Commonweal articles from December 2006

Commonweal archives from December 2006

Pastoral formation.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Your editorial, "Tomorrow's Priests" (November 3), lists essential talking points for church leaders considering the formation of future pastors and how to support the newly ordained who are destined to assume these pastoral responsibilities. I...

Set apart.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... While I recognize the danger of overemphasizing the "cultic" understanding of the priesthood when training seminarians, I take issue with how easily your editorial bypasses this model in favor of the "servant-leader" model. It strikes me that...

Reproduction concerns.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Barbara Dafoe Whitehead asks, "Where is technological reproduction taking us?" ("Answered Prayers," October 20.) As a reply, let me begin by quoting Joel Shuman and Brian Volck in Reclaiming the Body (Brazos Press, 2006): "First, in the...

Broader education.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... While I applaud Alasdair MacIntyre's proposal for a more truly in-depth and also universal university education ("The End of Education," October 20), it appears that one of the foundations for his argument might have been a straw man. It seems...

Enlarging the tent.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Philip Schweiger asks whether the prolife "tent" can be enlarged to include other social issues, such as health insurance and immigration ("Kansas Matters," October 20). As one who votes prolife, I think it can, but Schweiger puts the cart...

The greatest evil?(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Given the contextual unknowns surrounding so many moral acts, it is difficult to agree with Christine Flowers (Letters, November 3) "that abortion is the greatest moral evil facing society." To identify any one phenomenon as the worst of...

Hearsay.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... In his review of The Rule of Benedict ("The Puzzling Pope," November 3), Fr. Andrew Greeley refers to Pope Benedict replacing "Joaquin Navarro-Valls, head of the Vatican Press Office, with a Jesuit, Frederico Lombardi of Vatican Radio, a...

Creating god.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Peter Causton's article ("Darwin's Ghost," October 6), although a good overview of the subject, suffers from inappropriate language and imagery that makes it very difficult to reconcile evolution, Christianity, and the problems of theodicy. The...

Questionable conclusion.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Chris Dowd's analysis of just-war theory ("Unjust & Indefensible," October 6) is marred by his speculative conclusion that the United States can indeed fix what it has broken in Iraq. After his critical evaluation of the war, Dowd's suggestion...

Stay the course?(United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)(Editorial)
December 1, 2006... Meeting last month in Baltimore, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a number of statements, including guidelines for the pastoral care of "persons with a homosexual inclination" and an instruction--titled "Happy Are...

The politics of reconciliation: sometimes, nice guys finish first.(Deval L. Patrick )(Column)
December 1, 2006... Democrat Deval L. Patrick made history last month by becoming the first African-American governor of Massachusetts. In the national news media, his victory was covered as an inspiring story of racial progress, and rightly so. Patrick's win...

The left-out middle: a message to the new Congress.
December 1, 2006... It might be useful for Democrats to take a break from their inane round of backstabbing and score-settling to focus for a few moments on why voters gave them their congressional majorities last month. A lot of Americans are hurting in the...

More on the seminaries: let's be candid about the candidates.(Continuing the Conversation)
December 1, 2006... To shed some light on the crisis in seminary formation today (see "Tomorrow's Priests," November 3), let me describe a priest I know, a man I will refer to as Fr. Bo. Ordained after barely scraping by in the seminary academically, Fr. Bo...

Twilight of the republic? Seeds of decline, path to renewal.(Article)
December 1, 2006... In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush declared the promulgation of freedom to be "the mission that created our nation." Fulfilling what he described as America's "great liberating tradition" now requires that the United States...

Without missing a step: 'A Chorus Line' returns to Broadway.(Stage)
December 1, 2006... Sometimes existential philosophy circulates in university classrooms and libraries, or hangs out on the foreign-language shelves of used bookstores. And then, sometimes, it lands on Broadway, dressed in a gold vest and leggings and a gold top...

A Rune, Interminable.(Poem)
December 1, 2006... Low above the moss A sprig of scarlet berries Soon eaten or blackened Tells time. Go to a wedding as to a funeral: bury the loss. Go to a funeral as to a wedding: marry the loss. Go to a coming as to...

Walking.(Poem)
December 1, 2006... The pleasure of walking, Brother Angel, calls to mind your panel, vertical, your Paradise--its death-life desirable and full of radiant saviors. I am full of longing for the paradise in place in the vivid repose of each breathless...

Matthew Boudway.(The Road)(A Time of Gifts)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Two of the best books I read this year were both day-by-day accounts of long, unlikely walks. Apart from that, and their general excellence, they have little in common. Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Alfred A. Knopf, $24, 241 pp.) has already been...

Robert E. Proctor.(Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality)(Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar)(The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth)(Last Plays: Separating Art from Autobiography)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... In doing research on the origins of the liberal arts, I've discovered that beauty played a large and well-recognized role. Here are some books that have deepened my understanding of this forgotten but, in my view, recoverable dimension of the...

Tiina Aleman.(The Keep)(Old Filth)(Snow)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... One of the few advantages of a long daily train commute is the opportunity to read without the demands of cats, telephone calls, house cleaning, or the latest DVD delivery from Netflix. I prefer a good plump novel, and lately I've been enjoying...

Keith C. Burris.(Homegrown Democrat)(Jarhead)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... As we approach our fourth Christmas mired in the increasingly hopeless misadventure in Iraq, I am reading about war and politics--what we have done, and what we should do. Garrison Keillor's Homegrown Democrat (Penguin, $10.99, 272 pp.) is...

Nick Baumann.(How to Lose a Battle)(In No God but God)(The Looming Tower )(Book review)
December 1, 2006... My current employers are the editors of a prominent magazine that has yet to satisfactorily recant its irrational exuberance about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I trudge to the office every morning dreading each new rationale for the war...

Car trouble.(The Last Word)
December 1, 2006... It was a cold night in late December fifteen years ago. I was on the interstate near Philadelphia when the snow began to fall. I was driving home to New Jersey after a series of interviews for medical residency programs. I was tired but eager...

One of Tomorrow's Priests.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 15, 2006... As a transitional deacon nearing priestly ordination, I feel compelled to respond to your editorial on seminary formation and the priesthood in the United States ("Tomorrow's Priests," November 3). I agree that there is increasing pressure on...

More than a job.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 15, 2006... I cannot agree more with your editorial "Tomorrow's Priests." I have personally experienced the trauma of being a lay staff member at a suburban Chicago parish when a new pastor was assigned. Although he did not dismiss the current staff...

The Catholic model.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 15, 2006... In your precis of Dean Hoge's study, you suggest that the tendency of newer priests to adhere to a "cultic" model of the priesthood will only widen the gap between the ordained and the laity. The implication is that the "servant-leader"...

Rethinking the hierarchy.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 15, 2006... After digesting your critique of the current state of the priesthood, I was dismayed to read your staid and uninspired conclusions. Instead of trying to fix the troubled and problematic clerical priesthood, we should look at what Christ's...

Sailing from byzantium.(Pope Benedict XVI on his visit)(Editorial)
December 15, 2006... Pope Benedict XVI returned to Rome from Turkey last month a virtual conqueror. He had achieved the improbable during his four-day visit: substantive steps toward political, cultural, and religious rapprochement with the East. The pope had...

Contraception, again: where can we find compromise?(Column)
December 15, 2006... Catholics believe that the basic requirements of morality are accessible in principle to all human beings through the natural law. We also believe that Christ conferred on the church special insight into the requirements of natural law....

Saints be praised: what catholicism says to our coarsened culture.
December 15, 2006... Age ten is the new fifteen, according to the Associated Press, which reports that teen rebellion and multiple body piercings have migrated all the way down to elementary school: "Some of them are going on 'dates' and talking on their own cell...

On giving to the poor: variations on a biblical theme.
December 15, 2006... Excuse me. Hello! Excuse me!" I was walking with friends on a New Haven street. We turned to see a man and a woman striding toward us. Both were tall and bone-thin. When they reached us, the woman took a deep breath. They were homeless, she...

And then there was light: five generations of stained-glass makers.
December 15, 2006... The absurd is the object of faith and the only object that can be believed. --Kierkegaard The art of stained-glass painting has been practiced by my family for five generations....

Peasant woman with straw hat sitting in the wheat.(Poem)
December 15, 2006... Long leaves like ribbons of green silk shot with pink, The grain is gold, and the pink flowering Convolvulus clings tightly to the stem. A pale straw hat (with untied sky-blue knot) Haloes her red face. Realization comes. Desire fills...

British Invasion: 'BORAT' & 'THE QUEEN'.
December 15, 2006... "Smile," Alan Funt used to say on his TV show, "you're on Candid Camera." "Gotcha!" Sacha Baron Cohen might say, "you're in my movie, Borat, and you've signed the release forms, and so you will continue to make an ass of yourself from here...

Planting the Flag.(Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism)(Book review)
December 15, 2006... Empire's Workshop Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism Greg Grandin Metropolitan Books, $25, 304 pp. In his second inaugural address, George W. Bush declared that "the survival of liberty in...

Measuring the Pearly Gates.
December 15, 2006... Paradise Mislaid How We Lost Heaven--and How We Can Regain It Jeffrey Burton Russell Oxford University Press, $28, 224 pp. There was a time when heaven was in heaven. But then something happened to heaven. As long as the...

The Unveiling.(Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns)(Book review)
December 15, 2006... Double Crossed Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns Kenneth Briggs Doubleday, $24.95, 272 pp. Areligious sister I know who is principal of an inner-city Catholic high school likes to joke that a nun's...

A sense of an ending.(theology)
December 15, 2006... One of the many elements of a coherent Christian vision lost in the past half-century is a clear sense of how things end. Catholics profess in the creed that "he will come again in glory to judge the living and dead, and his kingdom shall have...