Commonweal articles from September 2004

Commonweal archives from September 2004

The case against Bush.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... Charles Morris's article on economic injustice ("Economic Injustice for Most," August 13) presents as judicious and convincing an argument as I have seen for a regime change in Washington this November. Recognizing that the increasing disparity...

No shelter.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... While I was impressed with some of the thoughtful articles in the August 13 issue, I was disappointed by some misleading statements made by Charles Morris in his article on economic inequality. As a CPA who started practicing during the Carter...

Unfair to Kerry.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... Your twin editorial letters to John Kerry and to the U.S. bishops (August 13) gave me much food for thought. I do think, however, that they were a little unfair. If the abortion issue is ever to be resolved, both camps will need to explore new...

Mean to Gene.(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... I first began reading Commonweal in 1947 when I was a student at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. A young instructor named Eugene McCarthy recommended it to me. Ever since, I have been loyal to McCarthy and to your journal....

Keep quiet.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... I very much liked Cathleen Kaveny's column on the destructive power of the tongue ("Watch Your Mouth," August 13). I have seldom if ever heard anyone confess destructive gossip as a sin. Yet if I remember my moral theology correctly,...

Celibacy talk.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... The reflections on celibacy by Msgr. Harry Byrne ("One Man's Vocation," July 16) are among the most genuine that I have ever heard or read. I think many priests of different ages and years of ministry can identify with what he says and be...

Ordained forever.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... Andrew Greeley's article in favor of priestly term limits ("A Priest Forever?" July 16) makes no sense. Holy Orders is like Baptism or Confirmation: once you are baptized and confirmed, you are baptized and confirmed for ever. After a priest or...

A heavy burden.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... Responding to your July 16 issue on priests, Fr. Francis X. Meehan reminds us of a beautiful part of our tradition: "saints and mystics and theologians have experienced an intimacy with the Lord Jesus through the sacrificial life of celibacy"...

Communion rights.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... In your August 13 issue, John Garvey defends his earlier remark that "no one has a right to Communion" (Correspondence). Yet he fails to note that Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy states that: "Mother Church earnestly desires...

Aborting the retarded.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2004... I want to explain why I and many sincere Catholics disagree with the editors' views on abortion and mental retardation ("Grassroots Eugenics," July 15). I am the mother of a mentally deficient child who committed suicide. The experience of...

Holding Bush accountable.
September 10, 2004... As we go to press, the Republican Party is gathered just a few miles from our offices to nominate George W. Bush for a second term as president of the United States. Most knowledgeable observers expect the November election to be very close....

None of the above: why I'm sitting out the election.(Of Several Minds)
September 10, 2004... Since former Commonweal columnist Sidney Callahan has confessed her past votes ("A Prolife Case against Bush," June 4), I'll confess to mine. During the last race I registered Republican to vote for John McCain in the primary, and voted in the...

Torturing prisoners: setting the tone at the top.(Of Several Minds)
September 10, 2004... The United States has suffered several defeats in the "war on terror," the latest and worst of them, conceded last month in two separate reports, being the "demoralization" and corruption of the U.S. Army in matters concerning the torture of...

Ratzinger, feminist? Not quite.
September 10, 2004... Good. The Vatican document On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World (released July 31), rejects "an outdated conception of femininity" as passivity. The letter to the bishops of the world, written by Cardinal Joseph...

The religion gap: can Democrats bridge it?
September 10, 2004... This may well be remembered as the year of the Democratic Revival, when Democrats stopped allowing religion and God to be co-opted by the Republican Party and started to fight back. For the first time in a generation, the presidential campaign...

Papal term limits? Give it some thought.
September 10, 2004... Most observers of John Paul II don't expect him to resign the papacy. Still, many have an opinion about it. Some have commented on his dedication and willingness to suffer for the church he loves. Others have said that having a leader who is so...

Closing Catholic parishes: a painful process that could be done better.
September 10, 2004... Last May, Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley announced that nearly one-fifth of the 357 parishes in the archdiocese would be closed. At the time, various media outlets linked the closings to the sexual-abuse crisis, as did many of Boston's...

Listen up: bishops need to hear theologians debate.
September 10, 2004... Critics of Pope John Paul II claim that although he often refers to certain themes from Vatican II, he has failed to heed the "spirit" of the council. Quarrels about the "spirit" of Vatican II are often nothing more than partisan positioning,...

Road kill.(Poem)
September 10, 2004... Actaeon ripped to gobbets by his hounds, felled in the mazy paths of venery: it was not like that. Where the dark abounds, a five-point buck hit by an SUV ghosted into my lane with car-wreck sounds, huge, pale and cartwheeling like an...

Brain drain: 'The Manchurian Candidate'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
September 10, 2004... Without tampering with the bones of its narrative, Jonathan Demme has transformed The Manchurian Candidate, turning the classic cold-war pulp thriller into a fictional sibling of Fahrenheit 9/11. Paranoia still fuels the tale, as it did in...

Meet David Kraehenbuehl: a composer worth hearing.(Music)
September 10, 2004... A concert last spring by the Amor Artis Chamber Choir and Orchestra at Manhattan's Blessed Sacrament Church gave New Yorkers the long overdue opportunity to hear a major work--Drumfire: A Cantata against War--by the late American and Catholic...

Benito's shadow.(Books)(Book Review)
September 10, 2004... Rome in America Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimiento to Fascism Peter R. D'Agostino University of North Carolina Press, $22.50, 393 pp. It is well known that President George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II...

A democrat's republican.(Books)(Book Review)
September 10, 2004... Why Lincoln Matters Today More than Ever Mario M. Cuomo Harcourt, $24, 183 pp. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo believes that Abraham Lincoln was a great president and that George W. Bush has so far proved a pretty bad...

Faith-based initiator.(Books)(Book Review)
September 10, 2004... Performing the Faith Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence Stanley Hauerwas Brazos Press, $19.99, 252 pp. For the past thirty years, Stanley Hauerwas has been our most prolific, provocative, and profound theological...

To hell-not back.(Books)(Book Review)
September 10, 2004... Shake Hands with the Devil The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda Romeo Dallaire Random House, $25.95, 584 pp. It all started on April 6, 1994. When a plane crash killed Juvenal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda, the tenuous...

Gift or curse?(The Last Word)(Editorial)
September 10, 2004... When I was a student in Rome, in the 1980s, I attended a presentation on the U.S. bishops' newly released document, The Challenge of Peace. During the session, a key sticking point for many was the issue of possessing--but not being morally...

Highway robbery.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 24, 2004... Thank you for Charles Morris's informative, well-written critique of the Bush tax cuts ("Economic Injustice for Most," August 13). Morris has the courage to say what Bush and the rest of the super-rich don't want the rest of us to know about....

Bishops & abortion.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 24, 2004... Your letter to the U.S. bishops was very well done ("Dear Bishops..." August 13). You nailed it perfectly when you wrote that "the church's absolutist rhetoric often undermines [the bishops'] case against abortion." Way back in 1970, Daniel...

In the middle.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 24, 2004... Regarding your open letter to the American bishops. The church has made a critical error by describing the abortion question as whether a person is prochoice or prolife. There is an excluded middle. Many Catholics are stoutly antiabortion, but...

Hats off.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 24, 2004... As a priest ordained in 1943, now "reduced" to the lay state, I heartily commend you for your issue on "Priests: Rethinking Their Role" (July 16) and I salute Msgr. Harry J. Byrne as a supreme symposiarch--as well as a most honest man--for his...

Sans pomp.(To the Editors)(Letter to the Editor)
September 24, 2004... Your July 16 issue on the priesthood was provocative and thoughtful. Over the years, I have watched with anguish as scores of men have left the celibate priesthood. Upon reflection, I have concluded that part of the problem may have been the...

Clear skies?
September 24, 2004... This summer's hurricanes in Florida, coupled with even more destructive monsoons in Bangladesh; last year's European heat wave that killed thirty thousand and massive wildfires that scalded Australia: suddenly, people everywhere are beginning...

Kerry, our erring brother: the need for quality control.(Of Several Minds)
September 24, 2004... What is all the fuss about Catholic bishops refusing Communion to prochoice politicians? Controlling access to Jesus Christ has been a security nightmare since the day he first announced his mission on Earth. No one should blame the bishops for...

The health-care issue: where Bush & Kerry differ.(Of Several Minds)
September 24, 2004... There are crystal-clear differences between the two major presidential candidates on the issue of life in its earliest stages--differences that give Catholics reason to avoid a vote for John Kerry. Senator Kerry takes the strongest possible...

Labor pains: Spain's migrant-worker problem.(Of Several Minds)
September 24, 2004... It's difficult being a foreigner in Spain these days. The government labels you illegal three months after you arrive. Residency and work permits are nearly impossible to obtain. You can't legally rent an apartment. And that's if, like me,...

Catholics, politics & abortion: my argument with Mario Cuomo.(Cover Story)
September 24, 2004... Listening to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry talk about his position on abortion ("We believe that what matters most is... not narrow appeals that divide us, but shared values that unite us... "), I hear loudly in the background the...

Persuade or coerce? A response to Kenneth Woodward.
September 24, 2004... Ken Woodward has decided it's time to challenge a speech I gave at Notre Dame twenty years ago, and John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president who, he says, may have been influenced by it. He does so by excerpting the speech selectively...

The other warsaw uprising: why the world has forgotten.
September 24, 2004... World War II, it is often forgotten, did not end in the liberation of the whole of Europe. Among the major ironies of twentieth-century history is the fact that although it was the ruthless invasion of Poland that precipitated the war, after...

Mythmaking: 'Hero' & 'Vanity Fair'.(Screen)(Movie Review)
September 24, 2004... The Chinese movie epic, Hero, is more than spectacular; it is elemental. Watching it, I felt regret that Wolfgang Petersen had landed the job of directing Troy, though I respect Peterrsen's crafts-manship and like most of his film. But if...

No pain, no gain.(Books)(Book Review)
September 24, 2004... Holy Tears, Holy Blood Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970 Richard D. E. Burton Cornell University Press, $45, 291 pp. In the late nineteenth century, the social reformer and polemicist Leon...

One sinner's story.(Books)(Book Review)
September 24, 2004... Father Joe The Man Who Saved My Soul Tony Hendra Random House, $24.95, 271 pp. Is there a Catholic news story today that's not related to sexual abuse? Former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan gave Father Joe, Tony Hendra's...

Safe, legal & rare?(Books)(Book Review)
September 24, 2004... Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition E. Christian Brugger University of Notre Dame Press, $50, 281 pp. After giving this book a quick look, I gathered its subject would be as much about Catholic authority and...

Don't feed the human beings.(Books)(Book Review)
September 24, 2004... Savages and Beasts The Birth of the Modern Zoo Nigel Rothfels Johns Hopkins University Press, $34.95, 304 pp. The days of zoo animals being kept in tiny barred enclosures, slowly driven mad by confinement, isolation, and plain...

Religion booknotes.(Books)(Book Review)
September 24, 2004... The French family that "owned" Pierre Toussaint fled the island of Haiti in 1797 following a slave rebellion. Not long after, Toussaint emigrated to New York, where according to his biographer he had four strikes against him: He was "black, a...

Five feet under.(The Last Word)(Editorial)
September 24, 2004... The humblest members of my garden I suppose are its worms. I seldom meet with them until the fall. Then, when bright blue days are cold but the soil is still warm, I see them everywhere under the decaying, thinning summer mulch. We've been...