Commonweal articles from March 2007

Commonweal archives from March 2007

Who was paid?(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... I have never watched The Sopranos but Cathleen Kaveny's discussion of religious redemption in the show ("Salvation & 'The Sopranos,'" February 9) grabbed my attention. In the article, Kaveny uses St. Anselm's theory on how the death of...

Seriously?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... Do you still want to be considered a serious magazine covering "Religion, Politics, and Culture" after publishing a five-page article on redemption in TV's The Sopranos? I've been reading Commonweal since the 1950s and I can't remember anything...

A predicament.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... Cathleen Kaveny's article makes a person wonder which is stronger, sin or the love of Christ? What if a dying Tony Soprano were to call a priest to his side, confess, and say, "Absolve me, Father, please. I don't want to be damned." What would...

Our responsibility.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... As a veteran, the best friend to a mother whose son is in Iraq, an American, and a citizen of the world, I accept the responsibility David O'Brien writes of in his recent article ("What We Have Done," February 9). But we need to do more than...

Not in his name.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... David O'Brien made too broad a statement when he wrote that "Iraq remains our war and that our servicemen and servicewomen kill, not for President Bush but for the country, for all of us." Before Bush launched this war there was the largest...

Haight's insight.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... Thank you for the clarity and insight of Paul Lakeland's apologia for Roger Haight ("Not So Heterodox," January 26). I doubt that it will change or convince those who continue to condemn him. But I have no doubt that history will smile on...

Getting closer.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2007... As a post-Vatican II Catholic married to a Jewish woman, I was intrigued by Peter Phan's article "Praying to the Buddha" (January 26). Although Phan rightly deemphasizes theological dialogue in favor of the more important and pervading...

Not again.(Bush administration)(Editorial)
March 9, 2007... The Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq demonstrated its extraordinary capacity for self-deception. The White House rushed to grim conclusions about Iraq's weapons program in advance of the facts. Afterward, when it became clear that...

Bush's budget: bait & switch, again.(Columnists)
March 9, 2007... It was one of those moments when a public official gives away a larger truth by offering what seems to be a throwaway line. Testifying last month on President George W. Bush's budget, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. suggested he would...

What the heart was made for: the theological legacy of John S. Dunne.(Columnists)
March 9, 2007... In the index of any book by John S. Dunne, CSC, you can find Martin Buber bumping right up against Ray Bradbury, and Sartre all cozy with--well, Satan. Tolkien and Tolstoy must be old friends by now. "I appreciate that he draws from many...

The Gentle Darwinians: what Darwin's champions won't mention.(Article)
March 9, 2007... A few lines of poetry, the selected aphorisms of a retired man of letters, may liberate the demon of a charismatic political leader. The whole imaginative and intellectual life of a culture is one interacting...

Two poems.(Poem)
March 9, 2007... Jan Vermeer: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663) She travels toward him only so far as her hands have traveled the map so far as her hands have traveled the contours of his body. His voice fills the room as though he...

Literature & revolution: Tom Stoppard's 'The Coast of Utopia'.(Stage)(Theater review)
March 9, 2007... An ice-colored likeness of St. Basil's, the famed Russian church, seems to float in the air during part of Voyage, the first installment of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center Theater. The onion domes glitter, apparently molded...

Stories Have Consequences.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... Christ Killers The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen Jeremy Cohen Oxford University Press, $29.95, 336 pp. Has any relationship between world faiths been more fraught with ambivalence than that between...

Not a Supernatural Boy Scout.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil Brian Davies Continuum, $24.95, 224 pp. Brian Davies has written an excellent volume on God and evil. The book is remarkable in a number of ways, including its brevity (given the subject...

More than a Bargain.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... The Erotic Phenomenon Jean-Luc Marion Translated by Stephen E. Lewis University of Chicago Press, $35, 248 pp. Erotic love is interesting to almost everyone. We endlessly write and talk about it, delight in it, and worry about...

Duty & Delight.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... The Freedom of a Christian Grace, Vocation, and the Meaning of Our Humanity Gilbert Meilaender Brazos Press, $22.99, 192 pp. The Way That Leads There Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life Gilbert Meilaender...

California Dreamin'.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith Anne Lamott Riverhead Books, $24.95, 272 pp. I should start by admitting that a few years ago I fell in love with Anne Lamott, and it was hard not to. Admittedly, this was from something...

Let's Keep Talking.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... Interfaith Dialogue A Catholic View Michael L. Fitzgerald and John Borelli Orbis Books. $25, 192 pp. After Vatican II, ecumenical dialogue and interreligious dialogue became central to the life of the church. No one expressed...

Vision Quest.(Book review)
March 9, 2007... New Wine, New Wineskins A Next Generation Reflects on Key Issues in Catholic Moral Theology Edited by William C. Mattison III Sheed & Ward, $24.95, 224 pp. Younger theologians find themselves at a cultural distance from their older...

Talk of the town.(The Last Word)
March 9, 2007... Some New Yorkers weren't sorry to see it go. Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror, installed last fall on the Fifth Avenue side of Rockefeller Center's promenade, had promised to be a striking presence. Kapoor first came to public notice in the 1980s...

Making room.(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... Commonweal, a solid and consistent intellectual journal, bows to devotional Catholicism. I was fascinated with Mathew Schmalz on Audrey Santo ("The Saint of Worcester," February 23). He takes us somewhere we are seldom led. Of course, I...

Exotic or repulsive?(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... At least Mathew Schmalz has the awareness to mention "Catholic exoticism" as a term for the Audrey Santo phenomenon. The same term might be used to describe his article. I do appreciate the effort to explore the connection between mental...

Why I stay a subscriber.(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... "Why I Stay Catholic" (Jerry Ryan, February 23) makes a year's subscription a bargain. Will his essay be part of an anthology on spirituality? I hope so. GARY YOUNG, CR Nazareth, Ky.

Iraq's other casualties.(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... David O'Brien does well to remind us of our complicity in the war in Iraq ("What We Have Done," February 9). Although the recent midterm elections may be interpreted as a repudiation of the administration's "stay the course" policy, even...

No 'metanoia' for Tony.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... In her article "Salvation & 'The Sopranos'" (February 9), Cathleen Kaveny, quoting St. Paul, asks how human beings can be redeemed. Paul's answer: Redemption is for all and occurs as a result of Christ's death and Resurrection. For human beings...

The author responds.(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... My article used The Sopranos to argue that Americans are deeply engaged with two interrelated questions: First, what does redemption look like? And second, does it really exist? Season 5 explored several ways of understanding redemption widely...

The Golden rule.(Letter to the editor)
March 23, 2007... Thanks for Paul Lakeland's irenic rejoinder to some critical reviews--including Commonweal's--of Roger Haight's important recent books on Christology and ecclesiology ("Not So Heterodox," January 26). It makes sense to me to be grateful,...

Disarray.(Walter Reed Army Medical Center (Washington, D.C.))(Editorial)
March 23, 2007... Beleaguered is the polite word now most often used to describe the Bush administration. Yet making sense of the administration's failures requires stronger language. As the events and revelations of the last few weeks remind us, almost nothing...

Shutting the door: how not to close a parish.(Edward M. Egan)(Editorial)
March 23, 2007... Soon after Cardinal Edward M. Egan became archbishop of New York, a Catholic publication asked me to write a piece about the state of the archdiocese. "What is its most pressing problem?" the editor wanted to know. "The archbishop's...

Through a lens brightly: what photography teaches us.(Column)
March 23, 2007... I have been taking photographs for most of my adult life. With no technical knowledge of f-stops, apertures, or how to work with light and shadow, I have still stumbled into taking some fine pictures. A nice camera, the right moment, and blind...

All in the family: when should the state intervene?(Short Take)
March 23, 2007... When is it proper for the state to intervene in a family on behalf of a child's well-being? Most Americans agree that the state can, and should, remove a child from physically abusive parents. What about parents who relentlessly mock the sexual...

The two Afghanistans: a veiled culture adapts to modernity.
March 23, 2007... In Afghanistan, every time we start any new thing, we say Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim--in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate," declared my twenty-eight-year-old friend Raz Muhammad. "In the Taliban time, there was one soldier...

The Cosmos Says.(Poem)
March 23, 2007... The doors between the worlds at equinox declare themselves. A perfect stretch of day matches a perfect stretch of night, & the fissure of equipoise at the doors you cannot unlock widens. Wake up. Watch the pitch of time display hour by...

Look to tradition: the case for electing bishops.
March 23, 2007... A cross Canada and the United States, many Catholic dioceses are without bishops, and nearly thirty more could be without bishops this year if all those eligible to retire do so. Vacancies are piling up as the system that produces appointments...

The other abolitionists: 'Amazing Grace'.(Screen)(Movie review)
March 23, 2007... For American moviegoers, Amazing Grace fills an amazing gap in popular knowledge. We may leave the theater wondering why its hero's name, William Wilberforce, has not become a byword for stubborn courage and liberating zeal, the way Frederick...

Just-so therapy.(The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry)(Book review)
March 23, 2007... The Mind Has Mountains Reflections on Society and Psychiatry Paul R. McHugh The Johns Hopkins University Press, $25, 272 pp. The Mind Has Mountains is a long and uneven feast of a book made up of seventeen essay-length...

Altered states.(The Echo Maker)(Book review)
March 23, 2007... The Echo Maker Richard Powers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 464 pp. In the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes of how believers will inherit the Kingdom of God on the last day, which he...

More than a resume.(The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)(Book review)
March 23, 2007... The Audacity of Hope Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream Barack Obama Crown, $25, 376 pp. There hasn't been a book by an active politician as popular as The Audacity of Hope since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage...

Religion booknotes.(Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts And Contemporary Debates)(Christianity and the Transformation of the Book)(Do We Worship the Same God?: Comparing the Bible And the Qur'an)(Bede Griffiths: Friend and Gift of the Spirit)(Book review)
March 23, 2007... Originally published in Great Britain in 2002, this American edition of John Wijngaards's study of women deacons is a work of polemical scholarship. Its basic thesis is that for nearly a millennium women in the Eastern Church were ordained to...

Quantos Sao?(The Last Word)
March 23, 2007... Before I spent Holy Week in the Azores seven years ago, what little I knew about the islands and their people was based on my husband's tales of having been stationed there as a lieutenant in the Portuguese Navy. I had my own later experience...