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Abortion and Public Policy
Blase J. Cupich
Voters will decide the fate of the nearly total ban on abortions that was recently passed overwhelmingly by the South Dakota Legislature and signed by that state’s governor, Mike Rounds. On June 19, 2006, South Dakota’s secretary of state, Chris Nelson, confirmed that the legislation, wh
Film
There Is No Plan: World Trade Center
Richard A. Blake
One scene in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center encapsulated the entire film for me. A distraught wife of a missing police officer runs out into the street in front of her home after waiting all day for some news of her husband. The September evening sparkles with lights glowing through the win
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
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Jim McDermott
On this fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I have many memories of Sept. 11, 2001. Images flicker in the back of my mind when I am on the way to the airport or gazing up at a skyscraper on a blue-sky day. I expect the news stations this week will offer a nons
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Catholic Common Ground Marks 10th AnniversaryListening has to be an essential ingredient in relationships within the church, just as it must be in all healthy relationships, said the keynote speaker at an event at Loyola University in Chicago on Aug. 11 marking the 10th anniversary of the Catholic C
Where Have We Been?
James Martin, S.J.
When I left the World Trade Center in October 2001, after working there for several weeks alongside fellow Jesuits and other volunteers, I wondered what would become not only of the physical site but of the people we had met. One ironworker, who spent long days at Ground Zero cutting apart the steel
Alarm Bells in the East: From September 11, 2006
Drew Christiansen
In These Pages: From September 11, 2006
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
Arts & CultureBooks
War? Crime? Emergency?
Kimberly E. O'Leary
In his new book Before the Next Attack Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman takes a complex constitutional proposal directly to the American public and he does a terrific job explaining the what and why of his proposals as well as the history of emergency power in the United States I am sure my le
Poetry
Enclosures of Violence
Osvaldo Pol

The guard dog

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
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
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
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
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
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