Commonweal articles from July 2006

Commonweal archives from July 2006

Christians & the Holocaust.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... As someone who was present at Auschwitz-Birkenau with Pope Benedict XVI, I would like to offer the following reflections on his address in light of your editorial ("Benedict at Auschwitz," June 16). The pope should be given credit for the...

My father's story.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... My family and I were pleased to read Neil Coughlan's well-written review of The Witness of St. Ansgar's ("Manhattan Transfer," May 19), the recently published novel by my late father, Francis W. Nielsen. To answer the questions posed at the end...

The moment of consecration.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... Mark Plaiss is correct to note that the Vatican's recognition of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is, in many ways, exceptional ("This, Too, Is My Body," May 19). I suspect, however, that the decision was meant primarily as an ecumenical gesture...

The dictates of conscience.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... When I took a job with the government, I was told that if an issue of conscience arose, I should resign if I could not follow the code of professional conduct. This would make a powerful statement about the issue's importance, while preventing...

A wise guy.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... Joseph Cunneen's review of Reflections Over the Long Haul, Robert McAfee Brown's last book ("Public Theologian," May 19), refers to Brown's "rich sense of humor." I recall a comment he made in a 1960s column, reflecting on Paul VI's creation...

Girls, back then.(Letter to the editor)
July 14, 2006... Regarding Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's "The Boy Problem" (May 5): I grew up in a middle-class rural community in the 1950s and '60s. Many girls my age sought some form of advanced learning. Smart girls in my high school took all the college-prep...

The court acts.(Supreme Court)(Editorial)
July 14, 2006... President George W. Bush received a long-overdue rebuke from the Supreme Court June 29 for the ill-conceived and illegal manner in which he has conducted the "war on terror." In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld the Court ruled against the...

A way of seeing, a way of giving: the legacy of Emil Antonucci.(Obituary)
July 14, 2006... Emil Antonucci, the gifted artist and graphic designer who created Commonweal's distinctive new format in 1965 (he dropped The from the logo and invented the magazine's colophon), and who remained involved in its design and production until...

Could the church have gotten it wrong? Let's look at the facts.(Column)
July 14, 2006... Reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one is left with the impression that Catholic moral teaching is comprehensive, definite, and unchanging across the centuries. It is a comforting idea, but not an accurate one. As John Noonan...

A thrift shop in India: diamonds in the rough.(Column)
July 14, 2006... One of my favorite Dorothy Day stories is about the diamond ring a wealthy admirer donated to the Catholic Worker. Everyone in the community was curious to see what Dorothy would do with the ring, and some were dismayed and a bit annoyed when...

Northern exposure: the 'war on terror' comes to Canada.
July 14, 2006... Many Americans, preoccupied with the politics of their southern border, are accustomed to paying scant attention to events beyond their northern boundary. Yet in the past month, dramatic developments in the war on terror have plunged Canada...

Uncharted waters: the future of Catholic-Jewish relations.
July 14, 2006... It has been almost forty-one years since Nostra aetate, the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, transformed relations between Catholics and Jews, effectively repudiating the...

Heart (1).(Poem)
July 14, 2006... Heart like the warm weather bumblebee-type wood borer that issues from some inner part of an emptied-out sill. Heart being the one each day caught. Or heart like what's loose-- tachycardic--it lets loose. Heart: the...

The morality of human rights: a problem for nonbelievers?
July 14, 2006... The masses blink and say: "We are all equal.--Man is but man, before God--we are all equal." Before God! But now this God has died. --Friedrich Nietzsche Not all nonbelievers exude the breathtaking contempt that Nietzsche aims at...

Refined sugar: 'The Closer'.(Television program review)
July 14, 2006... Don't underestimate the significance of the junk food. I'm talking about the junk food that's a recurrent motif in TNT's hit drama The Closer--a fast-paced, woman-centered police procedural that may mollify Prime Suspect addicts while they're...

Death becomes him.(Everyman)(Book review)
July 14, 2006... Everyman Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, $24, 182 pp. The fifteenth-century morality play Everyman tells of a man confronted by death, deserted by friends, family, wealth, strength, beauty, his wits--finally only knowledge and good...

Agatha's ashes.(The New Woman)(Book review)
July 14, 2006... The New Woman Jon Hassler Viking Press, $23.95, 214 pp. W.H. Auden once remarked that readers want their favorite * novelists to be faithful to them, while remaining free themselves to be as unfaithful as they please. Jon...

Body beautiful.(The Nuptial Mystery)(Book review)
July 14, 2006... The Nuptial Mystery Angelo Cardinal Scola Translated by Michelle K. Boras Eerdmans, $29, 444 pp. Everything that pleased fans of John Paul II's Theology of the Body will please them in this book, for it is a sustained and...

Odd fellow.(Wordsworth: A Life)(Book review)
July 14, 2006... Wordsworth A Life Juliet Barker Ecco/HarperCollins, $29.95, 548 pp. William Wordsworth presents a biographer with considerable difficulties. He lived a very long time, and the poetry he wrote over his long life established...

Religion booknotes.(Living Vatican II: The 21st Council for the 21st Century)(Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church)(The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540-1773)(The Shadow of God: A Journey Through Memory, Art, and Faith)(Book review)
July 14, 2006... Gerald O'Collins is the beau ideal of the contemporary Catholic theologian: extremely well educated, possessed of a keen analytical mind, a clear writer and thinker, and, above all, a faithful servant dedicated to the good of the church (which...

The gospel of Sulivan.(Jean Sulivan)
July 14, 2006... Catholics discouraged by the sexual-abuse scandal and by declining vocations to the priesthood should take a look at the work of Jean Sulivan, the French novelist and essayist who died in 1980. In his spiritual journal, Morning Light...