National Catholic Reporter back issues from September 2007:
Human work, the essential key.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Labor Day has come to mean many things in the United States: a day of rest, the end of summer, and the custom of refraining from wearing white shoes until Memorial Day. However, the holiday, first celebrated on Sept. 5, 1882, was a day to honor workers and a time to celebrate the ...
Correction.(Correction notice)
Sep 07, 2007 ... A survey of American Catholics referred to in the John L. Allen Jr. story "Liberal Catholicism endures in pastoral church" in the Aug. 31 issue was the joint effort of William d'Antonio, James D. ...
Engaged wisdom.(Listen to NCR podcasts)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Listen to James Conlon, director of the Sophia Center, featured in this issue's cover story. He says that the enthusiasm and soul strength ...
Lay synods.(Listen to NCR podcasts)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Tom Fox talks with Lisa Striebing about organizing a lay ...
A daily dose of news.(Listen to NCR podcasts)
Sep 07, 2007 ... The Daily News Feed on NCRcafe.org offers reporting and analysis of news ...
Join the conversation.(Listen to NCR podcasts)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... NCRcafe.org is NCR's interactive Web site that allows a community of people to read about and respond to the issues shaping our church today. On the topic of women in the church, one cafe member wrote: "It's difficult for many women right now, ...
Water for all.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... A farmer collects water from a dried-up and algae-filled pond in Yingtan, in China's Jiangxi Province, Aug. 23. A dozen Catholic organizations have joined other religious groups in calling for U.S. leadership to increase access to safe water for the world's people. "Clean water is key to ...
Nuns want Bush impeached.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... CHICAGO -- The National Coalition of American Nuns, a progressive group of U.S. nuns, has called on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney because of their roles in the war in Iraq. Impeachment is warranted for their "deceiving the public under the false ...
Professor's classes canceled.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Norman Finkelstein)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... CHICAGO -- DePaul University canceled the courses of Norman Finkelstein, the controversial political science professor who was denied tenure last spring (NCR, June 22), and put him on administrative leave for the last year of his contract with the school, the Chicago Tribune reported Aug ....
Legal bill totals $18.8 million.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... PORTLAND, Ore. -- Lawyers have submitted an $18.8 million final bill to the Portland archdiocese for handling the church's bankruptcy proceedings. The total includes only the lawyers and experts who worked on the case in Bankruptcy Court. Attorneys for priest accusers who filed ...
Quotable & notable.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... "Ryanair already performs miracles that even the pope's boss can't rival." --Dublin-based airline Ryanair, touting a budget pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain "for the heavenly price of 10 euros" (about $13.50) "Politics shouldn't be like ...
Scholarships help empower female university students.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Fatema-Tuz-Zuhra Nilu)
Sep 07, 2007 ... DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A Muslim undergraduate said the support she received from a Christian organization makes her want to help other poor Bangladeshi women. The 22-year-old botany student, Fatema-Tuz-Zuhra Nilu, told UCA News that after her studies, she will reject all marriage ...
Male teachers recruitment aim.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... ST. LOUIS -- The Midwest province of the Christian Brothers has begun a program to combat a shortage of male teachers. Men account for 19 percent of teachers in U.S. Catholic schools and 21 percent in public schools, according to Christian Br. Patrick Conway, director of the ...
Visitors to confess 'eco-sins'.(WORLD BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... LONDON -- Visitors to East Anglia's annual Greenpeace fair in England Sept. 2 were able to confess their sins against the environment to a Catholic priest. But Fr. Antony Sutch, who will be hearing people's eco-confessions, said it would be a question of secular rather than sacramental ...
Great need in flooded South Asia.(WORLD BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... DHAKA, Bangladesh -- The global Catholic aid agency Caritas Internationalis feared the situation in floodstricken parts of South Asia would worsen as heavy rains continued to fall in late August. Many families were totally helpless, living on the streets, under trees or in other people's ...
Starting point.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007; ... OK, time to pray. I'll just let all thoughts go and enter into the realm of contemplation. OK, I'll just let all thoughts go. Well, maybe I'll start with the reading for the day from the Rule of St. Benedict 64.18: The prioress should ponder on the discretion of holy ...
Christopher Hitchens.(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Shelve this under irony: Publishers Weekly reports that Christopher Hitchens' antireligion polemic God Is ...
Yuan Weijung.(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Chinese authorities stopped Yuan Weijung from leaving the country Aug. 24, the day she was to depart for the Philippines to collect a human rights award on behalf of her ...
Janie Spahr.(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... A midlevel court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has overturned a lower court ruling and ruled 6-2 that a lesbian minister should be rebuked for presiding at a same-sex wedding. The Rev. Janie Spahr was charged for presiding at the 2005 wedding of two ...
Fr. Harm Schilder.(PEOPLE)(fined)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Fr. Harm Schilder, rector of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in the center of Tilburg, the Netherlands, has been fined more than $27,300 for disturbing local residents by ringing bells at his church. Schilder rings the bells daily for the 7:15 a.m. Mass. The city ...
Irish peat farmers.(PEOPLE)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... From London's The Tablet, Aug. 10, 1907: The threatening "fuel famine" and skyrocketing petrol prices in Great Britain may give hope to struggling Irish peat farmers. British chemists ...
Women's work: gathering envisions ways women can-create peace.(WORLD)(International Women's Peace Colloquium)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Many women insist that if women ran the world, we wouldn't be in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the dozens of lands where men and armaments create mayhem. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Men, however, can point to Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher--women who waged ...
'A training camp for mystics': Sophia Center brings together thought and discussion from art, quantum physics, theology, ecology and healing.(SOPHIA CENTER)(Cover story)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Here is the sacred," physicist Brian Swimme said softly as 150 pairs of eyes gazed at the projected image of the Rosette Nebula, a 4 million-year-old cluster of sparkling young stars that blend together to form a beautiful fuchsia-colored rose in full bloom. There is a ...
Peru: among the ruins.(WORLD: PHOTO ESSAY)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Churches, homes, families and livelihoods were destroyed in the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that hit the Ica province on Peru's southern coast Aug. 15 at 6:40 p.m. local time. It was Peru's worst earthquake in 30 years. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Pisco, 150 miles south of ...
Gay Catholic youth group ministers in Mexico.(WORLD)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Noe Ruiz, 27, teaches elementary school in Saltillo, Coahuila's state capital, about 200 miles south of the Texas border at Laredo. Like many in northern Mexico, Ruiz is Catholic and actively practices his faith. Unlike many in his hometown, he is openly gay and coordinates a ...
Christian Peacemaker Team heads back to Iraq.(WORLD)
Sep 07, 2007; ... After six months focused on healing accumulated stress and trauma, a Christian Peacemaker Team will be heading back to Iraq to resume its mission of monitoring the Iraqi occupation by Western forces and supporting local groups in reducing violence. Christian Peacemaker Teams was ...
How climate change affects world regions.(WORLD)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... U.N. climate report looks at impact on eight world regions, with the Arctic, southern Africa, Pacific islands and Asian coastal regions worst hit: (1) North America * More heat waves * More forest fires * Year-round snow melts in the western ...
Occupation Project targets Congress' war spending votes.(NATION)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Encouraged by successes in its winter-spring campaign to stop funding for the Iraq war. a coalition of antiwar groups is organizing another round of sit-in demonstrations in the home offices of U.S. senators and congressmen and congresswomen through the end of September. The ...
Number of lay parish leaders shows decline.(NATION)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... The nmnber of parishes without a resident priest pastor that are led by someone other than a priest has decreased for the third straight year, according to a report in the latest issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown ...
A principal ousted for what she didn't say: a post-9/11 story.(NATION)(Khalil Gibran International Academy's Debbie Almontaser)
Sep 07, 2007; ... The date 8/10/07 will never have the traction of 9/11. In fact, it's already been forgotten. The forgetting itself is part of the fault line of the Debbie Almontaser incident. On Aug. 10, Almontaser, the Muslim principal of the new Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York ...
New Khalil Gibran Academy is caught up in controversy.(NATION)(Khalil Gibran International Academy)
Sep 07, 2007; ... "Only in America" may be an overused phrase, but a debate is percolating in New York these days that reflects a uniquely American confluence of religious pluralism, church/state tensions, the politics of identity and fears unleashed by the war on terror. At the eye of the storm ...
42 abuse cases sent to trial.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... SAN DIEGO A federal judge has ordered 42 of the 127 lawsuits over sexual abuse claims to be removed from the bankruptcy case of the San Diego diocese so they can go to jury trials in state court. Bankruptcy Court Judge Louise DeCarl Adler found that leaving the 42 plaintiffs in ...
Essay contest announced.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 07, 2007 ... MARYKNOLL, N.Y. -- The theme of the 2007 Maryknoll student essay contest is "Put away your sword," the words Jesus said to Peter in the Gospel of John when Roman soldiers and Temple guards came to arrest him. The annual contest, open to sixth-through 12th-grade students, ...
The perils of populism.
Sep 07, 2007; ... DEMOCRACY AND POPULISM: FEAR AND HATRED By John Lukacs Yale University Press, 256 pages, $16 DOES AMERICAN DEMOCRACY STILL WORK? By Alan Wolfe Yale University Press, 224 pages, $22 The right can't catch a break these days. Republicans lost the midterm elections; the ...
U.S. blames others for civilian casualties.(COLUMNS)
Sep 07, 2007; ... The United States and its allies are increasingly relying on air power to fight radical Islamic movements. In addition to the question of whether such operations will be successful, the shift in tactics has led to an increasing numbers of civilian casualties. As part of an ...
Shonali Bose: unafraid and unabashed: the filmmaker courts controversy in focusing on a dark chapter in Indian history.(MOVIES)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Shonali Bose remembers pitching "Ainu" to a Bombay producer. She told him the film was about an Indian-American girl's journey to India to find her roots. That was fine. Then she said the film was about the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. He stopped her right there. "He got up and ...
A raid on the inarticulate: on the parallels between poetry and prayer.(POETRY)
Sep 07, 2007; ... A recent survey by Baylor University found that 75 percent of all Americans pray at least once a week. One can be sure, whatever their understanding of prayer and be they Jew or Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, Bahai or Hindu, 100 percent of these pray-ers would admit that they also find it ...
Gerard Manley Hopkins Visits Islamorada.(POETRY)(Poem)
Sep 07, 2007; ... <Pre> Gerard Manley Hopkins Visits Islamorada Time and space no barriers now,imagine he jets to Florida. Fair skin swathed againstwhitebeam blaze of sun, his eyessquint at penciled curt of cormorantpunctuating a sea that cups pastels. Bones ...
Hattie Ann Morrow.(POETRY)(Poem)
Sep 07, 2007; ... <Pre> Hattie Ann Morrow On her solitary-sweepthrough the gilded Hampton mansionsthe widowed cleaning lady agedstraining toward the finish line. Her flesh began to falterLike a crumbling sanctuary.Floaters filled her eyes with pause.Her joints ...
Creativity at the grass roots: Women-Church Convergence models religious community.(COLUMNS)
Sep 07, 2007; ... If one reads only the news of official Catholicism, it might appear to some to be a depressing picture. I was recently asked by a Presbyterian leader if I "still" had any relation to the Catholic church. I said I belonged to a local parish haft a block from my home. He professed himself ...
Hispanic youth are the U.S. church's best investment.(VIEWPOINT)
Sep 07, 2007 ... Public television's "Antiques Roadshow" surprises participants with the value of possessions long disregarded. A blanket over an easy chair is a priceless Navajo creation. A bookmark reveals a daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe. Something similar occurred at the first Encuentro ...
Ending the war.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... The article, "Catholics in Congress appeal to bishops to help end the war" (NCR, Aug. 17) may have given readers an incomplete picture. In my letter of response to the House Democrats, I emphasized the desire of the bishops' conference to work "with the Congress and the administration to ...
Lukewarm liturgy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... I have many fond memories of inspiring and exhilarating Tridentine Masses (NCR, July 20). I also recall the more common experience of the "15-minute" Mass. Post-Vatican II, I have experienced inspiring and exhilarating liturgies of the Mass today, but unfortunately like the days of old, ...
Changing church doctrine.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Regarding "Reinventing church" (NCR, July 20): Fr. Albert Nolan is said to "see Christianity as alive and relevant, but obscured by old ways of formulating church doctrine." Christianity may well be alive and relevant in Africa, where Fr. Nolan resides. However, I do not see any evidence ...
Illegal immigrants.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... Mary Jo McConahay's article about the increased numbers of illegal immigrants migrating across the U.S. border (NCR, Aug. 17) manifests the increased dangers to Americans' well-being and property. While the suffering of illegal immigrants who die in their attempts to cross is indeed ...
Displaced poor.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... I wish Fr. Horace McKenna was alive to flex his muscles (NCR, July 6) as his Jesuit community in Washington benefits again while poor neighbors lose their housing. Thirty years ago, hundreds of the poor who lived on the south side of St. Aloysius church and Gonzaga High School were ...
The feminization of the church.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Sep 07, 2007; ... John Allen's article on the feminization of the church left more questions than answers (NCR, Aug. 17). By feminization, does he mean simply that women are assuming more and more roles and work in the church? If so, that is only because men do not choose to do this work. If he is speaking ...
What students need to know.(EDITORIALS)
Sep 07, 2007 ... As our schools reopen after the summer break, it might be time to recommit ourselves to educating for the common good, educating for justice. Unfortunately, the commitment to protect all people, a core principle of Catholic social teaching, too often finds itself up against ...
Time without deadlines.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
Sep 14, 2007; ... I had an extended pause this summer from both the day's provocations and its occupations during several months of a sabbatical that was, I imagine, a bit like grace, something at the same time all around us yet beyond our possessing. One must just nod assent to it. That, of ...
School year opens.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... Four-year-old Sloan Berry, right, shows Susan Bradford, a pre-kindergarten teacher at St. Ann School in Wilmington, Del., the swimming trophy she received over the summer, as her sister Milan, 2, and her mother, Jennifer, look on at their ...
Fast for debt relief begins.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... WASHINGTON -- Religious leaders began a 40-day "rolling" fast Sept. 6 to advocate for legislation that would cancel the debts of the world's 67 poorest countries. The Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than 80 religious denominations and faith communities working for debt relief for ...
Parish asked to take pledge.(U.S. BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... PORTLAND, Ore. -- The peace and justice committee of St. Juan Diego Parish in Portland, Ore., is asking fellow parishioners to take the Assisi pledge in September as a way to begin thinking beyond war in Iraq and work toward peaceful resolutions. The Assisi pledge is a statement made by ...
Quotable & notable.(IN THE BEGINNING)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... "It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet." --BBC Newsnight editor Peter Barron reacting to criticism of the British broadcaster's scrapping plans for "Planet Relief," a TV special on climate change, BBC execs said the program was more advocacy than factual ...
Today's school checklists reflect modern times, potential troubles.(IN THE BEGINNING)(security measures in schools)
Sep 14, 2007 ... WASHINGTON -- Long gone are the days when school officials had to simply run an inventory of desks, school supplies and audiovisual equipment before the start of the school year. Today's back-to-school checklists are far more complex. They have to ensure that faculty and staff ...
Pope meets with Syrian leader.(WORLD BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI met in a private audience with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa Sept. 5 to discuss the exodus of refugees from Iraq, many of whom have fled to Syria. Later, al-Sharaa met for separate talks with Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's top ...
Degraded land in vicious cycle.(WORLD BRIEFS)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... LIMA, Peru -- At least haft of the land in the Latin America and the Caribbean region is degraded, and this "creates a vicious cycle in the rural areas: overexploitation and degradation of the soil, increased demands for production, more poverty, food insecurity, migration," according to a ...
Calls for peace for Ramadan.(WORLD BRIEFS)
Sep 14, 2007 ... ISABELA CITY, Philippines -- In his first pastoral letter in five years, Bishop Martin Jumoad of Isabela has called for a halt to the war against the Abu Sayyaf extremist group in his southern Philippine prelature during Ramadan. The Muslim month of prayer and dawn-to-dusk ...
Cardinal says rein in radio.(WORLD BRIEFS)(Stanislaw Dziwisz calls for new board at Radio Maryja )(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... KRAKOW, Poland -- Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Pope John Paul II's former secretary, urged Poland's Catholic church to take control of a Polish radio station criticized for promoting anti-Semitism. In a speech to his fellow Polish bishops Aug. 25, Dziwisz called for ...
Starting point.(IN THE BEGINNING)(God's grace)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007; ... On the ranch where I live here in the Southwest, there is a chronic shortage of water. This has been made worse by the persistent drought of the past four years. Ordinary daily chores--feeding the chickens in the hen house, tending the goats, caring for the big livestock--all require the ...
Fr. Luis Jorquera.(PEOPLE)(charged)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... Fr. Luis Jorquera, a Chilean prison chaplain, has been charged with covering up the deaths of 28 dissidents killed or "disappeared" during the rule of former President Augusto Pinochet. The BBC reported that ...
Jose Maria Sison.(PEOPLE)(arrested)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... Jose Maria Sison, a founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army, which has been in armed revolt against the Philippine government since 1969, was arrested in the Netherlands on murder charges Aug. 27. The ...
Kelly Romenesko.(PEOPLE)(cases)(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... A Catholic schoolteacher who claimed she was illegally fired in 2004 dropped her discrimination suit Aug. 27 following a settlement in which the terms were not disclosed. Kelly Romenesko, who taught French at two Appleton, Wis., Catholic schools was fired in October 2004 after school ...
Sr. Carol Keehan.(PEOPLE)(most powerful people )(Brief article)
Sep 14, 2007 ... Sr. Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who is president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, tops the list of the 100 most powerful people in health care, according to the sixth annual ...
Anglican schism? Archbishop Rowan Williams strives to preserve the communion.(PROFILE)(Canterbury Archbishop)
Sep 14, 2007; ... On Sept. 3 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams came back from study leave to face the music. The primate of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion does not want to go down in history as the archbishop who presided over the disintegration of that communion. So far, against the ...
Mother Teresa's silence.(WORLD)(Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light)
Sep 14, 2007; ... Many who assumed the interior life of Mother Teresa to be as resplendent as her outward existence was austere were surprised by recent revelations that the founder of the Missionaries of Charity struggled for haft a century with a desolate prayer life. But in continuing to serve a God who ...