National Catholic Reporter back issues from August 2004:
Eyes on Latin America.(Editor's Note)
Aug 13, 2004; ... A number of people have called and e-marled asking if the Latin America series, which totals 10 parts to run through the early fall, will be available in one piece. If the interest is there, we will certainly consider republishing the whole series in an inexpensive, easy-to-use form for ...
Riding out the storm.(In The Beginning)(Sudanese refugees)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Refugees walk through blowing sand during a storm on the Chad-Sudan border. Rain, sand and wind are hampering relief efforts for Sudanese refugees who have been driven from their homes. "U.N. humanitarian agencies say they have less than 40 percent of the funding needed to provide relief ...
Religious split over faith office.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... WASHINGTON -- The Interfaith Alliance, which aims at fostering a positive role for religion in public life, has asked President Bush and Sen. John Kerry to pledge to eliminate the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives in the next presidential administration ....
Harvard returns sheikh's gift.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... BOSTON -- After more than a year of debate and negotiation, Harvard Divinity School has agreed to return a gift from a leader of the United Arab Emirates, at the Arab nation's request. The school accepted in 2000 a $2.5 million gift from Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, to establish a professorship ...
Churches defeat gun law.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A Ramsey County district judge overturned Minnesota's controversial "conceal-and-carry" gun permit law in July, ruling in favor of a lawsuit fried by several churches. Minnesota's six Catholic dioceses banded together with more than 30 churches, social service agencies ...
Quotable & notable.(In The Beginning)
Aug 13, 2004 ... "Remember, Jesus came to take away our sins, never our brains." --Greg "Dobie" Moser, director of youth ministry for the Cleveland diocese, quoting a Jesuit friend, during a talk at the National Association for Lay Ministry conference in June "Here's what I think the ...
Finnish theologian deported from U.S.(In The Beginning)
Aug 13, 2004 ... A renowned Finnish theologian and tenured professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., has been forced to leave the United States because he did not qualify under new visa regulations for religious professionals. In what may be one of the stranger cases of ...
Cardinal to mediate election row.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... CEBU CITY, Philippines -- Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu has accepted an invitation from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to serve as mediator between administration and opposition leaders with the aim of reconciling political factions and uniting the nation. "I will be ...
Embryo screening rules relaxed.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... LONDON -- Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority last month loosened rules on screening human embryos to allow couples with a sick child to test embryos conceived during fertility treatment and pick one to implant in the woman's uterus that matched the sick child's tissue ...
Wall, settlements expand.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... JERUSALEM -- The barrier separating Israel from the West Bank will not follow the 1967 boundary, despite last month's High Court of Justice ruling that the current route violates Palestinian rights, an Israeli Defense Ministry official has said. Nezah Mashiah, head of the wail project in ...
Pope won't seek Lourdes cure.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II will make an Aug. 14 and 15 pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, not to seek physical healing but to praise God for his great gifts, including the gift of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said the papal trip organizer. "Lourdes is not just a place to seek ...
Mary Robinson.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Mary Robinson, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland, will address the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and Leadership ...
Fr. John B. Ardis.(People)(Democratic National Convention)(Father John B. Ardis offers closing benediction)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Ft. John B. Ardis, director of the Paulist Center in Boston, where presidential candidate John Kerry attends Mass, offered the closing benediction for the Democratic convention July 29. Traditionally, the bishop or archbishop of the ...
Barbara Hall.(People)(won $15,000 from the Paulist Priests' Humanitas Awards for media writing)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Barbara Hall, executive producer of the CBS television drama "Joan of Arcadia," won $15,000 from the Paulist Priests' Humanitas Awards for media writing. Judges ...
Archbishop of York David Hope.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Archbishop of York David Hope, the second-ranking prelate in the Church of England, announced Aug. 1 he is resigning so he can return to parish ministry. Hope's resignation comes nearly six years before the church's mandatory retirement age of 70. He has been appointed vicar of a ...
Starting point.(In The Beginning)(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004; ... I received an e-mail from far away, from a lady who lives in England. She mentioned in passing that there were eight men ordained priests and six men ordained deacons. The ordinations took place in the cathedral. At the end, there was a procession. The men--surely all men--were ...
Document recommends cultivation of 'feminine values': Vatican rejects combative feminism, seeks 'active collaboration' for men and women.(Vatican Document On Women)
Aug 13, 2004; ... In a critique of what some in Rome regard as American-style feminism, a new Vatican document has rejected systems of thought that, in its view, blur differences between men and women and regard women as adversaries of men. A related tendency to see gender as culturally ...
Beginning a serious conversation about sexual difference.(Commentary)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Much of the rapid response to the new Vatican document, "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World," suggests that the church is attacking radical feminism and that she only wants women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. But a complete reading of ...
To the 'experts in humanity': since when did women become the problem?(Commentary)
Aug 13, 2004; ... "The church, expert in humanity, has a perennial interest in whatever concerns men and women," a new document from Rome begins. After that the expertise, sincere as it may be, gets cloudy. The interesting, if not tantalizing, thing about Vatican documents that purport to deal ...
Bombings in Iraq expose deeper problems.(The Word From Rome)
Aug 13, 2004; ... It's an occupational hazard for journalists--one we share with academics, policy wonks and others who make their living analyzing things--to try to understand even the incomprehensible. We thereby run the risk of imparting logic even to acts of pure madness. That said, the ...
Kerry advised to court faith groups.(Nation)
Aug 13, 2004; ... The Bush campaign's efforts to reach out to religiously motivated voters is well documented; the Kerry campaign's less so. Maybe that's because there's not much to say about the latter. "The Kerry folks really do not understand the scope and the complexity of ...
Dems' religious outreach director quits.
Aug 13, 2004 ... After less than two weeks on the job, the Democratic Party's first-ever director of religious outreach resigned Aug. 4 after her public positions came under fire. The Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson said it was "no longer possible for me to do my job effectively" after the New York-based ...
Missouri bans same-sex marriage.(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... Missouri voters Aug. 3 approved 71 percent to 29 percent a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The bishops of Missouri's four Catholic dioceses had strongly supported the amendment. In a June 28 message published in church ...
More bishops restrict Communion.(Brief Article)
Aug 13, 2004 ... In a joint statement released Aug. 4, the bishops of Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and Charleston, S.C., have barred Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion until they publicly recant and receive the consent of their bishop. The bishops said unrepentant ...
Pro-choice stance draws scant notice at convention.(Nation)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Democrats for Life gathered for a reception July 26 and they needed a room larger than a phone booth to conduct their business. In fact, they met in the majestic Great Hall of the Massachusetts State House. Nearly two-dozen antiabortion and anti-death penalty office holders and office ...
Priests say dismissal lacked due process: military chaplains lose posts when archbishop revokes endorsement.(Nation)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Two military chaplains who are critical of church leaders for tolerating clergy sex abuse lost their "ecclesiastical endorsement," apparently without recourse to any form of due process, and consequently lost their jobs in the military. The endorsements for Air Force Col. Thomas ...
Migrants risk their lives in search of a future.(Perilous journey)(Cover Story)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Part Four: Immigration In the aftermath of civil unrest, Latin Americans face uncertainty born of chronic poverty and the unpredictable shifts of globalization. In search of stability and a future, many are increasingly willing to risk the considerable danger of moving to ...
From romance to retro: engaging love in 'Before Sunset'; 'Anchorman' unevenly skewers the '70s.(Movies)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Richard Linklater achieved considerable success with "Before Sunrise" (1995), an unabashedly romantic movie that begins with Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American traveling through Europe in 1994, meeting Celine (Julie Delpy), a student from Paris, on a train. They start talking earnestly, ...
'Haven,' a one-woman play, looks at refugees in America.(Theater)(Biography)
Aug 13, 2004; ... When Sara Kahn was 10 years old, her mother showed her a documentary on the Holocaust called "Let My People Go." It was Kahn's first encounter with evil, and it made a strong impact, especially a scene in which concentration camp guards scooped up skeletal remains into a wheelbarrow and ...
The perils and promise of globalization.(World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability; Globalization and its Discontents)(Book Review)
Aug 13, 2004; ... WORLD ON FIRE: HOW EXPORTING FREE MARKET DEMOCRACY BREEDS ETHNIC HATRED AND GLOBAL INSTABILITY By Amy Chua Doubleday, 256 pages, $26 GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS By Joseph E. Stiglitz W.W. Norton & Company, 304 pages, $15.95 Capitalism has produced amounts of ...
Compassion is for the birds.(Columns)
Aug 13, 2004; ... I'd come in from the garden where I'd sat all morning drinking minted iced tea, reading a mystery, and settled happily into work. I'd write a while, then do yoga, then bake bread. Finally, a day to myself, no rushing around, no chores I didn't want to do. The phone rang. ...
Most Americans don't want religion in their politics.(Columns)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Toward the end of June, David Brooks, one of the two conservative columnists who appear regularly on the op-ed page of The New York Times, did a piece headlined "A Matter of Faith" in which he proposed that the majority of Americans want their presidents and presidential candidates to talk ...
International Court decided wisely.(Column)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Socrates was the first thinker to contend that it is better to suffer injustice than to perpetrate it. Those who carry out injustices, he argued, corrupt their own souls and are ultimately ruined from within. The great Greek philosopher consequently maintained that society ...
AIDS menaces a 'liberated' Vietnam.(Viewpoint)
Aug 13, 2004; ... While working on a documentary for PBS in Vietnam last year, I was amazed to find many teenagers still in their high school uniforms at a Saigon nightclub, kissing each other on the dance floor and drinking alcohol with glee. One of them, a 15-year-old girl named Hoa, said that ...
I hear confessions.(Viewpoint)
Aug 13, 2004; ... I hear confessions at St. Francis of Assisi Church in midtown Manhattan. It is possibly my chief work. The two confessionals are spare, small and often cold. In summer, awful odors can linger, a composite of perfume, cologne or spent breath. The stale smell of a cigarette occasionally ...
Law's posting to Rome.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... After reading John Allen's piece "O'Malley calls Law post poorly timed" (NCR, July 16), I was nearly seething with anger, not toward John Allen but toward Archbishop Sean O'Malley and Pope John Paul II. In the minds and hearts of most persons, there could never be a "good time" ...
Latin America's future.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Part Three of the series "Latin America Today" (NCR, July 16) left me with many emotions: chagrin; anger, yet understanding; and a sense of deja vu. I worked with Catholic Relief Services, the Institute for Human Progress and the Peace Corps in Mexico and Central America between 1956 and ...
Off the martyr list.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... In these times when Muslim extremists target Christians and Jews and the suicide bomber is called a martyr, it is more than interesting to recall the decisions of the Council of Elvira (c.305), which dealt with Christians who were engaged in similar violence against pagan shrines and ...
Colman McCarthy chases a mirage.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Colman McCarthy's encouragment to Catholics to leave the church (NCR, June 18) especially saddens me because I have so long admired what I understood to be his stalwart work for peace. His discovery--however many years ago--that Catholics are not members of a pacifist church seems to be ...
Abusive priests on the lam.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Thank you, NCR staff, for summarizing the work of The Dallas Morning News in your article "Priests said to cross borders to escape abuse charges" (NCR, July 2). This article evoked fury and disgust within me that compared to when I first learned of the sex abuse scandals. If the priests ...
Keleher left no mess.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... I was dismayed by the comments of Tom Roberts in his Editor's Note (NCR, July 16). Having been an 18-year resident of the Belleville, Ill., diocese and a friend of Archbishop James Keleher (whose last name Roberts could not even be bothered to spell correctly), I am angered at his ...
A Lutheran view.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... As an outsider but a faithful subscriber, I have major doubts about the Roman Catholic commitment to its antiabortion stand. I am a retired pastor and former bishop of the Lutheran Church in America (known as the ELCA now). Presidential hopeful John Kerry has been informed that he is to be ...
Voters to move to Rome?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... What is a good Catholic to do in the upcoming presidential election? Catholics in good conscience wonder if they can vote for George Bush due to his full support for preemptive war and capital punishment. They feel equally confused as to whether they can support John Kerry due to his ...
Republicans chasing Catholics.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... I was more than a little disturbed when I read the "Washington Notebook" article about the Republican National Committee seeking parish directories and membership lists (NCR, July 30). While I certainly believe that my faith is connected to how I live my civic life, I do not ...
9/11 commission report.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... It has been stated by the Bush administration and various pundits that the reason for the 9/11 attack is because terrorists hate democracy and the United States is a democratic nation. The lie to this is found in the report by the 9/11 commission. It states, "America's policy choices have ...
Equal-opportunity slurs.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... The article by Demetria Martinez, "Hip-hop help for budding activists" (NCR, July 2), provides much food for the intellect. What strikes me about the title of the group called "The League of Pissed Off Voters" is the dignity of it. We all know that the term "pissed off" is one that is used ...
Pro-life ad in NCR.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Aug 13, 2004; ... Regarding the ad by the American Life League on Page 15 of the July 16 NCR, "183 Catholic bishops lost in the ...
A document from the male imagination.(Editorials)
Aug 13, 2004 ... It was, in the end, a document that issued from the male imagination. In popular parlance it was quickly branded "The Vatican Letter on Women." Its actual title, however, is "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World." ...
The unsettling story of the Austrian church.(Perspectives)
Aug 13, 2004; ... You cannot help but feel sorry for Austria's Catholics. Their local church has been plagued by a number of incompetent bishops. They call themselves conservatives, but betray Christian traditions for the sake of ecclesial power. Austria's Catholics--those who have not altogether ...
Reporting on Deal Hudson.(Editor's Note)
Aug 27, 2004; ... Deal Hudson, the influential Catholic publisher of Crisis magazine and political operative, attempted, in his words, "to get a head start" on a story that NCR Washington correspondent Joe Feuerherd has been working on for more than four months. Hudson's ploy was to write a response to a ...
Boston to close more churches.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... BOSTON -- The Boston archdiocese said it will close 10 more parishes, bringing to a total 81 churches that will be shuttered by year's end under a massive reconfiguration plan. The closings, in the old industrial cities of Lowell and Lawrence, north of Boston, were considered separately ...
Legal aid offered to Muslims.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union will provide free legal representation to any Arab or Muslim who is approached by the FBI in what the ACLU is calling "dragnet technique" interviews by the bureau. ...
Victims can't address nuns.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... WASHINGTON--At press time NCR learned that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents the leaders of nearly 70,000 U.S. nuns, decided not to allow a group of sexual abuse victims to address their Aug. 19-22 national conference in Fort Worth, Texas ....
Stem-cell research explained.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... ST. LOUIS -- People in the pews really need to understand the issue of stem-cell research, especially in light of the upcoming presidential election, said a nationally respected neuroscientist and theologian. Stem-cell expert Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk spoke to Catholic pro-life officials ...
Blessed oil.(In The Beginning)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... Cardinal Juan Cipriani Thorne of Lima blesses the new Camisea natural gas pipeline during its launch in Lurin, Peru. At left is Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. Peru celebrated the inauguration of its huge gas line two decades after the reserves were discovered. The government hopes ...
Conditions in Darfur continue to deteriorate.(In The Beginning)
Aug 27, 2004 ... LONDON -- Christian aid agencies report that conditions for the more than 1 million displaced persons in Darfur, western Sudan, and refugees in eastern Chad are deteriorating. A joint Caritas Internationalis and Action by Churches Together team working in the region reported that the onset ...
Quotable & notable.(In The Beginning)
Aug 27, 2004 ... "Iran is going to be the 800-pound gorilla of American foreign policy come September." --An unnamed U.S. State Department official commenting on the apparent collapse of a European initiative to persuade Iran to freeze its nuclear program "It is Boring with a capital ...
Students talk with space station.(U.S. Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... TULLAHOMA, Tenn. -- Students from St. Paul the Apostle and Good Shepherd Catholic schools made history for Tennessee Aug. 10 when they made contact with the International Space Station. "My heart skipped when we first heard him," radio control operator Mike Boyea said of the initial voice ...
Vatican closes Austrian seminary.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican closed Aug. 12 a 200-year-old Austrian seminary at the center of a sex scandal involving thousands of child pornography photographs and evidence of homosexual relations between priests and seminarians. Bishop Klaus Kung of Feldkirch, acting for Pope John Paul ...
Silver jubilee celebrated.(World Briefs)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... ITANAGAR, India -- A village in Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India, has launched a yearlong celebration to observe the silver jubilee of Catholic presence in the state, once off limits to Christian missioners. Twenty-five years ago, 600 people of the Nocte tribe were baptized ...
Starting point.
Aug 27, 2004; ... The late start only added to the anticipation. People lined both sides of the street. From down the block we heard and saw the sirens go off. The parade had started. The police car and fire engines were coming. Seated on the curb, Brendan craned his neck to get a better look. I couldn't ...
The Revs. Raewynne Whiteley of Swedesboro, N.J., and Beth Maynard of Fairhaven, Mass., have just completed Get Up Off Your Knees, Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cowley Publications), a compilation of 25 sermons based on the music of Irish rock band U2.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... The Revs. Raewynne Whiteley of Swedesboro, N.J., and Beth Maynard of Fairhaven, Mass., have just completed Get Up Off Your Knees, Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cowley Publications), a compilation of 25 sermons based on the music of Irish ...
Haley Waldman.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... Haley Waldman, a New Jersey 8-year-old who suffers from a wheat gluten allergy, used a rice-based wafer for her first Communion in May, but now Bishop John Smith of Trenton has said the sacrament was "invalid." The girl's mother Elizabeth Pelly-Waldman, has petitioned the Vatican's ...
Msgr. Eugene Gomulka.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... Msgr. Eugene Gomulka, a former U.S. Navy chaplain whose endorsement to continue as a military chaplain was revoked by the Archdiocese of Military Services in March without a hearing (NCR, Aug. 13), was married in Yale Divinity School Chapel Aug. 7. Gomulka had said he had no immediate ...
Jesuit Fr. Robert F. Drinan.(People)(Brief Article)
Aug 27, 2004 ... Jesuit Fr. Robert F. Drinan, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a former member of Congress, received the American Bar Association's 2004 ABA Medal, the association's highest honor, at the organization's annual meeting in Atlanta. "He has ...