Commonweal articles from March 2006

Commonweal archives from March 2006

A must-read.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... Congratulations for the perceptive article by John T. Joyce ("The Future of Labor," February 10) and for giving it the room it deserves. I see that you have not posted it on your Web site. Too bad: it should be generally available. ROBERT...

The importance of leisure.(Letters)
March 10, 2006... John T. Joyce's article was provocative and insightful. I especially appreciated his discussion of the works of Joseph Pieper and Romano Guradini. Pieper's book on the importance of leisure seems particularly relevant today. Back in the 1950s...

Labor's woes.(Letters)
March 10, 2006... John T. Joyce's erudite essay on the woes of the union movement focuses on the philosophical and educational aspects of a potential labor revival. I think everyone would agree that the union movement has been in trouble for some time and that...

Racial tensions.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... John T. Joyce's article on labor contains many truths. Yet he, like many, ignores the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. Never once does he mention the prevalence of racism in the labor movement. I hope that Joyce and John Sweeney have...

Challenge accepted.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... Thank you for your superb editorial on Rev. Richard John Neuhaus's ultimatum to the Vatican regarding gay priests and "dissident" theologians ("Wanted: Manly Men," February 10). I have been hoping that you or the editorial staff of America...

Back on dry land.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... Thank you for your illuminating editorial on Pope Benedict XVI's Deus caritas est ("A Distinctive Voice," February 10). No one expects any major doctrinal shift from this new pontificate, but with his first encyclical Benedict has signaled a...

A love story.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... In his review of Brokeback Mountain ("Emotional Apartheid," February 10), Richard Alleva acknowledges that it's not a gay movie, yet he insists that "academy members will vote for it because they regard it as a gay movie that did great box...

A gay film.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2006... Richard Alleva has written one of the best reviews of Brokeback Mountain, particularly in articulating the seamless collaboration of scriptwriters, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and director, Ang Lee. Yet in joining the chorus of critics who...

A nation adrift.(From the Editors)(United States military policy in Iraq)
March 10, 2006... The ultimate consequences of the bombing of the Shia Muslim shrine in Samarra, and the subsequent retaliatory killings that took more than a thousand lives of mostly Sunni Arabs, are unclear. Presumably, the bombers hoped to precipitate an...

ET Cetera go higher.(Editorials & Comment)
March 10, 2006... Every year in early February we list of our generous and loyal Commonweal Associates, without whose support there would be no Commonweal. In the same issue we thank those who support the Commonweal College Subscription Program, which introduces...

Orthodox, Florida.(franchise pizza business)(Editorial)(Brief article)
March 10, 2006... Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza, obviously feels a strong and sincere allegiance to the church. Since selling his franchise pizza business, he has spent millions to found Florida's Ave Maria University. Now he is busy expanding this...

Values & voters: can the Democrats talk straight?(Columnists)
March 10, 2006... New York Times columnist David Brooks recently paid tribute to philosopher Sidney Hook by giving "Hookie" awards to the best essays written in 2005. I'd like to propose the "Moynihans," in honor of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan....

Lift up your voices: congressional Catholic Democrats address the bishops.(Columnists)
March 10, 2006... When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he said some things about Catholic bishops that might, in today's climate, be condemned as insolence toward church authority. "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state...

Breaking the habit: how the U.S. traded freedom for oil.(Short Takes)
March 10, 2006... When President George W. Bush used his State of the Union address to decry U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, he made headlines. Two days later, when Donald Rumsfeld offered an apocalyptic rendering of the global war on terror--"they will...

Fair pay: growing support for a living wage.(Short Takes)
March 10, 2006... Andrew Lustig recently wrote that for nine years the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $5.15 per hour ("Bare Minimum," February 10). That means a minimum-wage worker fortunate enough to secure forty hours of work a week, fifty-two weeks a...

Caring at the end: how the Schiavo case undermined Catholic teaching.(Terri Schiavo)
March 10, 2006... The old adage that hard cases make bad law is often true, but it is also true that hard cases can help crystallize fundamental moral issues. Thus, at the risk of reviving the painful passions that swirled around Terri Schiavo's death, I want to...

Making History: MUNICH' & 'SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS'.(Movie review)
March 10, 2006... Munich warrants controversy but not the controversy it got. Political columnists accused the Steven Spielberg production of morally equating Israeli Mossad agents hunting down terrorists with the terrorists themselves who deliberately target...

Crime & Punishment: 'RABBIT HOLE' & 'SWEENEY TODD'.(Theater review)
March 10, 2006... Don't look for Alice in Wonderland in Rabbit Hole, the profound and heartbreaking new play by David Lindsay-Abaire. The title may hint at Lewis Carroll--and, indeed, a certain Mad Hatter absurdity is what you might expect from this ingenious...

Opiate of the Philosophers.(Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... Breaking the Spell Religion as a Natural Phenomenon Daniel C. Dennett Viking, $25.95, 448 pp. The concept or, if one prefers, the "phenomenon" of religion is evidently somewhat indeterminate. It has clear instances: Judaism,...

Fundamentally Sound.(Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... Our Endangered Values America's Moral Crisis Jimmy Carter Simon & Schuster, $25, 224 pp. Jimmy Carter is often referred to as America's most successful former president. Perhaps he is; the activities and interests he pursues...

Father & Son?(Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... Jesus and Yahweh The Names Divine Harold Bloom Riverhead Books, $24.95, 238 pp. Few American literary intellectuals command more awe in the academy than Harold Bloom, the Yale English professor and scholar whose 1973 book,...

Redeeming Politics.(The Ways of Judgment)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... The Ways of Judgment Oliver O'Donovan Eerdmans, $35, 330 pp. This book, by the (Anglican) Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, is the sequel to and completion of The Desire of the Nations (1996). Taken...

Scholarly Sojourn.(A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... A Season in Mecca Narrative of a Pilgrimage Abdellah Hammoudi Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26, 304 pp. Typically, the study of religion and of religious experience itself are two separate phenomena. The encounter with the sacred...

How They Answered.(Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian, Wisdom on Vocation)(Book review)
March 10, 2006... Callings Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation Edited by William C. Placher Eerdmans, $24, 468 pp. In a collection of writings, published posthumously as Waiting for God, Simone Weil confessed: "Nothing among...

Unlikely heroes.(The Last Word)(The Ringer)(Movie review)
March 10, 2006... In one scene from The Ringer, the recent Farrelly brothers' movie (There's Something about Mary, Dumb and Dumber), a gang of Special Olympics athletes clad in nothing more than towels, leads an exuberant steamroom dance. It's my...

Soul food.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... I was pleased to read that Luke Timothy Johnson plans to bless us with a series of essays designed to raise our spirits in what seems a prolonged winter of discontent ("A Good Word," February 24). As a Lenten exercise, I'm trying to fast from...

Murray's long winter.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... I applaud your intellectual courage in publishing Luke Timothy Johnson's article "After the Big Chill" (January 27). His vision of "a healthy balance between magisterial authority and theological inquiry" merits the attention of every bishop...

Ryan & the living wage.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... In "Bare Minimum" (February 10), Andrew Lustig observes: "Don't confuse our arguments about a minimum wage with Catholic musing about a living wage. The two are not the same." Confusion between the two began with Msgr. John A. Ryan. To show how...

Labor's basic principles.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... John Joyce's "Labor's Future" (February 10) may be one of the most important articles you have printed in recent years. I have been active in the teachers union (UUP) for more than twenty-five years and was president of the Stony Brook...

Making lists.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... Timothy P. Schilling in his review of Belonging to God ("Getting into Shape," February 24) criticizes the author, Charles Murphy, for "making up lists as spiritual aids: 'the five spiritual principles,' Augustine's 'four elements,'" etc....

Better late ...(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... I've finally read Mark Stricherz's brilliant history of the alienation of Catholic voters from the Democratic Party ("Goodbye, Catholics," November 4, 2005). It is the most important, incisive commentary on this subject that I've seen. I knew,...

Defending Mel.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2006... I object to the terse way in which Lawrence S. Cunningham, while praising Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, offhandedly dismissed Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ as "awful" ("Religion Booknotes," January 13). Christ the Lord is...

Abandoned children.(From the Editors)(Editorial)
March 24, 2006... In any given year, tragedy, family dysfunction, poverty, neglect, and abuse separate hundreds of thousands of children from their birth parents. Where adoption cannot be arranged, many of these children find themselves moved from one...

When does life begin? Two prolife philosophers disagree.(Columnists)
March 24, 2006... My esteemed Notre Dame colleague, John Finnis, will receive the third annual Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics from the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC), a conservative Christian think tank. Paul Ramsey (1913-88) was a pioneer...

Pied piper of Dehra Doon: the music of Charlie King.(Columnists)(Column)
March 24, 2006... For the past twenty-five years, I have dreamed that one day I would convince Charlie King, the American folk singer and social-change activist, to come for a visit to India. Somehow I would find the money to make it possible. Charlie and I have...

A desecrated land: the view from the Mount of Olives.(Short Take)
March 24, 2006... The Mount of Olives, like every piece of real estate in or near Jerusalem, particularly the walled-in Old City, is layered with historical, political, and theological significance. The Mount, situated to the northeast across the Kidron Valley,...

The Catholic voter: a description with recommendations.
March 24, 2006... During the 2004 election, some bishops insisted that Catholics should obey church teachings in deciding how to vote. Some bishops even declared that prochoice Catholic politicians should be denied Communion. The ensuing public controversies...

Holy alliance? The danger of mixing politics & religion.(John F. Kennedy, catholicism)
March 24, 2006... In September 1960, John F. Kennedy gave one of the most memorable speeches of his political career to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Kennedy addressed this group because Protestants, especially evangelical Protestants, were deeply...

The Annunciation.(Poem)(Brief article)
March 24, 2006... Once said and the seed implanted, where did the angel go? It could not stay no matter how the arch of roses and the amaryllis in the brown pot drew its eyes away from paradise where there are no pots and no flowers but riddle of...

Displaced person: 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada'.(Screen)(Movie review)
March 24, 2006... The Tex-Mex Western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Tommy Lee Jones, is like a guided tour so ineptly planned by travel agents that the bus keeps breaking down, wrong roads are taken, and...

Out of the ashes.(Books)(Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)(Book review)
March 24, 2006... Postwar A History of Europe Since 1945 Tony Judt Penguin Press, $39.95, 896 pp. In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth's play Der Stellvertreter (in English, The Deputy) opened in Berlin, unleashing a wave of controversy with its depiction...

Does character count?(Books)(Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics)(Book review)
March 24, 2006... Public Philosophy Essays on Morality in Politics Michael J. Sandel Harvard University Press, $25.95, 304 pp. Michael Sandel is a leading political philosopher and public intellectual. In his first major book, Liberalism and...

Loyal opposition.(Books)(The Intellectuals and the Flag)(Book review)
March 24, 2006... The Intellectuals and the Flag Todd Gitlin Columbia University Press, $24.95, 192 pp. Every time I read something by Todd Gitlin, I realize again how much he and I have in common. We are roughly the same age and grew up Jewish. We...

Religion booknotes.(Books)(Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven)(Book review)
March 24, 2006... Jean-Luc Barre's biography of Jacques and Raissa Maritain presents a lyrical account of two of the most significant Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century. From the time the two first met as students in Paris, one could not imagine a...

Trust the laity.(The Good Word)
March 24, 2006... It is a teaching moment that happens in every seminary. The professor has finished presenting some difficult point in theology, Scripture, or history. Perhaps the issue is that human language is inadequate to describe God, or that there are...