Commonweal articles from May 2005

Commonweal archives from May 2005

Fixing health care.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 6, 2005... Charles Morris makes some compelling points in "The Economics of Health Care" (April 8). Yet I found his description of the overall problem, and his proposed solutions, problematic. Morris argues that technology is driving health-care...

Damaging statements.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 6, 2005... In their attempts to side with Terri Schiavo's parents and the extreme side of the prolife community, some members of the American Catholic hierarchy made damaging statements that will have wide-spread repercussions on the Catholic community...

Defending pius.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 6, 2005... In his "Et Papa Tacet" (April 8), Michael Phayer charges that Pope Pius XII was indifferent to Hitler's persecution of Polish Catholics. Material in print, most of it for decades, tells a different story. Phayer says that after denouncing...

Paying for college.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 6, 2005... Your editorial "What Bootstraps?" (March 25) dealt with a critical issue: the rising cost of higher education that threatens upward mobility for millions of young adults from families of modest means. You're right, it is troubling that some...

A clean limerick.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 6, 2005... Thanks to "Cork" in the March 11 issue for illustrating a limerick I wrote for an English class in 1942: There once was a monk, called the abbot, / Who went hunting hares in his habit. / Along came an owl, / Laid an egg in his cowl, / And...

Pope Benedict.(From the Editors)(Pope Benedict XVI)
May 6, 2005... No one knows exactly where Pope Benedict XVI will lead the church, to what extent his ecclesiastical style will mirror that of John Paul II's, or in what ways, theologically or administratively, he may deviate from the legacy of his charismatic...

Rome journal: the smoke turned white.(Short Take)
May 6, 2005... Tuesday, April 19, 2005: My flight arrives in Rome early on the second morning of the conclave. I proceed immediately to the mother house of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, my hosts for the week. Though anxious to join the crowd at...

Intercommunion now?(Short Take)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2005... Did you see what I thought I saw? Was a Protestant the first to receive Communion at the funeral of John Paul II, and from the hands of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? Granted, Roger Schutz, founder of the ecumenical Taize community in France,...

The Church & Benedict XVI: what can we hope for?(Cover Story)
May 6, 2005... I have met Pope Benedict XVI only once. It was seventeen years ago, when I was a graduate student at Yale. Richard John Neuhaus had organized an invitation-only conference in New York on biblical interpretation. Among the invited guests were...

From the postulator: a few words to his candidate concerning hagiography.(Poem)
May 6, 2005... Welcome to the posthumous world. Already you'll notice a few changes in your past-- Objects and persons best given to one-line explanations. Nouns trained to barely respond when I nudge them with verbs-- We can't have them...

A place for dissent: my argument with Joseph Ratzinger.
May 6, 2005... Habemus papam. I heard these words in St. Peter's Square as a young seminarian on October 28, 1958. My first impression of Pope John XXIII was disappointing. Pope Pius XII was an austere and ascetic figure, but John XXIII was a roly-poly...

Thrasher's nachtlied.(poem)(Poem)
May 6, 2005... It is not that I do not believe or fail to grieve: justly, I have outlived that which I strived for and mewing now, with the cold flocks, reach far, far, out for what shoals, what ulterior banks, for--barren boatsman--what shore? ...

Blood sport: 'Sin City' & 'Walk on Water'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
May 6, 2005... Nowadays, flesh-and-blood actors can share the screen with cartoon characters (Who Killed Roger Rabbit?) or a bunch of human performers can emote in front of computer-generated backdrops (Gladiator). Movie protagonists may now wrangle...

A necessary evil?(book by Sanford Levinson )(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... Torture A Collection Edited by Sanford Levinson Oxford University Press, $29.95, 319 pp. Why debate torture? Unqualified rejection seems the only position for any decent person. Discussion seems to promise no reward: Either...

Left behind.(Spring Books)(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... God's Politics Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It Jim Wallis HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95, 384 pages Return to Greatness How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It ...

Taming the beast.(book by Andrew J. Bacevich)(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... The New American Militarism How Americans are Seduced by War Andrew J. Bacevich Oxford University Press, $28, 270 pp. No one was expecting Dwight D. Eisenhower to warn of the dangers of a "military-industrial complex" in his...

Nasty, brutish & long.(book by A. N. Wilson)(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... My Name Is Legion By A. N. Wilson Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, $26, 496 pp. A. N. Wilson is probably best-known in the United States for historical works like God's Funeral or The Victorians, biographies of C. S. Lewis and Tolstoy,...

Planned parenthood.(book by Leslie Woodcock Tentler)(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... Catholics and Contraception An American History Leslie Woodcock Tentler Cornell University Press, $29.95, 335 pp. The American birth rate dropped steadily throughout the nineteenth century, but the cause for the fall in births...

Religion booknotes.(Spring Books)(The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire)(Discernment and Truth: The Spirituality and Theology of Knowledge)(Paul: His Story)(Creative Fidelity: American Catholic Intellectual Traditions)(Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati: An Ordinary Christian)(Book Review)
May 6, 2005... At a time when Catholic dioceses in the United States teeter on the brink of insolvency, in part because of the costs of the sexual-abuse crisis, it is worthwhile to remember the enormous charitable work that the church has performed over its...

Saintly grammar.(The Last Word)
May 6, 2005... If you speak English, it makes it harder to believe in the Communion of Saints. Let me explain. Speakers of English cannot escape time--a prerequisite for grasping this theological doctrine--whereas the saints have already done so. The...

In his image.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Surely the world is correct in the honors it has paid to John Paul II. And your contributors are, for the most part, rightly generous in their estimation of this courageous person ("John Paul II," April 22). The irony is that he leaves a church...

Father knows best.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Yes, John Paul II was "a force of nature, a man of iron will and passionate spirituality" ("Peter's Successor," April 22). He was also a man of volatile impatience. Seeing him admonish Fr. Ernesto Cardinal during his trip to Nicaragua conjured...

Left of center.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... In your April 22 package of articles on Pope John Paul II, Richard McBrien writes that his assessment of the late pope's pontificate "stands somewhere between those to my left... and those to my right." My question is: Who is to Fr. McBrien's...

Sex & the seminaries.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... I would like to commend Donald Cozzens for his honest and perceptive analysis of what ails Catholic seminaries today ("Sex & the Seminaries," April 22). Cozzens has ruined his chances for a miter by saying out loud what has been murmured sub...

Reforming the priesthood.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Donald Cozzens presents one of the most concise analyses of a central problem in the church: the deteriorating state of the clergy. The old remedies--careful review of candidates and better seminary formation--will not work without a...

Sexual sins.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Donald Cozzens makes several interesting observations, but one stands out--that sexual sins come only in the mortal variety. I believe this goes to the root of the church's contempt for sexuality. Often it seems that church leaders are trying...

A generous teacher.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... I was saddened to read of the passing of Wilson Carey McWilliams (Et Cetera, April 22). Your editorial spoke to the breadth of his scholarship and his generosity as a teacher and a writer. I first met Carey when he was a visiting professor at...

Darkness & light.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Thank you to John Garvey for his thought-provoking column on evil ("Something Does Not Love Us," April 22). My job is to represent victims of torture. The face I give evil tends to be that of the perpetrator of terrible deeds done to my client....

Forgotten tragedy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... To his list of evil events--"the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the killing fields of Cambodia..."--John Garvey should add the rape of Nanking in December 1937. After defeating the Chinese in Shanghai, the Japanese army marched into Nanking, where it...

Villanova tragedy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... Thank you to Cathleen Kaveny for her thoughtful column on the tragic death of Mine Ener ("Crime or Tragedy?" March 25). No charitable person could read Villanova's plaque in honor of Professor Ener as condoning, let alone honoring, either...

My son & Peter Singer.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 20, 2005... As the proud parent of a son with Down syndrome, I found it gratifying to see Andrew Lustig take Peter Singer, if not apart, at least to task ("Lethal Prescriptions," April 8). My son Mark has helped to raise thousands of dollars for retarded...

Extra! Extra!(ET CETERA)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2005... We are extremely pleased to announce that Commonweal has been awarded a two-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to help the magazine provide better coverage of theological issues. Part of the grant will be used to print extra copies of...

Sources say ...(ET CETERA)(Correction Notice)
May 20, 2005... Speaking of great issues. And great corrections. A reader alerted us to this item from the May 4 Washington Post corrections column: Articles on April 25 and 26 about Pope Benedict XVI said that St. Peter was the founder of the Roman...

The new pope: an Orthodox view.(Columnist)
May 20, 2005... It struck me, watching the coverage of John Paul II's death and the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Benedict XVI, that non-Catholics were generally more inclined to praise the late pope and to feel somewhat welcoming toward his successor than...

Blair's victory: Labour's love lost.(Short Takes)(Tony Blair)
May 20, 2005... Unlike elected presidents, British prime ministers get where they are by being leader of the largest party in the House of Commons. The only people who vote directly for Tony Blair are his constituents at Sedgefield, a safe Labour seat in...

Bad credit: cashing in on the new bankruptcy law.
May 20, 2005... Remember "welfare queens"? That absurd image of black, inner-city, unwed mothers--purposely popping out illegitimate babies so that they could dine on filet mignon purchased with food stamps--strongly influenced the welfare "reform" debate and...

How high a wall? The court & religion.(Short Takes)
May 20, 2005... It must have felt strange, even surreal, in the Supreme Court Chamber on March 2, when the justices heard oral arguments in two cases involving government-supported displays of the Ten Commandments: Justice Stephen Breyer wandered on, in...

Catholics, Jews & stem cells: when believers beg to differ.
May 20, 2005... One of the most remarkable recent events in American religious life has been the formation of what I call a "traditionalist entente" linking theologically conservative or orthodox believers across ancient divisions separating Protestants,...

Miss la la's leap from bible verse to modern verse.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 20, 2005... Casual as a sumptuary law, Miss la la is comfortably clothed in her refusal to speak the pluperfect, or God forbid, the imperfect. Now, totally dependent on her use of morphemes, she spins from the ceiling of the Baptistry...

Mystic pizza: how one parish transformed a family.
May 20, 2005... This is a story about teenagers and priests, but it contains nothing scandalous or malevolent. Rather, it tells how an influx of capital can transform the spirit of a household, and recounts how the Catholic Church has formed people for secular...

Dinosaurs shouting.(Poem)
May 20, 2005... You say the world is not exactly as one supposes and yet apples are more abundant than ever while worms inside their cores are now as scarce as birds without wings. Remember the mirror is glass and you inside it could be...

Scarlet's web: 'Our Fathers' on Showtime.(Media)(Television Program Review)
May 20, 2005... Our Fathers, premiering on the Showtime channel Saturday, May 21, dramatizes the Archdiocese of Boston's sexual-abuse scandal. Written by Thomas Michael Donnelly and directed by Dan Curtis (Winds of War), the film is based on David France's...

In the beginning.(Books)(Book Review)
May 20, 2005... Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures through the Ages Jaroslav Pelikan Viking, $24, 274 pp. For most people, shopping for a Bible at the local Barnes & Noble produces symptoms analogous to shopping for a car or a...

He's an auteur.(Books)(Book Review)
May 20, 2005... Jesus and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" The Film, the Gospels, and the Claims of History Edited by Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb Continuum, $17.95, 198 pp. Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy The Cross,...

Unwelcome guest.(The Last Word)(breast cancer, fear factor)
May 20, 2005... How are you feeling?" My friend and I are sitting on overstuffed sofas sipping hot tea. Her usual attire of big, dangling earrings and flamboyant, colorful fabrics has been replaced by sensible sweat pants and a sweatshirt. No effort has been...