Commonweal articles from September 2006

Commonweal archives from September 2006

Pfaff's skepticism.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2006... How does one respond respectfully and gratefully to William Pfaff, then tell him he is at least a little bit wrong ("Clash of Cultures," June 16)? His remarkable overview of our historic situation has among its many virtues locating historic...

What might have been.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2006... Philip A. Cunningham ("Uncharted Waters," July 14) is quite correct in pointing out the supersessionist mindset of the draft of the "lost" encyclical Humani generis unitas. Yet he misunderstands its historical importance as an emphatic...

Beauty is truth ...(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2006... Michael J. Perry ("The Morality of Human Rights," July 14) finds the attempts to lay a nonreligious foundation for human rights unconvincing; and, in the commitment to human rights among secular thinkers, he discerns only an "aesthetic...

Catholicism at Columbia.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2006... Maurice Timothy Reidy's April 7 article ("Catholicism on Campus") requires some clarification regarding the evolution of campus ministry at Columbia University. I was an undergraduate at Columbia between 1989 and 1993, and for a year I served...

After Lebanon.(peacekeeping forces )
September 8, 2006... Israel's ill-conceived and evidently botched effort to destroy Hezbollah forces in Lebanon has ended in stalemate. A UN peacekeeping force of fifteen thousand, led by the French, will now be deployed in the hope of keeping Israel and its...

John Cort, R.I.P.(John C. Cort)(Obituary)
September 8, 2006... When John C. Cort, the writer, editor, activist, husband of sixty years and father of ten, and self-proclaimed Christian socialist died last month in Massachusetts at the age of ninety-two, his family included in the Mass program an...

Against the odds: Colorado's prolife Democrat, Bill Ritter.
September 8, 2006... Bill Ritter is a prolife Democrat with a good shot at besting his fellow Catholic, Republican Congress-man Bob Beauprez, in their race to become Colorado's next governor. Ritter has been running slightly ahead in the polls for months, and he...

Role reversals: hazards of the college party culture.
September 8, 2006... In the wake of last spring's sex scandal involving the Duke University men's lacrosse team, a Rolling Stone reporter named Janet Reitman went to Durham to interview current students. She returned with a revealing portrait of social life at...

Altered states: what I've learned about death & disability.
September 8, 2006... More than a year after the death of Terri Schiavo, discussions about her case remain highly polarized. What principles should guide decisions about people who can no longer speak for themselves? Who should make those decisions, and what do...

Young Catholics & their faith: is being 'spiritual' enough?(Articles)
September 8, 2006... Two months after the wedding of my nephew, Joe, and his lovely bride, Laura, I went out to dinner with them. Their wedding had been well planned and beautiful, a ceremony containing so many thoughtful elements, I'd assumed they must be very...

Torcello.(Poem)
September 8, 2006... Summer 2005 Memory, bellied as the sun in its sublime excursions. The mind rests, indifferent in its frayed regalia. In the cover of spring shade, in the trap of a lavender bush, the predictions of flesh. Then the stupor of...

The material of ornament.(Poem)
September 8, 2006... (Ruskin) He is the material of ornament laid against the copper roof in the sun, muscle sweet as caramel. I have long hungered and would break my fast. The cheese and bread have fallen into a stupor of mold. The vine goes queer....

Spreading the news: a report on Europe's new evangelization.
September 8, 2006... The church exists in order to evangelize," wrote Pope Paul VI in his 1975 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi; it is "the grace and vocation proper to the church, her deepest identity." In the three decades since that classic statement,...

Termite damage.(Poem)
September 8, 2006... The pinking shears gleam on the blue table, cold the first cold morning of the year. All the way down to the bay the first grass, and the last stands of black fennel. Throughout the long summer the invisible teemed. The...

Trapped: 'The Descent' & 'Little Miss Sunshine'.(Screen)(Movie review)
September 8, 2006... Horror films divide moviegoers into love 'em or loathe 'em camps, and I confess to being in the former. If you're an aficionado who appreciates horror's unique mix of camp and catharsis, The Descent is for you. Director Neil Marshall...

Schools of Democracy.(Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement)(Book review)
September 8, 2006... A Political History of the American Labor Movement Clayton Sinyai Cornell University Press, $22.50, 282 pp. It is the rare volume of labor history that opens with a quote from Rousseau. What has the Social Contract to do with John...

The one percent doctrine.(Books)
September 8, 2006... Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 Ron Suskind Simon & Schuster, $27, 367 pp. The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind's anatomy of the Bush administration's "war on terror," reads more like a thriller than the...

Gentle Regrets.(Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life)(Book review)
September 8, 2006... Thoughts from a Life Roger Scruton Continuum, $19.95, 248 pp. Roger Scruton may not be a household name, but he is a contemporary cultural exemplar from the British side of the pond, someone who has given clear and eloquent...

Loyal Dissent.(Loyal Dissent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian)(Book review)
September 8, 2006... Memoir of a Catholic Theologian Charles E. Curran Georgetown University Press, $26.95, 280 pp. Charles Curran was once the best-known Catholic priest in the United States. His headline-grabbing dismissal from the Catholic...

Where it started.(St. Mary's City )
September 8, 2006... The route today to St. Mary's City, Maryland, is from the north. It snakes through sprawling suburbs, down Maryland's western peninsula, and leaves behind the power centers of Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis. This is not how people in...

Commonweal's.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... You will forgive a reader of fifty-five years an impertinence, will you not? I have noticed of late that some of your articles carry the note that they have been funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. As a Commonweal Associate, as...

Benedict on politics.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... In "Catholic Swingers" (August 11), the editors advise the Democratic Party that, unless it moderates its positions on abortion, stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, it will lose the same set of Catholic voters in 2006 and 2008 that it...

Dealing with change.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Christopher M. Bellito ("A Changing Church," August 11) is to be commended, not only for trying to take the fear out of change, but also for pointing out the difference between change for the sake of change and change that restores the healthy...

Aquinas & transubstantiation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Christopher M. Bellitto writes that "the church does not have the option to give up what makes her church: she will not delete a doctrine like transubstantiation." This might not be the best example to cite. Transubstantiation, a teaching less...

Errata.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Christopher M. Bellitto's article contains three errors: (1) Transubstantiation is a way of formulating a doctrine rather than a doctrine. The doctrine is the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. (2) Lay investiture, the conferring of ring...

Inextricably linked.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... In his excellent column on the mystery of suffering ("Cosmically Unfair," August 11), John Garvey writes that "suffering and love in this world are inextricably tangled." Put in a slightly different way, if suffering did not exist in this...

Christianity & human rights.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Michael J. Perry ("The Morality of Human Rights," July 14) appropriately questions how nonbelievers can ground their commitments to human rights. He does not seem to recognize, however, that believers have our own challenges in this regard. For...

Seeking forgiveness.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Perhaps Commonweal is not the place to make suggestions to our Jewish partners in dialogue. I wonder, however, how Philip A. Cunningham ("Uncharted Waters," July 14) would respond if a Catholic theologian made the equivalent Christian claim...

Fairness & the economy.(From the Editors)
September 22, 2006... Few experts dispute the fact that economic inequality in the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades, especially under the Bush administration. Americans are harder working and more productive than ever, yet the rewards for...

Family feuds: what's keeping Catholics apart?(Columnists)(Catholic Common Ground Initiative)(Organization overview)
September 22, 2006... In August, the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, founded by the late Cardinal Joseph Bemardin, celebrated its tenth anniversary in Chicago. When I mentioned the anniversary to people at Notre Dame, I got a puzzled look, and a query: "Oh, is...

Shades of blue: will the North vote the Democrats back into power?
September 22, 2006... The North will rise again. If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in this fall's elections, the inversion of that old slogan is likely to be a central factor in their victory. Although no one anticipates a Democratic sweep in...

A swift-boating in Jersey: lessons in journalistic objectivity.(Short Takes)
September 22, 2006... I became well acquainted with political spin during the many years I covered New York City politics as a newspaper reporter. Yet, even with that background, I've been a little dizzied by the brazenness of what the spin doctors have been dishing...

Faith-based candidates: no shortage in Ohio.
September 22, 2006... A recent article in an Ohio newspaper asked provocatively: Has the holy war begun? The answer to that question is yes. The battle, though, will not take place in Jerusalem, or on the West Bank. Nor will it take place in Iraq, Afghanistan, or...

If Anything.(Poem)
September 22, 2006... Nothing special, species perfectly Unextraordinary, robins Joggle across the orchard corroded Breasts, jet heads (the males), bobbing And probing like any old fangless poet Yet again putting nib to paper, Bobbing, probing, abducing...

The visitation: report on the Vatican's seminary review.
September 22, 2006... Last fall the seminary where I teach was visited by a team of examiners sent by the Vatican. Interviews were conducted with faculty members and with students studying for the priesthood. Initially, I was hopeful that the visit would lead to a...

Shifting allegiances: Catholics, Democrats & the GOP.(Articles)
September 22, 2006... True story: It is the day before Pope John Paul II's funeral, a year ago last April. Assembling in Rome are the members of the official delegation of the United States government, including President and Mrs. Bush and a number of Catholic...

A guide for Catholic voters: abortion is not the only issue.
September 22, 2006... The 2004 presidential election saw a handful of U.S. Catholic bishops involve themselves in partisan politics in an extraordinary way. They admonished Catholic candidates publicly for their views and in some cases advocated refusing Communion...

Tardy.(Poem)
September 22, 2006... the word a big-eyed schoolboy his books strapped together his shoelaces undone two tardies make an absence I watch the children playing in the dirt, channeling rivers with popsicle sticks the clouds are a land of laundry ...

Passion play: Oliver Stone's World Trade Center'.(Screen)
September 22, 2006... There is a question that hovers over Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. Is America ready for a movie about September 11? Since there have already been several documentaries on issues raised by the event (not to mention United 93), the more...

The lessons of defeat.(Books)(A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... A Godly Hero The Life of William Jennings Bryan Michael Kazin Alfred A. Knopf, $30, 374 pp. It is perhaps some measure of the current desperation of American liberals that an obviously talented historian would recommend for...

Identity crisis.(Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Catholic Higher Education A Culture in Crisis Melanie M. Morey and John J. Piderit, SJ Oxford University Press, $35,450 pp. The argument isn't new: Most Catholic colleges are in imminent danger of losing whatever religiously...

The limits of language.(Into It: Poems)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Into It Poems Lawrence Joseph Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $20, 67 pp. The age demanded an image / Of its accelerated grimace, / Something for the modem stage, / not, at any rate, an attic grace." These famed lines from Ezra...

Religion booknotes.(A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future)(An Infinity of Little Hours)(Spirituality and Mysticism)(The Writings of Julian of Norwich)(God's Last Words: Reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Immediately after the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI, a spate of books on the two men and the conclave were published, none of any great interest or enduring value. They tended to be cobbled together from press releases,...

Thank you, sister.(The Good Word)
September 22, 2006... My football coach in 1955 was a very young Sister of Mercy--evidence that Hollywood did not always make things up--named Paulinus Oakes. She taught at St. Peter's grade school in Jackson, Mississippi. Besides teaching us how to hit with...