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Faith in Focus
The Resurrection of the Body
Laura Sheahen
Please stop being Gnostic. Yes, you, the person reading these words. You’re bringing me downliterally. You see, I had hoped after death to rise. Physically. I hope very much the church’s constant teaching is true: that at the end of time, we’ll be raised bodily. The resurrection of
In a Single Bed
Joan Sauro

All of them were small and narrow, Emily Dickinson beds situated in modest rooms. Once I journeyed to Amherst, Mass., solely to see Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, to breathe the sacred air. As luck would have it, I had come the wrong day for tours and was left on the stoop of the Homestead, breathing the spring air. There I pondered the 300 feet to the Evergreens next door and the well-worn path taken by Emily and her best friend, her sister-in-law, Sue.

 

The next afternoon Emily’s door was opened and I joined a group in a downstairs parlor where we endured a half-hour talk devoid of poetry. Finally, we were led up the stairs to the landing where Emily had stood, out of sight, above the chatter of company down in the parlor we had just left. She had little use for chatter, preferring to send a short poem, perhaps a few flowers down to the company. Lagging behind the group, I ran my hand along the banister and listened to Emily’s voice.

 

Had I not seen the Sun

Arts & CultureBooks
Journey Toward Peace
Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
A gem among the sayings of the desert fathers has Abba Lot coming to Abba Joseph and saying As much as I am able I keep my little rule and my fast my prayer meditation my contemplative silence And as much as possible I strive to keep my thoughts clean What more should I do The elder monk ros
Editorials
Washington and Schools
The Editors
As presidents, neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln spent time worrying about schools. Since the Constitution did not assign care for education to the federal government, that became the states’ concern. Until after the Civil War, however, the states pretty much left it to families an
Crown of the Year
Don Saliers
Resurrection seems an unlikely notion for contemporary minds. Creation is much easier for us to understand, given its prevalence in naturethe caterpillar and the butterfly, the seed and the plant, the bud and the rose. But Easter is more than the scent of lilies and the rolling of eggs or the genera
Seeing, Tasting, Telling
Michael A. Signer
As the gray days of winter move toward spring, Jews and Christians begin to prepare for their festivals of rebirth and freedom: Passover and Easter. Since the Second Vatican Council’s publication of the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions in 1965, many Chri
Letters
Letters

The Divide

After reading Terry Golway’s column Renew-ing Theology on Tap (3/12), I hope my experience with our local program is not typical. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati sponsors a Theology on Tap program, which last summer was meeting in my neighborhood in Covington, Ky., a city across the river. Mine is a diverse inner-city neighborhood, and our parish is the most inclusive in the area. When we sing All Are Welcome, we mean it. The Theology on Tap schedule included a talk on homosexuality. Since the bar where they meet is near my house and across the street from my church, I decided to find out what they had to say on this topic. What I encountered was appalling. The talk, given by a priest from the Diocese of Covington, was reactionary, psychologically nave and deeply homophobic. At one point, in response to a question, this priest compared gays and lesbians to Nazis. Amazingly, not one member of the large, relatively young audience challenged these comments. In fact, many expressed complete agreement. If Theology on Tap is using this kind of reactionary theology to appeal to young adults, it will only deepen the divide between younger and older Catholics.

Daniel A. Burr

Arts & CultureBooks
Holy,' Indeed
Gary A. Anderson
Christian tradition has not been kind to the Jewish claim to the land of Israel For many of the fathers of the church the fact that Rome had invaded that land and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem A D 70 seemed to be an objective marker of divine disfavor Already in the fourth century John Chr
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Karen Sue Smith
Months ago a friend sent me an article from The Atlanta Constitution (10/22/06) about a man whose family I knew well when we all lived together at Koinonia Farm in Americus, Ga. Today Koinonia is known as the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, but a generation ago it suffered the bitter distinction
Arts & CultureBooks
A Communion of Subjects
Stephen Bede Scharper
In future years when the history of our lagging environmental consciousness is written there may well be a special place devoted to the work of Thomas Berry.
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Drew Christiansen
As I rode Amtrak’s Regional from Washington to New York one cold February afternoon, I was reminded that for me one of the delights of train travel is getting the lay of the land. Gazing out the window, I had just noted how one semi-rural settlement lay on the flood plain, and I wondered how f
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Vatican Criticizes Jon Sobrino, Liberation TheologianThe Vatican has strongly criticized the work of Jon Sobrino, S.J., a leading proponent of liberation theology, saying some of his writings relating to the divinity of Christ were not in conformity with the doctrine of the church. In publishing a d
Evil: Good Corrupted
John C. Cavadini
I remember watching a television episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I would like to say I was watching it with my kids, but actually I was watching for my own interest, without them. Mr. Rogers was interviewing the Wicked Witch of the West from the classic film The Wizard of Oz. For the b
Poetry
Modern Warfare
William J. Rewak

A cockroach clicks

Arts & CultureBooks
Magic in the British Isles
Franklin Freeman
E M Forster wrote in Aspects of the Novel 1927 that fantasy asks us to pay something extra that is first to accept the fantasist 8217 s impossible story as a whole and second to accept the specific beings say fairies and events say miracles that are in it Those who can do this howe
Current Comment
Current Comment
The Editors
A Report From Los AngelesAnyone lamenting the health of the Catholic Church would have been cheered by this year’s Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, the largest Catholic convention in the country, held every year since 1967. This year’s gathering attracted nearly 40,000 pastoral
Columns
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
Margaret Silf
Lent can be a disorienting, dislocating time, and sometimes it seems that it observes us more than we observe it. Twice recently I had the feeling that Lent was observing me and gently tweaking at my mind and heart, not without a smile on its face. The first of these moments happened in the middle o
The Lesser Evil
James T. Bretzke
In a Dilbert cartoon, “Mike the Vegan” takes pride in claiming that he uses “no animal products whatsoever.” Dilbert reminds him, though, that his clothing was made on sewing machines that use electricity produced from fossil fuels. The last panel shows Mike walking down the