Commonweal articles from January 2004

Commonweal archives from January 2004

Fig leaf, please.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... Your December 5, 2003 cover ("El Greco's Modern Vision") was a joke, right? If not, kindly send future copies of Commonweal in a plain brown wrapper. EDWARD F. HAYES Orlando, Fla.

Schiavo redux.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... Obviously, Commonweal's response to my letter on the Terri Schiavo case ("Correspondence," December 5, 2003) is not the work of your editor. The jargon and the reasoning tell me that it is the work of a theologian. I did not misrepresent...

The consult replies.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... The consult replies: Patrick J. Boyle, SJ, appears to think that Commonweal is guilty of some sort of ventriloquism. Alas, we don't have the budget for it. Nor do we think, as Boyle appears to, that "theologian" is a derogatory term. ...

Pay attention!(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... In his essay "War & War by Other Means" (December 5, 2003), Alan Wolfe reviews three new books on the Bush presidency that provide a scathing indictment of the Bush administration and its frightening fiscal, domestic, and foreign policies....

Bloody England.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... Richard Alleva's attempt to understand Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill--Volume 1 ("About a Boy," December 5, 2003) ran aground early when he limited his scan to video art and schlock Hong Kong flicks. More instructive historical models for...

Providing bread.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 16, 2004... In your November 21, 2003, editorial "Democracy at Home & Abroad," you write that "eloquent words not followed by action create only doubt about the integrity of the speaker." This judgment could equally apply to President George W. Bush's...

Getting religion.
January 16, 2004... After a series of largely ignored debates and months of organizing and cajoling, candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination are about to enter a dizzying period of caucuses and primaries that could determine the nominee by...

Job well done.(ET Cetera)(Brief Article)
January 16, 2004... Many Commonweal readers are familiar with, and even subscribers to, the Tablet of London, the voice of liberal and intellectual Catholicism in Great Britain. For the last twenty-one years, John Wilkins, a charming, self-effacing individual...

How to read Scripture: tradition vs. zeitgeist.(Of Several Minds)
January 16, 2004... The Vatican has suspended its dialogue with the Anglican Church, following the decision of its American branch to consecrate as a bishop a man who left his wife to enter a relationship with another man. The Russian Orthodox Church had already...

A quagmire? Vietnam, Iraq & other analogies.
January 16, 2004... As Americans contend with an increasingly dangerous and uncertain situation in Iraq, the language we use to debate our policy becomes more and more important. Vietnam-era phrases like "credibility gap," "quagmire," and "exit strategy" are now...

How ecumenical? The Vatican on Islam.
January 16, 2004... In November 2003, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, wrote a letter to the worldwide Muslim community. The occasion was Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic celebration that marks the end of...

Islamic Britain: how the UK deals with radical Muslims.(Editorial)
January 16, 2004... London has become the center of the Arab political world, leading one writer to describe it as "Beirut-on-Thames." The racks outside newspaper stands on Edgware Road and Queensway are stacked with dozens of Arabic newspapers and magazines, many...

Chicago Catholic: a profile of Cardinal Francis George.(biography)(Biography)
January 16, 2004... He's decidedly not charismatic. His style is cerebral, low-key, and unlike other prominent church leaders, he is a bit awkward at obligatory small talk. When Cardinal Francis George, OMI, walked through a television studio in Chicago last...

The coming conclave: how the next pope will be chosen.(papal elections)
January 16, 2004... Somehow, talking about conclaves feels unseemly--even ghoulish--while John Paul II suffers so visibly. Still, we must talk about conclaves and what comes next, just as we should have those unsettling conversations about health-care proxies and...

Never say die: 'Autumn Spring' & 'something's gotta give'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
January 16, 2004... Come year's end, with Hollywood serving up another round of high-gloss, $100-million epics, it's nice to be able to turn to European movies. Not only for a change of scale, but also a different palate of emotions and ideas. Take the idea, for...

Among the patriarchs.(Book Review)
January 16, 2004... The Beginning of Wisdom Reading Genesis Leon R. Kass The Free Press, $35, 720 pp. Leon Kass is a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is also the chairman of the President's Council on...

Dictionary of Saints (revised edition).(Book Review)
January 16, 2004... John J. Delaney's Dictionary of Saints has served the public well for over two decades, but was in need of some updating. Arthur Jones has done the job nicely, adding many of those beatified and canonized by Pope John Paul II. The second...

A real church lady.(The Last Word)(Biography)
January 16, 2004... Last spring, I finally got to meet Elisabeth Behr-Sigel. At ninety-six, she is the undisputed "grandmother" of Western Christian Orthodoxy and one of its foremost theologians. We had been corresponding for years, yet when she arrived from Paris...

Targeting the 'Times'.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... Your December 19, 2003, editorial ("Waiting") refers to a November 25, 2003, New York Times story about Robert P. Scamardo, formerly general counsel for the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. The editorial asks: "How true Scamardo's accusations are...

Trouble in Cincinnati.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... In your December 19, 2003, editorial discussing the plea by Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati to five misdemeanor counts of failing to report abuse of children between 1978 and 1982, you hardly mention what was elsewhere reported as a...

Elderly & in the way?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... Re: Andrew Lustig's article on Medicare costs versus other social needs ("In Denial," December 19, 2003). A December 27, 2003, article in the New York Times reports on Philipp Missfelder, a German youth leader who claims that there is a...

Bishops & gay marriage.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... Your December 5, 2003, editorial ("Premature Judgments") notes that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. It is unfortunate that the bishops did not emulate Worcester Bishop...

Close encounters.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... John Garvey's tribute to Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony Bloom ("Encounters of the First Kind," December 5, 2003) was beautifully written and deeply personal. Those who are interested in learning more about this remarkable man might wish...

Cafeteria catholic?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 30, 2004... Francis Dorff's letter to the editor (Correspondence, December 5, 2003) on Pope John Paul's personalist philosophy reminded me of my recent studies in theology. Reading Pope John Paul's letters and encyclicals, I was often confused by his...

The truth & Iraq.
January 30, 2004... Supporters of President George W. Bush extol his honesty and personal virtue. Americans like a plainspoken leader, a straight shooter they can trust, we are told. Bill Clinton's strained relationship to the truth dishonored the presidency and...

Initial step.
January 30, 2004... The release on January 6, 2004, of the audit report by the Office of Child and Youth Protection (OCYP) of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) provides reason for cautious hope. It is the first report card on how each U.S. diocese or...

Planned obsolescence: the wrong prescription for Medicare reform.(Notebook)
January 30, 2004... I don't take a lot of drugs. Pop an Advil here, a Tylenol there. Dose up on NyQuil when the going gets really rough. On the list of heaviest (legal) drug users in the United States, I rank pretty low, much farther toward the bottom than, say,...

Enuf already: the fixation on Iraq.(Of Several Minds)(Editorial)
January 30, 2004... As an editor at a magazine covering international affairs, I should be overjoyed that the coming U.S. presidential election is widely touted as the first such contest in decades to focus on foreign policy. Indeed, Howard Dean's antiwar stance...

Preemptive war: what would Aquinas say?
January 30, 2004... War is among the most terrible of human realities. Yet Catholicism has never condemned all participation in war as morally impermissible. From the early Middle Ages to our own time, the church has consistently asserted that some evils or...

Caring for the dying: my patients, my work, my faith.(Cover Story)
January 30, 2004... Friday afternoon at the hospice center. I punch in and eye the "white board," looking for empty white strips and unfamiliar names, quickly piecing together who has died, who is still living in this eighteen-bed facility. I start at the bottom...

Ashes to ashes: toward a Christian understanding of death.
January 30, 2004... The first time I seriously questioned what we usually think of as the self, or the soul, was following an operation which required general anesthesia. My loss of consciousness was so profound that there was no experience, none at all, of time...

Moths.(Brief Article)(Poem)
January 30, 2004... Some bewildering squall of moths might again rise florid in its infestation from within the replastered, claydamp walls, showing us the waiting danger of the new, as we snuffed out, feverish, every blind brown life. Without descent, a left...

Peter Jackson's sorcery: 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy.(Screen)(Critical Essay)
January 30, 2004... Peter Jackson's three-part film of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) may or may not please votaries of J. R. R. Tolkien's prose epic, but it is a godsend to anyone like me. I love the book's "northness," its landscape of towering forests and...

Where the slippery slope began.(Books)(Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution )(Book Review)
January 30, 2004... Pandora's Baby How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution Robin Marantz Henig Houghton Mifflin, $25,256 pp. Of all the human biological capacities, procreation is one of the strangest. Unlike any of the...

Augustine or Emerson?(Books)(Democracy and Tradition)(Book Review)
January 30, 2004... Democracy and Tradition Jeffrey Stout Princeton University Press, $35, 348 pp. Democracy and Tradition is a long and complicated book that offers a diagnosis of what philosopher Jeffrey Stout (Ethics after Babel) regards as...

Shoes to fill.(Books)(My Father's Footprints)(Book Review)
January 30, 2004... My Father's Footprints Colin McEnroe Warner Books, $23.95, 198 pp. There's a short story by Ethan Canin in which a young man complains about how hard his father is to get to know. "You don't have to get to know me," the father...

The evolution of evolution.(Books)(Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe )(Book Review)
January 30, 2004... Life's Solution Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe Simon Conway Morris Cambridge University Press, $29.95, 464 pp. Finally, a book on evolution that gets it right. To be blunt about it, not since Charles Darwin's Origin of...

Shunned.(The Last Word)
January 30, 2004... In the small chapel overlooking one of the waterways that run like ribbons into the Pearl Delta in southern China, someone is playing a one-finger version of "Jingle Bells" on the organ. It's a liturgical prelude, and those already gathered for...