Commonweal articles from June 2006

Commonweal archives from June 2006

Censuring love.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 2, 2006... It's shame that Jo McGowan can't bilocate ("To Welcome a Child," May 5). She lives in India, but she should be deliberating on Boston's archdiocesan council. Her argument for permitting adoption by same-sex couples was right on point. How can...

The church & gay adoption.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 2, 2006... Instead of the thoughtful encounter with the Catholic tradition typical of Commonweal, Jo McGowan's recent column is a rant against the "recent decision by Catholic Charities of Boston... to refuse to allow gay couples to adopt children." She...

Boys vs. girls.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 2, 2006... As a long-time fan of Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, I was disappointed by the errors in "The Boy Problem" (May 5). Whitehead asserts that the gender gap has developed not because "the boys of today are lagging behind the boys of yesterday [but...

Give them amnesty.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 2, 2006... Eduardo Moises Penalver's article comparing illegal immigrants to the illegal squatters who settled the West was masterful ("Are Illegal Immigrants Pioneers?" May 5). Many of our ancestors became legal through amnesty programs, some of which...

McGahern & my father.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 2, 2006... One night last winter, when I couldn't sleep, I turned on the bedside radio to listen to the latest news from the BBC. Instead, I heard the mesmerizing voice of John McGahern reading his memoir All Will Be Well--just as Edward Wheeler did...

Immigration reform.(From the Editors)(Editorial)
June 2, 2006... Despite the bitter political divide in Congress over the solution to the nation's illegal-immigration problem, a sensible consensus already exists: our boundaries must be secured and the massive flow of immigrants across the Mexican-U.S. border...

Family values: not all they are cracked up to be.(Columnist)(Column)
June 2, 2006... When I was a pastor I visited one home which had the normal number of windows, open to the sun during the daytime; but remembering my visits I recall the place as dark and cavernous. I think I know why: the family was a mess, with madness,...

Judas & Jesus: what did the gnostics really believe?(Short Takes)
June 2, 2006... The recently published Gospel of Judas, writes biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, "has a completely different understanding of God, the world, Christ, salvation, human existence--not to mention of [sic] Judas himself--than came to be embodied in the...

Gentrification: who wins, who loses?(Plight of working class in Brooklyn)
June 2, 2006... For Latino and Hasidic families who have lived for decades in the Brooklyn waterfront community of Williamsburg, the September 19, 2005 headline in New York magazine wasn't exactly news: "The Southside of Williamsburg has become a place to put...

Math.(Poem)
June 2, 2006... Math Back in high school I was foolish I admit it tapping my pen to figure out the rhythms reducing to rhymes the lowest possible terms. Mr. Brown caught me: You'll live to regret it-- no counting on...

Merton's enlightenment: what he found in Asia.(Thomas Merton)(In memoriam)(Travel narrative)
June 2, 2006... Near the end of his posthumously published Asian Journal, Thomas Merton described a remarkable visit he made in December 1968 to Gal Vihara, a Buddhist shrine in central Sri Lanka. Scribbled in a notebook, his account breathes with the...

On the pilgrim road: hospitality on the 'Camino'.(Personal account)
June 2, 2006... It was the last day of September. My husband and I climbed into a taxi in Astorga, Spain, and traveled twenty kilometers west to the mountain village of Rabanal del Camino, (population less than fifty). Rabanal's cobblestne main street, the...

Lost: 'UNITED 93'.(Critical essay)
June 2, 2006... United 93, Paul Greengrass's depiction of the 9/11 jetliner whose passengers rose up against its hijackers and crashed it into a field in Pennsylvania, is a movie less interesting in itself than in the questions of intention and reception that...

A One-Man Think Tank.(Book review)
June 2, 2006... Richard Hofstadter An Intellectual Biography David S. Brown University of Chicago Press, $27.50, 282 pp. History is one of the few scholarly pursuits that garners popular attention. Among the ranks of its practitioners are...

Religion Booknotes.(Book review)
June 2, 2006... Robert Ellsberg enjoyed much success with his book All Saints (1997), which provided daily reflections on saintly and prophetic figures. Blessed among All Women is a follow-up to that book, although it is devoted exclusively to "women saints,...

Andean baptism.(The Last Word)(Personal account)
June 2, 2006... I have worked as a hospital chaplain in the United States, but on a medical-mission trip to Bolivia three years ago, I was serving as translator, patient transporter, and recovery-room assistant. I was with a team that repairs the cleft palates...

Burying the truth.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... Your May 5 editorial ("Jesus, Da Vinci, and Us") is a masterful example of throwing dust in the eyes of the truth. To compare the gnostic Gospel of Judas with the pure fiction of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is an editorial cheap shot. You...

The cult of Ayn Rand.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... William Pfaff's "The Global Economy" (May 19) misrepresents the ideas of Ayn Rand, repeating the old canard that she was a cult leader. As both her novels and her nonfiction articles make clear, Rand was no fan of the crony capitalism that is...

A people apart?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... Luke Timothy Johnson says that lay Catholics have "an ecumenical vision of the church" that understands unity "not in terms of uniformity but in terms of a complex yet harmonious diversity" ("A Larger Sense of Church," May 19). This may be the...

Beauty & the Latin Mass.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... In his April 21 essay on the liturgy ("With Thankfulness & Praise"), Luke Timothy Johnson refers to the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Mass as "meaninglessly mechanical." He is too kind. Traditionalists usually fail to acknowledge that the "solemn...

Sacramental power.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... Thanks to Mark Plaiss for his analysis of the Vatican statement recognizing the validity of the Eucharistic prayer of the Assyrian Church ("This, Too, Is My Body," May 19). There is one potential "side effect" of this document that Plaiss does...

Paradoxical truths.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... The closing paragraph of Celia Wren's review of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera is priceless ("Now, A Word from Our Sponsors," May 19). "We live in a country," Wren writes, "where Philip Morris airs antismoking ads; where beer companies...

Princeton's Catholic speakers.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 16, 2006... I was dismayed by the tenor of Maurice Timothy Reidy's "Catholicism on Campus" (April 7). As the father of a recently graduated Princeton student, I have participated in some of the activities of the Aquinas Institute. I've worshiped at the 10...

Benedict at Auschwitz.(Pope Benedict XVI in concentration camps)
June 16, 2006... Pope Benedict's XVI's recent visit to Auschwitz, during which he conspicuously failed to voice repentance for the Catholic Church's nearly two millennia of anti-Semitic teaching, has been welcomed in certain Catholic quarters as a rejection of...

Parenthood: once the norm, now the exception?(Column)
June 16, 2006... Being a parent has never been easy but it is now a conspicuous source of distress and anxiety. Increasingly, adults see the years spent in active childrearing as a grueling experience, imposing financial burdens, onerous responsibilities,...

In good conscience: can pharmacists decline to fill some prescriptions?(Column)
June 16, 2006... In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade came statutes allowing health-care providers to refuse to provide procedures, such as abortion or sterilization, to which they objected on moral or religious grounds. Today such "conscience clauses" exist in...

An American in Egypt: no longer innocent abroad.
June 16, 2006... From my student days, almost forty years ago, when I hitchhiked with a backpack on my shoulders and a guitar at my side, I've been an eager traveler in the Middle East, fascinated by the rich historical resonance and complex politics of this...

Report from South Africa: sex, tribalism & the race for president.(Jacob Zuma of African National Congress acquitted of rape)
June 16, 2006... Deputy presidents are normally unknown quantities outside their own countries, unless they become potential presidential successors or get into hot water. South Africa's Jacob Zuma has managed to do both simultaneously. Last month, the...

Pivotal figure: the woman behind 'Nostra aetate'.(Sr. Rose Thering)(Obituary)(Biography)
June 16, 2006... Those who knew Sr. Rose Thering, OP, as a fellow nun, a friend, colleague, teacher, or activist, mourn her death and celebrate her courage. Although she lived a long and productive life--dying May 6 at the age of eighty-five--her passing leaves...

Clash of cultures: globalization & the March of Western values.
June 16, 2006... In the riots that swept Islamic society last winter, reaction to the publication of cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed, the world glimpsed evidence of a clash between cultures--but not in the sense of the "clash of civilizations" that...

Puzzle Solved: 'The Da Vinci Code'.
June 16, 2006... On my way to The Da Vinci Code I felt as bully as Teddy Roosevelt. The time was noon, the sky was promising, springtime buoyed me. Well rested, well fed (but not overfed), I was quite in the mood for a good, exciting movie-movie, especially one...

Summer Reading.(memoirs)
June 16, 2006... The memoir, always vulnerable to a gut-punch (too self-indulgent, too self-absorbed), has taken some extra licks lately. The James Frey fray, in particular, has occasioned much schaden-freudery in literary and not-so-literary circles, as the...

Summer Reading.(new books)
June 16, 2006... Does "guilty pleasure" describe your idea of summer reading? If so, you may enjoy The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood (Forge, $24.95, 304 pp.), the latest in Andrew Greeley's Bishop "Blackie" Ryan series. Blissfully full of every ethnic cliche...

Summer Reading.(books)
June 16, 2006... In the summer, spending more time outdoors--and shuffling reluctantly to work in more whimsical attire--we bubble with schemes for new hobbies, new explorations, new selves. But at the same time, the heat makes us sluggish, loath to do anything...

Summer Reading.(books)
June 16, 2006... For those looking to expand their reading horizons this summer, I cannot recommend too highly the late Octavia E. Butler, who died last spring at her home in Seattle following an accidental fall. Her works are usually categorized as science...

Summer Reading.
June 16, 2006... As a child raised by a family of beach-lovers and bookworms, I spent my adolescent summers sprawled on the shores of North Carolina, frying my freckled skin while plowing through the stack of books my parents treated me to at the season's...

The chosen.(catholics jewish relations)(Column)
June 16, 2006... I started this series of essays to celebrate signs of hope in Catholicism. My last reflection ("A Larger Sense of Church," May 19) touched on the way Catholic laypeople can learn from their Protestant and Orthodox neighbors. Such conversations...