Commonweal articles from March 2002

Commonweal archives from March 2002

To the Editors.
March 8, 2002... Two kinds of ignorance By coincidence, your January 25 issue on Darwinism included Luke Timothy Johnson's piece on Chesterton [a review of Garry Wills's Chesterton], whose comment I cherish and lamely quote: "The controversy goes on...

Priests & pedophilia.
March 8, 2002... The Archdiocese of Boston lies under a siege of criticism over the way cases of molestation of minors by priests have been handled. Boston Catholics have been stunned by stories in the Boston Globe that priests with records of pedophilia...

Correction.
March 8, 2002... In the February 8 issue listing the Commonweal Associates, we failed to include the name of Sustaining member John Maher, CA. We regret also a misspelling in identifying Charter member Lawrence F. Barmann, MO; and not including John & Elaine...

Continuing the conversation.(relations between Catholic Church and Judaism)
March 8, 2002... The church & anti-Semitism Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's recent lengthy article in the New Republic (January 21), "What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust," has already generated a vigorous response in the...

FACING ANTI-SEMITISM : Apology, yes; apostasy, no.(Brief Article)
March 8, 2002... In the January 21 issue of the New Republic, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners (Knopf), offered a sizable chunk of his new book, A Moral Reckoning: The Catholic Church during the Holocaust and Today. While I agree...

THE REAL SCANDAL: Enron's 'crimes' were legal.(legality of Enron's business practices is examined)
March 8, 2002... There was plenty of illegality in the Enron debacle. Class-action lawyers are already ferreting out the company's affirmative misrepresentations and nondisclosures of material facts ("big lies" to nonlawyers). All of these will be found to have...

LAW & DISORDER: Boston's priest-pedophile crisis.
March 8, 2002... The Archdiocese of Boston has been reeling for two months from continuing disclosures about pedophilia among priests, and from documentation of how members of the hierarchy, up to and including Cardinal Bernard Law, attempted to mute the voices...

RISKING BELIEF : Why William James still matters.('Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited')(Excerpt)
March 8, 2002... It is almost a hundred years since William James delivered his celebrated Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh on The Varieties of Religious Experience. I want to look again at this remarkable book, reflecting on what it has to say to us at the turn...

In the Woods Hole Harbor.(Poem)
March 8, 2002... You can't see them from Shuckers', or even the Captain Kidd, not for the sea of masts rocking at anchor, Lasers and Snipes needling in on changeable wind. You have to cross the drawbridge where the whole road lifts to...

KIDS' VIDS: To be seen & heard.(various children's video recordings)
March 8, 2002... I cannot decide whether young children are gainers or losers now that they have been ghettoized by popular culture. When so much of TV and film is scabrous, parents rightly want to control what their youngsters see and, in response to this...

Good pope, bad pope.('Pope John XXIII')
March 8, 2002... Pope John XXIII Thomas Cahill Lipper/Viking, $19.95, 241 pp. Good Pope John. Bad Pope John Paul. Those who like their biography Manichean-style will enjoy Thomas Cahill's book on John XXIII. Those who don't will be entertained,...

MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM.('Religion and Its Monsters')
March 8, 2002... Religion and Its Monsters Timothy K. Beal Routledge, $19.95, 256 pp. There's something real about monsters. That is why they keep coming back to hound us--in our imaginations, in our films, even in our experience of God. In this...

WITNESSES IN THE DOCK.('Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe')
March 8, 2002... Salvation at Stake Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe Brad S. Gregory Harvard University Press, $20, 528 pp. Brad Gregory's important and highly original book is a social history of religion that eschews the reductionism...

DOORS OF SALVATION.('Churches' and 'Lives of Service: Stories from Maryknoll')
March 8, 2002... Churches Judith Dupre HarperCollins, $35, 168 pp. Lives of Service Stories from Maryknoll Jim Daniels Orbis, $25, 128 pp. It is not often one can confess with the psalmist, "We will go up to the house of the Lord with joy." The...

RIPE IN DENMARK.('Kierkegaard: A Biography')
March 8, 2002... Kierkegaard A Biography Alastair Hannay Cambridge University Press, $39.95, 510 pp. There is no better conversation partner for thinking about faith than the lyrical Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55). Kierkegaard, of...

MINISTER'S QUESTION TIME.(why churches should have annual meetings)(Brief Article)
March 8, 2002... Corporations have them. Trade and professional associations have them. Even bishops have them. (In fact, they have two of them.) Annual meetings, that is. So why don't parishes have them? "God forbid!" I can almost hear many a reverend...

To the Editors.
March 22, 2002... Respect for life Thank you for the debate on the pro-life issue (February 8). Commonweal has again honestly looked at both sides of the question. However, your authors write as if there is no argument from compassion for pro-choice....

War budget.(US military expenditures)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... How far will the United States go? The time has come to ask the Bush Administration about the war on terrorism, its aims and costs. Senate majority leader, Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), began the task gingerly enough on February 28: "I think...

Evildoer.(investigating Iraq's possible role in September 11/01)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... No doubt about it: Iraq is a terrorist nation. Saddam Hussein's government used chemical weapons against its own Kurdish population in 1988 and it invaded and terrorized citizens and residents of Kuwait in 1990. Since the end of the Persian...

MAKING DO : The virtues of underdevelopment.(roads and traffic in India)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... As a child, one of my favorite books was Half Magic by Edgar Eager. It was about four children who find a coin that grants them their wishes, but only halfway. The muddles these four get into until they figure out the tricks of doubling what...

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE : Inside the World Economic Forum.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Rosemary is a very nice witch, perhaps the nicest I've ever met. She smiled, took time to talk with me, and patiently explained why she--along with her colleagues in the Pagan Cluster--was holding a rally against the World Economic Forum on a...

WRONGFUL LIFE? The strange case of Nicholas Perruche.
March 22, 2002... The law tells stories. So argues Catholic legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon in her short but fascinating book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. Glendon draws on anthropologist Clifford Geertz's claim that law is a "culture system"--it "tells...

Blue Wagon.(Poem)
March 22, 2002... Left out in the rain far too long, For too many seasons, now rust Has crept along its stenciled sides, Turned its white wheels brown and black, Left its steering rudder scoured Down to the metal of its base. It...

WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? Christology: What it is & why it matters.(studying Jesus Christ and his teachings)
March 22, 2002... The biblical scene is well known. Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, "Who do people say that I am?" Various people reply, "John the Baptist" or "Elijah" or "one of the prophets." Then Jesus asks, "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter...

WHY WE NEED BOTH STORIES.(Christology)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... All Christology begins "from below." Rahner's distinction, "from below/from above," describes the plots of the Christological stories we tell, but not the genesis or sources of those stories. Too often we fail to make that distinction. ...

EASIER SAID THAN DEFINED.(explaining Christology)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Robert Krieg emphasizes the distinction between a "Christology from above" and a "Christology from below." But it seems that making this distinction is misleading. As Krieg admits, any Christology that takes its cue from Chalcedon is bound, in...

SWEET & SOUR : 'John Q.' & 'Storytelling'.
March 22, 2002... Politicians take note: if box office figures reveal what America has on its mind, then it seems we're thinking health care. The hugely successful John Q. stars Denzel Washington as a factory worker whose young son is stricken in the middle of a...

UNDYING 'PASSIONS' : From Bach to Carmen Miranda.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... While new musical compositions of the Passion went out of style by the nineteenth century, recently there has been an unexpected--and largely unexplained--revival of the genre. It began in the aftermath of World War II, after midcentury...

She used to write novels.('A Life')
March 22, 2002... Iris Murdoch A Life Peter J. Conradi W. W. Norton and Co., $35, 706 pp. There was never any good biography of a good novelist," confided Scott Fitzgerald to his notebooks. "There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he is any...

FIRST THINGS.('Who Count as Persons? Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing')
March 22, 2002... Who Count as Persons? Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing John F. Kavanaugh Georgetown University Press, $24.95, 240 pp. John Kavanaugh, S.J., well-known author of the "Ethics Notebook" column for America, has written a book...

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD.(three books)
March 22, 2002... John Maynard Keynes Hopes Betrayed: 1883-1920 Robert Skidelsky Viking, $23, 496 pp. John Maynard Keynes The Economist as Saviour: 1920-1937 Robert Skidelsky Viking, $25, 768 pp. John Maynard Keynes Fighting for Britain:...

Psychology and American Catholicism.
March 22, 2002... Psychology and American Catholicism C. Kevin Gillespie, S.J. Crossroad, $24.95, 214 pp. One need only pay a bit of attention to what passes for spirituality to affirm Phillip Rieff's 1966 argument that therapy was replacing faith in...

Discerning the Signs of the Time: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel.
March 22, 2002... Discerning the Signs of the Time: The Vision of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel Edited by Michael Plekon and Sarah Hinlicky Saint Vladimir Seminary Press, $13.95, 202 pp. Elisabeth Behr-Sigel must be numbered in that illustrious litany. Still...

Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians.
March 22, 2002... Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians Lawrence Kushner Jewish Lights, $12.95, 128 pp. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (not to be confused with Rabbi Harold Kushner, the equally esteemed author of When Bad Things Happen to...

Living Catholicism.
March 22, 2002... Living Catholicism Roderick Strange Paulist Press, $14.95, 143 pp. Roderick Strange is an English diocesan priest who has served as Catholic chaplain at Oxford University and as a parish priest. He is currently the rector of the Beda...

BORDER TOWN.(Matamoros, Mexico)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... * Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the Texas border at Brownsville, the road is hard, dry, and littered with white dust, a byproduct of the neighborhood hydrofluoric-acid plant. This white dust is spread on the roads to keep the dirt down, but...