Commonweal articles from January 2002

Commonweal archives from January 2002

To the Editors.
January 11, 2002... Well written Brian Doyle's "Flagrant Foul" (December 7) was most touching. I finished it with eyes a bit wet and a prayer in my heart for Tom Crotty. It is a pleasure to come across something so well written. (MOST REV.) PATRICK V....

Of Hobbits, war & Bush.(President Bush is enjoying a high popularity rating, but there are some distrubing elements)(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... Last January George W. Bush assumed the presidency under the cloud of a disputed election thanks to the transparently partisan actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. At that time, we were a divided and contentious nation. On September 11 the United...

THEREFORE, CHOOSE LIFE: Widows, Planned Parenthood & September 11.(children born to people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001)(Brief Article)(Column)
January 11, 2002... As "difficult as their situation may be, she and other widows said they felt blessed to have their babies, now more than ever," reports a New York Times story, "Waiting for Babies Who Will Never Know Their Fathers" (December 5). Surely, the...

DOES GLOBALIZATION WORK? Someone should find out.(efforts made at the World Trade Organization meetings in Doha, Qatar)(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... The World Trade Organization (WTO) may be a lot of things--undemocratic, beholden to rich nations, subservient to multinational companies, pick your cliche--but it isn't stupid. Still smarting from the notorious failure of the 1999 WTO meetings...

HUMANISTIC ISLAM: An opportunity not to be squandered.(extremism in the Muslim world, and how to discuss it)
January 11, 2002... As a Roman Catholic and a scholar whose research focuses on Islam, I am frequently involved in interfaith dialogue. In the past few months the need to engage in such dialogue has acquired fresh relevance. In the Christian-Muslim gatherings I...

Sparrows.(Poem)
January 11, 2002... This morning I saw a sparrow on a thin stalk of yellow corn, the only plant adorning the seaside hotel. The sparrow cleaned itself; the stalk shook. Another sparrow came; the stalk bent. A third sparrow;...

THE LITURGY AS BATTLEFIELD: What do 'restorationists' want?
January 11, 2002... Complaining about the liturgy is a favorite--and probably healthy--pastime of Catholics, lay and clerical alike. Few dispute the fact that the liturgical reforms of Vatican II have been implemented with mixed results. There is a widespread...

MY POLISH GRANDFATHER: A dark history, with flashes of light.('Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland')
January 11, 2002... Poland was forced to take a new look at its World War II past last year after the publication of a book about a horrific massacre in one village. I looked back as well. The book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne,...

WHO'S AFRAID OF SISSY SPACEK? 'In the Bedroom'.
January 11, 2002... Writer Andre Dubus, who died in 1999, never became a big name with the general public. But he was revered by other writers, a storyteller whose fictions mixed quiet dismay with unexpected moments of transcendence, and whose Catholic ethos...

A MAJOR MINOR POET: Billy Collins isn't just funny.(poet laureate)
January 11, 2002... Billy Collins being named poet laureate was good news to me, yet I think the first words that ran through my head, after hearing of the appointment, were, "They've actually had the guts to honor someone who writes light verse? Ogden Nash should...

Are the parties over?('The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics')
January 11, 2002... The Radical Center The Future of American Politics Ted Halstead and Michael Lind Doubleday, $24.95, 264 pp. Dealignment and disengagement are the order of the day, and Ted Halstead and Michael Lind are intent on doing something about...

LIGHTS, CAMERA, HUBRIS.('America's Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen')
January 11, 2002... America's Bishop The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen Thomas C. Reeves Encounter, $26.95, 479 pp. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Fulton J. Sheen was the best-known Catholic priest in the United States. His...

Calvin: A Biography.(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... Calvin: A Biography Bernard Cottret Eerdmans, $28, 376 pp. First published in French, Bernard Cottret's Calvin is a very readable study of that central Reformation figure. Cottret traces John Calvin's (1509-64) intellectual...

Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary.(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary Sarah Jane Boss Continuum, $27.95, 264 pp. One of the characteristics of Catholicism is a lively devotion to Our Lady. (Calvin, to put it mildly, had little...

The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity.(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity Gerald O'Collins, S.J. Paulist, $16.95, 234 pp. Karl Rahner once famously observed that most Christians profess the Trinity in their recitation of the creed but live as...

Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding.(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding Mary Boys Paulist, $29.95, 393 pp. Sister Mary Boys holds the chair in practical theology at New York's Union Theological Seminary where she moved after...

We, the Ordinary People of the Streets.(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... We, the Ordinary People of the Streets Madeleine Delbrel Eerdmans, $24, 270 pp. A few years ago I reviewed in this column a short book on the life of Madeleine Delbrel (1904-64) written by Charles Mann. The "Ressourcement in Catholic...

A ZEN RETREAT.(Catholic attends a Buddhist retreat)(Brief Article)
January 11, 2002... The dates for the retreat with a Zen Buddhist orientation were convenient. I participated and ended up with new insights and aspirations. The routine was rigorous. We began at 6:15 a.m. and ended with Mass at 9:15 p.m.--all in total silence....

To the Editors.(Letter to the Editor)
January 25, 2002... Those covers! The cover designs for both the November 23 and December 21, 2001 issues were crude and unappealing. It is not clear what you wish the message of the covers to be and how you want prospective readers to perceive your magazine....

Enron's legacy.(Brief Article)
January 25, 2002... Could more regulation have prevented the collapse of Enron Corporation, the huge energy and online trading company that last month became the largest company in history to declare bankruptcy? That is the question the Senate will pursue in...

WHEN CHRISTIANS KILL : Don't make a virtue of necessity.
January 25, 2002... I opposed the war in Vietnam and was active in the antiwar movement. I would do it again. The war we are engaged in now is thoroughly different. Like many who opposed our involvement in Vietnam, I believe a military response was necessary after...

DOES EUROPE MATTER? Yes & no.(Brief Article)
January 25, 2002... Two developments of the past few months are certain to be crucial to the evolution of international balance in the twenty-first century. First was the spectacular military performance in Afghanistan of U.S. high-technology air attacks,...

CHAVEZ IN TROUBLE : Report from Venezuela.(Brief Article)
January 25, 2002... The work stoppage called by Venezuela's main business organizations along with prominent labor leaders last December 10 demonstrated just how divided and conflict-ridden Venezuela has become under the "revolutionary" government of President...

STANDING ROOM ONLY : What to do about prison overcrowding.(Brief Article)
January 25, 2002... Until very recently, the U.S. prison system has been our fastest-growing industry, expanding from 500,000 prisoners in 1978 to nearly 2 million in 2001. The U.S. incarceration rate leads the world. With less than 5 percent of the world's...

THE DARWINIAN UNIVERSE : Isn't there room for God?
January 25, 2002... Religious skeptics and critics of theology are increasingly turning to Charles Darwin. Freud and Marx have lost much of their former luster, and the remaining disciples of Nietzsche, Sartre, or Derrida are not interested in getting the seal of...

FINDING PASSION : 'Monster's Ball' & 'Lantana'.
January 25, 2002... The run-up toward movie-award season is getting more and more like Christmas shopping madness. All year long, whole weeks can pass with no film release of note; then comes December, and ho ho ho, an inundation. My own solution to Christmas gift...

THE LONGEST DAY : Fox TV's '24'.
January 25, 2002... The ticking clock--that staple of the thriller genre--delivers more than suspense in Fox's much hyped action series "24": It also delivers the audience. After all, who really cared, when the series began in early November, that blond hunk...

God's journalist.("Chesterton")
January 25, 2002... Chesterton Garry Wills Doubleday, $14, 330 pp. Why should Gilbert Keith Chesterton still matter? Born in Victorian England in 1874 and dead in 1936, before the outbreak of World War II, he ought to seem as quaint as the romantic...

REAGAN DIDN'T DO IT.(Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000)
January 25, 2002... Armageddon Averted The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 Stephen Kotkin Oxford University Press, $27.50, 235 pp. Lest we become distracted by the specter of global terrorism with an Islamist face, the continuing threat of Saddam Hussein, or...

HOW CATHOLIC IS HE?(books)
January 25, 2002... With the Grain of the Universe The Church's Witness and Natural Theology Stanley Hauerwas Brazos Press, $22.99, 256 pp. Christian Existence Today Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between Stanley Hauerwas Brazos Press,...

JUST A FLOOR ABOVE.(life and death in a physician's practice; narrative)(Brief Article)
January 25, 2002... Just a floor above, a patient lies angled across the clean and freshly turned sheets. Her hollowed cheeks are glazed in sweat. Her pursed panting and her moans puncture a silence as heavy as slushed snow. Yet in the darting of Dorothy's eyes...