shared history.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 2, 2005... In his review of Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines ("What If... ," October 21), Jack Miles suggests that both Christians and Jews have shied away from considering this scholar's work. Miles, who believes that his is the first review of Border Lines...

Beyond our understanding.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 2, 2005... Your issue on the Eucharist (October 7) called to mind the efforts of Vatican II theologians to produce new models and language for the sacramental life of the church. The fact that traditional explanations of the Eucharist were weighed down by...

Luxury tax.(Letter to the Editor)
December 2, 2005... I have a proposal that addresses Paul Griffiths's objection to "writing the checks without acting on the half-hearted thought that I should alter my self-indulgent life" ("A Well in Togo," October 21). I propose we set up "justice funds" that...

Leaving Iraq.(From the Editors)(Editorial)
December 2, 2005... Despite President George W. Bush's recent attacks on his Democratic critics, it is the loss of confidence among Republicans and the public at large in the president's credibility and conduct of the war in Iraq that is now driving the debate...

For love & money: has marriage become an elite institution?(Columnists)
December 2, 2005... While media attention has focused on marriage equality for same-sex couples, almost no attention has been paid to a historic transformation in marriage that has far-reaching consequences for economic equality in the society as a whole. Without...

After Kass: the future of the President's Council on Bioethics.(Leon Kass resigns)
December 2, 2005... On October 1, Leon Kass stepped down as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. Kass was succeeded by one of the "founding fathers" of modern bioethics, Edmund Pellegrino, professor emeritus of medicine and medical ethics and adjunct...

Reforming the reform: U.S. bishops & the new liturgical texts.(Short Takes)
December 2, 2005... Catholic bishops are usually loath to acknowledge dissent within their ranks. So it was surprising when the U.S. bishops publicly released the results of an internal poll that showed them almost evenly split on new English translations for the...

Mexico's next president? Lopez Obrador is running hard.
December 2, 2005... With Mexican President Vicente Fox's single term due to expire in late 2006, a front-runner has emerged to succeed him: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. While it's too early to predict the winner, Lopez Obrador enjoys a 5 point lead in the polls...

Lost in translation: the bishops, the Vatican & the English Liturgy.
December 2, 2005... Forty years ago this month, the Second Vatican Council concluded its work in Rome. The first document it promulgated was the constitution on the liturgy. It was a trailblazer for what followed, harbinger of a new era for the church. The draft...

Literary Conceits: 'THE SQUID AND THE WHALE' & 'CAPOTE'.(Movie Review)
December 2, 2005... A spate of recent movies--films as disparate as Wonder Boys, Adaptation, The Door in the Floor, Sideways, and Sylvia--all share one thing: a failed or troubled writer as protagonist. There are excellent reasons for this. Who wants to accompany,...

All in the Family: "COMMANDER IN CHIEF," "PRISON BREAK" & "EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS".(Television Program Review)
December 2, 2005... In an era that has made a catchphrase of the term "family values," it's no surprise that a few new TV hits capitalize shamelessly on the theme of kinship. ABC's schmaltzy woman-president drama Commander in Chief may have practically nothing in...

Christmas Critics.(The Death of the Heart)(Elizabeth Bowen)(Book Review)
December 2, 2005... Oh, you have the best job in the world!" people say to me all the time. "Being paid to read!" It is a good job, and as book critic of the Washington Post I occupy a modestly visible forum from which to harangue an especially responsive...

Christmas Critics.(The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden)(Onward and Upward in the Garden)(Manual of Woody Landscape Plants)(Plant Names in Yiddish)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 2, 2005... As serious gardens are not gardens but Eden, so are serious gardening books not books about gardening, but about being. Yes, a gardener needs to know how and when to trim the Perovskia atriplicifolia (to the base, in late winter); but one no...

Christmas Critics.(Column)
December 2, 2005... I've been on leave from teaching for the past six months, which means that I have gloriously free evenings. No need to sit down after dinner with a stack of undergraduate essays or the book for this week's seminar. How have I used this fleeting...

Christmas Critics.(Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War)(War and the Iliad)(Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 2, 2005... Much of my reading of late has been absorbed in a game effort to keep up with the vast out-pouring of reportage, memoir, history, and commentary produced by the ongoing war in Iraq. This, it turns out, is a full-time job (at least), and I...

Christmas Critics.(God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot)(Losing Moses on the Freeway)(Book Review)
December 2, 2005... As a teenager on our annual holiday to the family house in Ireland, I used to take a slightly ghoulish pleasure in rereading my grandmother's musty copy of R. H. Benson's classic Reformation novel, Come Rack! Come Rope!, a fictionalized version...

The sower.(The Last Word)
December 2, 2005... We need more farmers. Not industrial farmers, family farmers, or even subsistence, organic farmers (although we could do with more of the latter). We need more versions of Paul Farmer, the forty-six-year-old Harvard physician/anthropologist...

Market values.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... Daniel Callahan's article on falling birth rates ("Depopulation Bomb," November 18) contains a salient insight. "It is to me a profound mystery," he writes, "why many social conservatives do not understand that the market is the greatest enemy...

Out of Iraq.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... Regarding your December 2 editorial ("Leaving Iraq"), discussing the arguments for and against withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq: the correct decision is to begin leaving now, not to wait six months or longer until the Iraqi government and army...

The case against Bush.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... In the November 18 issue a reader took you to task for your harsh criticism of the Bush administration (Letters). I say, How can you call yourself a Christian publication and not do so? How are you supposed to treat an administration that used...

A woman of faith.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... Robert E. White's article on U.S. Latin American policy brought back painful memories ("Bad Neighbor," November 18). As a Maryknoll seminarian twenty-five years ago, I had the privilege of working with Sr. Maura Clarke, one of the nuns who was...

Translating the Bible.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... To insist that all vernacular translations of the Scriptures "hew closer to Latin texts" is like translating the works of Shakespeare into Spanish and then requiring that all future Shakespeare translations conform to the Spanish (Tom Heneghan,...

One-issue voters.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... This passage from Daniel Finn's "Hello, Catholics" (November 4) jumped right off the page: "For all the principled talk about the right to life, the evidence suggests that opposing abortion is a strategic issue for the Republican Party.......

Thank you, Mother Angelica.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... I do not have access to EWTN, and probably would not watch it if I did. However, my ninety-two-year-old shut-in mother does; she watches it to see Mass and say the rosary. Therefore, I feel it has some value. I question your assignment of...

Eliot, not Heaney.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... John Savant's "Follow That Metaphor" (November 18) is too good to leave unnoticed a small error: T. S. Eliot, not Seamus Heaney, coined the remarkable phrase "a raid on [not upon] the inarticulate." The original wording can be found in Eliot's...

The Tycoons.(Letter to the Editor)
December 16, 2005... I was disappointed with John T. McGreevy's review of Charles Morris's The Tycoons ("Capital Gains," October 21), a book that clearly favors the "captains of industry" interpretation of late-nineteenth-century industrialists over the so-called...

Instruction from Rome.(closing of priesthood for gay men)(Editorial)
December 16, 2005... Writing about the Vatican takeover of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) from bishops' conferences ("Lost in Translation," December 2), John Wilkins offered the rule of thumb he used when editor of the Tablet of...

Letter vs. spirit: why the Constitution needs interpreting.(Columnist)
December 16, 2005... When discussing Supreme Court nominees, President George W. Bush has long repeated the mantra: he wants judges who "will strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench." Yet Bush's mantra sets up a false dichotomy. Good...

Gay seminarians: is the Vatican bigoted or prudent?(Short Takes)
December 16, 2005... The recent instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education regarding the ordination of homosexuals suggests to me that seminaries are hardly the best place to help gay men mature, learn from their experiences, and seek the support of...

Abuse in Philadelphia: why the district attorney couldn't indict.
December 16, 2005... For a while, it seemed as if the Philadelphia Archdiocese had escaped relatively unscathed from the sexual-abuse scandals that devastated the Boston Archdiocese and many others. To be sure, there had been private lawsuits, and the Philadelphia...

Inside the Wardrobe: is 'Narnia' a Christian allegory?(C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia)
December 16, 2005... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), always multifaceted and versatile, continues to elude definition and provoke controversy. A major polemicist and great proselytizer, Lewis was regarded by millions as a modern Christian knight. He wrote The Chronicles...

Quiet, please: the importance of silence in the liturgy.
December 16, 2005... By way of promoting active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all...

Two to Tango: 'PRIDE AND PREJUDICE' & 'SHOPGIRL'.(Pride and Prejudice)(Movie Review)
December 16, 2005... "I loathe you!" "And I despise you!" Pause. Kiss. That's the heartbeat (or love/hatebeat) of Pride and Prejudice and it has kept the novel and all its stage and movie versions happily throbbing no matter what else in them works...

Gaining perspective: Fra Angelico at the met.(religous art)
December 16, 2005... In the 1430s, when the Florentine painter Fra Angelico was at the peak of his career, he composed a three-panel painting of the Last Judgment. The left panel, Paradise, shows angels dancing through a flowering meadow as they lead the redeemed...

How Should Judges Judge?(Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution)(Book Review)
December 16, 2005... Active Liberty Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution Stephen Breyer Alfred A. Knopf, $21, 176 pp. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's elegant little book has gotten a lot of press. The reason for the buzz is that the...

'Suck It Up'.(Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind)(Book Review)
December 16, 2005... Stoic Warriors The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind Nancy Sherman Oxford University Press, $26, 242 pp. In July, news accounts reported the death of retired Navy Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale. Known to the public...

How to Be Good.(The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II)(Book Review)
December 16, 2005... The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II Charles E. Curran Georgetown University Press, $26.95, 262 pp. Pope John Paul II's legacy requires and deserves critically appreciative rumination for many generations to come. Charles...

Devils, Dust & God.(The Last Word)(Bruce Springsteen's spiritual songs)
December 16, 2005... From the rising death toll in Iraq to the chaos created by Hurricane Katrina to the devastating earthquake in Kashmir, this year has been one of unthinkable grief. The poet Denise Levertov has written that we should not treat grief like a...