Commonweal articles from May 2003

Commonweal archives from May 2003

To the editors.
May 9, 2003... Poor analysis Regarding Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's "The War So Far" (April 11): When I read Commonweal, I expect to see perceptive, incisive, and original writing, but such qualifiers could scarcely be applied to Steinfels's piece....

War & partisan politics.
May 9, 2003... A French Catholic journalist and priest recently visited Commonweal's office (don't tell Attorney General John Ashcroft about this possible collaboration with the "enemy"). Naturally the conversation turned to the war in Iraq, the...

Et cetera.
May 9, 2003... Follow the money * Tax fraud costs the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Individual taxpayers rip off the government for $132 billion annually. A recent study estimated that small business owners are among the worst...

Continuing the conversation.
May 9, 2003... Another voice I would like to join the conversation begun by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels (December 20, 2002) and continued by David O'Brien (February 14, 2003) and others on what is to be done regarding the crisis in the U.S. Catholic Church....

A time whose idea has come: Dick Gephardt offers voters a choice. (Of Several Minds).
May 9, 2003... Some of the Democrats running for president have found an issue that's gotten them really worked up. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, called the idea in question "totally impractical" and "much too expensive." Florida Senator Bob...

Intelligent design: don't count on it. (Of Several Minds).
May 9, 2003... I once had to suffer through the attempt of an atheist friend to explain to me, and to others too polite to flee him, exactly why religious people are religious. It was all standard stuff: unresolved childhood security issues, an inability to...

A real racket: Now's scheme to silence abortion protest.
May 9, 2003... On February 27, the day after the Supreme Court handed down its 8-1 decision overturning a federal racketeering conviction of anti-abortion protesters, I happened to get on the New York subway with one of the West Side's more repugnant prolife...

The language of redemption: the Catholic poets Adam Zagajewski, Marie Ponsot & Lawrence Joseph.
May 9, 2003... Wallace Stevens, one of the great modernist poets of the last century, wrote that "after one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is the essence which takes its place as life's redemption." Yet, modernism--the period of literary innovation...

The Wolf and the Lamb.
May 9, 2003... The Wolf and the Lamb (Fables, I, 10) La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleur. The strongest reasons are the reasons of the strong. It's so--as we'll show before long. A lamb was drinking quietly Close to...

History lite: Goldhagen, the Holocaust & the truth.
May 9, 2003... Before the war with Iraq there were at least three petitions, which gathered thousands of signatures, that the pope should take up residence in Baghdad as hostage against the American bombing of the city. Forty years from now, when the reasons...

Canonizing Pius XII: why did the pope help Nazis escape?
May 9, 2003... The past, a historian once ironically remarked, is unpredictable. Certainly, much of what happened in World War II falls into that category, including the saga of Pope Pius XII. Some historians view the record of his long papacy (1939-58) and...

Games people play: 'Laurel Canyon' & "Bend It Like Beckham'. (Screen).
May 9, 2003... What's the best way of rebelling against your parents when they happen to belong to a minority? By joining the majority, of course. Consider two new movies that show what happens when a whelp from an enclave merges with the masses. Laurel...

The odd couple.
May 9, 2003... Catholicism and American Freedom A History, from Slavery to Abortion John T. McGreevy W. W. Norton & Company, $26.95, 407 pp. There was a moment when American liberalism, our dominant intellectual culture, and Roman Catholicism embraced....

Witch-hunts & child abuse.
May 9, 2003... No Crueler Tyrannies Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times Dorothy Rabinowitz Free Press, $25, 239 pp. Dorothy Rabinowitz won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary for the reporting that makes up the bulk of No Crueler...

The giving tree.
May 9, 2003... Miracles at the Jesus Oak Histories of the Supernatural in Reformation Europe Craig Harline Doubleday, $22.95, 309 pp. There is perhaps no greater flash point in the religious world than the subject of miracles. A person's reaction to the...

'We report. And we decide'.
May 9, 2003... What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News Eric Alterman Basic Books, $25, 322pp. The belief that the media are decisively liberal is a tenacious bit of contemporary folklore, only a little more credible than the widely held...

Against all odds.
May 9, 2003... Something for Nothing Luck in America Jackson Lears Viking, $27.95, 392 pp. Whether bitten by the gambling bug or not, who hasn't been mesmerized by the virtuosity of the card shark, the mystique of the high-stakes dice-roller, the...

'The man he killed'. (The Last Word).
May 9, 2003... Now that the war in Iraq is won, I've been thinking about how it was fought. Operation Iraqi Freedom had its setbacks and breakthroughs, but one constant was the massive discrepancy in casualties, with American troops inflicting hugely...

To the editors.
May 23, 2003... Elshtain is wrong The confidence of Jean Bethke Elshtain ("A Just War," April 25) in the justice of Bush II's war against Iraq is equaled only by her confidence in her grasp of just-war theory. This is puzzling, for no preemptive war can...

Letter from Rome.
May 23, 2003... Whatever one thinks of Pope John Paul II, no one doubts that he is a passionate man. Passionate about his native land; passionate about the church; and especially passionate about the truth of Jesus Christ. That passion infuses his fourteenth...

Et cetera.
May 23, 2003... VOTF un-banned * As reported in our October 11, 2002, issue ("VOTF Watch," Grant Gallicho), the lay Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful has roused the ire of several bishops, eight of whom had prohibited it from meeting on church...

End-of-life decisions: does faith make a diference? (Ethics Watch).
May 23, 2003... Death and dying, it would seem, are out of the closet, taboos that we enlightened (post)moderners have overcome. I'm not so sure. Granted, we've nearly all heard about living wills and durable powers of attorney, even if, as polls indicate,...

'Terrorism': Bush II redefines the term. (Of Several Minds).
May 23, 2003... Foreign ministers of the G-8 leading industrial nations met in Paris in early May to affirm that terrorism remains a "pervasive and global threat." Just a few days earlier, however, the U.S. State Department had announced that terrorism is at...

After Baghdad: questions for Middle East policy.
May 23, 2003... At the end of World War I, when the British marched from Basra to Baghdad and the Ottoman Empire toppled, the Brits said they were in Mesopotamia to liberate the Arabs from Turkish oppression, and they promised to leave shortly. They stayed...

At My Mother's Bedside.
May 23, 2003... At My Mother's Bedside At the edge her legs thin as tree roots hanging above a river thirst for the icy current to pull her into the fish swells drag her through weeds to the soft sand the...

At odds with the pope: legitimate authority & just wars.
May 23, 2003... At a recent campus discussion about the bishops' authority to speak on matters of war, much airtime was given to whether the bishops had overstepped their competence in judging such matters. Near the end of the session, a genuinely perplexed...

Alpha and Omega (Les Bises).
May 23, 2003... Alpha and Omega (Les Bises) The other stood squarely on the ground, I forget what his arms were doing Or mine, our clothes were light-- It was all so light, and in the lobby. People watched, lightly: I didn't see ...

The fog of scandal: the sexual-abuse crisis in historical perspective.
May 23, 2003... It is now almost a cliche to say that the sexual-abuse scandal of the last year is the worst crisis in the history of the American church. The sustained media coverage, subsequent disillusionment, and passion aroused by the scandal have no...

The bishops & politics: has the scandal stilled the church's voice? Don't believe it.
May 23, 2003... There has been considerable hand-wringing among Catholics about the negative effects of the sexual-abuse scandal--the "Long Lent of 2002"--on the political influence of the church, particularly of the bishops. For some, the low ebb of that...

American voices: 'A Mighty Wind' & 'Spellbound'. (Screen).
May 23, 2003... Christopher Guest has carved a niche for himself as our master of the mockumentary, wreaking comic havoc by taking a serious form and filling it up with silliness. Guest began his career as pseudo-documentarian with his screenplay for Rob...

Live from Saigon.
May 23, 2003... Patriots The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides Christian G. Appy Viking, $29.95, 491 pp. Christian G. Appy clearly has a talent for finding interesting people and getting them talking. For this comprehensive oral history...

Gnostic longings.
May 23, 2003... Beyond Belief The Secret Gospel of Thomas Elaine Pagels Random House, $24.95, 256 pp. From the subtitle a reader might expect that Elaine Pagels, whose scholarly work has centered in Gnostic literature, has written a...

Out of tune.
May 23, 2003... The American Spiritual Culture And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies William Dean Continuum, $24.95, 240 pp. The study of the nation's character is a genre of American writing older than the nation itself,...

Passage through India. (The Last Word).
May 23, 2003... In the bunks below, voices chattered in Hindi as the train to Jaisalmer lurched forward. Half awake, I glanced at Laura in the opposite bunk and smiled. A distant and wan stare was all my wife could muster in return. Our tenuous attempt at...