Commonweal articles from May 2002

Commonweal archives from May 2002

To the Editors.(Letter to the Editor)
May 3, 2002... What's needed I commend Commonweal for its editorials on the Catholic Church's sex-abuse crisis ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8, and "The Whole Story," April 5). Considering the "frenzy" of the moment, they were the most balanced...

When in Rome.(Brief Article)
May 3, 2002... As we go to press, thirteen U.S. cardinals are meeting with the pope and his advisers in an effort to formulate a response and a policy that can restore the church's credibility in the wake of the sex-abuse scandal. Will this extraordinary...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
May 3, 2002... We regret our failure, in the February 8 issue listing of the Commonweal Associates, to include the names of Benefactors William & Mary Ann Ford, N.J., and of Sustaining member Edward A. Marcil, N.Y. We apologize to these generous Associates....

ET CETERA.(Pentecost)(Brief Article)
May 3, 2002... Prayers for the church * Nicholas Clifford and Dennis O'Brien, two frequent contributors to Commonweal, have proposed that Sunday May 19, 2002, the Feast of Pentecost, be considered a special day of prayer for the reform of the Catholic Church....

James Finn, R.I.P.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
May 3, 2002... James Finn, who served as a Commonweal editor from 1955 to 1961, died on March 20, 2002 in New York City. Jim remained a good friend as well as a steady contributor to these pages long after he left the staff. In his years at Commonweal, his...

MARRIED PRIESTS? It works for the Orthodox.(Brief Article)
May 3, 2002... We must pray for the strength of the Catholic Church," an Orthodox monk once told me. "If they collapse we will look pretty foolish, and we'll be alone." He was referring to his disappointment at the anti-Catholicism he had encountered on Mount...

PRIMARY BOOMER : Bill Clinton as scapegoat.(Brief Article)
May 3, 2002... The tall, gray-haired man walking purposefully down the hall at Commonweal's old Dutch Street offices looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until he was within a few feet of me that I recognized the famous face. In 1968 novelist Norman Mailer...

LOOKING FOR SIMONE : Saint of estrangement.(Simone Weil)
May 3, 2002... It took twenty-seven years, much longer than I'd imagined when I made this promise to myself, but last October, during my first trip to England, I visited Simone Weil's grave. This is not, I realize, on the standard itinerary for one's first...

'THE LONG LONELINESS' AT 50 : Dorothy Day's enduring autobiography.
May 3, 2002... Dorothy Day was a material girl." My seminar students laughed when I said that in the middle of a discussion of The Long Loneliness, but I wasn't trying to be clever. Fifty years after its first publication, two generations past its initial...

WHY & HOW DAY WROTE IT.(Dorothy Day)
May 3, 2002... One afternoon in 1949 Dorothy Day took the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island. When she was in her twenties, she had owned a beach cottage on the island, and the ferry ride, as much as the cottage itself, had become a retreat. In the coming...

BETWEEN THE LINES.
May 3, 2002... In a brief letter to the editors (November 3, 1939) commending Commonweal on the occasion of its fifteenth anniversary, Dorothy Day wrote that Catholic Worker cofounder Peter Maurin "always says that it is the duty of the journalist to make...

STAGE STRUCK : 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty' & 'The Last Five Years'.
May 3, 2002... Life is a performance that, for most of us, is all too rarely broken by applause. You're out of the spotlight--or, even worse, you're in it--or you're waiting in the wings, or botching your big scene, or playing a bit part in a scheme whose...

TRUE CONFESSIONS : Fifteen years of 'Biography'.
May 3, 2002... The A&E television series "Biography," now in its fifteenth year, has become a many-tentacled phenomenon. There are Biography magazine, a line of books, a Web site, videos, and even a cable channel. The last seems redundant since A&E itself...

Easier said than done.(A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide)
May 3, 2002... A Problem from Hell America and the Age of Genocide Samantha Power Basic Books, $30, 610 pp. Genocide is the problem from hell. Right behind it is the problem of getting anyone to do anything about it. Samantha Power surveys the...

SOCIETIES OF JESUS.(Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits)
May 3, 2002... Passionate Uncertainty Inside the American Jesuits Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi University of California Press, $29.95, 380 pp. Passionate Uncertainty is a disappointing book. This is something of a surprise because...

THE LIES OF NOVELISTS.(Atonement)
May 3, 2002... Atonement Ian McEwan Doubleday, $26, 351 pp. English writer Ian McEwan has built his house of fiction in traditional patterns, seemingly avoiding forms of postmodern construction. In his novels, stories, and plays, McEwan has...

BETHLEHEM NOW.(report from administrator of Bethlehem's Holy Family Hospital)(Brief Article)
May 3, 2002... Friday, April 5, 2002. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reoccupied Bethlehem in the early morning hours of April 2. A gun battle in the center of town ended with some three hundred persons taking refuge in the Church of the Nativity. Among them...

To the Editors.
May 17, 2002... Bishops 1, Cardinals 0 Regarding your May 3 editorial "When in Rome": The Protestant churches seem to manage nicely with only bishops. Who needs cardinals anyway (except for Saint Louis)? DORIS R. ASMUNDSSON East Elmhurst, N.Y. ...

When in Dallas.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... When the Catholic bishops meet in Dallas, June 13-15, they face a daunting task. They have three days to respond convincingly to a scandal that has escalated out of control and done great damage to the people of God. What the bishops do is of...

LAWLESS IN BOSTON.(Cardinal Bernard Law)(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... The longer the sexual-abuse crisis continues, the more Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston shows himself to be arrogant and obtuse, a man lacking both pastoral and common sense. Whatever his direct responsibility for the sexual abuse scandal before...

ET CETERA.(priest sex abuse scandal)(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... Dunwoodie Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y. * From a special correspondent: "On April 29, Cardinal Edward Egan met with some five hundred priests of the Archdiocese of New York in response to his invitation 'for prayer and discussion concerning the...

George G. Higgins, R.I.P.(Obituary)
May 17, 2002... Monsignor George G. Higgins, who died on May 1, 2002, at age eighty-six, was a leading public figure in U.S. Catholicism for almost sixty years. Known as "the labor priests' priest," no one played--or is likely to play again--such a public role...

Continuing the conversation.(Jesuits)
May 17, 2002... Jesuits in denial Well over a decade ago, while researching my first book on the Society of Jesus, I happened to be sitting in an office at Jesuit headquarters in Rome. The occupant of the office was visibly agitated. Malachi Martin's book...

SNAKE IN THE CHURCH : Clean up or run away?(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... The current sexual abuse crisis in the American church reminds me of the time we saw a dangerous snake go into our garage here in India. We knew it was in there, but we could think of no safe way to approach it. Everything we came up with...

FOREIGN AID : Who gets it & why.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... Foreign aid is back. Long ostracized in economic development circles as a necessary evil or simply as a wasteful budget item, economic assistance to poor nations has again become fashionable, due in large measure to the war on terrorism. The...

CHURCH & STATE : Sexual abuses & the First Amendment.
May 17, 2002... Headlines across the nation reveal a fascinating irony: courts, citing the First Amendment, are stripping the Catholic Church of secrecy surrounding its internal workings. Allegations of sexual abuse by priests are not new phenomena. What is...

AMERICAN DESTINY : Safe for the rest of the world?
May 17, 2002... Contrary to what usually is claimed in Washington, American foreign policy has rarely been directed by calculations of national interest. That policy is shaped by nationalism, fear, consideration of commercial interests, political ideology, or...

CAMPING OUT : 'Sing-A-Long Sound of Music'.
May 17, 2002... Sing-A-Long Sound of Music modifies Robert Wise's 1965 film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical for audience participation, a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The phenomenon began three years ago in London, hit New York last fall,...

U-turn on affirmative action.(The Anatomy of Racial Inequality)
May 17, 2002... The Anatomy of Racial Inequality Glenn Loury Harvard University Press, $22.95, 219 pp. At the center of Glenn Loury's argument in this dense, difficult, and challenging book is the concept of "racial stigma." That concept is best...

PASTORAL.(By the Lake)
May 17, 2002... By the Lake John McGahern Alfred A. Knopf, $24, 336 pp. John McGahern's latest novel, the first since his celebrated Amongst Women won several awards and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize a decade ago, continues in the lyrical...

SWEPT OFF HIS FEET.(Thirty Days on Retreat with the Exercises of Saint Ignatius)
May 17, 2002... Thirty Days on Retreat with the Exercises of Saint Ignatius Paul Mariani Viking Compass, $23.95, 279 pp. I got up and rushed to the window, prying open the outer aluminum storm window, and greedily sucked in all the air I could. It...

A WAY FORWARD.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2002... Each Sunday, we declare in the creed that the church is "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic." Many of us these days find it hard to think of the church as holy. The news about the sexual abuse practiced by the clergy and covered up by the...