Commonweal articles from February 2004

Commonweal archives from February 2004

Cardinal George.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... I was very disappointed that Cardinal Francis George declined a direct interview with Peter Feuerherd ("Chicago's Cardinal," January 16, 2004), since George seems to be a key figure among thoughtful Catholic conservatives. My sympathies to...

... the manager.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... On the day I read Peter Feuerherd's assessment of Cardinal Francis George, I received an article about George's archdiocese from a recent Chicago Tribune: "Catholics See Drop in Attendance; Donations Also Are on the Decline." That cannot of...

... the scholar.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... Many thanks for Peter Feuerherd's balanced profile of Cardinal Francis George. I became acquainted with George before he became a bishop, while he was running Cardinal Bernard Law's Institute for Faith and Culture in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I...

No superman.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... As one of the people of God in Chicago, I read Peter Feuerherd's article on Francis George first with shock, then hysterical laughter. Could I have been reading about my own bishop? I have never read such a milquetoast piece of journalism in...

The good doctor.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... Your lead editorial, "Getting Religion" (January 16, 2004), is carefully unspecific about what qualities make a candidate "religious," although you seem to accept Franklin Foer's judgment in the New Republic that Howard Dean is "one of the most...

Moral distinctions.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... Let's hear it for John Garvey! His "How to Read Scripture" (January 16, 2004) is a fine example of his good sense. As an almost-cradle Episcopalian who has been gay since his first gulp of air, I was delighted with what Garvey had to say,...

Rejecting the zeitgeist.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... On the subject of homosexuality, John Garvey has apparently decided to abandon Christian tradition in favor of the zeitgeist. He justifies this on the ground that if homosexuality were a choice, he could "agree that it is an evil, an objective...

Gospel truth?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... Your January 16, 2004, issue was very well done, especially Luke Timothy Johnson's review of The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon Kass ("Among the Patriarchs"). Johnson writes that "Kass seems unworried about the moral implications of massive...

Making peace.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2004... Rand Richards Cooper's story about making war and eventually peace with his neighbor and her dog ("Delicate Negotiations," December 5, 2003) went straight to my conscience. His point that every day we each face the choice whether to "opt for...

Un-intelligence.(Commonweal)
February 13, 2004... We were almost all wrong," David Kay, the former U.S. chief weapons inspector in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. After months of searching, Kay has concluded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD). What Kay...

Lessons from Troy?(Et Cetera)
February 13, 2004... The Zenit news agency (November 19, 2003) reprinted a letter to Catholics of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, written by three of the diocese's priests, Thomas A. Frechette, Paul T. Lamb, and Roger J. Landry. In "A Pastoral Letter from...

Immortality: coming soon to a pharmacy near you.(Of Several Minds)
February 13, 2004... In December, the President's Council on Bioethics released Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (HarperCollins). The six-part report provides a balanced but critical assessment of actual and prospective developments in...

Anglican angst: is communion possible?
February 13, 2004... When the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) decided in November to consecrate an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire, it was a given that splits in the worldwide Anglican Communion would follow, and that they would go deep. Indeed the Ugandan...

The bottom line: will church finances be the next scandal?
February 13, 2004... The release later this month of a much-anticipated survey quantifying a half-century of clergy sexual abuse of minors is sure to be another blow to American Catholics, even as it serves as a necessary purgative for a lingering crisis that...

True North: 'Every mile is two in winter.' Herbert.(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 13, 2004... One's mind has changed in five London winters and their half-light, wearing no more than a coat, blood thinner again to behold a January sun's pale reflection, and trees that run black, ragged in last leaves, with rain. So as...

From Saturday Morning IV.(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 13, 2004... Through an upstairs window on the southeast side of the house, you could see the last of the tree's maroon leaves had found its own peace impaled among thorns or flat on the lowest ground. Finally made bare, the valley beyond...

What the body teaches: lessons from the autopsy table.(Thinking about Death: Part 2)
February 13, 2004... Someone once asked me what unique understanding I as a pathologist derive from my professional contact with the dead. I said that the autopsy teaches the transience and the fragility of human life. My interlocutor replied that, in that case,...

Waitin' for da big one: my father's last years.(Thinking About Death: Part 2)
February 13, 2004... My father had a stroke in August 1976 at the age of fifty-eight. It put him in the hospital for about a month and left him with the right side of his face partially paralyzed and drooping. "Why didn't you tell me about my face?" he asked as he...

Final cut: Hollywood does the afterlife.(Thinking About Death: Part 2)(Critical Essay)
February 13, 2004... Whether heavenly or hellish, the afterlife presents moviemakers with one big headache: eternity. Drama demands that time run out--Oedipus must identify the killer of Laius before the plague wipes out Thebes; at high noon, the train arrives and...

At home.(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 13, 2004... Two decades of hell could not convince Odysseus to think of Ithaca as just another island. Where else did Churchill go in his defeat but back to what he fondly called his "habitation"? What else but home restores us in the...

Bob, we hardly knew YA: Robert McNamara & 'The Fog of War'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
February 13, 2004... Viewers aren't likely to have forgotten Errol Morris's ominous and dream like 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, which took up the case of a Texas drifter wrongly convicted of killing a cop in a nighttime roadside shooting. Morris...

First in her class.(Books)(Madam Secretary: A Memoir)(Book Review)
February 13, 2004... Madam Secretary A Memoir Madeleine Albright Miramax, $27.95, 562 pp. Madeleine Albright's measure as secretary of state (1997-2001) could be taken by comparing her to Warren Christopher, her predecessor, and Colin Powell, her...

She's back.(Our Lady of the Forest)(Book Review)
February 13, 2004... Our Lady of the Forest David Guterson Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95, 323 pp. In 1994, first-time novelist David Guterson suddenly found himself on the best-seller list with Snow Falling on Cedars, a richly atmospheric story set on an...

Thank you.
February 13, 2004... This year marks Commonweal's eighth full decade of providing a place for reflective, progressive Catholic thought, a unique venture that has allowed a wide variety of voices to reach an engaged audience around the world. We have been able to do...

Loot.(The Last Word)
February 13, 2004... In Tuscany, at Palaia, on a July morning in 1944, I entered a shelled, roofless, and deserted church and looted the poor box of three crumpled bills and a handful of change. It was the first time I had ever visited a church without saying a...

Worth rereading.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... How can I best describe Mary Lee Freeman's article, "Caring for the Dying" (January 30, 2004)? In a word: breathtaking. Her essay is masterfully written, blending insight, compassion, hope, and love. I found it deeply moving and inspiring, and...

Amid tears.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... After reading Mary Lee Freeman's article, amid the flow of tears, I immediately recalled Shakespeare's observation: "How many goodly creatures are there here. How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!" Lord, grant...

Sleep in peace.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... Over the years, Commonweal has never failed to publish some of the best reflections on the Christian life. John Garvey's "Ashes to Ashes" (January 30, 2004) is a great example of prayerful reflection. I now understand much better the words we...

Condo in the sky.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... John Garvey's fantastic article on death brilliantly identifies how the "original sin" of pride (autonomy from God) has fueled the dominant culture's obsession with finding a "life after death" that will fit into our plans for the future. We...

Thinking about death.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... As a seventy-year-old Catholic I find myself thinking more and more about death. I therefore appreciated John Garvey's profound and sobering article on the subject. His stark description resonated especially with me: "Death is as bad as it...

Sans sting.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... I'm sorry to say that I didn't find John Garvey's article on death very helpful. I don't agree that "where death and an afterlife are concerned, most Christians are functionally neo-Platonists." Nor do I agree that in much of our writing and...

Dean & religion.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
February 27, 2004... Your January 16, 2004, editorial ("Getting Religion") describes Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean as "resolutely secular" and as having a "tin ear for religion." Like most Northeasterners, Dean does not talk about his religion in...

Mel is as he was.
February 27, 2004... Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, to be released nationwide on Ash Wednesday, is expected to become the most successful "biblical" film ever made. Advance sales, especially among Evangelical groups cultivated by director, producer, and...

Outsource this: unemployment & the presidential race.(Of Several Minds)
February 27, 2004... Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), who has had perfect rhetorical pitch in this year's presidential campaign, altered the opening of his stump speech in the week leading up to the February 17 Wisconsin primary. The change should be a warning to...

'Whom do you hate?' measuring our love for Jesus.(Of Several Minds)
February 27, 2004... My sixth-grade teacher was a nun who enjoyed scaring her students. "Did you say goodbye to your mother this morning?" she would ask portentously. "How do you know she'll still be alive when you go home?" We tried not to pay too much attention,...

Innundated: immigration & the Dutch.
February 27, 2004... For at least four decades, the Netherlands has been a progressive's dream. A highly developed welfare state provides health insurance and an economic safety net to the vast majority of residents. An open-minded immigration policy welcomes those...

St. Blog's church: America's most vibrant parish?
February 27, 2004... As a librarian and information specialist, I have a professional interest in the social aspects of the Internet, particularly its use by activists (of several political stripes) and those who lack access to conventional forums of public debate....

Mel Gibson meets Marc Chagall: how Christians & Jews approach the cross.
February 27, 2004... Last August in Los Angeles, I saw an early, rough edit of Mel Gibson's controversial new film, The Passion of the Christ. Reviled as anti-Semitic by some who have not even seen it, I judged the version I saw free from explicit anti-Semitism,...

What woman has a country?(Brief Article)(Poem)
February 27, 2004... What woman has a country? Always she's the alien in a male nation, papers disheveled, visa date blurred, her strategies for sanctuary require that she barter self for place within the borders or else, misfit, illegal, grow...

The road to Compostela: a doctor takes stock.
February 27, 2004... Beneath the high altar of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in the wind-worn province of Galicia, Spain, lies a silver sarcophagus containing the relics of St. James the Greater. For a thousand years, pilgrims have been walking a path to...

Passion plays: Brian Kulick's 'The Mysteries'.(Stage)(Theater Review)
February 27, 2004... January brings the doldrums to the New York theater world. The glitzy Broadway openings of the autumn are over; the spring's pre-Tony-deadline frenzy has not yet begun. Critics have summed up the previous year in top-ten lists, which have been...

Rolling along: three decades of Bruce Cockburn's music.(Music)(Critical Essay)
February 27, 2004... Somewhere between pure pop music--music that succeeds or fails on the basis of its popularity--and genre music lies a kind of music that critic Robert Christgau defined many years ago as semipopular: music with a smaller, more sustainable...

According to their desert.(Books)(Lifting Up the Poor: A Dialogue on Religion, Poverty, and Welfare)(Book Review)
February 27, 2004... Lifting Up the Poor A Dialogue on Religion, Poverty, and Welfare Mary Jo Bane and Lawrence M. Mead Brookings, $16.95, 179 pp. HAMLET: Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used... ...

Boob-tube babies.(Books)(Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children)(It's Not the Media: The Truth about Pop Culture's Influence on Children)(Book Review)
February 27, 2004... Kid Stuff Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children Edited by Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti Johns Hopkins University Press, $29.95, 267 pp. It's Not the Media The Truth about Pop Culture's Influence on...

The path often taken.(Books)(The Road to Santiago)(Book Review)
February 27, 2004... The Road to Santiago Kathryn Harrison National Geographic Directions, $20, 150 pp. I walked through the Middle Ages last summer. Not some medieval fair, with jousting, damsels in cone-shaped hats, and Harleys crowding the parking...

Our best critic.(Books)(Pieces of My Mind: Writings 1958-2002)(Book Review)
February 27, 2004... Pieces of My Mind Writings 1958-2002 Frank Kermode Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26, 467pp. Sir Frank Kermode is the outstanding British literary scholar of his generation, and one of the few with an international reputation,...

'The journey is over. Love to all'.(The Last Word)
February 27, 2004... What did you think about Carolyn Heilbrun's suicide?" The question came like a bolt from the blue. I was at the University of Vermont Library, combing through a tattered Baedeker in an attempt to understand my great-grand-mother's early life...