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Television
A Trojan Horse
Jim McDermott
The sixth season of Fox’s juggernaut television drama 24 debuted recently with a typically nightmarish scenario: random terrorist bombings taking place across the United States, killing more than 900 people in 11 weeks and leaving the rest of the population scared to death. America, we are to
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
Lent? Wasn’t it just Christmas? Catholics can be forgiven for sometimes scratching their heads over the liturgical calendar. While the liturgical year is designed to help Christians follow the life, death and resurrection of Jesus by meditating on the sequence of Gospel readings, sometimes it
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
China’s Catholics Hope Pope Will Clarify Relations Underground Catholics in China say they hope a letter Pope Benedict XVI plans to send them will not only strengthen their faith but also clearly explain how their fractured community in the mainland can be healed. The Holy See wants us to reco
Imagining Our Defeat
Leo J. ODonovan
The horrors of the bloody century past—from the Great War through the Holocaust and Hiroshima to the genocide in Rwanda—all but defy human imagination. Some artists, though, have summoned skill enough to warn us of the sorrows humanity can inflict upon itself. Their imagery bears ponderi
Arts & CultureCulture
Reading in the Season of Lent
Lawrence S. Cunningham
One could do worse than devote some time during Lent to 'lectio divina' and reading the Scriptures prayerfully.
The Word
The Testing of Gods Son
Daniel J. Harrington
In the church rsquo s calendar Lent is a period of preparation for the solemn celebration of Jesus rsquo death and resurrection the paschal mystery at the end of Holy Week On the First Sunday of Lent it is customary to read the account of the testing or temptation of Jesus Since Jesus had been
Current Comment
Current Comment
The Editors
The Costs of CampaigningWhile the presidential election of 2008 is nearly two years away, the field of aspiring candidates is already crowded. The early start of the campaign provides an unsettling reminder of how costly election campaigns have become. The first index of a candidate’s potentia
Columns
A Personalist Lent
John F. Kavanaugh

This is what Yahweh asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God Micah 6:8

Faith
Jesus in the Middle Kingdom
Maurice O'Sullivan
The first question surprised me. We had come to China in the spring of 2006 as a group of college faculty members to experience the old and the new China and to meet faculty and students at a variety of universities.
Poetry
The Houses of Charleston
Richard O
A poor thing the past
Editorials
The Death Penalty:Tinkering' to Good Effect
The Editors
The execution of Saddam Hussein roused condemnation by the United Nations and European Union leaders. But this widespread international criticism also cast a spotlight on the use of capital punishment in the United States, where public dissatisfaction has been growing. An overview of the current situation follows.
The Rights of Gods People
Kevin E. McKenna
The church is not a democracy, we often hear, and the statement is true in several senses. But does this mean that the faithful have no rights before church authorities? Is the church’s teaching on the importance of basic human rights consistent with its own internal governance? The present Co
Film
Life Among the Dead: Letters From Iwo Jima
Richard A. Blake
Suicide and martyrdom have become our constant companions in this dark new century. We’ve settled comfortably into explaining the phenomenon in terms of extremism or fanaticism. We place the blame securely on tribal and religious traditions gone terribly wrong in the minds of some few who woul
Letters
Letters

Distraught Prayers

There is no way either Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City, S.D., or America could have anticipated the confluence of his unambiguous defense of all life (How Unconditional Is the Right to Life? 1/29) and the New York federal jury’s imposition of the death penalty on Ronell Wilson. Perhaps it was the work of divine providence. Bishop Cupich recognizes that such verdicts spring from compassion for the victims of horrendous crimes, a desire to right the wrong and a desire to bring about closure in those affected by the taking of innocent life.

Closure was certainly on the minds of the victims’ widows, who applauded the verdict and saw in it the hand of God, who somehow orchestrated this horror in answer to their distraught prayers. Gone from their tortured memory is the age-old reminder that God, who hates the sin, still loves the sinner and wishes for each person, even the apparently remorseless ones, salvation.

Bishop Cupich draws from a deeper wisdom when he writes that taking a human life in the name of retribution does not breed justice or bring closure, but only continues the cycle of violence and hatred.

Camille D’Arienzo, R.S.M.

Columns
Race in America
Maryann Cusimano Love
As Senator Barack Obama explores a presidential bid, media headlines across the country ask, Is America ready for an African-American president? Between 50 percent and 62 percent of Americans polled answer yes, that race is no longer a barrier in the United States. But that this is considered a news
Arts & CultureBooks
Media Shine a Light
Gene Roman
In 1940 the Carnegie Foundation commissioned a study to assess the state of race relations in America segregation and white supremacy in the South The Foundation chose a Swedish sociologist named Gunnar Myrdal to lead the project They selected a non-American scholar because they wanted an outsid
Challenged to Serve
George M. Anderson
"Knowing they were going to die, the H.I.V.-infected parents we were visiting in a slum section of Nairobi were worried about the education of their children.” These were the words of Joseph Oganda, co-founder of the new St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School for AIDS orphans in Kenya. They were rep
Editorials
Here Comes Everybody
The Editors
Sometimes a nation ought to pause in order to celebrate a major collective achievement. And the approaching presidential primary season may well be one of those times. After more than 200 years when only one segment of the populationnamely, white, non-Hispanic males who, with just two exceptions, we
North Korea's Nuclear Challenge
Ronald E. Powaski
In the wake of North Korea’s first nuclear weapon test on Oct. 9, 2006, the long-stalled six-party talks resumed in Beijing in December, but quickly ended without tangible progress. The multinational talksin which Russia, China, South Korea and Japan joined North Korea and the United Statessta
Arts & CultureBooks
History Unhinged
Vincent Ryan
The Middle Ages are popularly perceived as a period of intellectual and cultural stagnation This perspective is reinforced by the common description of this era as the Dark Ages or the fact that the word medieval is frequently used as a pejorative in our modern vocabulary These stereotypes many o