Commonweal articles from November 2006

Commonweal archives from November 2006

In whose interest?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... The recent editorial on the aftermath of Israel's war against Hezbollah states that "Israel alone cannot root out or tame Hezbollah, nor is it clear how a destabilized Lebanon serves Israel's security interests" ("After Lebanon," September 8)....

Faith & reason.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... Regarding your October 6 editorial, "Benedict on Islam," Pope Benedict XVI blundered by yanking a quotation out of context and offering an explanation without any historical or present value. The problem is not a difference of viewpoint, but a...

Economic justice.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... Eduardo Moises Penalver's "A Guide for Catholic Voters" (September 27) is a great contribution to the responsibility of Catholic citizens in a democracy. Another staple of economic justice is the church's social teachings on the rights of...

A clear choice.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... Eduardo Penalver concludes his essay with the following: "The best Catholic voters can hope to do is consider thoughtfully the entire range of issues, then cast their ballots as their consciences (rather than certain bishops) guide them." Wise...

Prolife people.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... Penalver's article about the Catholic vote made me laugh. Catholics are not going to "storm the abortion clinics." He forgets to mentions the Holy Father's writings on "proportionality." Abortion is number one--far more important than war,...

The human face of God.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... I'm so glad Luke Timothy Johnson has been enriched by Sister Paulinus ("Thank You, Sister," September 22). Over the years I've known many sisters like her, who "show others the human face of God." They sure outnumber those "who specialize in...

Communion and love.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2006... Reading the quartet of letters published in the October 6 issue in response to Dennis Doyle's "Missing Masses" (September 8), what fascinated me is that the dissimilar foci of the responders were variations on a theme of communion. For Brian...

Tomorrow's priests.(Editorial)
November 3, 2006... The Catholic priesthood in the United States stands at a crossroads. An increasingly sophisticated Catholic laity fills the church's pews and staffs its ever-growing parishes, and yet the church has failed to produce a corps of new priests to...

Undue process: the evisceration of habeas corpus.(Column)
November 3, 2006... In mid-October, President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which gives him the power to identify unlawful enemy combatants, to order harsh interrogation of them, and to detain them indefinitely. American forces can...

Double standards: why North Korea got the bomb.(Column)
November 3, 2006... The government most destabilized by North Korea's nuclear explosion last month was clearly the government of the United States. Washington had said it would prevent this from happening. The Clinton administration negotiated with an opaque...

Gambling our future: should Wall Street control the economy?
November 3, 2006... Not long ago, my wife and I were delayed in an airport in a university town. Across from us, a young woman settled herself to wait, pulled out her cell phone, and over the next half-hour or so proceeded to call everyone she knew. From what we...

Protecting individual rights: a deeply Catholic tradition (really).
November 3, 2006... What is the most important moral test facing the United States today? In just a little over five years, the new century has presented us with many daunting challenges. Yet one issue calls for particular attention. I am referring to an emerging...

In Quiet./Quietud.(Poem)
November 3, 2006... In Quiet At evening, when all grows quiet, I throw down a pebble. The road of abandon: the offering of not choosing my own steps. Quietud Al atardecer, cuando todo se aquieta, arrojo cuesta abajo un guijarro....

Childhood./Infancia.(Poem)
November 3, 2006... Childhood It's raining and the tree is weighed down by its leaves, the rose bush by its roses. It's raining and the garden smells of childhood, of the nearness of all miracles, of the absence of all memories. ...

From Where I Left Off./Desde Donde Parti.(Poem)
November 3, 2006... From Where I Left Off at the end when I find myself on the tracks of trains that don't stop of travelers who see me and don't wave goodbye I will have come to the place I've always been: to the barefoot child staring...

Boston massacre: 'The Departed'.(Movie review)
November 3, 2006... I feel like an ingrate about The Departed, Martin Scorsese's latest. Scripted by William Monahan, this is a cops-and-robbers melodrama that contains everything you want in a thriller: riveting action, sufficiently believable characters, steamy...

Extreme makeover: museum edition; Washington's Phillips Collection.
November 3, 2006... Great museums are living institutions. They grow by acquiring quality art consonant with their own (think of the Met in New York), or reshape themselves for greater access (think of the Louvre and I. M. Pei's pyramid). Those that aspire to...

The puzzling pope.(The Rule of Benedict)(Book review)
November 3, 2006... The Rule of Benedict David Gibson HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95,400 pp. Recently, Vatican postage stamps, adorned from time immemorial with the papal triple crown, conveyed a different note: "Episcopus Romae," Bishop of Rome. An...

Unclothed but not redressed.(The Emperor's Children )(Book review)
November 3, 2006... The Emperor's Children Claire Messud Alfred A. Knopf, $25, 431 pp. Claire Messud's new novel, her third, is, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, a singing, Jamesian beauty. She does it all and does it like a virtuoso:...

Beyond ideology.(Catholic and French Forever; Religious and National Identity in Modern France)(Book review)
November 3, 2006... Catholic and French Forever Religious and National Identity in Modern France Joseph F. Byrnes Pennsylvania State University Press, $50, 278 pp. When Pope John Paul II arrived at the airport on his first trip to France in 1980,...

Religion booknotes.(Christ, the Life of the Soul)(What Is the Point of Being a Christian?)(The Tree of Life: Models of Christian Prayer)(Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite)(New Ecclesial Movements)(Book review)
November 3, 2006... My copy of Columba Marmion's Christ, the Life of the Soul--heavily underlined and annotated from use on retreats during my youth--is on somebody else's bookshelf. Years ago I lent it to a friend, never got it back, and now I would love to...

What religion is for.(faith )
November 3, 2006... Some time ago I was in a pub in Australia when two cheerful men stopped by my table. They were older, friendly, both professors, and both, it turned out, professional philosophers. We got to talking, a wild conversation about how thoughts are...

Cheap grace.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... I am dismayed by Chris Dowd's apologia for his support of the Iraq war ("Unjust & Indefensible," October 6). Like many others, he now admits that he was taken in by a group of charlatans. Dowd forgets that there is considerable moral...

Our moral duty.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... It is regrettable that Chris Dowd diminished his otherwise excellent essay by stating: "Our moral responsibility is to stay in Iraq long enough to help sort out the mess we created." We have visited unspeakable death and destruction on the...

The test of proportionality.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... Chris Dowd's "Unjust and Indefensible" is a useful discussion of just-war theory in an era when our government is openly contemptuous of constraints on its pursuit of global domination. But Dowd's uncritical embrace of just-war principles as a...

'Just' in hindsight only.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... Chris Dowd is treading a slippery slope when he justifies the invasion of Afghanistan by using just-war theory as a checklist in hindsight, rather than a framework for discussion before the fact. Dowd's justifiable cause was self-defense and...

The problem of evil.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... Peter James Causton ("Darwin's Ghost," October 6) presents an exciting approach to melding Christian beliefs and evolutionary theory through the ideas of kenotic theology. At the end of the piece, however, he has serious second thoughts because...

Pain & evil.
November 17, 2006... Peter James Causton's article was engaging and insightful, but he seems to conflate several terms, mentioning them in similar contexts: pain and evil; death and suffering; pain and suffering; suffering and evil. These concepts deserve to be...

Remembering Wyatt.(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2006... The recent death of Jane Wyatt at age ninety-six made me remember, once again, how fortunate I was in the late 1940s to have known her mother, Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt, the longtime Commonweal contributor and drama critic for the Catholic...

Winner takes all.(elections in United States)(Editorial)
November 17, 2006... As we go to press, voters are electing a new Congress, a third of the Senate, and deciding countless state and local races. Also on ballots is a bewildering menu of referendums and amendments to state constitutions. Many of these measures are...

Trial by fire: I thought stuff didn't matter.(Column)
November 17, 2006... Toward the end of his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes, "I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content." I learned recently, the hard way, how far I am from that state of being. My wife and I were sitting down to a Sunday...

My mother's keeper: life in the Alzheimer's ward.
November 17, 2006... A flicker of anxiety arises as I pass through the locked doors to visit the Alzheimer's residence of my ninety-three-year-old stepmother. Who is mentally and spiritually prepared to cope with demented old age? Not I. I am as addicted as any...

Hope: what the doctor ordered.
November 17, 2006... We circled him with our impotent answers, our guarded gestures of help. Circled while the cancer waged its all-out assault, stripping him of vigor and hope. Dick nodded in his bed during most of the family meeting, the one hastily convened...

A Heroic Effort: CLINT EASTWOOD'S 'FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS'.(Movie review)
November 17, 2006... It's easy to see why Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers has been hailed as a masterpiece. Both the subject matter and the theme wrested from it are stirring and important. On the fifth day of the nearly month-long battle of Iwo Jima, some...

Understanding the Enemy.(What Terrorists Want)(Book review)
November 17, 2006... What Terrorists Want Louise Richardson Random House, $25.95, 239 pp. Louise Richardson, in her new book What Terrorists Want, offers a curiously bloodless account of terrorists and terrorism that is refreshingly devoid of the...

Malpractice.(Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror)(Book review)
November 17, 2006... Oath Betrayed Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror Steven H. Miles Random House, $23.95, 220 pp. Steven H. Miles, University of Minnesota geriatrician, regularly and courageously brings ethical questions about...

Vision Quest.(Every Eye)(Book review)
November 17, 2006... Every Eye Isobel English Boston: Black Sparrow/David R. Godine, $23.95, 152 pp. Isobel English (1920-94) had a brief but distinguished literary career that established her as a highly original stylist. From 1954 to 1973, this...

To What End?(The Sheed and Ward Anthology of Catholic Philosophy)(Book review)
November 17, 2006... The Sheed & Ward Anthology of Catholic Philosophy Edited by James C. Swindal and Harry J. Gensler Rowman & Littlefield, $35, 608 pp. In Plato's Apology, Socrates's claim to be wiser than anyone else in Athens rests on a paradoxical...

Competing Values.(Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate )(Book review)
November 17, 2006... Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate Ronald Dworkin Princeton University Press, $19.95, 192 pp. Ronald Dworkin is a distinguished legal philosopher who also participates actively in academic...

Keeping spirituality sane.(The Good Word)
November 17, 2006... What are we to make of all the books on spirituality cramming the shelves at Borders and the crowds of readers clotting the aisles between those shelves? How should we think about the mantra, "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual," mouthed by...