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Arts & CultureBooks
Paul Wilke
Not long ago surely in a fit of masochism I dusted off The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire What with the current administration rsquo s tactful outsourcing of war to the brave but dominantly underclass warrior lack of interest for anything that smacks of environmental concern and the conspi
FaithThe Word
Dianne Bergant
quot The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God and the fellowship or community koinon a of the Holy Spirit be with all of you rdquo This passage taken from Paul rsquo s First Letter to the Corinthians is familiar to many of us for it is often used as the greeting in our liturgy
Columns
Lorraine V. Murray
I am sitting at my desk near the library’s back door when I notice a hat on the floor. Evidently one of the many theology students rushing to class dropped it. I notice that it is a fine hat, made of wool and clearly hand-knit, so I trust its owner will return shortly. If not, I remind myself,
Film
Richard A. Blake
Most people drink in order to enjoy wine. Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) enjoys wine in order to drink. Surely there are as many definitions of alcoholism as there are drinkers, or even as there are people who have ever thought about it, but Miles has enough classic symptoms to give friends reason to
Arts & CultureBooks
Thomas H. Stahel
The thesis of this book is that like Nazareth this town hidden in the Cajun country of south central Louisiana has been the home of holy people whom an oblivious world ought to know about And it rsquo s true Grand Coteau La makes Nazareth in Galilee look like the Great White Way Can anything
Editorials
The Editors
Critics have been talking for years of the need to reform the United Nations. In this country the pressure has frequently come from conservative politicians like the late Senator Jesse Helms, who are jealously protective of U.S. sovereignty and begrudging of funding for the international organizatio
Ronald G. Roberson, C.S.P.,
On Nov. 30, 2004, an extraordinary liturgical event took place in St. George’s Church in Istanbul, the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. As Patriarch Bartholomew presided nearby, glass cases containing the remains of two of his predecessors were placed on the patriarc
Letters

Important Parallels

In his article, Some Forgotten Lessons (4/25), Jason R. Rowe illustrated some important parallels between American military attitudes now, as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those that were operative in El Salvador during the 1980’s. The Salvador Option is truly an insidious concept, when one remembers what the government-sponsored death squads did in the name of fighting Communism in El Salvador during those years. (One such death squad took a friend of mine captive, poured acid on his arms and left him for dead simply because they could not find his brother, whom they suspected of being a guerrilla sympathizer.) But as much as I agreed with Rowe’s analysis, I felt it was torpedoed at the end of the article when he misidentified (twice) the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional (F.M.L.N) as the Frente Sandanista (sic) de Liberaci6n Nacional (F.S.L.N.). Wrong country (Nicaragua). Wrong year (1979). Wrong spelling (Sandinista).

Dick Howard

Arts & CultureBooks
John A. Coleman
This is a provocative even polemical book The provocation flows from the near-taboo question it raises a question that merits a serious hearing How much time do children need with parents especially mothers Do we need to scrutinize closely America rsquo s ongoing massive historically unprece
Arts & CultureBooks
George Kilcourse
The Catholic fiction writer from Georgia Flannery O rsquo Connor 1925-64 once volunteered that it would be 50 years before readers understood her stories Half a century after the publication of her first novel Wise Blood 1952 and the inaugural collection of her short stories A Good Man Is
Kevin M. Cahill
Shortly after a Vatican and hospital medical team completed emergency abdominal surgery on Pope John Paul II following an assassination attempt on May 13, 1981, they asked six international specialists to come to Rome as consultants. Two of those invited were from the United States, Harvard’s
Letters

A Very Simple Message

Much of the world stood still recently, at least for a few moments, to observe the passing of Pope John Paul II. Television coverage of the crowds of pilgrims making their way to view the body one last time was extraordinary. In a world often deemed indifferent to religion, who would have guessed a humble Polish priest would become a pope the whole world would mourn (4/18)?

I am a Catholic by birth and an editor at a Catholic publishing house by profession. Even among those of us who might be called professional Catholics, there has been a sense of awe and wonderment at the life and accomplishments of John Paul II. In August 2002 I watched television coverage of a visibly ailing, 82-year-old pontiff saying Mass in a field outside Krakow. The crowd was immensean estimated three million people. Everywhere John Paul II went there were crowdsseven million in the Philippines. His general audiences in Rome were attended by 14 million people. It’s difficult to imagine a person living or dead who has seen or been seen by more people than John Paul II. Why?

I decided to search for an answer by immersing myself in John Paul’s writings. He is perhaps the papacy’s most prolific writerauthor of 14 encyclicals, 42 apostolic letters, 15 apostolic exhortations, 10 apostolic constitutions, hundreds of public addresses, numerous poems, five books and a number of playsall this in addition to being the most traveled and most influential pope of the modern age.

What really amazed me, though, was the fact that the magnitude of John Paul II’s accomplishmentsas world statesman, theologian, philosopher and church leaderhad perhaps obscured his greatest role: that of a humble pastor. He knew something about how men and women can find God. He understood how the power of God can be released in our lives. His supreme desire was that we come to embrace a faith that transforms the way we work, the way we relate to other people and the way we live in the world.

John Paul returned again and again to a few basic themes in all his writings and talks: faith, prayer, family, suffering, the church, Mary and, most passionately, ChristChrist as the answer to all life’s mysteries. He traveled the world bringing this very simple message.

Though the papacy of John Paul II has ended, his legacy lies tangibly before us in his writings. We can touch his books, hold his pages in our hands, take his words into our hearts. We should do this. He wanted us to. In so doing we may discover that the secret to John Paul II’s immense popularity was that he really believed in a faith that could change the world for the better. His words will bear eloquent witness to this hope for many years to come.

Joseph Durepos

Arts & CultureBooks
Peter Heinegg
India has turned into something like the center of the world Forever touted as the world rsquo s largest democracy it is now about to become the world rsquo s most populous country The achievements of its scientists artists and writers many of them migr s are astonishing The thoroughly mod
Editorials
The Editors
The editors on Joseph Ratzinger's election as pope
John W. OMalley
From 2005, John W. O'Malley, S.J., on the resurgence in Jesuit scholarship
Arts & CultureBooks
This volume presumes an older one of Selected Poems which was published by New Directions in 1959 and again in 1967 in an enlarged edition with an introduction by Mark Van Doren Van Doren had been Thomas Merton rsquo s university professor and mentor at Columbia It was he who put Merton rsquo s
The Word
Dianne Bergant
So many stories in the Bible recount the wondrous working of God In some of them the events are reported in such unremarkable ways that one wonders whether or not anything exceptional really happened An example of this might be God rsquo s revelation to the prophet Elijah in ldquo a tiny whisper
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Neighbors Describe Pope as Humble Cat LoverSince the papal election on April 19, tidbits have begun trickling out from those who came to know Pope Benedict the man, as distinguished from the theologian. "I like him more than Wojtyla [Pope John Paul II]. Maybe that’s because I knew him,&qu
George M. Anderson
They came from all over, some 220 parents and children, and waited in line for up to three hours to enter the century-old red brick building in East Harlem. In this once Italian neighborhood, they were now mostly Hispanic immigrants from all over Central and Latin America and the Carribean. What the
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Elected Pope Benedict XVICardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, 78, who has been prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the last 24 years, was elected the 265th pope and took the name Benedict XVI. Appearing at the central window of St. Peter’s B