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Cardinal Walter Kasper, prefect of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, delivered an important address to the council’s plenary assembly on Nov. 14, 2006. In it he said that anyone who spoke “indiscriminately of retrogression, of standstill or even of an ecumenical &lsqu
Arts & CultureBooks
Are the culture wars of the last two decades a bogus conflict Do the debates about abortion gender sexuality and aesthetics amount to a series of shadowboxing matches Intellectuals appear increasingly divided For some they 8217 re a genuine combat for others they 8217 re something for the
FaithThe Word
The phrase “Easter faith” refers to the conviction that Jesus who was dead has been raised and thus has brought about the victory of life over death.
Of Many Things
We buried Joe Hacala two days short of his 62nd birthday. Joe’s last job was as president of Wheeling Jesuit University. It was a natural fit, because Joe was a native West Virginian, deeply committed to his home state and the poor people of the Appalachian region. Joe and I came together in W
News
Jerusalem Hospice Open to Patients of All FaithsWhen Sister Monika Dullmann first came as a volunteer to Saint-Louis Hospital in Jerusalem as a young theologian, the most difficult task she faced was watching terminally ill patients suffer. Sister Monika, now the hospital director, said 20 years of
Politics & Society
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (May 1954), racial tensions in Alabama heightened considerably. When in February 1956 Autherine Lucy, a black student, began attending class at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, white students and community membe
Arts & CultureBooks
Where is the solution manual Nearly a quarter-century ago when I first taught Business and Public Issues in a large state university an undergraduate accounting student came to see me The class had just discussed a case that described a difficult ethical dilemma Not surprisingly there was no e
The Word
The fundamental question of the Easter season is How does the movement begun by the earthly Jesus continue after his resurrection Today rsquo s excerpt from Jesus rsquo discourse in John 10 known as the Good Shepherd discourse provides the beginning of an answer It reminds us that our personal
News
U.S. Peace Activists Visit Vatican On the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, three U.S. Catholic peace activists paid a discreet but significant visit to the Vatican. The officers of the Indiana-based Catholic Peace Fellowship were in Rome in mid-March to promote the issue of conscientious objec
"What kind of judgment is one based on scraps of paper copied three times? We do not want such judgments.” So said Cardinal Josef Glemp to the crowd that filled Warsaw Cathedral after Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus announced his resignation on Jan. 6, moments before the celebration of his instal
Culture
The contemporary poet Franz Wright expresses a sense of human life as a brief hiatus between an immense before and after. The cold and dark was Wright’s environment for decades of his life, starting from age eight, when divorce took his much-admired father, the poet James Wright, out of the ho
Arts & CultureBooks
For years I have stared at the five published volumes over 2 100 pages of Thomas Merton rsquo s letters arranged neatly on a shelf in my Merton collection and wondered if I would ever have time to work through them Occasionally I opened a volume to check a reference but the massive collection of
The Word
Why did the early Christian movement succeed Why has it lasted for almost 2 000 years The most basic reason is the resurrection of Jesus Early Christians believed that God was at work in a definitive way in the life death and resurrection of Jesus They believed that through Jesus it had become
Current Comment
A Star PhilosopherWith the announcement that the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor will be soon be honored for his investigations in human spirituality, another star has been added to the firmament of Templeton Prize winners. Taylor is an exceptional philosopher, a practicing Catholic much influen
Columns
Under the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas, I hold that a soul is a unifying formative source of any living being’s activities and purpose. Thus each individual plant or tree has a soul, a formative cause of its integrated development in its life-activities of growth, healing and reproduction.
Not so long ago, chastity, the virtue that single people practice by abstaining from sex and married people by being faithful to their spouses, was regarded as a mainstream value. Even people who failed to live up to it generally recognized it as normal and normative. Today, however, the mainstream status of chastity is attenuated, to say the least. This attenuation has been both reflected in the law and promoted by it.
Letters
Limited Report
Too bad you limited to one page your report on the Vatican’s notification on the works of your fellow Jesuit, Jon Sobrino (Signs of the Times, 3/26). My diocesan newspaper, not in your league by any means, nevertheless gave us a more complete report, which allowed us to see the deft and graceful handling of the issue. In the more complete report, you see the Vatican making a clear distinction between the man (who is praised) and his work (on which concerns are raised). In an accompanying interview on Vatican Radio, we learn that Sobrino’s books may continue to be used in seminaries and elsewhere. Indeed, the consultor to the congregation is quoted as saying that books may be read as much as you like, keeping in mind the questions the congregation raised. It suggests, at least to me, a new level of trust in the judgment of the reader. Our newspaper also took time to interview James T. Bretzke, S.J., of the University of San Francisco, who pointed out that the process had a much greater transparency and openness than was found in the past. Perhaps it is the careful hand of Cardinal William J. Levada. Whatever the reason, this approach seems welcome to me, and I am sure your readers would appreciate having the whole story.
John W. Weiser
Editorials
The reaction of Robert Gates, the new secretary of defense, to the failure to provide appropriate medical care to wounded veterans offers a striking contrast to the reaction of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to reports that eight United States attorneys had been fired for partisan political reaso
Look into any book about the history of racial integration in the United States, and you will almost certainly find dramatic stories about bus boycotts and Rosa Parks; Freedom Riders, voter registration and Emmett Till; Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery; and the civil rights movement and Martin Luther K
Film
One need not be one of those bloated bloviators of talk radio to rush to the judgment that political correctness and ethnic sensitivity can be carried to comic, even tragic, extremes at times. Philip Roth, an author of solid liberal credentials, explored the dark side of planet P.C. in his splendid