Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Clear filter
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Political Choice

Your editorial The Political Season (8/2) distresses me. It is not so much a call for debate on the Iraq war as an opinion that the war was wrong and that the weight of evidence proves this. I must admit that I do not have an informed opinion on this. But I trusted Bush and his advisers, although I can admit that they may have been wrong. I do not believe all the facts are in yet, so I do not have as strong an opinion as you do.

In any case, assuming Bush was wrong on this most important of issues, one would conclude that he should be turned out. To turn him out, a vote must be cast for Kerry. For Catholics, is this wise? Not only Kerry but the entire Democratic party seems encamped on the side of the culture of death, as Catholics define the issues.

So we are left in a quandary. Vote for Bush or vote for Kerry. Which is worse?

Howard J. White

Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
I have poor circulation, and that makes my ankles swell,” said the woman in front of me, speaking in the soft accents of “the islands.” A heavy-set person in her 50’s, she explained this as we sat on our bags early one morning at the Port Authority bus terminal in New York Ci
Oppressors for Justice
Ellen Rufft
As I get older, I continue to discover that many of the beliefs I cherished as a child were not really truths. They were, rather, proverbs my Irish mother used to say to encourage her daughters to behave appropriately. Because of a letter I received during the past Easter season, I was reminded of t
Politics and the Parish
Vincent J. Miller
When we think about politics and the parish, we generally think about policy advocacy - for example, the pre-election-year statements of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, like Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility(October 2003), or letter-writing campaigns conducte
Books
The First Families
Pheme Perkins
One might approach this book as a field guide to the multiple species of church or early Christian assembly to be found in the New Testament The text remains rooted in the world of first-century Christianity The Rev Raymond Collins professor of New Testament at The Catholic University of America
FaithThe Word
All God's People
Dianne Bergant
People of every religious faith should be able to recognize God’s goodness in the way we live our lives and interact with them.
Editorials
Refugees: Darfur and Beyond
The Editors
The disaster unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan shines a spotlight once again on the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons. The Sudanese government has stood by as Arab Janjaweed militias engaged in the systematic destruction of Darfurian villages and water sources. Thirty thousan
FaithOpinion
My Conscience, My Vote
David R. Obey
I was raised a Catholic. I know in my bones that I would not hold the views I hold today if it were not for the values I learned in Catholic school. I am, I think it is fair to say, a Midwestern, populist progressive in the tradition of Robert LaFollette, George Norris and Theodore Roosevelt. Their
Poetry
Resistance Fantasies
Diane Thiel
We like to think we would have been
Books
Amorous Concerns
James S. Torrens, S.J.
With these two books of translated sonnets one under its own label and one through a subsidiary Farrar Straus and Giroux tightens its claim to a place on the top rung of literary publishers The sonnet is about as much in vogue these days as the gavotte but we have to admire the great practition
FaithThe Word
Blowhards
Dianne Bergant
If you want to make it in the world today you have to advertise If you have a product to sell or a service to offer you must make it known mdash and you must brag about it ldquo We have what no one else has rdquo ldquo Ours is bigger and better and lasts longer rdquo ldquo We can do what
FaithFaith in Focus
Lourdes Diary: Seven days at Massabieille: Part Two
James Martin, S.J.
‘Even before dawn, there is a Mass being celebrated, and pilgrims are already here, kneeling before the space, running their hands over the rock, praying the Rosary and hoping for healing, as they have been doing since 1858.’
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Battle of Sexes Not Part of God’s DesignThe battle of the sexes and, particularly, the subjugation of women are the result of original sin and not of God’s original design for creation, said a document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Attempts to advance the ca
Diet for a Small Planet? Fat Chance
Stephen F. Gambescia
As I was hurrying through a popular bookstore during the winter holiday rush, my attention was caught by the cover of a prominently displayed book, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. The work is a sequel to Frances Moore Lappe’s appeal to Americans in the early 1970’s t
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Stark Reality

Thank you for printing the picture with the caption Mother feeds malnourished child in Signs of the Times on July 5. I simply stopped and stared, disturbed and saddened. Having breast-fed all three of my children, I want to cry with and for the mother in the picture, knowing she is not providing the milk that every ounce of her mind, body and soul wants to produce for her child. I was disappointed in myself for daily agonizing over what food to make for dinner, rather than simply being grateful that I even have food available. As disturbing as the picture is, I’ll put it on our fridge, next to our kids’ artwork, made in their secure little world. It will call me to gratefulness and humility.

Thanks, America, for showing and reminding me of the stark reality hungry breast-feeding mothers and their children face daily.

Amy Giorgio

Books
From Punch Ball to Hardball
Joseph A. OHare
In this richly documented and thoroughly engaging memoir Joseph A Califano Jr recalls his years in Washington as a member of several administrations and as a partner in a powerful law firm From this vantage point Califano observed and participated in the national crises and unsettling cultural c
Columns
Redrafting America
Terry Golway
As the Roman world began to disintegrate and the emperor was far from home fighting wars on the Rhine, a group known as the Alemanni advanced from Germany to the very outskirts of the great global city. In this emergency, wrote Edward Gibbon in his masterful tale of Rome’s decline and fall, th
Film
Burning Bush: Fahrenheit 9/11
Richard A. Blake
The worm turns. Last spring the religious right made such a fuss about the polychrome piosities of Mel Gibson that even card-carrying atheists had to line up to see what all the buzz was about. Every action has its reaction, so now the sanctimonious left has created an even greater fuss about Michae
Books
We're Broke
Cecilio Morales
While Ronald Reagan tagged Democrats with his tax and spend label it was his 1980 electoral adversary Jimmy Carter who while governing Georgia in the 1970 rsquo s pioneered zero-based budgeting in government the system by which each program rsquo s very existence must be justified every time spe
Editorials
The Political Season
The Editors
The conventional wisdom about presidential election campaigns is that the American voting public does not begin to pay attention until after the Labor Day weekend. For both Democrats and Republicans the candidates have been clearly identified long in advance of the national conventions in which they