Recently added articles from Commonweal:

Bad education.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

Feb 15, 2008; Smith, David L. ... In his article on Karl Adam ("Reformer and Racialist," January 18), John Connelly demonstrates how the terms of Adam's theology proved to be so compatible with, and supportive of, Nazi ideology. How are we to account for Adam's enthusiastic support for an ideology so antithetical to the ...

The best laid plans ...(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

Feb 15, 2008; Gafney, Leo ... The moderate tone and balance in John Connelly's article made his revelations about Karl Adam all the more chilling. Connelly's warning about speculation reminded me of a talk some years ago at Woodstock College in Maryland. The speaker was eloquent in describing Teilhard de Chardin's ...

Jules Isaac's legacy.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

Feb 15, 2008; Phayer, Michael ... Kudos to John Wilkins for his well-balanced essay on the origins of Catholic-Jewish religious understanding ("The Beginning of the Beginning," January 18). It should be pointed out, however, that the man who prompted Pope John XXIII to include Judaism in the deliberations at the Second ...

Corrections.(Correction notice)

Feb 15, 2008 ... The meaning of a sentence in William H. Slavick's October 26, 2007, letter was changed by an editorial error. The sentence should have read, "But the tradition Lauritzen cites [the just-war tradition] is essentially incompatible with the ancient Christian tradition that prevented ...

Bridge closed.(From the Editors)(censorship among Catholics)

Feb 15, 2008 ... There was a good deal of justified outrage among Catholics, and presumably among all fair-minded people, when protests from faculty and students at Rome's La Sapienza University caused Pope Benedict to cancel an academic address he was to give there in January. The protesters claimed that ...

A man of peace: Gordon C. Zahn, 1918-2007.(Farewell)(In memoriam)

Feb 15, 2008; Hovey, Michael W. ... On the night of John Leary's funeral in Boston in August 1982, I ran into Gordon Zahn in Copley Square. His face was lined with tears. Young Leary, a Catholic pacifist and Harvard grad, had dropped dead a few days before while jogging along the Charles River. He was twenty-four years old. ...

Sex & the teenage girl: the insights of 'Juno'.(Columnists)(Critical essay)

Feb 15, 2008; Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe ... There's a classic story of teen pregnancy, told in books, movies, and teen magazines over the past century. It goes something like this: a young girl falls in love for the first time, and, under the spell of first love, she "goes all the way" in the back seat of a car. When she finds ...

Justice or vengeance: is the death penalty cruel & unusual?(Columnists)(Essay)

Feb 15, 2008; Kaveny, Cathleen ... Does the three-drug cocktail used by the majority of states that impose the death penalty violate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment"? The Supreme Court recently heard arguments on this question in Baze v. Reese, a case in which the ...

Good reasons to be humble: a foreign-policy agenda for the next president.(Issues 2008)

Feb 15, 2008; Slaughter, Anne-Marie ... In matters of foreign policy, the next president faces a tall order in a short time. Within days of taking office in January 2009, he or she must take a series of actions to restore America's moral authority in the world and our confidence in ourselves. Within the first year of taking ...

The Suspect Corpse.(Poem)(Brief article)

Feb 15, 2008; Murray, Les ... <Pre> The dead man lay, nibbled, between dark carriages of a rocky river, a curled load of himself, in cheap clothes crusted in dried water. Noisy awe, nose-crimped, sent us up the gorge to jail, in case we were hoaxing. Following us back down next ...

Faith & politics: after the Religious Right.(Articles)(Essay)

Feb 15, 2008; Dionne, E.J., Jr. ... It is already clear that the 2008 presidential campaign will be one of the most notable in our country's history. But one of the most important transformations in our politics is receiving remarkably little attention: In this election, the religious winds are changing. The ...

Begotten, not made: the dangers of reproductive technology.(Articles)(Essay)

Feb 15, 2008; Kane, Francis ... In the region where I live and teach on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the economy centers on a thriving poultry industry. On a number of occasions, when my boys were young, I would trot off with them on a school field trip to admire the wonders of the modern chicken industry. Those ...

Thicker than oil: 'There Will Be Blood'.(Screen)(Movie review)

Feb 15, 2008; Alleva, Richard ... Why is it that the great characters of fiction and drama always, finally, elude us? Hamlet, Phaedra, Charles Foster Kane, the bums waiting for Godot, Anna Karenina, Huck Finn: they lure us on and lure us on and then they turn into Mona Lisas. Critic Eric Bentley wrote that the "enigmatic ...

Clash course.(Books)(Faith, Reason, and the War against Jihadism: A Call to Action)(Book review)

Feb 15, 2008; Cavanaugh, William T. ... Faith, Reason, and the War against Jihadism A Call to Action George Weigel Doubleday, $18.95, 195 pp. George Weigel offers this book as a guide to the war on jihadism for a bipartisan "Coalition of Those Who Understand." Weigel believes that ...

Unintelligent design.(Books)(The Case against Perfection)(Book review)

Feb 15, 2008; Lauritzen, Paul ... The Case against Perfection Michael J. Sandel Harvard University Press, $18.95, 176 pp. In his 1987 novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe explores the hubris, greed, and recklessness of the 1980s Wall Street boom. One of the central characters, Sherman ...

Failed experiment.(Books)(Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy)(Book review)

Feb 15, 2008; Sheehan, James J. ... Weimar Germany Promise and Tragedy Eric D. Weitz Princeton University Press, $29.95, 432 pp. In 1950, when the East German authorities demolished the Royal Palace in the center of Berlin, they retained a single piece of the facade that was ...

Beneath the skin.(The Last Word)(Essay)

Feb 15, 2008; Martin, Regis ... Aside from the few friends whose names and faces even forty-plus years cannot entirely erase, I remember almost nothing of my high school years. Neither the classes I attended nor the poor devils assigned to teach them have left much of an impression. If it wasn't for the fact ...