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FaithThe Word
He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7)
Books
The Rev Richard P McBrien the Crowley-O rsquo Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame Lives of the Saints Catholicism in this one-volume treatment provides in portable and more affordable form the quality otherwise found only in the 12-volume 1995 Burns edition of Butle
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
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
Of Many Things
You may have noticed in a recent issue of America (2/25) a listing of retreat houses around the country, sponsored by both Jesuits and others. (The list will be kept up to date on America’s Web site.) Jesuits generally make an annual retreat of six to eight days, and while the specific purpose
Editorials
A sharp cutoff in refugee admissions represents one of the lesser noted repercussions of September’s terrorist attacksa repercussion with dangerous ramifications for the more than 20,000 refugees who had already been approved for entry into the United States before the attacks. Many were fleei
The Word
Death has been too much our companion in recent months near us not only in the disaster of Sept 11 but in molten lava submerging a village crumbling houses in Turkey and a horrendous fire in Lagos Death walks with Jesus in today rsquo s Gospel as he moves in measured pace toward his suffering a
News
'Underdogs’ Winning in Congress, Rural Life Advocates SayRural life and family-farm advocates say they are winning the legislative fight on the 2002 farm bill, but the game is not yet over. "We’re in the third quarter of [debate on] this year’s farm bill. We’re the u
Letters
This Mess
Your editorial about sexual abuse by priests (2/18) reminds me that the past secrecy of our bishops in this matter is somewhat analogous to the Nixon administration’s coverup of Watergate. The Watergate break-in was bad enough, but the coverup made Nixon’s White House lose whatever credibility it once had.
The church hierarchy too has made matters much worse by refusing to recognize the problem of priests who prey on youngsters. Some of the same bishops who complain about the lack of vocations to the priesthood are the very ones guilty of covering up this horrible scandal.
Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk is to be applauded for his courageous stand on this issue. But mere guidelines and apologies are not enough. What is needed during this Lenten season is an honest and sincere appraisal of how we got to this woeful state of affairs and how we are going to extricate ourselves from this mess.
Edward J. Thompson
Entering the Kacha Ghari Afghan refugee camp, filled as it is with mud buildings reinforced by straw and dung baked to a brown-pink terra-cotta by the harsh Central Asian sunlight, is like walking into the 14th century. Turbaned shopkeepers hawk wares from pushcarts and lean-tos, meat crawling with
Columns
When I was home with my four baby birds, I used to say, When I go back to work, I want a cleaning service. Just one day a week. Let someone else scrub the shower and wipe the dog’s nose prints from its glass door. I will pay handsomely. I hated housework. Somehow during our nesting years, it b
Many people talk about the priest as acting in persona Christi, "in the person of Christ." But so do all the baptized. They act in the person of Christ in various ways, as Paul emphasizes. There is one body of Christ with many different members. There is one Holy Spirit, who gives to
As a liberal Catholic, I admire the progressive doctrine of Reform Judaism. Last summer, Reform Jews gave me something else to applaud. They have been open-minded enough to restore what they call the affective side of their religion: traditions like Hebrew chant. They now acknowledge that those gest
The Word
The feast of Tabernacles Sukkoth was one of the great celebrations of the Jewish liturgical calendar at the time of Jesus as it is today It was celebrated as an autumn harvest festival and people built little booths or tents that recalled the way they had dwelt during their wilderness wandering
I suspect that many Americans are, like me, torn between two conflicting desires. On the one hand, we yearn for nothing more than the opportunity to revert to our comfortable pre-Sept. 11 ways, even if some aspects of our culture and routines now seem a bit frivolous. On the other hand, we feel the
Books
Back in the boom days of the very near past there was much talk of how stock ownership in the United States had been democratizedwith a stock in every pot There is no doubt that in the 1990 rsquo s many families like my own were suddenly mindful of the market having sunk savings for college or
The people of Zambia voted on Dec. 27, 2001, in the election of a new president, members of Parliament and local councilors. Though the president gained only 29 percent of the vote and none of the 10 major parties gained a majority, the stage is set for a new direction in Zambian politics. Questions
While our nation was breathing a sigh of relief over the rapid deterioration of Taliban power in Afghanistan, we American Muslims were still reeling from the fact that our faith had also been hijacked on Sept. 11 by people who twisted their version of Islam into a blackened form uglier than the burn
News
Vatican to Release Some WW II Archival Material EarlyThe Vatican announced it would open ahead of schedule part of its 20th-century archives, including new documents on Vatican-German relations and Pope Pius XII’s efforts to help prisoners during World War II. The Vatican said cataloguing the