Commonweal articles from July 2002

Commonweal archives from July 2002

To the editors. (Correspondence).
July 12, 2002... Leg room I thought Rand Richards Cooper's "One Boy's Story" (June 1) was wonderfully written, honest, and insightful. That bright and self-aware boy has obviously grown up into an equally bright and self-aware man. This "story" was such a...

The no-tax man.
July 12, 2002... President Bill Clinton had many flaws, some more notorious than others. But whatever Clinton's failings, he had the political backbone to defy his own party when he believed the greater good of the nation was at stake. He earned the enmity of...

What has been lost: the church after Dallas. (Notebook).
July 12, 2002... Surveying the battlefield of the sex-abuse scandal, I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church in the United States will never be the same. I said that to the bishops in Dallas on June 13 (see: www.usccb.org/bishops/index.htm). In...

Continuing the conversation.
July 12, 2002... Aquinas did it Having recently published a book on the idea of a Catholic university [see review, page 24], I was asked by the Chicago Tribune what role Catholic universities and colleges should play in the sex-abuse crisis enveloping the...

Competing orthodoxies: can the East face Rome? (Of Several Minds).
July 12, 2002... Many evaluations of the papacy of John Paul II have mentioned his desire for Orthodox-Catholic reunion. The chances are, sadly, not at all good. Although there was a brief springtime following Vatican II, the relationship between the churches...

Unlikely allies: Oxfam & globalization. (Of Several Minds).
July 12, 2002... Kudos to Oxfam International. Last April, the England-based humanitarian and advocacy network issued a massive report on the global trading system and its impact--real and potential--on the world's poor. The thrust of its message is...

Airport security: how should screeners be screened?
July 12, 2002... Erlinda Valencia has done a good job during her fourteen years as a security screener at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). During one particularly active two-week period in 2000, she alerted authorities to the presence of a loaded...

Cyril comes to America: an overseas adoption.
July 12, 2002... Russian telephones, depending on your frame of mind, can be an annoyance or an adventure--not unlike the country itself. On our first night in Moscow, sodden with jetlag and fatigue, my wife and I were jolted awake near midnight by an...

Bullet.
July 12, 2002... Bullet Memory must be a way of celebrating a holiday that does not pass. It is the day of atonement, that not enough thanks can be given to the departed for their simple kindness, taking a fork with...

Africanism: good for Africa? will new leadership emerge?
July 12, 2002... A time comes in the life of any institution or society when, for it to move forward, someone has to go. Until that person has exited, whether voluntarily or not, nothing can happen; not only is progress blocked, but decline is inexorable and...

Comic erudition: R. Crumb meets Kafka. (Culture Watch).
July 12, 2002... March 2002 was the tenth anniversary of a smart and smart-alecky publishing venture called the Introducing series. Longtime readers of Frank McConnell's Commonweal columns know of "graphic novels," that is, comic books that tell complex adult...

Where's the beef?
July 12, 2002... Why I Am a Catholic Garry Wills Houghton Mifflin, $26, 390 pp. Garry Wills, perhaps the nation's widest-ranging man of letters or, as the phrase now goes, "public intellectual," has never concealed his Catholicism. But he has usually worn...

Curdled populism.
July 12, 2002... Wealth and Democracy Kevin Phillips Broadway Books, $29.95, 472 pp. People yearning for a return to the economic dispensations of Louis XIV may not be scandalized by the present degree of financial inequality in the United States. Most of...

Make it different.
July 12, 2002... The Idea of a Catholic University George Dennis O'Brien University of Chicago Press, $28, 239 pp. George Dennis O'Brien is the former president of Bucknell University and president emeritus of the University of Rochester. He is also a...

Girl power.
July 12, 2002... Living with Saints Mary O'Connell Grove/Atlantic, $23, 228 pp. The saints live. Nowhere is this clearer than in New Orleans, where voodoo shops sell plaster saints alongside figures of good luck and bad luck, mojo, herbal cigarettes, dried...

Economic justice for most.
July 12, 2002... Seeking Social Justice through Globalization Escaping a Nationalist Perspective Gavin Kitching Pennsylvania State University Press, $45, 339 pp. In this book, Gavin Kitching, a British citizen who teaches in Australia, has taken on the...

Bishops should marry. (The Last Word).
July 12, 2002... It is now clear that the unfolding Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandal is not some transitory blip on the screen of history, but a tragic event of major and enduring significance. If we use the frame of reference of the last fifty years, we would...