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Letters
Our readers

Vision

Thank you for the insightful article by the Rev. Robert Kress on the priest-pastor (3/11). I have found the model of the overseer to be a useful tool for encouraging pastors to delegate responsibilities to qualified members of the parish. This frees the pastor to be about the equally important work of articulating and maintaining a vision in both pastoral and liturgical contexts.

(Rev.) Joseph C. Doyle

Editorials
The Editors
One day President George W. Bush was denying a request from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for the U.S. administration to resume its active engagement in the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. A few days later he was dispatching retired Marine General Anthony Zinni to try once a
The Word
John R. Donahue
Dic nobis Maria quid vidisti in via sepulchrum Christi viventis et gloriam vidi resurgentis Yes tell us again Mary what did you see on your journey I saw the tomb of one who still lives and the glory of the risen one The core of Easter faith resounds through these words from the poetic Easter
Books
Constance M. McGovern
From that moment in October 1919 when his doctor cried My God the President is paralyzed until his last meeting with his cabinet in March 1921a meeting at which he could neither control his tears nor walk steadily even with his caneWoodrow Wilson rsquo s every word gesture and act was directed b
Faith in Focus
Mary Pence
At the age of 15 I was a girl who made it difficult for anyoneeven myselfto love. My upbringing has been a turbulent ride. There were struggles with anorexia, friends poorly chosen and my parents’ divorce. The only positive thing about me was something that I did not earn. I was blessed with a
John F. Kavanaugh
As the six-month mark passed since the World Trade Center and Pentagon atrocities, the president of the United States was greeted with heart-warming news. A Washington Post-ABC News poll, entitled America at War, informed us that 88 percent of us support the way the president is handling the campaig
Robert VerEecke
Have you heard the one about the confirmation liturgy at which a liturgical dancer presented the gifts to the bishop? After receiving them the bishop turned to the pastor and said, If she asks for your head, she can have it! This allusion to the story in Mark’s Gospel about John the Baptist an
Books
John B. Breslin
Umberto Eco is that relatively rare phenomenon a public intellectual who plies his specific academic trade as a semiotician but also ventures beyond the ivy cover to pronounce on public issues and to play the critic He is also of course a successful novelist who in The Name of the Rose may have
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
For two decades, I have taken part in a public Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday. At St. Aloysius in Washington, D.C., the procession began after dark. Moving from the church, we would walk through the surrounding low-income neighborhood, flashlights in hand, following a crossbearer and sin
Robert B. Gilbert
There is a bitter joke circulating among many Guatemalans ever since the nation’s 36-year civil war ended in 1996: Beware the peace, they chide, because now the government is fighting everyone. Guatemalahalf the size of Idahohas endured some of the most unimaginable human abuses in modern hist
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Bishop O’Connell Admits Abuse; Pope Accepts ResignationAfter admitting that he had sexually abused a high school seminarian more than 25 years ago, Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell of Palm Beach submitted his resignation to Pope John Paul II, and it was accepted. He said his misconduct has ha
Philip R. Sullivan
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, I went to an automobile garage and was greeted by a bearded man of Middle Eastern appearance who asked in a foreign accent how he could be of help. Rather abruptly, I was seized by a disagreeable feeling, along with the urge to say “Forget it.&r
Of Many Things
John W. Donohue
Nearly 100,000 new books were published in the United States last year, and most of them were ignored by The New York Review of Books and the Sunday book sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Although these three are heavyweights in the book review business, they have space to exam
Columns
Terry Golway
A kindly police officer stationed at the corner of Liberty Street and Greenwich Street in downtown Manhattan warned me about ground zero. “It’s really muddy there,” he said. “And you’re wearing good shoes.” I don’t own a pair of “good” shoes, as
Books
Edward Curtin
This is a brilliant complex and compelling analysis of emotions and their significance in personal and social life Like most philosophical writing however it is written in an academically analytical style that will limit its readership This is unfortunate and deeply ironic for Nussbaum is a ma
Editorials
The Editors
When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, the problem of the Barbary pirates was waiting for him. These Moorish privateers, outfitted in Algeria, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis, were prowling the seas off the North African coast as their predecessors had done for two centuries. They plundered Brit
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Bishops Weigh in on Clerical Sexual Abuse of MinorsA number of U.S. bishops reiterated or strengthened their policies against clerical sexual abuse of minors and several removed some of their priests from ministry in the wake of a growing national controversy over the issue that began in the Archdio
Letters
Our readers

Cautionary Note

Thank you for publishing Thomas A. Shannon’s clear and concise article (2/18) about the complex moral and ethical issues surrounding attempts at human cloning to obtain stem cells for therapeutic use, and the related question of induced parthenogenic cell division of human eggs for the same purpose. This article documents the need for care and caution by the scientific community in continuing such research and, importantly, emphasizes the very preliminary stage of our knowledge in the use of stem cells. Implied also is a cautionary note for the magisterium in its authoritative pronouncements about the beginning of human life, when it fails to consider at all the advances in the science of embryology over the last several decades. I hope we can all benefit from the expertise of Professor Shannon and his colleagues.

Robert M. Rowden

Faith in Focus
Amy Gibson
After a 24-year teaching career in Catholic education, 20 of those years with the Sisters of Mercy at Mercy High School in Baltimore, I took a big risk and leapt to the public schools. I had always wanted to round out my career with a stint in public education. My move back to my family home in sout
Books
John Omicinski
Economics has dabbled in theology from its beginnings Two centuries ago Adam Smith the father of economics got the theological ball rolling with his assertion that prices were determined by the Invisible Hand of competition in the market Karl Marx rsquo s theory of capital was that it was a reli