Commonweal articles from January 2003

Commonweal archives from January 2003

To the editors.(Letter to the Editor)
January 17, 2003... Better than his party Regarding Mario Cuomo's "Faith & Government" (December 6, 2002): I have long admired Governor Cuomo, both for his open Catholicity and his integrity in handling the affairs of government. He makes a compelling case...

Raelpolitik.(Church scandal, cloning and President Bush's foreign policy)
January 17, 2003... A long year for U.S. Catholics ended with the belated resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law. Law's departure seems to promise a new beginning, at least in Boston, for victims of sexual abuse as well as the church as a whole. At the same...

A word from the editor: how I got here & why I stayed. (Notebook).(Editorial)
January 17, 2003... I began subscribing to Commonweal and submitted my first article to the magazine as a student at Yale Divinity School twenty-three years ago. That piece was about the official "visit" of two or three Catholic bishops to the somewhat anomalous...

Assimilation: the stuff dreams are made of. (Of Several Minds).(Learning Hindi)
January 17, 2003... The first time I dreamt in Hindi--nearly twenty years ago--I was both pleased and confused. Pleased because this surely represented a quantum leap in my acculturation to India; confused because, just as in real life, I needed a translator. ...

Prolife democrats: an oxymoron? (Of Several Minds).
January 17, 2003... Paul Wellstone was my friend and mentor, but he was not my candidate in Minnesota's 2002 senatorial campaign that brought about his tragic death. I supported Norm Coleman, an erstwhile Democrat who had been driven out of the party because he's...

My husband, the priest: can the church afford to ignore these men?
January 17, 2003... In a way, ours is like any other marriage, a union of souls, raising children, paying the bills. In a way, too, it is like any other second marriage embarked on by two people in their early middle age. Both accustomed to being in charge,...

The attraction of Islam: a community of faith & care.
January 17, 2003... Imagine trying to talk to people in Bangladesh, who have seldom met a Christian, about Christianity. Where would you begin? Perhaps with Jesus Christ, and then with the challenge to state religion that his followers posed, and then the...

Standing in Place in Yellowstone.
January 17, 2003... Standing in Place in Yellowstone Through the steam of warm pools shapes recede... emerge in low sunlight, pastel at the edge of mist. Buffalo. They stand in shaggy non-chalance-- browns and sables, gray--...

Art deco: `Far from Heaven' & `Frida'. (Screen).(Movie Review)
January 17, 2003... A pair of films offers variations on the theme of passion and its impediments and privileges. Far from Heaven, Todd Haynes's sumptuous homage to Hollywood melodramas of yore, is set in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1957. In the Insurance...

On honeymoon.(The UNexpected Way: On converting from Buddhism to Catholicism)(Book Review)
January 17, 2003... The Unexpected Way On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism Paul Williams Continuum/T & T Clark, $22.95, 264 pp. The blood of the martyrs, the old saying has it, is the seed of the church. The same should be said about the stories told by...

A tangled history.(The Shade of Swords: Jihad and tge Conflict Between Islam and Christianity)(Book Review)
January 17, 2003... The Shade of Swords Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity M. J. Akbar Routledge, $25, 272 pp. Muslim Indian journalist M. J. Akbar sets out to chronicle the history of "jihad" (popularly but sometimes misleadingly...

The Spirituality of the Psalms.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
January 17, 2003... The Spirituality of the Psalms Carroll Stuhlmueller Liturgical Press, $19.95, 208 pp. When Carroll Stuhlmueller died in 1994, he left behind a nearly finished manuscript on the psalms. Carol Dempsey, O.P., and Timothy Lenchak, S.V.D.,...

The Church According to the New Testament.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
January 17, 2003... The Church According to the New Testament Daniel Harrington, S.J. Sheed & Ward, $19.95, 187 pp. Daniel Harrington is one of the most productive and readable biblical scholars in the English-speaking world. His work as editor of New...

Hail Mary: A Marian Book of Hours.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
January 17, 2003... Hail Mary: A Marian Book of Hours Edited by William G. Storey Ave Maria Press, $14.95, 316 pp. The bishops at Vatican II wisely refrained from issuing a separate document on Mary, instead adding a wonderful chapter dedicated to her in the...

Mary Queen of Scots.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
January 17, 2003... Mary Queen of Scots Carol Schaeffer Crossroad, $19.95, 208 pp. Schaeffer begins her admiring biography of Mary Queen of Scots with a moving account of Mary's execution in 1587. It was done with almost liturgical ceremony. She entered the...

Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism.(Book Review)
January 17, 2003... Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism Edited by R. Neil Scott Timberlane Books. $127.95, 1,086 pp. Flannery O'Connor died in 1964 at the age of thirty-nine. During her lifetime she published two novellas, a...

Not so fast. (The Last Word).(Lay governance of Catholic parishes)
January 17, 2003... A strange byproduct of the church scandals is the inordinate media attention to the minutiae of Catholic life. The New York Times devoted an entire story to the role of parish councils, a story that without the obligatory mention of the crisis...

To the editors.
January 31, 2003... Steinfels's example Thank you to Margaret O'Brien Steinfels for her many years of work at Commonweal ("A Note from the Editor," November 8, 2002). I have been reading the magazine for forty-five years. It has always been thoughtful and is...

`Trail of pain' continued. (Commonweal).(Sexual abuse among the Catholic clergy)
January 31, 2003... On January 12, the front page of the Sunday New York Times featured a story, which jumped to two full pages inside the newspaper, offering the most comprehensive statistical analysis to date of sexual abuse among the Catholic clergy. Titled...

Et cetera.(The death penalty in Illinois)
January 31, 2003... Illinois justice n Before leaving office earlier this month, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 men on death row and pardoned outright four others, thus placing in limbo, at least temporarily, the state's death penalty....

The ten suggestions? The `Times' does the decalogue. (Of Several Minds).(New York Times series on the Ten Commandments)
January 31, 2003... It is a common complaint that religion is not dealt with well in the media, which, when it doesn't just plain get things wrong, tends to concentrate on either the dullest institutional aspects of religion ("Southern Baptists Get New Head") or...

Reality TV: from public autopsies to what?
January 31, 2003... In November, a German physician performed the first public autopsy in Britain since the practice had been outlawed in 1832. "Performance" is literally the word, since Dr. Gunther von Hagen's dissection was conducted before an audience that had...

Defining dogma: the danger of creeping infallibilism.
January 31, 2003... When, after months of resistance, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston finally had a meeting with representatives of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), the attendees were at pains to assert that while they sought a larger lay participation in the running...

Christians & Jews: starting over: why the real dialogue has just begun.
January 31, 2003... How should Christians think about Jews? Or better, how should Christians think about themselves with reference to Judaism? This will always be a necessary question for Christians to ask, and will never be an easy question for them to answer....

Rome has spoken: a new Catholic approach to Judaism.
January 31, 2003... One of the most remarkable historical developments in modern Catholicism is the transformation of the church's relationship with Judaism. Vatican II's revolutionary declaration Nostra aetate is the Magna Carta of this change. And the leadership...

Creation.(Poem)
January 31, 2003... The blind woman knows where she lives in no way I can see. I drive back and forth, for these minutes her borrowed, ignorant eyes, and when the place happens on us I help her out, not sure what help she doesn't need. ...

Dream in which I sing to my mother.(Poem)
January 31, 2003... The song is doo-wop, and my amazing falsetto loops around us its creamy arabesques. In my arms you smile, curled and quiet; with one palm I press your thin skull to my chest; my heart hears your last dreams beat. ...

Trapped: `About Schmidt' & `The Pianist. (Screen).(Movie Review)
January 31, 2003... Alexander Payne made a name for himself with Election, his wry study of a high school teacher's demolition by an aggressive, ambitious girl. The movie had me shuddering to recall four long-ago years spent as a young high school English teacher,...

Waving the flag: PBS's `Freedom' & A&E's `Benedict Arnold'. (Media).(Television Program Review)
January 31, 2003... It's the best of times and the worst of times for Freedom: A History of US, the gravitas-laden PBS series that commenced in mid-January. On the one hand, this earnest eight-hour documentary--which is based on Joy Hakim's books for young people,...

The age of innocence.(Child of My Heart, a novel)(Book Review)
January 31, 2003... Child of My Heart Alice McDermott Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $23, 242 pp. The narrator of Child of My Heart sums up the story: "Petey, who always used to ask, challenging and pleading at the same time, `Do you like me? Do you like my...

Apologists & saints.(Three books)(Book Review)
January 31, 2003... God at the Ritz Attraction to Infinity Lorenzo Albacete Crossroad Publishing, $19.95, 192 pp. Steps along the Way A Spiritual Autobiography Diogenes Allen Church Publishing Incorporated, $13.95, 134 pp. Father Mychal Judge An Authentic...

Christianity & pluralism.(The Comon Good and Christian Ethics)(Book Review)
January 31, 2003... The Common Good and Christian Ethics David Hollenbach Cambridge University Press, $23, 269 pp. David Hollenbach, S.J., who teaches Christian social ethics at Boston College, works in a century-long tradition of distinguished...

Where was GOD?(The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth )(Book Review)
January 31, 2003... The Blindfold's Eyes My Journey from Torture to Truth Sister Dianna Ortiz with Patricia Davis Orbis Books, $25, 480 pp. In 1989, two years into a stint as a missionary teacher in Guatemala, Dianna Ortiz--an Ursuline sister from New...

22 million dead. (The Last Word).(AIDS treatment and prevention)
January 31, 2003... Discussions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa invariably focus on the high cost of antiretroviral (ARV) drug therapy. ARV is an effective tool in the fight against the disease, but it is terribly expensive. In the United States, a year's...