Commonweal back issues from October 2007:
Modern problems.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 12, 2007; ... R. Scott Appleby's article on the Modernist controversy ("American Idol," September 14) reminds me of Hans Kung's observation in his autobiography that the major reason we need a Vatican III is that at Vatican II the church did not have an historical-critical understanding of itself and ...
An outdated Oath?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Thank you for the thorough article on Modernism. I was told years ago by a bishop in Minnesota that he had taken the Oath against Modernism three times in his career: at his ordination, when he was made monsignor, then again when was made bishop. And as recently as three years ago, while ...
Gifts of the sisters.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 12, 2007; ... It was refreshing to read Kathleen Anderson's warm recollections of the teaching sisters she had in elementary and high school ("The Reunion," September 14). My three younger brothers and I also attended Catholic grade school in the 1970s and '80s. With one exception, I remember the ...
Stigma.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The September 14 letter from an adoptive father ("Unprecedented Experiment"), makes several unsupported assertions about the suitability of gay parents. Contrary to the opinions in the letter, there is a considerable body of research that strongly indicates that children raised by gay ...
Veganism is healthy.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 12, 2007 ... As a dietitian, I know that, contrary to Dr. Robert P. Heaney's claims in his letter to the editor ("A Biological Approach," September 14), meat and other animal products are not essential parts of the human diet. In fact, following a vegan diet is one of the best ways to stay slim, lower ...
Primary care.(From the Editors)
Oct 12, 2007 ... The United States is known for having the best medical care anywhere--if you can afford it. The problem is each year more Americans can't. They lack insurance coverage, in large part because fewer employers can afford to offer it. The average cost of family coverage has risen 78 ...
The trouble with religion: certainty is no substitute for faith.(Columnists)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Religion, as it is ordinarily practiced, reconciles us--not to one another, in any interesting or profound way, but rather to the world as we would like to encounter it. If we are more or less liberal, it takes us easily into the world of liberal thought and its satisfactions, and if we ...
Setting a trap: Iran's Revolutionary Guard wants a U.S. attack.(Columnists)(United States)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The degree of alarm and war propaganda generated in the United States and elsewhere by the Iranian nuclear program reflects a variety of ideological, political, and industrial interests that have little or nothing to do with the actual risks a potentially nuclear Iran poses to anyone. What ...
No exit from Iraq?(Continuing the Conversation)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Matthew A. Shadle From 2003 until the beginning of this year, the Bush administration and many of its supporters allowed ideological preconceptions to cloud their perception of the reality on the ground in Iraq. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's comment, in response ...
Private Wheeler.(Poem)
Oct 12, 2007; ... <Pre> Adrift in a morphine haze, He closes his eyes And strips down his rifle, Spreading the parts on his poncho, Wiping the ...
The sting of death: why we yearn for eternity.(Articles)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Many people today have the greatest difficulty finding a way to speak to our strongest feelings about death. Luc Ferry speaks of the "banalite du deuil" (the banality of grief) today. We very often feel awkward at a funeral, don't know what to say to the bereaved, and are often tempted to ...
Between reform & rupture: the council according to Benedict XVI.(Articles)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The last four popes all participated in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) either as bishop or peritus (theological adviser), and it is clear that their legacies will be distinctively tied to that epochal event. It may be early to assess Pope Benedict XVI's approach to the implementation ...
Courting schismatics?(Articles)(Society of St. Pius X)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's June 29 statement on the ecclesial status of Christian communities outside the Catholic Church contains little that wasn't already affirmed in Dominus lesus and earlier declarations. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the major ...
Shared burden: a manifesto for the laity.(Articles)(Voice of the Faithful)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Recently, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) marked its fifth anniversary. News stories reported the organization's accomplishments, its current challenges, and reflections by friends and critics about its record and its future. The question is: Does Voice of the Faithful still matter? Since ...
Gun therapy: 'The Brave One'.(Screen)(Movie review)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Plato wanted poets and dramatists banished from his republic because he believed they reveled in emotion to the detriment of reason and citizenship while coaxing audiences to join in the wallow. The only time I'm tempted to agree is when I see a vigilante movie. Films such as Death Wish, ...
Goods in conflict.(Books)(The Future of Marriage)(Book review)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The Future of Marriage David Blankenhorn Encounter Books, $25.95, 260 pp. Just the other day, it seems, same-sex marriage was unthinkable--or even if thinkable, nonexistent, its anthropological and historical evidence rare, fragmentary, and usually ...
Faulty design.(Books)(The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism)(Book review)
Oct 12, 2007; ... The Edge of Evolution The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Michael J. Behe Free Press, $28, 336 pp. It would be difficult to name a scientific idea that causes more unease, more bewilderment, or more opposition than Charles Darwin's theory of ...
Philosopher & statesman.(Books)(Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life)(Book review)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Once Upon a Country A Palestinian Life Sari Nusseibeh, with Anthony David Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27.50, 560 pp. Although Sari Nusseibeh first met the distinguished Israeli novelist Amos Oz in 1978, it was not until he read Oz's ...
Culture critic.(Books)(Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television)(Book review)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Not Remotely Controlled Notes on Television Lee Siegel Basic Books, $15.95, 304 pp. A television review has the shelf life of a popsicle in August: its value is in the moment. A TV program that proves to be a failure will vanish from public ...
Our gulag.(The Last Word)(prison administration)
Oct 12, 2007; ... Long before Guantanamo, the United States had its own domestic prisoner-abuse problem. The high rate of incarceration in county jails, and in state and federal prisons, coupled with a general lack of public awareness, makes such abuse almost inevitable. Take a case I am familiar ...
The common good.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... As a theology professor and former Marine, I took great interest in Paul Lauritzen's "Student Soldiers" (September 28). Lauritzen argues that ROTC provides well-educated leaders for the Army and is not incompatible with the vision that informs a modern Catholic university. I would add only ...
A right to conscience.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Paul Lauritzen makes the all-too-common mistake of saying that pacifism is the only reason to oppose ROTC on Catholic campuses. Not so. Catholics who are not pacifists can believe either in the just-war theory or in the blank-check theory, according to which the government gets ...
Contradicting traditions.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... If one slides uncritically over Paul Lauritzen's assertion that "Catholic tradition ... [affirms] the right and responsibility of governments to defend their citizens," his argument for ROTC appears solid. But the tradition Lauritzen cites is essentially incompatible with the ...
More than reason.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Paul Lauritzen's article brought to mind an old story that floated among the theology students at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, more than fifty years ago: "If you lose your wallet, pray that a moral theologian never finds it. He will come up with a dozen good reasons to keep ...
The body question.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... I do think that Charles Taylor has properly defined the complexity of our current situation ("Sex & Christianity," September 28). But it seems to have escaped his notice that the Vatican naysayers jettisoned Counter-Reformation Puritanism long ago and are now animated by the same ...
Thou shalt not swear.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Anthony Wiggins tells of a bishop who took the Oath against Modernism on three occasions, and a group of priests who all said they had taken the oath (Letters, October 12). It's important to realize that the experience of each of these sources is more than ...
Burmese daze.(From the Editors)(demonstrations in Burma)
Oct 26, 2007 ... For a few days in September, scenes of barefoot Buddhist monks confronting Burmese soldiers and riot police in the streets of Rangoon made it onto the evening news. The images were disturbingly picturesque. To the Western eye, they presented a real-life costume drama of good versus evil, ...
Time to pay up: there is no such thing as a free war.(Columnist)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Would conservatives and Republicans support the war in Iraq if they had to pay for it? That is the immensely useful question posed by Congressman David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, when he recently called for a temporary war tax to cover President George ...
The wildness of Christianity: the legacy of Madeleine L'Engle.(Short Take)(Biography)
Oct 26, 2007; ... The remarkable Madeleine L'Engle died in September, at the age of eighty-eight. The book that made her famous and won her the Newberry Award in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time--the tale of a homely, brainy fourteen-year-old girl who ends up saving the universe--remains beloved by many today. But ...
'A Catholic in the room': second thoughts on Hilaire Belloc.(Articles)(The Crisis of Civilization)
Oct 26, 2007; ... On May 18,1937, Hilaire Belloc completed a series of lectures at Fordham University, published later that year as The Crisis of Civilization. On May 18, 2007, seventy years to the day, if not quite to the minute, I finished reading that book. I had chanced upon it on the shelves of the ...
Perennial.(Poem)
Oct 26, 2007; ... <Pre> While we slept last night, late October frost passed over the garden like the angel of death, shriveling the purple heads of cone flowers. Already the smell of snow. Tightening in the ribs. Little by little afternoons shrink around us in the darkening rooms ....
New century, same crisis: Walter Rauschenbusch & the social gospel.(Articles)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Nineteen hundred seven was quite a year. William James published his landmark collection Pragmatism. Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Two of Antoni Gaudi's greatest buildings, Casa Batllo and Casa Mila, went up in Barcelona. And Henry Adams announced the arrival of ...
Lost boys: 'In the Valley of Elah' & 'Into the Wild'.(Screen)(Movie review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Is there an actor working today who conveys a more mythically American presence than Tommy Lee Jones? His endlessly fascinating face unites opposites in our national character, making him both suave and brutal, calculating and homespun. He's tough, but smart too (that Harvard education!), ...
Bringing out the dead: Frontline's 'The Undertaking'.(Media)(Television program review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... For most of us, the profession of mortician would fall fairly low on a list of desirable employments. Choosing to handle dead bodies, to deal with grieving relatives, to confront mortality on a practical level, day in, day out--it's hardly conceivable. We belong to a culture that idolizes ...
What became of Wystan?(Fall Books)(Collected Poems)(Book review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Collected Poems W. H. Auden Edited by Edward Mendelson The Modern Library, $40, 928 pp. Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973. To commemorate the centenary of his birth, The ...
Why secularism is the exception.(Fall Books)(Book review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... The Stillborn God Religion, Politics, and the Modern West Mark Lilla Alfred A. Knopf, $26, 352 pp. Theological ideas," Mark Lilla tells us, "still inflame the ideas of men, stirring up messianic passions that leave societies in ruins." But ...
Was something lost?(Fall Books)(How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now)(Book review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... How to Read the Bible A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now James L. Kugel Free Press, $35, 848 pp. James Kugel's elegantly written How to Read the Bible tries to be at least two things at once. On one level, it is an introductory textbook. On ...
Speech therapy.(Fall Books)(Finding the Voice of the Church)(Book review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Finding the Voice of the Church George Dennis O'Brien University of Notre Dame Press, $25, 256 pp. To be both a defender of the faith and an advocate of church reform is not easy. King Henry VIII failed spectacularly in that mission, but in his new book ...
Populist & cosmopolitan.(Fall Books)(Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite)(God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America)(Book review)
Oct 26, 2007; ... Faith in the Halls of Power How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite D. Michael Lindsay Oxford University Press, $24.95, 352 pp. God's Harvard A Christian College on a Mission to Save America Hanna Rosin ...
A hidden life.(The Last Word)(Marzena Ladiejewska's death)
Oct 26, 2007; ... On Sunday, February 25, 2007, Marzena Ladiejewska and her mother Urszula Winiarski went to their former home in Cheshire, Connecticut. The house was up for sale, and Marzena and Urszula arrived to prepare it for an open house later that day. Urszula's former husband, Tadeusz, ...