National Catholic Reporter back issues from February 2003:
Inside NCR. (Openers).(Editorial)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Coffee and justice. The two might have been linked in the past as the beverage that often accompanied long discussions about the latter. The association, however, has a more practical side to it today. From stories and other reports crossing my desk, it is easy to conclude that coffee has ...
All the hours of my life. (Starting Point).(living a Christian life)
Feb 07, 2003; ... I have never witnessed an instant cure or a sudden transformation. I've never been to Lourdes or Medjugorje. I've never seen a statue move or an icon weep. The Holy Shroud of Turin is no consolation to me. Neither sea nor sky has ever parted so I could get across. I've eaten ...
Wars r us? (Nation).(Illustration)
Feb 07, 2003 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: In Surabaya, Indonesia, a shop assistant displays toys showing U.S ....
Opinions clash on just war: Christian opposition to attack on Iraq is widespread, but not universal. (Nation).
Feb 07, 2003; ... Can "preemptive war"--military action undertaken absent an imminent threat or ongoing attack by an aggressor--be a "just war"? That depends on who answers the question. On the one hand: "A preventive war is a war of aggression, there's no doubt. It is not included in ...
Doctor: pain care refutes case for euthanasia. (Nation).(Dr. Charles von Gunten)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Those who argue in favor of the "humanity" of killing patients through euthanasia typically cite a person's unrelieved pain as the primary rationale for taking life, but the argument is "absolutely not true," said a San Diego physician. "Our ability to end pain is more powerful ...
Scandal costs account for over half of archdiocese's $13.4 million deficit. (Nation/World).(Archdiocese of Los Angeles)(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... The severely reduced Los Angeles archdiocese central administration is about to take another hit. In September 2002 the archdiocese announced a $4.3 million operating deficit that led to the curtailment of 60 staff and many outreach ministries. Now, according to the Jan. 24 ...
Cardinal predicts Novak's effort to sell Vatican on Iraq war will fail. (Nation/World).(Kasper, Walter on Michael Novak trip)
Feb 07, 2003; ... A top Vatican official has predicted that Michael Novak, an American Catholic intellectual asked by the U.S. government to try to persuade Rome of the morality of a possible "preventive war" in Iraq, will fail. Cardinal Walter Kasper, in a Jan. 24 comment to NCR, said with ...
Lay people named pastoral life directors in Baltimore. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Strategy became reality in mid-January when the Baltimore archdiocese announced that four parishes would be headed not by priests but by pastoral life directors--two women religious, a deacon and, for the first time, a lay person. "This is probably the first major way that people in the ...
No Eucharist for pro-abortion politicians, bishop says. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Any Catholic politician who supports abortion should "abstain from receiving holy Communion until he has a change of heart," Bishop William Weigand of Sacramento, Calif., said Jan. 22. In a homily at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento, marking the 30th anniversary of ...
Mexican-U.S. joint letter calls for immigration changes. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... With current migration policies essentially creating a new underclass in the United States, the time has come for the governments of Mexico and the United States to make basic changes in immigration law and practice, say the Catholic bishops of the two countries in a new joint letter. The ...
Rehab resident. (Nation).(Illustration)
Feb 07, 2003; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: Eugene Rodriguez is pictured in front of his religious-statue collection at Unity Acres hospitality house in Orwell, N.Y. The residence, which includes a working ...
Conservative Christians urge negotiation with North Korea. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Seventeen leaders, including a number of conservative Christians, have written a statement urging President Bush to negotiate with North Korea while keeping matters of religious freedom on the table. Drawing on the example of the Helsinki Agreement negotiated with the Soviet Union in 1975, ...
Faith groups vow to guard church-state separation. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... On Jan. 16, which marks the 12th anniversary of Religious Freedom Day, religious groups vowed to preserve the separation of church and state 217 years after Virginia adopted Thomas Jefferson's law on religious liberty. Five religious groups, led by the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, ...
Excommunications of seven women confirmed. (World).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... VATICAN CITY: The Vatican's doctrinal congregation said it had considered and rejected an appeal from seven ordained women priests who sought to have their excommunication decree overturned. In a new decree published by the Vatican Jan. 27, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ...
Group appeals to make region free of nuclear weapons. (World).(South Asia Partnership)(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... SOUTH ASIA: Christians and Muslims from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have issued an appeal to remove nuclear weapons from South Asia and to ban missile programs throughout the region. The appeal came from some 500 representatives attending the South Asia People Summit Jan ....
Catholic Korean-language translation of Bible complete. (World).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... KOREA: The Catholic church in Korea is in the process of publishing the first Catholic Korean-language translation of the Bible. The new translation, begun in 1989 and completed in late 2002, will replace the existing joint Catholic-Protestant Korean translation, and will be released to ...
Earthquake victim. (World).(Illustration)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Amalia Rodriquez, Injured in the earthquake that hit western Mexico, is helped by a relative as she leaves church following the funeral of her mother Jan. 22 in Colima. Her ...
Evangelization is human right, say India's bishops. (World).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... INDIA: The Roman Catholic bishops of India have asserted that evangelization is a human right and at the same time expressed concern about the resurgence of militant nationalism in their country. A statement issued after a recent meeting of 116 bishops conveys concern about "the resurgence ...
Hong Kong diocese calls for end to death penalty. (World).(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... CHINA: A Catholic diocesan commission was among the nongovernmental organizations appealing to the Chinese government to abolish the death penalty. The united effort, called the Joint Committee for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, handed petition letters and 1,200 signatures to the ...
Vatican: Jewish studies institute will not reopen. (World).(Jerusalem's Ratisbonne Institute)(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... ISRAEL: The Vatican announced it will not reopen the Ratisbonne Institute for Jewish studies in Jerusalem as scheduled in September, but will focus on strengthening the Judaic studies program at Rome's Gregorian University. The announcement was published Jan. 24 in the Vatican newspaper; ...
Archbishop criticizes oil industries after tanker spill. (World).(Jean-Pierre Ricard)(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... FRANCE: As the cleanup continued from the November sinking of an oil tanker, the archbishop of Bordeaux urged an end to "injustice, corruption and irresponsibility" by oil companies. "It is intolerable that the search for profit happens at the detriment of people, environment and life," ...
Protesters target Manchester's Bishop McCormack: Boston Catholics join survivors, supporters in New Hampshire diocese for cathedral march. (Church In Crisis).
Feb 07, 2003; ... The Sunday Boston Globe's front-page story Jan. 26 couldn't have been more timely. The newspaper's "Spotlight Team," in a follow-up report, wrote: "An examination of thousands of pages of internal church records make clear that [Bishop John B.] McCormack, now bishop of the Manchester, ...
New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful issues open letter to McCormack. (Church In Crisis).(Wilfrid H. Paradis alleges priests' files destroyed)(Brief Article)
Feb 07, 2003; ... Even before the Jan. 26 solidarity march in Manchester, N.H., (see related story) a monsignor who is also a historian stirred the pot. Msgr. Wilfrid H. Paradis said that priests' fries were destroyed to conceal abuse evidence, according to the Manchester Union Leader's reporting Jan. 8. ...
Boston bishop draws fire for move to depose therapists. (Church In Crisis).
Feb 07, 2003; ... A group of 83 psychologists and victims' rights advocates have criticized the Boston archdiocese's new leader for permitting church attorneys to depose the therapists of alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse. In a letter, the group of practicing therapists, about a dozen ...
Chicago archdiocese gives accounting of sex abuse costs. (Church In Crisis).
Feb 07, 2003; ... In a comprehensive report on its response to clerical sexual abuse of minors, the Chicago archdiocese said financial costs for such misconduct over the past decade totaled $16.8 million, of which $2.8 million was covered by insurance. Its review board, formed in January 1993, ...
`Plenty of blame to go around' in crisis: legal expert looks at the status of lawsuits and the church. (Church In Crisis).(John Garvey interviewed)(Interview)
Feb 07, 2003; ... The dramatic resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop of Boston in December did nothing to change the legal liability of individual priests implicated in the child sex-abuse scandal. But the controversial legal strategy of the archdiocese--to aggressively defend itself against ...
Depressed coffee prices yield suffering in poor countries. (Cover Story).
Feb 07, 2003; ... Maria Ramos doesn't understand why she works so hard and earns so little. A single mother in the village of Tauquil, high in the rugged mountains of northern Nicaragua, Ramos works her hillside farm with her two children. She produces organic coffee, for which she earns a higher price than ...
Good to the last drop: reconciliation in a cup. (Cover Story).(Jhai Coffee)
Feb 07, 2003; ... The rise in elevation is gradual but noticeable as the van climbs more than 3,000 feet from the valley cut by the San and Mekong Rivers up to Phu Phieng Boleven (the Boleven Plateau) in southern Laos. The air cools considerably as the van grinds up the road. Lee Thorn and Theresa Kingston ...
Harbingers. (Poetry).(Poem)
Feb 07, 2003; ... <Pre> Harbingers It is the sort of gray,raw February daywhen you knowin your bonesthat the fine, cold rainwill turn to snow,that April's flowersare still a long way off. ...
Celestial Favor. (Poetry).(Poem)
Feb 07, 2003; ... <Pre> Celestial Favor last night,I asked Godfor an answer,a sign of approvalthat my step was sure,my intent pure,anything would do,I said this morning,there is a chickenat the winter feederon the railing of the deck,...
Welcoming the Dark. (Poetry).(Poem)
Feb 07, 2003; ... <Pre> Welcoming the Dark Bedroom window sunset:a biblical glow, yellow rayslike the fingers of Godpoking holes in the hills,filling them with liquid gold. I run for the camera.Over my shoulder, yellowsmetamorphose into rush-ahead pinks.No ...
Visiting My Brother. (Poetry).(Poem)
Feb 07, 2003; ... <Pre> Visiting My Brother In deceptive calm,through milky Plexiglas,a taut line of fear connects us.And separates us. No one knowsthe day and hourof his death. This blessed ignorance,God's greatest mercy,all creatures but the ...
Global capitalism a new challenge to theologians: Christians must envision alternative society. (Column).
Feb 07, 2003; ... From the late 1960s to the end of the 1980s, Latin American Liberation theology enunciated a comprehensive vision of Christian theology based on the biblical prophetic tradition and an understanding of redemption centered on social justice. Its watchword was the "preferential option for ...
Political instructions may go unheeded. (Column).(guidelines for Catholic politicians on life issues)
Feb 07, 2003; ... For those unfamiliar with the ways of the Vatican, it may have come as something of a surprise last month when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued specific guidelines for Catholic politicians that attempt to dictate how they should vote on various issues relating to the ...
Don't call it war--it's mass horror: we need to hear of real misery of armed conflict. (Viewpoint).
Feb 07, 2003; ... William Tecumseh Sherman is credited with uttering the now-famous phrase "War is hell." Like so many millions of men, women and children who experienced or witnessed warfare, the Union general had firsthand knowledge of the unspeakable evil of armed conflict. Unfortunately, Sherman's apt ...
A wonderful faith suffers. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003 ... * In the tragic article about the abuse in Los Angeles (NCR, Jan. 31), you wrote of a Franciscan seminary where abuse of boys by friars was rampant. I have no doubt that such tragedies happened. However, I also was in a Franciscan seminary, St. John's Atonement Seminary in ...
Women pay the price. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003 ... * You need to take the abortion discussion one step further back (NCR, Jan. 17). Abortion is not a legitimate topic of debate by either politicians or religious men. Who tells men what to do with their bodies? This choice belongs with a woman and her doctor. It is the woman who pays the ...
Morality upside down. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * I just wish for once that someone would explain how someone like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and so many other Catholic political leaders can defend their pro-choice views (NCR, Jan. 24). All I ever hear them say is that they defend people of other persuasions to follow their conscience or that ...
Iraqi life important too. .(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003 ... * John L. Allen's report on the Vatican criticism of an attack on Iraq (NCR, Jan. 31) is affirmation of the church's belief that we are all God's children and an Iraqi life is as important as our own, or as the founding fathers said "all men are created equal." However if George Bush, Dick ...
Abuse is a cultural norm. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * Regarding the article on Afghanistan and its treatment of girls and women (NCR, Jan. 10), the writer did not mention the systematic abuse of young girls (aged 9 or 10 years) married off to grown men as commonplace in rural areas. Condemned to a life of rape and continuous childbearing, ...
Seminary census. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * Your "facts" are completely wrong again in your article about the closing of St. John's Seminary College in Camarillo, Calif. (NCR, Jan. 17). Arthur Jones reported that there are a total of 90 students in both institutions with 30 of those in the theologate. As a matter of fact, there ...
Cowboy justice. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * Where have we lost our way? A nation of laws, signatory of the United Nations Charter and model of democracy, the United States is suddenly in the year 2003 substituting vigilante law and cowboy justice to get our way in the world community. We thumb our noses at a historic prohibition ...
Dedicated work. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * Thank you for your article by Gill Donovan regarding Cardinal Bernard Law's life and career in the church (NCR, Dec. 27). I, like many others, only recently came to know of him through reports of his mishandling of complaints of sexual abuse. How easy it has been for us to form a biased ...
Doing good not easy task. .(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * How I resonate with the thoughts of columnist Jeannette Batz, "Business trumps spirit; heart and soul is lost" (NCR, Jan. 10). When life was simpler, it seems to me, more got done with less stress. We in Catholic institutions are victims of the time in which we live. To do good works is ...
Root of the scandals. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003 ... * Arthur Jones' article about A.W. Richard Sipe (NCR, Jan. 10) was excellent. It supported my conjecture that the root of the present scandals in the Roman Catholic church are not pedophilia, homosexuality or heterosexuality. As Sipe stated, "It is a human sexuality crisis." The church ...
Not the only one. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * In an editorial (NCR, Nov. 15) you stated, "The late Paul Wellstone was the only senatorial Democrat up for reelection this year who had the guts to vote what he, and many of them, truly believed: that a United States-led invasion of that ...
Teach by good works. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
Feb 07, 2003; ... * I respectfully disagree with your recent editorial titled "Two cheers for the faith-based initiative" (NCR, Jan. 10). My perspective is that Bush plans to unravel the present public social service system to completely transfer government's responsibility for assisting the poor over to ...
Bottom line: defense gets a billion a day. .(Editorial)
Feb 07, 2003 ... In an analysis following President Bush's State of the Union speech Jan. 28, one of the TV talking heads suggested that Bush had given two speeches, a kind of perfunctory, please everyone domestic issues speech and another, more passionate, all-but-a-declaration-of-war speech. ...
The deficiencies of an old superpower. .(Editorial)
Feb 07, 2003 ... During the past year the target has moved from regime change to disarmament. We are led to believe at press time that a new target is emerging, Iraq's association with and aid of al Qaeda. The president's State of the Union message and the flurry of activity following ...
America through global eyes: author's travels reveal contradictory image.(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... THE EAGLE'S SHADOW: WHY AMERICA FASCINATES AND INFURIATES THE WORLD By Mark Hertsgaard Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 256 pages, $23 A picture of an eagle engulfs the cover of this book--dark, ominous, consumed with a terrible burden, wings spanning off the page, as if there is no end ...
Rehnquist leads new `judicial activism': book chronicles how conservative Supreme Court has altered America's ideological landscape.(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... THE REHNQUIST COURT: JUDICIAL ACTIVISM ON THE RIGHT Edited by Herman Schwartz Hill & Wang, 276 pages, $25 In 16 essays by knowledgeable and distinguished jurists, this informative volume demonstrates how the U.S. Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist for 15 ...
History of human dimensions: myriad stories create a picture of Fordham and its Jesuit mission.(FORDHAM: A HISTORY AND MEMOIR )(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... FORDHAM: A HISTORY AND MEMOIR By Raymond A. Schroth, SJ Loyola Press, 424 pages, $16.95 Fr. Raymond Schroth, Jesuit Community professor of humanities at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J., is known to NCR readers as media critic and author of articles on the recent crisis ...
Place, word and light: inner, outer worlds integrate in tour of Europe's Cistercian abbeys.(CISTERCIAN EUROPE: ARCHITECTURE OF CONTEMPLATION)(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... CISTERCIAN EUROPE: ARCHITECTURE OF CONTEMPLATION By Terryl N. Kinder William B. Eerdmans/Cistercian Publications, 407 pages, $70 "Architecture," said Frank Lloyd Wright, "is the mother of all arts." He added: "A doctor can bury his mistakes; an architect can only advise his ...
Democracy finds its roots in debt and war.(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... A FREE NATION DEEP IN DEBT: THE FINANCIAL ROOTS OF DEMOCRACY By James Macdonald Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 564 pages, $30 The primary thesis of this book is straightforward, but prolonged, and can be stated as follows: First, the history of Western civilization has been ...
The sisters who built America: journalist tells of nuns in drama of U.S. history.(Sisters: Catholic Nuns and The Making of America )(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... SISTERS: CATHOLIC NUNS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA By John Fialka St. Martin's Press, 368 pages, $27.95 Historians have long neglected Catholic religious women and their contribution to American culture in accounts of the development of the United States. Along with religion in ...
God's design for generous love.(Wisdom of the Body: Making Sense of our Sexuality)(Book Review)
Feb 07, 2003; ... WISDOM OF THE BODY: MAKING SENSE OF OUR SEXUALITY By Evelyn E. Whitehead and James D. Whitehead Crossroad, 188 pages, $19.95 The best justification for religion I ever heard was that religion functions to give meaning to ordinary things and to perfect our love in the face of ...
Inside NCR. (Openers).
Feb 14, 2003; ... Anyone who has visited the grand headquarters of the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company in a converted mansion here in Kansas City, Mo., knows that the foyer to our wonderful, quirky old building gives special credence to the fact that the place is indeed quirky and old. In ...
Beauty shines in darkness. (Starting Point).
Feb 14, 2003; ... I was in the subway in Boston, anxiously clutching a crumpled white slip of paper on which I had written my instructions: "Take the Red Line from South Station to Park Street. Go downstairs to the Green Line and take the D train to Riverside." I recited these sentences like a mantra, ...
The church and war: American Catholic leaders protest Novak visit to Vatican. (Threat Of War).(Michael Novak)
Feb 14, 2003; ... A letter signed by more than 60 American Catholics, including prominent laity and men and women religious, protests the decision of the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican to bring Michael Novak, a conservative Catholic intellectual, to Rome to argue for the morality of a "preventive war" in ...
Pope's `answer to Rumsfeld' pulls no punches in opposing war. (Threat Of War).(Pope John Paul II, Donald H. Rumsfeld)
Feb 14, 2003; ... A senior Vatican official says that Catholic "just war" doctrine is undergoing an evolution similar to that on capital punishment, from grudging acceptance to a quasi-abolitionist stance. In both cases, he said, modern society has the means to resolve problems without the use of lethal ...
A familiar and unsettling song of war; cardinal prays for pope's vision of peace to prevail. (Threat Of War).(Cardinal James Francis Stafford)(Excerpt)
Feb 14, 2003 ... Cardinal James Francis Stafford, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and one of the highest-ranking Americans in the Vatican, was contacted in late January by Inside the Vatican magazine for a comment on the possibility of a U.S.-led "preventive war" in Iraq. In early ...
Gay Catholics denied Communion found guilty: church `homophobia' decried from the bench. (Nation).
Feb 14, 2003; ... As she prepared to declare their guilt and sentence the three defendants, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Mildred Edwards told the dozen or so people gathered in the second floor courtroom what most of them already knew. "This is not a difficult case on the facts." ...
Jews moving politically to the right, survey says. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 14, 2003; ... In increasing numbers, Jews are beginning to associate themselves with the Republican Party and politically conservative views, according to a new survey. The survey, which was conducted in November and December and released to the Jewish newspaper Forward in mid-January, found that the ...
Salary study praises priests' `financial quality of life'. (Nation).(Brief Article)
Feb 14, 2003; ... Catholic priests rank near the bottom of the pay scale when it comes to Christian clergy compensation, but the Catholic church offers the best model for "financial quality of life," according to a new Duke University study. The study co-authored by the Rev. Becky McMillan, associate ...
Muslim council calls FBI initiative `profiling'. (Nation).(Council on American-Islamic Relations)(Brief Article)
Feb 14, 2003; ... Referring to a new FBI initiative as "profiling," a national Muslim advocacy and civil rights group has urged the Department of Justice to rescind the policy, which calls for collecting demographic information on local areas in part by counting mosques. The Council on ...