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Alarm Bells in the East
Drew Christiansen
I have been anguishing over the fate of Christians in the Middle East. Only three months ago America published a survey by Michael Hirst of the dire problems facing Christians across the Middle East and South Asia (6/19). Last week’s news included two items that deepened my fears. The first, i
Poetry
Enclosures of Violence
Osvaldo Pol

The guard dog

Arts & CultureBooks
Beyond the Self
Emilie Griffin
I owe a great deal to Henri J M Nouwen His writing which I first discovered in the 1970 rsquo s helped clarify the spiritual life for me I continue to read and profit from his books and recommend them to others Oddly I felt a certain trepidation about this posthumous work on spiritual direct
Current Comment
Current Comment
The Editors
Defying the Rules of WarIn this issue, George A. Lopez argues that the war on terror has led us into a no man’s land of Dirty Harry ethics. The argument for a no-holds-barred approach to terrorism runs: We are in a dirty war, so we have to fight dirty. If they are nasty, we have to be nastier.
Arts & CultureBooks
Faith in Action
J. Bryan Hehir
This volume exquisitely edited by Kenneth Himes O F M is a superb contribution to Catholic social ethics and will undoubtedly serve as a basic text providing a synthetic statement of the last century of the Catholic social tradition While its primary audience is the Catholic community it prov
Current Comment
Current Comment
The Editors
Prisons in Latin AmericaThe often horrifying conditions in Latin American prisons receive relatively little attention in the United States. A recent study, Evaluation of Prisons in the Organization of American States, however, casts light on some of them. How well or badly a prisoner is treated in t
Columns
Labor's Love Lost
John F. Kavanaugh
As Labor Day approached, a sublimely ironic drama was being played out on Capitol Hill. At the end of July, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed a bill that would raise the minimum wage, over the next couple of years and with no provision for future inflation, from $5.15 to a kingly $7.2
The Demise of Workers' Rights
David L. Gregory
It is both sad and ironic that the National Labor Relations Board, the independent federal agency created during the Depression to safeguard the workers’ right to unionize, has instead been complicit in the demise of workers’ rights. The disturbing trend, which began during the administr
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Gospel Ethic

Regarding the article by Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., The Corporate University (7/31), I agree that much of third-level education today emulates the corporate business model. But I question whether this corporate university model is as intrinsically immoral as Father Miscamble seems to imply. If it is, then what other model would he propose?

University education today has become institutional on a grand scale, and we do not correctly read the signs of the times if we simply yearn for a return to the way higher education was administered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Responding to the core of Father Miscamble’s concerns, I think that the management and marketing models that a university espouses do not necessarily imply an underlying ethic. Corporate is not necessarily bad and non-corporate is not necessarily good. I suggest that one can have a corporate university based on a Gospel ethic that is capable of being communicated to its students.

One final point: Father Miscamble says that as a matter of urgency Catholic universities should take the lead in American higher education in providing just compensation for adjunct faculty. I must say that I am adequately compensated for my duties as an adjunct professor. Adjunct faculty are, by definition, temporary faculty who supply some particular need not provided by the regular faculty. Historically it has been assumed that they have or had some other primary profession and so do not need to be compensated with a living family wage for their adjunct contributions.

Robert N. Barger

Arts & CultureBooks
Group Discussion
Thomas J. Massaro
Can anyone seriously doubt that sustained reflection on the topic of peacemaking is among the most urgent tasks facing humankind In the wake of the bloodiest century in history the Christian community has a solemn obligation to share with the wider human society whatever insights it can glean from
The Word
True Religion
Daniel J. Harrington
The only formal definition of religion in the Bible appears in today rsquo s reading from James It is not an exhaustive or comprehensive definition But it does provide a starting point for reflecting on what the biblical tradition understands to be true religion The first characteristic of true re
Editorials
Raising the Minimum Wage
The Editors
Nowhere in the United States is it possible for a full-time worker earning the minimum wage to rent a one-bedroom apartment at market rates. Despite this shameful reality, Congress has again balked at increasing the minimum wage from its present $5.15 an hourunchanged since 1997. According to a repo
The Living Wage and Catholic Social Teaching
William P. Quigley
Should people who work still be poor? Few argue that they should. Yet the federal minimum wage remains a shocking $5.15 an hour. Advocates for living wages point to the Santa Fe local minimum wage of $9.50 an hour as much more just. Msgr. Jerome Martínez of Santa Fe, who stoutly supported the local
Film
Films That Move and Provoke
Jim McDermott
March of the Penguins quietly took mainstream America by storm last year with its surprisingly dramatic story of emperor penguins in Antarctica. The documentary film was both a critical and a box-office success, winning an Academy Award and grossing $122.6 million worldwide. Several other documentar
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Inspirational stories are not what you would expect to find in the Money and Business section of the Sunday New York Times. Its articles are generally of the dollars and cents kind. But a few years ago, paging quickly through that Sunday’s business section, I began to notice a regular column c
Arts & CultureBooks
God's Worldliness
Gloria L. Schaab
In his poem God rsquo s Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins calls it the dearest freshness deep down things and in his Book of Pilgrimage Rainer Maria Rilke refers to it as the deep innerness of all things What each poet strives to capture in words is the heart of matter beyond appearance that essen
The Word
Gods Love for the Poor
Daniel J. Harrington
Among the New Testament writings the Letter of James is important for its emphasis on social justice By social justice I mean how we find our way among the various social ethnic economic gender and political realities that shape our lives When this letter was written there were probably only a
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Christians Flee Sectarian Violence in IraqHalf of all Iraqi Christians have fled their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, said the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad. Auxiliary Bishop Andreos Abouna of Baghdad, a Chaldean Catholic, said that before the invasion there were about 1.2 million Christ
The Making of a Catholic Labor Leader
Joseph J. Fahey
The sky over Washington Square hung cloudy and gray, as if it reflected the mood of a group of New York University graduate students gathering there. Although it was graduation day (May 11, 2006), these newly minted Ph.D.’s and continuing graduate students were dispirited because the universit
Culture
Terror Bombing: Shattering the immunity of civilians has become the very definition of terrorism
Justus George Lawler
Winston Churchill launched Operation Gomorrah, ordering high-explosive and incendiary bombs to be dropped on the city of Hamburg on July 24, 1943. Five days later more than 50,000 civilians were dead. Two-and-a-half years later, the city of Dresden, crowded with refugees and of little strategic impo