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David Pinault
This spring I was in Pakistan doing research on religious rituals among the country’s Shia Muslim population. As a Christian with an interest in interfaith dialogue, I make it a habit when I travel in Muslim countries also to learn about local Christian communities.On a beautiful Sunday mornin
Columns
George Kearney
In the 1989 film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Aunt Bethany (played by Mae Questal), the aunt of family patriarch Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), travels to the Griswold family home in Chicago to celebrate Christmas. Clark asks Aunt Bethany, whose hearing is failing, to say grace before
Books
Paul Wilkes
It was one of those chilling moments I was seated across from my parish priest who had just gotten back from an extended ldquo time away rdquo mdash yet unexplained When I mentioned my interest in a more disciplined prayer life perhaps to buy a breviary mdash the standard daily book of prayers
Film
Richard A. Blake
Road to Perdition begins and ends with a young boy looking out over Lake Michigan. His voice-over narration in the opening shot leads the way to the lengthy flashback that provides the story line of the film. The camera, however, stares out over the faceless waters with him, as though pondering his
The Word
John R. Donahue
If there is one Scripture passage that seems to define Catholicism it is the Petrine promise of Mt 16 16-20 Matthew supplements Peter rsquo s confession that Jesus is the Christ Mk 8 29 by the more solemn affirmation ldquo You are the Christ the Son of the living God rdquo and adds extraor
Eric Stoltz
Conceived as an instrument of military tacticians, nurtured as a way to disseminate academic papers, imagined as a vast library, touted as a new economic frontier, the Internet has confounded all who sought to define its significance narrowly in purely practical terms. If we have learned anything, i
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
On Sundays I sometimes pass the Church of the Ascension on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and I generally pause to admire its Gothic Revival brownstone exterior fronted by a small courtyard with boxwood bushes. But it was not until late one Sunday afternoon in May that I went inside—drawn by
Editorials
The Editors
At Home in the Cosmos, the title of the last book written by David S. Toolan, S.J., can also serve to describe his life. When our longtime associate editor and treasured friend died on July 16, he did not know that his book had recently won an award for theological writing from the Catholic Press As
George M. Anderson
Houses of hospitality on the land”—this is how Dorothy Day described the Catholic Worker farms that began to spring up in the 1930’s. In May, I had occasion to visit one of them and experience a weekend’s hospitality at the Peter Maurin Farm in Marlboro, N.Y. The farm, named
The Word
John R. Donahue
Though Matthew stresses that the primary mission of Jesus was to the ldquo house of Israel rdquo in today rsquo s Gospel a non-Jewish woman draws him to a more universalistic vision Narrated by both Mark 7 24-30 and Matthew this story of courageous faith and boundary-crossing challenges the c
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
In Toronto, Pope Urges Youth to Follow Christ, Transform WorldCapping a week of prayer and celebration by more than 500,000 Catholic youths, Pope John Paul II urged the church’s younger generations to follow Christ and transform a world torn by hatred and terrorism. He also asked them to keep
Letters
Our readers

God in the Ripples and Waves

We want to compliment Valerie Schultz on her excellent reflection, God in the Tangled Sheets (7/1). We heartily endorse her point of view, except for two small quibbles. The first concerns the parents of those called to celibacy. One of our children is currently making final plans to join an order of nuns who work in South America. No one should feel sorry for us, even though our daughter’s decision has cut in half our chances of ever holding a biological grandchild. Perhaps we hear the wise words of Ms. Shultz’s father, It’s what makes the world go round, slightly differently from the way she does. We believe that the it is not grandchildren themselves, but the love reflected in their eyes. We have been blessed to see many ripples of love spread out from the small splash of our commitment to each other. It appears that this love will soon raise a wave that will reach all the way to Bolivia and wash over 50 or more young girls who have known far too little love in their lives. We stand in humble awe of what God is doing, and feel rewarded in ways we never could have imagined when we said I do 25 years ago.

Our second quibble comes from the last line of the meditation, which seems to imply that the Schultz household has no resident saints. We beg to differ, and suggest she look more carefully in her photo album, where we are sure she will find saints aplenty.

Joseph and Jane Kupin

Books
John Omicinski
How many times have we mumbled our way through the Nicene Creed giving not a second thought to our firm vocalized belief in the revolutionary proposition that there shall be a ldquo resurrection of the body rdquo after death and not simply some vague new life for our immortal soul How often p
Drew Christiansen
The just war tradition is fast becoming a contested field of ideas in Catholic circles. The growing division of the Catholic community on issues of war and peace was on clear display at the annual “Social Ministries” meeting in the nation’s capital (Feb. 24-27), sponsored by the U.
Chester Gillis
The bishops of the United States walked a tightrope in Dallas as they tried, during their annual spring meeting on June 13-15, to accommodate four different cultural matrices. Under the glare of the media lights representing the many publics they hoped to address, the bishops acted firmly, if not de
Faith in Focus
J. Ronald Knott
In my 32 years as a priest, I have been threatened by the Ku Klux Klan, have been thrown out of a ministerial association because I am a Catholic, have had fundamentalist preachers run me down by name on the radio and have had a knife pulled on me in church for a homily I gave. I have also seen one
Books
Richard Ryscavage
Every year the president determines how many refugees will be allowed into the United States for permanent resettlement In 2001 President Bush set the number at 70 000 But in the wake of Sept 11 the government decided to carry out a security review of the refugee screening process and shut down
The Word
John R. Donahue
Marian feasts season the liturgical calendar as the Assumption falls in the middle of Ordinary Time Though rooted in ancient tradition especially the Eastern tradition of the ldquo Dormition of Mary rdquo this celebration unlike the Annunciation the Visitation and Our Lady of Sorrows has no
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
David Toolan, America Editor, Dies of CancerDavid S. Toolan, S.J., an associate editor of America for many years, died of cancer on July 16 at the Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University in New York. He was 66. Father Toolan joined America in 1989 after working at Commonweal for 10 years as an associ
Poetry
Paul Mariani

Down the precipitous switchbacks at eighty