Commonweal articles from November 2004

Commonweal archives from November 2004

Wise words.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... I can't thank you enough for publishing Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's article on the presidential election ("Time to Choose," October 22). I am a committed believer, a lifelong Catholic, a Commonweal Associate, and an ardent reader of your...

Repairing the fabric.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's "Time to Choose" raised crucial issues about this year's presidential election. Well-informed Catholics know that the only effective way to solve moral problems is to address the tears in the social fabric. Laws...

On point.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Your editorial on George W. Bush's fiscal agenda ("The Rich Get Gicher," October 8) and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's October 22 essay on the election are models of clarity and reason. They are the most persuasive pieces I have read during this...

Kerry & the war.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... I have read with interest your articles on the presidential race. I have talked with many conscientious Catholics about the election and they have expressed the opinion that, despite John Kerry's unwavering support for abortion rights and...

Not a dealbreaker.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... While I agree with my friend Paul Griffiths's distaste for both presidential candidates ("Right, Left & None of the Above," October 8), their "deal-breaking offenses" are not on a par. John Kerry does not promote abortion, but choice (and if...

Two evils.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Like Paul Griffiths, I have thought about not voting in this year's presidential race. Kerry's stance on abortion contradicts the fundamental values of a culture of life. Meanwhile, Bush's warmongering, pro-death penalty, pro-wealthy,...

Reporting for duty.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... In his piece endorsing George W. Bush (October 8), Robert Royal notes, "Like his father, Bush is a thoroughly decent person." Really? A "thoroughly decent person" does not shirk his duty while serving in the National Guard. As a veteran of...

Bishops & segregationists.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Vincent Rougeau's article ("Politics & Communion," October 8) recalled a chapter in American Catholic history that many of us remember well. The example of Archbishop Joseph Rummel's handling of segregationists in New Orleans could certainly...

Rococo piety?(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Lawrence S. Cunningham's otherwise perceptive "Religion Booknotes" column (September 24) was marred by a negative reference to the Marian devotion associated with St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort (d. 1716). Followers of Montfort are...

Bully pulpit.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... I am a distressed seventy-one-year-old cradle Catholic who doesn't know whom to write to so I chose you. Two Sundays ago, a visiting priest came to my church and gave a homily stating that the five wounds of Christ are the reasons Catholics...

Pleasure principle.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... Despite Kenneth Woodward's atypical sarcasm, I found his debate with Mario Cuomo ("Catholics, Politics & Abortion," September 24) an elevated and provocative exchange. Neither author, however, addresses the fact that society's views on abortion...

Name calling.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 5, 2004... In his recent article on the election ("Campaign 2004," October 8), Wilson Carey McWilliams writes that John Kerry "always sounds to me like a slightly demented Episcopal bishop." This is very bad stereotyping and my Episcopalian friends should...

A Catholic president?
November 5, 2004... This eightieth anniversary issue of Commonweal goes to press a week before Election Day. Many of our subscribers will know the result of the 2004 presidential race--if there is a clear-cut result--before they receive this special double issue...

ET cetera.(Editorial)
November 5, 2004... More anniversary news * The new year will bring a new look to your favorite magazine. Commonweal's appearance hasn't changed often in its eighty years of publication--which is not to say it hasn't changed much. As this anniversary issue's cover...

Catholics & democracy: Michael Williams & the culture wars.(NOTEBOOK)
November 5, 2004... Some readers may recall that I have a serendipitous connection with Commonweal's founding editor, Michael Williams (1877-1950). Williams lived, died, and is buried in Westport, Connecticut, the town where I grew up. Upon learning this, I went...

Unspeakable sins: why we need to talk about them.(OF SEVERAL MINDS)
November 5, 2004... During his tenure as cardinal archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law vigorously defended the position of the Catholic Church on abortion, which is sometimes described as an "unspeakable" act in authoritative church teaching. All the while, it turns...

Christian gentlemen: a chapter of 'Commonweal' history.(Commonweal at 80)
November 5, 2004... There has never been a cult of personality at Commonweal, for which, on the whole, the Lord be thanked and the saints be praised. Small magazines don't really have room for superstars soaking up all the attention; let the readers read the whole...

Growing up Commonweal: what it meant; what it means.(Commonweal at 80)
November 5, 2004... We were two and four years old in 1952 when our family moved east from Chicago so that our father could take up his new post as managing editor of Commonweal. We can still remember the long overnight ride on the train taking us to our new home....

The mass bells of Maremma: the waning of European Christianity.
November 5, 2004... For several years now my wife and I have spent part of the summer in rural Tuscany, sometimes in the picture-postcard mountain countryside above Fiesole, deep in what the British (whose current prime minister regularly holidays there), like to...

The news from Rome: what's wrong with church governance.
November 5, 2004... John Paul II has served more than twenty-five years as pope. Although he has a debilitating disease, medical progress may prolong his life for years. Pius IX (1792-1878), in a century with far fewer medical resources, reigned thirty-one years;...

A new Gnosticism: an old threat to the church.
November 5, 2004... Historical analogies are both tempting and tricky. They are tempting because we like to learn about the present from past examples. They are tricky because the search for instructive examples can distort both past and present. Try hard enough,...

Why not say what happens?(Fictional Work)
November 5, 2004... I Of icons. Of divination. Of Gods. Repetitions without end. I have it in my notes, a translation from the Latin, a commentary on The Book of Revelation--"the greater the concentration of power on earth, the more truth is stripped of its...

A fugitive catholicism: the work of Richard Rodriguez, Dave Eggers & Czeslaw Milosz.
November 5, 2004... After Czeslaw Milosz died earlier this year, it was pointed out to me that he was being eulogized variously as a poet, a Nobel laureate, a Lithuanian in long exile, a survivor and anatomist of communism, but not, alas, as a Catholic writer. I...

Easy riders: The Motorcycle Diaries'.(SCREEN)(Movie Review)
November 5, 2004... The Motorcycle Diaries is about a sensitive, intelligent, and doomed youth named Ernesto Guevara, and the movie itself is sensitive, intelligent, and doomed. Scriptwriter Jose Rivera and director Walter Salles create interesting characters and...

Little miss neverwell triumphs.
November 5, 2004... Giving Up the Ghost A Memoir Hilary Mantel Henry Holt & Co., $23, 240 pp. Graham Greene was of the opinion that "the creative writer perceives his world once and for all in childhood and adolescence, and his whole career is an...

What a mess.(Book Review)
November 5, 2004... The Missing Peace The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace Dennis Ross Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35,840 pp. Waging Peace Israel and the Arabs, 1948-2003 Itamar Rabinovich Princeton University Press,...

The heart of Africa.(Book Review)
November 5, 2004... The Dust Diaries Seeking the African Legacy of Arthur Cripps Owen Sheers Houghton Mifflin, $23, 320 pp. With an ambivalence tracing back to Conrad, modern European writers portrayed Africa in extremes of innocence and violence,...

Chosen peoples.(Book Review)
November 5, 2004... For the Sake of Heaven and Earth The New Encounter beween Judaism and Christianity Irving Greenberg The Jewish Publication Society, $20, 274 pp. Rabbi Irving Greenberg has been one of the leading figures in American Jewish...

What would mickey do?(Book Review)
November 5, 2004... The Gospel According to Disney Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust Mark I. Pinsky Westminster John Knox, $14.95, 286 pp. Think back. In the Disney movie The Lion King, when a baboon anoints the cub Simba and lifts him to the heavens, did...

Passion & obedience.(Book Review)
November 5, 2004... The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004 Edited by Philip Zaleski Introduction by Jack Miles Houghton Mifflin, $14, 304 pp. I think of myself as religious but not spiritual. Partial to the sensuous, communal, and cerebral forms of...

Young blood.(The Last Word)(working at Commonweal)(Editorial)
November 5, 2004... People tell me I look young. It's something I've always heard, but more so since I started working at Commonweal. I guess that people think that Commonweal is--and has always been--an august journal edited by a veteran group of mature and...

Switching parties.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... Having been convinced by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels in her recent article ("Time to Choose," October 22), I voted for John Kerry. Nonetheless, like John Garvey, I believe that the Democrats have suffered "a well-deserved loss" ("None of the...

The president & abortion.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... Your November 5 editorial ("A Catholic President?") declared that "Nothing could be more reductionistic than the idea that the outcome of one presidential election will change abortion practice in this country." In fact, President George W....

The editors reply.(To the Editors)(Brief Article)
November 19, 2004... The editors reply: There is no evidence that Bush's effort to restrict access to abortion has actually "curtailed the slaughter of innocents." In fact, some projections estimate that the number of abortions performed during Bush's first...

Backroom deals.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... In her article on the election ("Time to Choose"), Margaret O'Brien Steinfels argues that the government should prohibit the sale of embryonic tissue in order to remove "the profit motive implicit in the research agenda of pharmaceutical...

Blessing Bush.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... Regarding "Bishops for Bush" (Et Cetera, October 22): On October 21, Cardinal Justin Rigali performed what has become a quadrennial ritual: the tacit public endorsement of the Republican candidate for president by the archbishop of...

Not so new.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... Thank you for Ernest Rubinstein's critical review of the new edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia (October 22). In a recent letter to Frank Menchaca of Thomson-Gale, the publisher of the encyclopedia, I and twenty-five other Catholic...

Happy endings.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
November 19, 2004... We enjoyed Richard Alleva's review of Bright Young Things ("Not 'Vile' Enough," October 22). Unlike Alleva, however, we found no fault with the use of World War II to end the movie. Why not use a historical war rather than the fictitious war...

Theology and religious studies faculty.(CORRESPONDENCE)
November 19, 2004... THE COLLEGE OF ST. SCHOLASTICA, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, invites applications for two tenure track positions at the level of Assistant or Associate Professor for Fall 2005. The successful candidates will be trained in...

Bush redux.(Biography)
November 19, 2004... George W. Bush does not deserve a second term as president. His record of miscalculation, error, and deceit with regard to the invasion of Iraq alone should have been enough for voters to return him to Texas. For that to happen, however,...

More work to be done: democrats can't give up yet.(OF SEVERAL MINDS)
November 19, 2004... Don't mourn. Organize. OK, we can mourn a little first. The punch in the stomach for blue Americans singing the blues was George W. Bush's popular vote lead of more than 3.5 million. Let's be honest: We are aghast at the success of a...

Minister of employment: my side job in India.(OF SEVERAL MINDS)
November 19, 2004... My first morning back in India after a trip to the United States, my daughter woke me at 8:00 a.m. to say that a young woman wanted to meet me. Jetlagged and foggy, I asked my daughter to send her to my office (I am the director of a school for...

Peacemakers: an Israeli & a Palestinian.(OF SEVERAL MINDS)
November 19, 2004... The two men are sitting in the foyer of their Barcelona hotel in early September: Amos Oz, Israel's best-known novelist and veteran peace campaigner, and Sari Nusseibeh, Palestinian philosopher and leading moderate. They have just won the 2004...

From the heartland: could Kerry have won Ohio?(John F. Kerry)
November 19, 2004... A sadness has set in. Throughout my small town in southeastern, Appalachian Ohio, people ask, "How's it going?" Typically you hear, "Could be better." Most skulk away after saying this; few need elaboration. Some neighbors can't bring...

Interior with portrait of Savonarola.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 19, 2004... The winter sun, angling across the south pasture, catches his mason jar where it waits on the window-sill, mute and rimed with uric salts, and makes it glitter. It is too late to speak of faults. It is too late to be bitter. The...

Catholics after the scandal: a new study's major findings.
November 19, 2004... Two recent and very different books--David Gibson's The Coming Catholic Church (HarperSan-Francisco) and David Carlin's The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America (Sophia)--have described the church as a ship caught in a storm. The...

Expectations of a leaf.(Brief Article)(Poem)
November 19, 2004... All winter it hung from the twine of a branch, as if waiting for more than the wind's hard mallet to strike it down; tip curled up, it assumed the shape of a bell, but made no sound. It could not fold; its edges failed to...

Young Catholics: when labels don't fit.(After the Scandal)
November 19, 2004... In her book The New Faithful, Colleen Carroll asserts that young Catholics take a more conservative approach to matters of faith than their elders do. According to James Davidson and Dean Hoge, that assertion is not supported by the empirical...

Righting the ship: how the laity can help.(After the Scandal)
November 19, 2004... Here's a thought experiment with pastoral motives: let's interpret the Davidson-Hoge report in the most sobering direction possible and see where that leads us. The clearest "finding" of the survey is the undeniably devastating fallout of...

Many truths? Coming to terms with pluralism.(After the Scandal)
November 19, 2004... Davidson and Hoge describe a difference in attitude toward other religions among Catholics of different generations, with older Catholics more likely to identify Catholicism as the only true faith, and younger Catholics, especially those of the...

A sign of hope: young, Catholic & curious.(After the Scandal)
November 19, 2004... As someone who has taught introductory theology and lived alongside undergraduates in residential campus ministry for more than eighteen years, I am deeply interested in Davidson and Hoge's portrait of the generational differences among...

Celibates on celibacy.
November 19, 2004... During the last half-year, two church renewal organizations, Call to Action and FutureChurch, have conducted anonymous surveys of priests in fifty-three U.S. dioceses. Priests were asked: "Do you favor an open discussion of the...

No cup of tea: Mike Leigh's 'Vera Drake'.(SCREEN)(Movie Review)
November 19, 2004... British director Mike Leigh came of age in the 1960s, and his movies deliver sensitive studies of working-class English life, with its signature mix of drear and cheer. Vera Drake follows a cleaning lady whose sunny disposition does daily...

Waking Jim Farrell.(BOOKS)(An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell)(Book Review)
November 19, 2004... An Honest Writer The Life and Times of James T. Farrell Robert K. Landers Encounter Books, $28.95, 562 pp. When we were growing up, whispers in the school spoke about a dirty book called Studs Lonigan. Some claimed to have...

Magical realism.(BOOKS)(A Death in Brazil : A Book of Omi)(At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig : Travels Through Paraguay)(Book Review)
November 19, 2004... A Death in Brazil A Book of Omissions Peter Robb Henry Holt and Company, $26, 329 pp. At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig Travels through Paraguay John Gimlette Alfred A. Knopf, $25, 362 pp. Nonfiction about...

Greene & Waugh in Texas.(THE LAST WORD)(Graham Greene)(exhibition of Evelyn Waugh's works)
November 19, 2004... When Graham Greene and his friend movie producer John Sutro founded the Anglo-Texan society in 1953 after meeting two charming Texas girls in London, they thought they were joking, but Sutro followed through on the joke and hosted fifteen...