Commonweal articles from November 2007

Commonweal archives from November 2007

Perseverance or prudence?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 9, 2007... In our exchange of views on the war ("No Exit from Iraq?" October 12), Andrew Bacevich writes that "persevering in a misguided war almost always makes things worse," but he makes the same mistake I criticize, assuming that the United States is...

Why go quietly?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 9, 2007... In his article "Separated Brethren" (September 28), Barry Jay Seltser writes that the Episcopal Church "should offer to withdraw from full membership in the Anglican Communion" and "acknowledge that its actions [the ordination of a gay bishop,...

Who left whom?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 9, 2007... Barry Seltser's excellent summary of the conflict roiling the Episcopal Church and the whole Anglican Communion reminds me of the familiar story of the seaman on the Titanic who, when asked why he had left his sinking ship, replied "I didn't...

Torture's enablers.(From the Editors)(Michael Mukasey on waterboarding)
November 9, 2007... First you are strapped to a plank. Then the plank is tilted so that your feet are above your head. Next a cloth is pulled taut across your mouth, and finally water is poured directly onto the cloth. Breathing becomes nearly impossible. You...

The trash man Cometh: consumerism & India's refuse problem.(Columnist)
November 9, 2007... My kitchen window overlooks a vacant lot. Like other vacant lots in India, it is covered with plastic bags, old shoes, broken glass, newspapers, and rotting food. Scavengers visit it regularly, some of them as young as six or seven. They...

The center can hold: why Democrats should not fear compromise.(Short Takes)
November 9, 2007... At first glance, as the 2008 campaign swings into high gear, prospects for the Democratic Party couldn't seem brighter. The Bush presidency is crashing, and grassroots Democrats are bristling to take on the president in the next round of...

Silent eugenics: abortion & Down syndrome.(Short Takes)
November 9, 2007... In recent months, people with Down syndrome and those who love and believe in them have shuddered at the advent of plans for expanded genetic prenatal testing. Given that the abortion rate for children with Down syndrome is estimated to be as...

"Why not become all fire?".(Poem)
November 9, 2007... A young monk approached Father Anthony: "I have fasted and prayed and studied, as you have taught me. What else should I do?" And Father Anthony replied, "Why don't you become all fire?" The world was never enough, though I loved it,...

The promise & limits of politics: what Gene McCarthy taught us.(Articles)(Biography)
November 9, 2007... How many Americans had their view of the world changed by a quietly passionate man whose campaign for the presidency in 1968 brought the battle over a mistaken war into the democratic process? There is no polling on the subject that I know of,...

Meet the Mormons: from the margin to the mainstream.(Articles)(Organization overview)
November 9, 2007... There's been a lot of "Mormon talk" in the air lately. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has something to do with that, as do the acclaimed HBO series Big Love (chronicling a fictional polygamist family that splits from its traditionalist...

Centering.(Poem)
November 9, 2007... Remember, the frightened sparrow's flapping finally calmed into a pattern just before it found the window and escaped. I mean, while we squinted and pointed in the dairy aisle, that trapped mind did circle, after all, in louvered...

The fixer: Tony Gilroy's 'Michael Clayton'.(Screen)(Movie review)
November 9, 2007... Michael Clayton begins with its eponymous hero (played by George Clooney) summoned from a midnight card game by a colleague in Clayton's law firm. A millionaire client has fled the scene of a hit-and-run, and the lawyer wants Michael to hasten...

The L-word.(Books)(Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism)(Book review)
November 9, 2007... Freedom's Power The True Force of Liberalism Paul Starr Basic Books, $26, 256 pp. Liberalism for a New Century Edited by Neil Jumonville and Kevin Mattson University of California Press, $19.95, 270 pp. Here's...

The silent justice.(Books)(Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas)(Book review)
November 9, 2007... Supreme Discomfort The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher Doubleday, $26.95, 432 pp. His wrenching, soul-searing confirmation hearing notwithstanding, Clarence Thomas is so little known to...

Twisted sisters.(Books)(Circling My Mother)(Book review)
November 9, 2007... Circling My Mother Mary Gordon Pantheon, $24, 272 pp. Mary Gordon is not choosy about the grudges she holds on her mother's behalf. To the contrary, as she repeatedly tells readers in her new memoir, Circling My Mother, she takes...

Lonergan to the rescue.(The Last Word)(Bernard Lonergan)
November 9, 2007... There have been times I've gotten help from a professional, occasionally even a stranger, that's made all the difference in the world. I'm thinking in particular of a dentist who pulled a tooth after I'd suffered an agonizing night of pain....

Letting God off the hook?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... In his unfavorable review of my book The Edge of Evolution ("Faulty Design," October 12), the Darwinian biologist Kenneth Miller worries about the kind of God implied by intelligent design. If God designed the germs and parasites that plague...

The reviewer replies.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... Michael Behe's letter suggests that my criticisms of his book focus on a desire to "let God off the hook." He's wrong. I have no such desire, and evolution (as Behe notes) wouldn't do that anyway. Life and death are both part of the creator's...

Enough is enough.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... In the October 12 issue, Matthew Shadle argues that the United States has a moral obligation to continue fighting to restore order in Iraq ("No Exit from Iraq?"). Although I agree that there is some merit in this notion, I wonder at what point...

A third choice.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... Missing from your recent articles on Iraq ("No Exit from Iraq?" October 12) was any discussion of alternatives to the false dichotomy of "stay the course" and "cut and run." There is a third choice: substitute a multinational stability force...

Why I resigned.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... Paul Lauritzen's article on the role of ROTC at Catholic universities ("Student Soldiers," September 28) accurately describes the central moral dilemma of my thirteen-year Army career. I finally resigned my commission because I was increasingly...

Militant veganism.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... After reading Dulcie Ward's reply ("Veganism Is Healthy," October 12) to my letter to the editor ("A Biological Approach," September 14), I thought it important to call attention to the organization with which she is associated. The...

A place at the table.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... As noted in Bill Casey and David O'Brien's "Shared Burden: A Manifesto for the Laity" (October 12), Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) recently marked its fifth anniversary. The lay group was formed in response to the burgeoning scandal occasioned as...

Genuine penitance.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... Fr. Thomas P. Doyle's letter to the editor ("It's More than Money," September 28), argued that your August 17 editorial ("$660 Million") "unduly focused on money." The editors replied, "While every instance of sexual abuse calls for justice,...

Another side of L'Engle.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 23, 2007... Thank you for Tanya Avakian's thought-provoking piece on Madeleine L'Engle ("The Wildness of Christianity," October 26). It affirmed the breadth of L'Engle's understanding and her gift of reaching people in different ways. But I was...

Intrinsically complicated.(From the Editors)(morality and political responsibility )
November 23, 2007... As we go to press, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting in Baltimore. At the top of the bishops' agenda is ratification of a statement instructing Catholics on the relationship between morality and political responsibility. ...

The difference: Christianity's uncomfortable claim.(Columnists)
November 23, 2007... The religious tradition that begins with Judaism focuses more than most religions on things to come. The attention is often on what God will do in the future. A promise is made to Abraham, another to Moses, about what will happen--the people,...

Coopted by evil? Abortion & Amnesty International.(Columnists)
November 23, 2007... How involved can you become in someone else's wrongdoing without becoming morally tainted by it? This is a question we all face, whether we worry about giving a coworker ten dollars to buy cigarettes that will eventually kill him, or regret...

Free at last? Yes & no.(Short Takes)
November 23, 2007... Late last year six black teenagers were charged--as adults--with attempted murder, for beating a white classmate in rural Jena, Louisiana. The beating followed a series of racially charged incidents, including the hanging of nooses from a tree...

Poland's identity crisis: coming of age as a democracy.(Short Takes)
November 23, 2007... The defeat of Poland's Law and Justice Party in parliamentary elections on October 21 meant the end of a government that had come to be seen as an aberration in Eastern Europe. Just two years ago, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's party won...

Le bulldozer: the achievement of Cardinal Lustiger.(Articles)
November 23, 2007... What is the fate--"grace," some would say--that brings a four-teen-year-old named Aaron, grandson of a Polish rabbi and the son of humble French shopkeepers, to embrace Christianity with such profundity that he will one day die as the cardinal...

Grieving.(Poem)
November 23, 2007... Still to remember your dying is a virtue beyond my heart, a wild, unnatural grace: for now, it must be enough to linger more than I wish in a room where the late sun, a brief sweet hour ago, lay softly on my arm;...

The other health crisis: why priests are coping poorly.(Articles)
November 23, 2007... It's been a rough year in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, where I have been a priest since 1984. Recently the archdiocese announced the closing of the academic program at its 151-year-old seminary. Its central offices--on forty-four acres of...

Mind the gap: the return of the lay-clerical divide.(Articles)
November 23, 2007... Recent studies point to a growing gap between the way American Catholic laypeople and priests understand their roles in the church. What is the nature of this divergence, and why has it developed? In the years before Vatican II, most...

Hope abandoned: Ang Lee's 'Lust, Caution'.(Screen)(Movie review)
November 23, 2007... Beautiful. Suspenseful. Sensual. Psychologically acute. All these words apply to Lust, Caution. But one more must be added: desolating. Indeed, this latest production by the amazingly versatile Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; The Hulk; Crouching...

Provocateurs.(Books)(The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy )(Book review)
November 23, 2007... The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26, 484 pp. It is fitting that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, prominent U.S. foreign-policy and...

Vital signs.(Books)(American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church)(Book review)
November 23, 2007... American Catholics Today New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church William V. D'Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, and Mary L. Gautier Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95, 214 pp. Once upon a time, U.S. Catholics thought...

A priest forever?(Books)(Belief: A Memoir and Padre: The Spiritual Journey of Fr. Virgil Cordano)(Book review)
November 23, 2007... Belief A Memoir N. John Hall Frederic C. Beil, $24.95, 256 pp. Padre The Spiritual Journey of Fr. Virgil Cordano Mario T. Garcia Capra Press, $17.95, 287 pp. The public reactions to Mother Teresa's letters,...

Among the brutes.(Books)(Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family)(Book review)
November 23, 2007... Fathers and Sons The Autobiography of a Family Alexander Waugh Nan A. Talese, $27.50, 480 pp. In Fathers and Sons, Alexander Waugh tosses out the old maxim, "Know thyself!" and replaces it with "Know thy roots!" Grandson of...

Fallen heroes.(Books)(Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts)(Book review)
November 23, 2007... Cultural Amnesia Necessary Memories from History and the Arts Clive James Norton, $35, 768 pp. Somewhere in the ether of critic Clive James's imagination is a dowdy mitteleuropaisches coffeehouse where the shades of...

My dark night.(The Penultimate Word)(Mother Teresa )
November 23, 2007... Some years ago I read that Mother Teresa had told New York's John Cardinal O'Connor that the best way for him to help her would be to pick up a broom and sweep. I was delighted. Here was a woman who helped the poor and called on influential...

Her dark night.(The Last Word)(Mother Teresa of Calcutta )
November 23, 2007... The media was agog that Mother Teresa suffered fifty years of anguish. Time, NPR, and other middlebrow oracles reported solemnly, but with great fascination, that Mother Teresa had a fifty-year spiritual drought during which God seemed to be...