Commonweal articles from March 2005

Commonweal archives from March 2005

Defending Social Security.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Charles Morris's "Just the Facts" (February 11) is an exceptionally clear and cogent analysis of the current debate over Social Security. As Morris points out, proposals to divert up to half of Social Security payroll taxes to private accounts...

A crisis exists.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Charles Morris's assertion that there is no Social Security crisis is simply untrue. Morris writes that after 2018 "the trust funds will have to start digging into their accumulated surpluses," which he claims have been mounting for the last...

Where virtue lies.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Fr. William Byron's article on finding a middle ground in the abortion debate ("Prolife & Prochoice," February 11) was one of the most thoughtful pieces I have ever read. It exemplifies perfectly a dictum frequently articulated by my old Latin...

Casey & Clinton.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... In his article on the Democratic Party and abortion, Fr. William Byron repeats the story (often heard on Fox News) of how Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was barred from speaking at the 1992 Democratic National Convention "because of his...

Where's the outrage?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Your editorial "Torture's Apologists" (February 11) was most welcome. The shattering revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere provoked loud cries of outrage from both parties, which soon died down. I was surprised that the issue was not...

A gay subculture?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Regarding Gerard Thomas's article on gay priests ("A Gay Priest Speaks Out," January 28): I confess deep conflict about this matter. I believe the church's teaching on homosexuality is misguided and misinformed. Nonetheless, I also believe that...

Fight or flight.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... Thank you for Benedicta Cipolla's essay on the two approaches to religiously motivated investing ("Stock Options," January 28). The perennial issue of "fight or flight" is a thorny one when it comes to corporation finances. The choice between...

Carp on.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2005... In a recent letter, Peter Riga complained "I do not understand why Commonweal is still carping about the war in Iraq" (Correspondence, February 11). Commonweal does not need me to defend it, but I want Mr. Riga to know that this reader is...

The color purple.(Editorial)
March 11, 2005... Lent is a time to take stock, confess sins, and, when necessary, begin anew. It is fitting, then, that the U.S. Catholic bishops have chosen Lent to issue their reports on the church's catastrophic sexual-abuse crisis. This year's report from...

Merton: persona non grata?(ET CETERA)(new catechism approved)
March 11, 2005... Brace yourselves, young-adult Catholics (are you out there?): the U.S. bishops have written and approved a new catechism aimed squarely at you. The idea of composing a catechism specifically tailored for the United States had been percolating...

Closing Catholic schools.(ET CETERA)(Brief Article)
March 11, 2005... Recent reports that a large number of Catholic schools in New York City and Chicago will close at the end of the year weren't that surprising (inner-city Catholic schools have been in financial trouble for years); but it was saddening...

Addendum.(Correction Notice)
March 11, 2005... The February 11 listing of the 2004 Commonweal Associates failed to include the following members: Patron: In Memory of Francis & Theresa Greene Straulman (MO); Charter: Bill & Laura Caldwell (OH), Michael & Barbara Toohig (VA); Sustaining:...

Christo's 'Gates': an unexpected pleasure.(Columnists)(Column)
March 11, 2005... It may seem pointless, and in a lovely way it is, to install a series of frames containing large hanging saffron rectangles over twenty-three miles of Central Park pathways. But after years of trying, in February the artists Christo and...

Exporting democracy: imperialism by another name?(Columnists)(Column)
March 11, 2005... Because the United States was founded on Enlightenment ideas, and nationalism is usually connected to romantic notions of terrain, history, and a unique cultural experience, little is ordinarily said about American nationalism. But, of course,...

Protect the rich: how Bush will 'reform' Social Security.(Columnists)(George W. Bush)(Column)
March 11, 2005... Of all the arguments for cutting and privatizing Social Security, the most obnoxious and misleading focus on the alleged "greed" of senior citizens--present and future. Arguments that are false in their conclusion often contain grains of...

Irish Catholicism: what will it become?(Short Take)
March 11, 2005... Young People of Ireland, I love you" must surely be one of the most memorable phrases uttered in recent Irish history. Pope John Paul II spoke these words during the youth Mass he celebrated in Galway in 1979. Last September, the twenty-fifth...

A historian's faith & hope: Eamon Duffy & the uses of tradition.(Faith of Our Fathers)(Book Review)
March 11, 2005... Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, is one of those rare scholars who are both commanding presences in their fields and frequent contributors to magazines and journals aimed at the common...

Our greatest threat: the coming nuclear crisis.
March 11, 2005... When the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could hardly have been imagined that nearly sixty years later 34,145 nuclear weapons would be in existence. In a long career as a parliamentarian, diplomat, and educator, I have...

Tortured genius: the miracle of Caravaggio's art.(Art)(Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio)
March 11, 2005... Claims of a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to see the works of a popular artistic genius rightfully merit skepticism. But when they come from an acknowledged authority like Keith Christiansen, curator of European paintings at New York's...

The Catholic thing.(Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them)(Book Review)
March 11, 2005... Between Heaven and Earth The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them Robert A. Orsi Princeton University Press, $26.95, 256 pp. It's Saturday morning in Indiana and I am at church. The occasion is my...

Divorced from Reality.(A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching)(Book Review)
March 11, 2005... A Church That Can and Cannot Change The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching John T. Noonan University of Notre Dame Press, $30, 284 pp. On May 5, 1888, Leo XIII issued the document In plurimus addressed to the bishops of...

Calls to action.(Faith That Dares to Speak)(Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church)(Book Review)
March 11, 2005... Faith That Dares to Speak Donald Cozzens Liturgical Press, $19.95, 138 pp. Common Calling The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church Stephen J. Pope, editor Georgetown University Press, $26.95, 272 pp. It...

Christian scientists.(Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality)(Book Review)
March 11, 2005... Science and the Trinity The Christian Encounter with Reality John Polkinghorne Yale University Press, $24, 184, pp. It is not easy to know how to adapt Christian tradition to the wide reach of modern science. Science's...

End time.(The Last Word)
March 11, 2005... My mother, Marybeth, was born in Troy, New York, in 1935. She was raised in the shadow of one of Troy's fourteen Catholic churches, raised her six children in the same church's shadow, and died there last spring. Though she was a Vatican II...

Finding 'The Way'.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... I have read many analyses of Opus Dei, but none more charitable and rational than Alvaro Silva's ("My Life in Opus Dei," February 25). His name can now be listed alongside Vladimir Felzmann, John Roche, Michael Walsh, Joan Estruch, Maria Carmen...

Not reactionary.(Letters)
March 25, 2005... Alvaro Silva claims that Opus Dei is a reactionary group unwilling to accept the changes put forth by Pope John XXIII. Yet I know married members of Opus Dei who embrace Vatican II, finding validation for their quest for holiness in the Decree...

Better than the rest.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... Charles R. Morris's article on the proposed changes in Social Security ("Just the Facts," February 11) was very well done--better than what one gets from reading the New York Times. This opinion comes from a retired economics professor, who...

Privatize Social Security.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... In your editorial on Social Security ("Social Insecurity," February 25), you criticize the president's proposal to create personal retirement accounts. Your chief objection seems to be that stocks and bonds are risky. Yet every plan I have...

Sing a song.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... John Garvey's column in praise of group singing ("Sing Out," February 11) led me to think about my local music club, a group of professional musicians who meet regularly for performance and a good time. Other than our annual Christmas meeting,...

Waiting for Haight.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... Roger Haight's Jesus: Symbol of God was published more than five years ago, but I didn't pay any attention to it until the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith gave it all that free publicity (see "Haight Redux," February 25). Now I can...

A reason for hope.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... God bless you for introducing me to Gregory Maguire ("Hopeful Still," February 25). When I consider, again, leaving the church, I reread his words and am strengthened by his faithfulness and critical love for the church. I would like more,...

Gay priests & women.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2005... Thanks to Fr. Gerard Thomas for his poignant article on being a gay priest ("A Gay Priest Speaks Out," January 28). As may happen to gay men in the future, women are already excluded from the presbyterate because of the way God created us. The...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
March 25, 2005... Leon Bloy wrote the memorable phrase "the only sadness is not to be a saint," not Charles Peguy, as stated in Alvaro Silva's "My Life in Opus Dei" (February 25).

What bootstraps?(From the Editors)(Editorial)
March 25, 2005... Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an expression that has a profound resonance for Americans. We like to think of this country as a "land of opportunity," where anyone can "get ahead" by dint of hard work. The historical record does...

A million flowers: remembering archbishop Romero.(Editor's Notebook)(Oscar Arnulfo Romero)
March 25, 2005... The single bullet tore into his chest and shattered his spine. He was sixty-three at the time, but had been at his particular job for only three years. In that short period, he had been awarded two honorary doctorates, received numerous death...

Crime or tragedy? Murder & suicide at Villanova.(Columnists)
March 25, 2005... On January 20, 2005, Villanova University dedicated a memorial to the late Professor Mine Ener, director of the university's Center for Arab and Islamic Studies. The last six months of Mine's life, and the circumstances of her death, had shaken...

Learning curve: the emergence of prolife Democrats.(Columnists)
March 25, 2005... Why are George W. Bush and his party so skillful in dealing with the abortion issue, and why are Democrats so clumsy? It turns out that Democrats willing to grapple seriously with these questions risk getting seriously trashed. It makes you...

Scandal 101: what I learned teaching the sexual-abuse crisis.(Education Issue)
March 25, 2005... Toward the end of the first week of teaching my course "The Crisis in the Church," one of my more thoughtful students--let's call him Steve--came up to me after class. "What do you think you are doing?" Steve said, mustering as much respect in...

How to save Catholic schools: let the revitalization begin.(Education Issue)
March 25, 2005... When the definitive history of American Catholicism is written, inner-city Catholic elementary schools will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of the U.S. church. At their outset, these schools served the children of...

Corruption & transcendence: the films of Carl Dreyer.(Screen)(Carl Theodor Dreyer)(Biography)
March 25, 2005... We all know which movies to watch for Christmas, but what about Easter? Are you really satisfied with all those films about prophets treading over desert sand? No, the cinematic companion you need for Passiontide is the Danish director Carl...

How do you plead? 'The Controversy' & 'Judas Iscariot'.(Stage)(The Controversy of Valladolid, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot)(Theater Review)
March 25, 2005... Utter the words "theatrical" and "trial" these days, and four-fifths of the populace will think of Michael Jackson. But a world away from that media circus, an off-Broadway theater has been giving the concept of courtroom theater a far...

Tragic Flaws.(Book Review)
March 25, 2005... The Pontiff in Winter Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II John Cornwell Doubleday, $24.95, 336 pp. John Cornwell is best known for his controversial Hitler's Pope (1999). As I prepared to review his assessment of...

What Comes Next?(Book Review)
March 25, 2005... Life after Death A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion Alan F. Segal Doubleday, $37.50, 866 pp. What accounts for the abiding interest in the possibility of existence after our earthly demise? Many of us still wonder...

On the Couch.(Book Review)
March 25, 2005... Jews and the American Soul Human Nature in the Twentieth Century Andrew H. Heinze Princeton University Press, $29.95, 376 pp. One of the more remarkable revelations of Andrew Heinze's Jews and the American Soul is that a...

Fast times.(The Last Word)
March 25, 2005... Because of my Catholic education (first grade through graduate school), I am, at seventy, a deeply religious liberal. The Sisters of St. Joseph who presided over my grammar school actually taught us grammar, the foundation of the liberal arts...