Commonweal articles from January 2008

Commonweal archives from January 2008

Good ethics.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... Thanks to my religious brother, Daniel Sulmasy, for his article "Preserving Life?" (December 7, 2007). By providing the context for the August 1 Vatican document on hydration and nutrition for patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS),...

Not a theological question.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... Daniel Sulmasy's finely nuanced analysis boils down, for me at least, to this: the Vatican chose once more to be "politically" correct at the risk of being logically, and perhaps theologically, incorrect. In catechism, we learn that our...

Responding to extremes.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... Daniel Sulmasy's article is helpful in setting out the European and American context for the response of the CDF to the American bishops. Troubling, however, is his note that the response should be understood as an "extreme position to counter...

A mixed bag.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... Congratulations to Paul Stanosz for his courageous realism in addressing the crisis of health and morale among today's Catholic priests ("The Other Health Crisis," November 23, 2007). His analysis of the dire situation is accurate and...

No silver bullet.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... Paul Stanosz offers an accurate and honest assessment of the morale crisis afflicting priests today. He also avoids pointing a finger at any alleged culprit. As he says, "large social, cultural, and economic forces... have contributed to...

Philosopher & teacher.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 18, 2008... I enjoyed E. J. Dionne's description of Gene McCarthy as "a radical in defense of tradition" ("The Promise & Limits of Politics," November 9, 2007). But I feel obliged to add that McCarthy was also a dedicated teacher and philosopher. As a...

Cracked.(From the Editors)(crack-cocaine sentencing guidlines)
January 18, 2008... Last month the Supreme Court ruled that a federal judge was free to set aside sentencing guidelines that imposed much stiffer penalties for crack-cocaine offenses than for crimes involving powder cocaine. The next day, the U.S. Sentencing...

The new atheists: marginalizing what most people value.(Columnist)
January 18, 2008... The recent reports of Mother Teresa's long dark night made more news than they should have, I thought. Then I had second thoughts: this might lead to a serious discussion of faith and certainty, which are not at all the same thing. There were a...

Uncommon opportunity: when Islamic moderates speak, who listens?(Short Take)(A Common Word between Us and You)
January 18, 2008... Where is the moderate Muslim voice? Political commentators have repeatedly asked this question in the cacophony of the "war on terror" and amid daily news reports of violent acts of Islamic extremism. Yet when a moderate voice is raised, we...

Lines for a January Afternoon.(Poem)
January 18, 2008... Downed by winter light-- its heft holds (stone to draw us in, to pause and slow)--and soon I've lost the thread. Snow this morning heavy on fields now white within white. Give me certainties: sure-winged, raucous crows....

Reformer & racialist: Karl Adam's paradoxical legacy.(Interreligious Issue)
January 18, 2008... Recently, a friend sent a color postcard from Poland, showing Pope Benedict XVI waving to a crowd and proclaiming: "The church looks upon the past with serenity, and does not fear for the future." There was something wrong with the picture. The...

The beginning of the beginning: how Vatican II changed Jewish-Christian relations.
January 18, 2008... One of the most embarrassing experiences of my life occurred at a colloquium in London organized by the Sisters of Sion. This Catholic order was set up to promote the conversion of Jews to Christianity, but now, after the changes in the...

Painting hope: the murals of inner-city Philadelphia.
January 18, 2008... Philadelphia is not always a city of brotherly love. It recently registered the highest number of homicides in the nation. That's why my mother didn't want me to travel there to photograph some of the 2,700 murals that now make Philadelphia the...

Fractured: 'I'm not there' & 'The Golden Compass'.(Screen)(Movie review)
January 18, 2008... Some novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers (Shaw, Voltaire, Jean-Luc Godard) work closer to the vein of the essayist than the storyteller. They may be able to create memorable characters and powerful scenes, but only for the sake of making...

Shock & awe: Kara Walker at the Whitney.(Art)
January 18, 2008... Ten years ago, at the age of twenty-four, the African-American artist Kara Walker became the youngest person to win a MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called genius grant). She had burst on the scene three years before with a major wall piece at...

Evangelicals & politics.(Books)(Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity )(Book review)
January 18, 2008... Wayward Christian Soldiers Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity Charles Marsh Oxford University Press, $25, 256 pp. Charles Marsh's book joins the lengthening list of volumes rushed into print by what might be called an...

Sibling rivalries.(Books)(The Promise, The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome)(Book review)
January 18, 2008... The Promise Jean-Marie Lustiger Eerdmans, $18, 177 pp. The Catholic Church and the Jewish People Recent Reflections from Rome Edited by Philip A. Cunningham, Norbert J. Hofmann, and Joseph Sievers Fordham University...

An intellectual magpie.(Books)(Shakespeare the Thinker)(Book review)
January 18, 2008... Shakespeare the Thinker A. D. Nuttall Yale University Press, $30, 448 pp. If asked, most people would surely agree that Shakespeare was a thinker. Even the generally received picture of Shakespeare, featuring that prominent...

Religion booknotes.(Books)(Book review)
January 18, 2008... As Kevin Seasoltz points out in the opening pages of God's Gift Giving, the idea of "gift" has engaged the attention of scholars across a wide range of disciplines, from cultural anthropology to ethics and economics. Seasoltz provides the...

Lost & found.(The Last Word)
January 18, 2008... Dear Mr. and Mrs. Norton, Warm greetings from the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Paris.... The woman at the hotel with whom you left M. S.'s wallet brought it to our shelter, and we returned it to him. On his behalf, thank you for your...

For the record.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... Your reply to my December 21, 2007, letter ("Waterboarding & the Law") includes a major error of fact and an important omission, which together leave your readers misinformed. Contrary to your assertion, in the December 2, 2002, memo you...

History is important.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... In his article on Our Lady of Guadalupe ("A Gringo's Devotion," December 7, 2007), Gene Sager indicates he's "always been skeptical of historical arguments that support or undercut religious devotion." He says that his own devotion "is not...

Lustiger & St. Maria of Paris.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... Steven Englund's article on Cardinal Aaron Jean-Marie Lustiger ("Le Bulldozer," November 23, 2007) brought to mind a little-known incident in Lustiger's life. On May 1 and 2, 2004, Mother Maria Skobtsova and her companions were canonized...

A guide for the perplexed.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... Thank you for the refreshingly sane and authentically Catholic reflections of Daniel P. Sulmasy ("Preserving Life?" December 7, 2007). My family and I endured weeks of soul-searching Catholic-rooted reflection about removing my mother's feeding...

Beleaguered priests.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... In his November 23, 2007, article, "The Other Health Crisis," Fr Paul Stanosz gives a host of reasons why he is concerned about the health of priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. But are the concerns the Milwaukee priests face unique? I...

Voting early & often.(From the Editors)
January 31, 2008... Trying to determine what is significant in the results and controversies of the early presidential primaries and caucuses is simply impossible. By the time this issue of Commonweal is in the hands of our readers, a frontrunner may have emerged...

Pious carnage: the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India.(Columnist)
January 31, 2008... Recent reports from postelection Kenya, particularly of the burning of a church packed with Kikuyu women and children, sent a shudder around the world. Unfortunately, India seems to be moving along a similar path. Crimes here resulting from...

Election chaos: a report from Kenya.(Short Takes)
January 31, 2008... Benson stood in line for five hours on December 27 to vote for Kenya's next president. He is a construction worker at the small Catholic hospital I run in Western Kenya. Over 8 million Kenyans went to the polls that day. The voting went...

Collaborative theology: Latin American bishops, the pope & the poor.(Short Takes)
January 31, 2008... Aparecida is the most important Marian shrine in Brazil. Last May it was also the site of the fifth general conference of the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM). These general CELAM conferences are unique, a type of synod that...

Human & divine: did Jesus have faith?(Contemporary Theology)
January 31, 2008... Just over a year ago, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a notification concerning certain elements in the theological works of the Salvadoran priest, Jon Sobrino, SJ. The substance of the complaints centered on...

Cottonwoods.(Poem)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... A century ago in North Dakota, when my mother's father was a boy, a homesteader was grateful when a cottonwood appeared at the edge of sight--eighty feet into the prairie sky, its ridged bark lightning-scarred, the rustle and shake of...

Life & death: 'Juno' & 'Sweeney Todd'.(Screen)(Movie review)
January 31, 2008... I first heard about Jason Reitman's quirkily bighearted film Juno from an unlikely source: Rush Limbaugh. The maven of right-wing talk radio had seen an advance screening, and he gushed about the movie's prolife message. Rush's recommendation...

Impressions of eternity.(Books)(Do You Believe?: Conversations on God and Religion)(Book review)
January 31, 2008... Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion Antonio Monda Translated by Ann Goldstein Vintage, $12.95, 178 pp. In an essay titled "Monda's World" in the July 29 edition of the New York Times Book Review, Rachel...

Too big a tent?(Books)(Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism)(Book review)
January 31, 2008... Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism Fergus Kerr Blackwell, $29.95, 240 pp. As the editor of the Dominican theological journal New Blackfriars, Fergus Kerr, OP, has a reputation for...

The way ahead.(Books)(The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism)(Book review)
January 31, 2008... The Priority of Christ Toward a Postliberal Catholicism Robert Barron Brazos Press, $29.99, 352 pp. In the past decade, Fr. Robert Barron has written four well-received books, including Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master (1996)...

False start.(Books)(Run)(Book review)
January 31, 2008... Run Ann Patchett HarperCollins, $25.95, 304 pp. Ann Patchett's new novel opens with a wryly romantic vision of motherhood. Bernadette Doyle, recently deceased mother of one biological and two adopted sons, has left behind a...

Reading with Jesus.(The Last Word)
January 31, 2008... Jesus doesn't read well. I sit with him on a Tuesday afternoon as he slowly works his way though the week's catechism lesson. When he comes to his namesake in the text, he always says "Christ" instead of Jesus. When I correct him, he stops and...