Commonweal articles from February 2003

Commonweal archives from February 2003

To the editors.
February 14, 2003... More to be said In light of not "living a lie," I found both confusing and disturbing your editorial dissection ("'Trail of Pain' Continued," January 31, 2003) of the New York Times's January 12 study on the priestly sexual-abuse crisis....

Will war come?
February 14, 2003... As the headline in the New York Post approvingly proclaimed, President George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union speech was an instance of "Pounding the War Drum." After a dutiful resume of his domestic proposals, Bush launched an...

Still challenged.(The destruction of the space shuttle Columbia)
February 14, 2003... The destruction of the space shuttle Columbia on February 1--the oldest orbiter in the NASA fleet--and of its valiant crew, will assume an unshakable place in our collective memory. Unlike the Challenger in 1986, which burst on take-off before...

Forget Latin America: it's barely on Washington's radar. (Of Several Minds).
February 14, 2003... If Latin America is not entirely going to hell these days, it seems to be suffering a prolonged stay in purgatory. Political chaos in Venezuela, financial debacle in Argentina, civil war in Colombia, and corruption seemingly everywhere are but...

State of emergency: California's health-care crisis.
February 14, 2003... The words "health care" and "crisis" follow each other in sentences so often that we have grown numb to the association. Policymakers and editorial writers have been talking about a crisis in access to affordable health care for more than half...

How to solve the church crisis: ordinary catholics must act.
February 14, 2003... The year 2002 was a very bad year for the Catholic Church in the United States. This year could be much worse. California has temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases. Some bishops are engaged in increasingly open...

The last command.
February 14, 2003... The Last Command Open your eyes and look into mine. I know you have quietly arranged for the ultimate needle to strike and I am intended to quietly die; even though I was born to thrive, a paradigm with a life...

Out of the cave.
February 14, 2003... Out of the Cave I am not, as you contend, the evil one. From the dawn of my consciousness, I saw particles curving and colliding, but none of them aspiring to connect in the way a god would deem perfect. And...

Spam wars: battling the relentless Web tide. (Media).
February 14, 2003... As if generated by some cyber-sorcerer's apprentice, they seem more numerous each day. "After Christmas blowout sale--the tiniest remote control cars ever made!" "Make a fortune on eBay!" "Looking for more betting action?" "You too can name a...

The road to Tiananmen.(A novel, The Crazed)(Book Review)
February 14, 2003... The Crazed Ha Jin Pantheon, $24, 323 pp. Ha Jin, who immigrated to the United States from China in 1985, has already published an impressive body of fiction and poetry in English. His short stories, which often appear in annual prize...

Needed: mysticism & method.(Book Review)
February 14, 2003... The Strangest Ways Walking the Christian Path Robert Barron Orbis, $15, 175 pp. A striking feature of contemporary Catholicism is the experiential divide between those whose initiation into Catholic faith and theology had begun prior to...

Still picking up the tab.(A book on the Paris Peace Confernde of 1919)(Book Review)
February 14, 2003... Paris 1919 Six Months that Changed the World Margaret Macmillan Random House, $35, 570 pp. In Peacemaking, his classic memoir of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Harold Nicholson regretted that he could not capture "the double stress of...

Dr. Einstein's neighborhood. (The Last Word).(An appreciation)
February 14, 2003... Anne Fremantle, the prolific writer and editor, died in London on December 26, 2002. She was ninety-three. A convert to Catholicism, she became an American citizen after moving her family to the United States in 1942. From 1947 to 1958, she was...

To the editors.
February 28, 2003... Status clarification Picking up on one sentence in my article for America ("'Covenant and Mission,'" October 21, 2002), Luke Timothy Johnson ("Christians & Jews," Commonweal, January 31, 2003) holds that I erred in characterizing the...

More time.(UN Security Council opts for more inspections)
February 28, 2003... On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the UN Security Council with evidence--some dramatic--that Iraq continues to evade the efforts of the UN's weapons inspectors. Most compelling in Powell's testimony were intercepts of the...

Et cetera.(Evaluation of aCaommentary nmagazine article about the Catholic Church)
February 28, 2003... Weigel or Wills? n Commentary magazine, published by the American Jewish Committee, rarely takes direct notice of developments or events in the Catholic world. Catholic-Jewish relations, or examinations of the church's troubled history of...

Impossible journey: India's female astronaut. (Of Several Minds).(Kalpana Chawla)
February 28, 2003... Kalpana Chawla is a household name in India, and a first-name at that. When the space shuttle Columbia crashed this month, the headlines here were all full of "Kalpana," as if there were no need to identify any further the forty-one-year-old...

Letter from Holland: Iraq & war through European eyes.
February 28, 2003... I live in a Dutch city where there aren't many other Americans, and I am often asked to account for the actions of my native country. At the same time, I am in a position to observe world events through a European lens. In that regard, some...

Shell game: Bush's domestic agenda.
February 28, 2003... The State of the Union message, a grand pulpit, was bound to give the president a lift, but it hasn't quieted the murmur of disquiet. Looking to 2004, Democrats, rather tentatively, are beginning to find their voices, hopeful that the wind of...

Vinnie's jacket: what I'll take with me.(Memories of a friend)
February 28, 2003... Vinnie loaned me his jacket one night when we were sitting in his basement bedroom listening to the Fugees and catching up. He'd been smoking in the stairwell leading into his room. Because the door had been open, it was cold. Vinnie let me...

Our Lady of the Freeways: is Los Angeles's new Cathedral worth the price?
February 28, 2003... During the height of the Clinton impeachment ordeal, the president's identity as chief executive of the United States was eclipsed by his identity as Monica's playmate. Matters as large as his treaty with North Korea or his bombing of Al Qaeda...

Photograph: temptation.(Poem)
February 28, 2003... Photograph: Temptation (Duccio, Temptation on the Pinnacle of the Temple, 1308/1311) Here's one of me up on hunger's balcony, my head just emerging from the gold smog of childhood, my ideas still stuck to my...

Saint Francis preaching to the birds.
February 28, 2003... (Workshop of Giotto, ca. 1300) Birds drop like consonants and vowels from a single tree, array themselves in alphabetic ranks that spell the sermon back to him. Omnilect and legible, he speed-reads light as speech empties into it. He leans...

Calling of apostles Peter and Andrew.(Poem)
February 28, 2003... (Duccio di Buoninsegna, ca. 1308) You're right in the middle of your life boat on open water green and lively as moss. It feels like wealth this floating world the nets you've made that fit your hands the rustling of...

Annunciation/expulsion.(Poem)
February 28, 2003... (Fra Angelico, ca. 1430) Inside, the house open like a doll's, The done deal is just starting to settle over the leaning-toward and -away of arched walls, lily, her averted, attentive face. Outside, the future is...

Saint Nicholas providing dowries to three virgins.
February 28, 2003... (Bicci di Lorenzo, 1433) He gives a push with one foot and sets the room spinning. Coins just bearing the weightless, inflated expense of the possible float like empty gold planets over the bed's red continent. The...

Churchgoing: from Chicago to Santa Pudenziana.
February 28, 2003... My father taught me to love churches. A surprising feat, really, since he spent most of his time in bed. At least that is how I will always remember him. He worked at a night job for more than forty years and seemed to lengthen the time away...

What's missing in this picture? `The Quiet American'. (Screen).(Movie Review)
February 28, 2003... In March 1974, after nearly two years of covering the war in Vietnam, I boarded an Air Vietnam flight to Bangkok on route to a new assignment in Rio de Janeiro. Goodbye Tu Do Street, Hello Ipanema. I pulled a paperback out of my shoulder bag...

Keeping up with the Simses: from Monopoly to cyberspace. (Culture Watch).
February 28, 2003... Prior to the Christmas season of 1934, board and card games had two great glories: they injected a little artificial drama into ordinary lives, and they were not life. To put it another way, games are warfare without blood. The plodding pawns...

They're not goodfellas.(For the Sins of My Father A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life)(Book Review)
February 28, 2003... For the Sins of My Father A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life Albert DeMeo (with Mary Jane Ross) Broadway Books, $24.95, 275 pp. A prominent character in the folklore of my childhood was Frank Zito, a local Mafia...

Putting up with each other.(Liberal Pluralism The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice)(Book Review)
February 28, 2003... Liberal Pluralism The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice William A. Galston Cambridge University Press, $55, 137 pp. At a conference of philosophers some years ago, I attended a lecture in which the speaker...

Beauty & the priest.(The Miracle, an novel)(Book Review)
February 28, 2003... The Miracle John L'Heureux Atlantic Monthly Press, $24, 221 pp. The biblical epigraph for John L'Heureux's new novel, The Miracle, is taken from the book of Deuteronomy. It's short and sweet, but decidedly in the imperative mood. "Choose...

Long Island Catholic. (The Last Word).(Further reporting of the priest sexual-abuse scandal)
February 28, 2003... Could the priest sexual-abuse scandal get any worse? For Long Islanders who opened their morning paper on February 10, the answer was yes. It described a Suffolk County, New York, grand jury report detailing the history of how the Diocese of...