Commonweal articles from May 2004

Commonweal archives from May 2004

Teaching the basics.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... John Cavadini's "Ignorant Catholics" (April 9) points to the growing gap between theology and catechetics. Too often theology is seen as a discipline for elites and catechetics as something for those who never grow beyond religious...

Image conscious.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... As one involved in parish adult education and indirectly in professional theological education, I am conscious of the problem highlighted by John Cavadini. I have just returned from Sicily, where I gazed at magnificent mosaics of Old and New...

Aging & ignorant.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... Much as I'd like to offer a hearty "Amen" to John Cavadini's lament that young Catholics are arriving at college catechically innocent, I am afraid he doesn't state the half of it. We've got fifty- and sixty-somethings catechized before Vatican...

Back to the future.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... I enjoyed John Cavadini's article but disagree with much of his premise--namely, the need for more catechesis. So much has been written about returning to the pre-Vatican II church. Well, I've been there and dammit I don't want to go back. I...

Liturgy for grown-ups.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... I read with great interest Maurice Timothy Reidy's article about the future (and past) of Catholic schools ("Needed: The Vision Thing," April 9). Reidy writes that, in Are Parochial Schools the Answer?, Mary Perkins Ryan argued "that the...

Lighten up!(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... I want to congratulate you on running Bill McGarvey's gently snide review of Robert Coles's recent unfortunate book on Bruce Springsteen ("Born in the U.S.A.," March 26). If I might offer a piece of advice as a somewhat younger reader: articles...

Trusting the bishops.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 7, 2004... In "Sexual Abuse & The Church" (March 26), Peter Steinfels notes that the John Jay Report "casts doubt on the idea that this problem can and should be handled by the criminal-justice system rather than the church." Until the enormity of...

The war president.(Commonweal)
May 7, 2004... One year ago, dressed in a flight suit and striking the pose of a warrior, President George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Addressing the ship's assembled crew, Bush declared that "major combat" in Iraq had...

More Mel?(ET Cetera)(Editorial)
May 7, 2004... * So you thought there was nothing more to be written or said about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Wrong. Yes, we know that Gibson's controversial movie has dominated the headlines and spurred conversation in the office and around the...

Breakage.(ET Cetera)
May 7, 2004... * One of the most intriguing revelations made in the recent cavalcade of books about the Bush administration was Secretary of State Colin Powell's attempt to explain one of the cardinal rules of shopping to President George W. Bush. In Bob...

Belief vs. unbelief: complacency, not religion, is the danger.(Of Several Minds)
May 7, 2004... Recently, a book, an article, and an interview made me realize what an odd corner discussion about religion has been backed into. Killing the Buddha (edited by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet), began as an online magazine and morphed into a book...

Hail Mary: a newspaper columnist for the ages.(Of Several Minds)(Mary McGrory)(Obituary)
May 7, 2004... Mary McGrory, my longtime colleague who died on April 21, could write rings around us all. But rather than take the compliment, she would immediately condemn the cliche at the heart of that sentence. Yes, we'll miss her gift for dissecting...

Anti-Semitism in 'The Passion': a rabbi reflects on Mel Gibson & the Gospels.(Critical Essay)
May 7, 2004... Mel Gibson has fashioned the most successful Passion play of all time. His film, The Passion of the Christ, is weak in its presentation of Jesus' teaching, but is a powerful retelling of the Gospel stories, complete with miracles, cosmic...

Blame the Gospels? A theologian responds.(Critical Essay)(Cover Story)
May 7, 2004... Rabbi Irving Greenberg offers not only a penetrating critique of The Passion of the Christ but, more importantly, a respectful but strong challenge to Christian interpretation of the New Testament. I concur with many of Rabbi Greenberg's...

Alien.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 7, 2004... What they never show in sci-fi movies is the alien's glee at being one of her kind. ET may get lonesome, but she's tingling with excitement right down to her light bulb finger-tip at being only one, a singular stretch-neck-baldy mid...

Brutally real: why 'The Passion' appeals to young people.(Movie Review)
May 7, 2004... When I was leaving the Jesuit novitiate and assigned to teach high school, my novice master told me: "Remember St. Ignatius's dictum: always go in their door and bring them out yours." Although I am now a university professor, the phrase has...

Bad little boys: the children of 'The Passion'.(Critical Essay)
May 7, 2004... They are for children, these Gospels. They're for children, they're for old people, they're for everybody in between." So claimed Mel Gibson in rebuttal to a group of academics who challenged his movie, The Passion of the Christ, on historical...

Hold in the hand your many vows.(Poem)
May 7, 2004... What better morning to profess belief than this; what better hour to hear settling on the grate the burning wood, how easy to purge the conditional. Here, one can wake to a range of mountains graphing the same end leaf of sky ...

East meets west: 'Goodbye, Lenin!' & 'Kill Bill--Volume 2'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
May 7, 2004... Round about 1991, as the Soviet Union imploded, Roger Rosenblatt did a television essay for the McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in which he bade a fond farewell to communism. A fond farewell? To be sure, the fondness was liberally laced with irony, and...

A faith like any other.(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... Freethinkers A History of American Secularism Susan Jacoby Metropolitan Books, $27.50, 352 pp. President George W. Bush begins his cabinet meetings with a prayer; Al Sharpton passes the hat in African-American churches while...

There goes the neighborhood.(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... The Devil's Playground A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square James Traub Random House, $24.95, 313 pp. I wish I'd been around when New Yorkers went to Harlem in ermine and pearls, Fred and Ginger skated in Central...

Men of their time & place.(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... Hitler and the Vatican Inside the Secret Archives that Reveal the New Story of the Nazis and the Church Peter Godman Free Press, $27, 272 pp. To a subject plagued by polemics, acrimony, and ahistorical speculation, Peter Godman, a...

A few good men.(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... Priests A Calling in Crisis Andrew M. Greeley University of Chicago Press, $19, 168 pp. No one is as effective as Andrew Greeley when it comes to using survey data in a street fight. In Priests: A Calling in Crisis, he's...

Taller, smarter, prettier.(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... Preaching Eugenics Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement Christine Rosen Oxford University Press, $35, 296 pp. In a wonderful essay whose title, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," sums up a certain view of...

Are you there, God?(Books)(Book Review)
May 7, 2004... Name All the Animals Alison Smith Scribner, $24,319 pp. These days, memoirs are a dime a dozen. But it's not often that the genre examines the grief of a sibling--and rarer still that it describes a Catholic world free from...

Booked.(The Last Word)
May 7, 2004... I am in Powell's Burnham Park bookstore, just south of the Loop in Chicago, on a book crawl, and I am thinking of Bruce Cook, friend, and novelist who died in Los Angeles last November. He was best known (under the nom de guerre of Bruce...

The problem with NFP.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... In a letter in the April 23 issue of Commonweal, Pamela Pilch gave a glowing account of her experience with Natural Family Planning (NFP). Could the fact that she and her husband used contraception for the first eight years of their marriage...

Macho men.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... I was happy to see Leslie Tentler's article in the April 23 issue. I was less enthusiastic about the letter by Pamela Pilch. I don't want to dismiss her experience; rather, I find the kind of mutuality present in her marriage admirable. Sadly,...

Got rhythm?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... While I disagree with the editorial policy of Commonweal more often than not, it is articles like Leslie Tentler's that sustain my subscription. Tentler's analysis is brilliant and reflects the attitude of most of the Catholic laity on this...

Ignoring women.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... I have just finished Leslie Tentler's engaging account of the church's struggle with the issue of contraception. Tentler must be commended for her fine research. She has been courageous, careful, compassionate, scholarly, and candid. What...

A global power.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... I would like to add a twenty-first century postscript to Leslie Tentler's fascinating historical survey of contraception and twentieth-century Catholicism. Christicans are admonished to attend to "the signs of the times." Two such signs...

Ahead of his time.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... Kudos for the perceptive, exquisitely titled "A Bitter Pill" by Leslie Tentler. In 1968, Tentler writes, "nothing was as devastating to the church's credibility as Humanae vitae and the paralysis it generated." At the time, Rev. Charles...

End-of-life care.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... Many good points were presented in the editorial, "Allowing to Die II" (April 23). Perhaps a few additional points will help those who may some day be confronted with this situation, either as providers, patients, or family members. First,...

Conspiracy theory.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... I am sure the Vatican and the pope have anticipated the following scenario: the pope has a massive stroke and is left in a persistent vegetative state. He has a feeding tube and hydration tube--and continues to exist for five or ten years. I...

Young & ignorant.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
May 21, 2004... Concerning John C. Cavadini's "Ignorant Catholics" (April 9): Last fall I taught a course titled "Contemporary Peacemakers" at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. In our first class, I asked my students to share, in small groups, their...

Communion politics.(Commonweal)
May 21, 2004... What do bishops who propose refusing the Eucharist to prochoice politicians hope to accomplish? St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke has been the most vocal in resorting to this tactic, demanding that Democratic presidential candidate Senator...

Protestants!(Et Cetera)
May 21, 2004... Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, a vehement convert to Catholicism and an old hand at invective, recently joined the right-wing chorus demanding that bishops refuse Communion to prochoice politicians like Senator John Kerry. Writing in the...

One great sermon: and an even better confession.(Of Several Minds)
May 21, 2004... In the small town in India where I live, there is only one Catholic parish. A good sermon is a rare event. Our priests are pious, simple men, almost all raised in villages so remote they make Dehradun, which boasts four traffic lights, look...

Torturing prisoners: who is responsible for Abu Ghraib?(Of Several Minds)
May 21, 2004... A question has to be answered about the torture of prisoners in Iraq that goes beyond the electoral consequences of this affair for George W. Bush. It has to do with the manner in which the socalled war against terror has been conducted, the...

Altered states: pills alone won't cure the blues.
May 21, 2004... Not long ago I bumped into one of my student advisees. I hadn't seen him for a couple of months and I asked him how he was faring. A warm and congenial young man, he smiled broadly but then his shoulders slumped as he confessed, "I have just...

Informal fallacy.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 21, 2004... Brought to sentences by his sister's birth, the boy who had decided to be laconic decided if he wanted food he better talk--and fast--or she would own the kitchen. First, he tried the old declaratives. I boy, I eat and I love you,...

Summer school: why it's good for you & for the church.
May 21, 2004... One of my favorite students milks cows for a living. An organic farmer from the heart of Lake Wobegon (Freeport, Minnesota, is the home of Charlie's Cafe, the inspiration for Garrison Keillor's fictional Chatterbox Cafe), Rick Scherping works...

Bloomsday at 100: two reflections on James Joyce's legacy.
May 21, 2004... Bloomsday, June 16, 1904, is the day anatomized, commemorated, and celebrated in James Joyce's Ulysses. Striking testimony to the enduring power of Ulysses is that we mark not the birth of its author or the publication of the book but the...

Devilish adaptations: 'the punisher' & 'hellboy'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
May 21, 2004... The current boom in comic-book-based movies is partly technological. Yet in addition to providing a vehicle for digital wizardry, comics offer us a view of our collective self, revealing the underlying urgencies of the moment. And while recent...

Liberal & loving it: Al Franken & Air America.(Media)
May 21, 2004... Full disclosure: I am married to a Republican. Learning his political affiliation was a bitter blow, fifteen years ago, when I'd just fallen in love, but I am inured to the knowledge by now. It is some comfort that he has grown more liberal...

Half the story.(Books)(The Reformation: A History)(Book Review)
May 21, 2004... The Reformation A History Diarmaid MacCulloch Viking, $34.95, 750 pp. In 2000, Andrew Pettegree, director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute in Scotland, rightly remarked that scholarship on the Reformation has...

Indissoluble bonds.(Books)(The Amateur Marriage)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 21, 2004... The Amateur Marriage Anne Tyler Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95, 306 pp. Michael Anton and Pauline Barclay, the mismatched couple in Anne Tyler's new novel, just can't get along. Why did they ever get married? Because, when Japanese...

Service projects.(Books)(Saving America? Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society)(Book Review)
May 21, 2004... Saving America? Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society Robert Wuthnow Princeton University Press, $29.95, 352 pp. Michele Dillon In March of this year, the ambiguity of the boundaries between church and...

Playing with fire.(Book Review)
May 21, 2004... God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Oxford University Press, $19.95, 176 pp. I have seen things," Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have remarked toward the end of his...

Growing season.(The Last Word)
May 21, 2004... I didn't go to London last spring specially to see the famous Chelsea Flower Show. But as long as I was stealing ten days from my own garden, I scheduled my London trip around the two days you could be admitted--for [pounds sterling]27--if you...