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Dont Forget Justice
Thomas J. Massaro
Pope Benedict’s first encyclical letter is superb in many ways and well deserves the nearly universal praise it has received. I found Deus Caritas Est informative, inspiring and at times extremely consoling, even sublime. The world certainly stands to benefit from this profound reflection on t
The Word
The Mystery of the Beloved Son
Daniel J. Harrington
The word mystery among its several meanings may refer to a religious truth that is known by revelation and is not fully understood by reason alone The readings for the Second Sunday of Lent highlight Jesus rsquo identity as God rsquo s beloved Son and confront us with the mystery of his death on
Columns
The Cruelest Month
Terry Golway
For parents and students in struggling Catholic schools, winter surely is the cruelest season. For it is now, in the first quarter of the year, that many parents and children learn that their school - for so many, their refuge - will not reopen its doors in September. Actually, this is a best-case s
Ethics Outflanked
George A. Lopez
Thirty years from now, students in ethics classes who study the Iraq war will be stunned by the manner in which ethicists twisted themselves into pretzels searching for a moral lens that would fit this war experience. They will be particularly puzzled by how the political realm continued to define t
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Needs of Parishioners

While I agree with much of the assessment by the Rev. Frank D. Almade in Response to A Blueprint for Change’ (1/30), I believe that priests today do want to be leaders of the parish community. However, the lights, leaks, locks, loot and lawns can take an inordinate amount of time. This is especially true in a parish where there is only one priest, no business manager and no maintenance person (even part time). The demands of parish life, liturgical events and diocesan reports remain at the same intensity as they were some years ago when there were perhaps two or three men assigned to the parish. Pastors today, even though they have a support staff and a large number of volunteers, are still solely and ultimately responsible for the functioning of the parish. In this situation, they must set priorities; certainly, the liturgical life of the parish and the needs of parishioners must take first place. Otherwise, what’s it all about?

Noreen Cleary, S.C.

Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Drew Christiansen
Social movements sometimes grow slowly out of sight, like Mark’s “seed growing secretly,” and then burst forth suddenly with astonishing rightness, just made for the times. So it is with the Religious Campaign Against Torture (www.nrcat.org). George Hunsinger, a graduate school cla
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Israeli Citizen Named Melkite ArchbishopFor the first time, the Vatican and the Melkite Catholic Synod of Bishops have agreed on an Israeli citizen to be archbishop of Akko, Israel. Archimandrite Elias Chacour, parish priest of the village of Ibillin in northern Galilee and founder of Mar Elias Coll
The Dilemma in Iraq
Gerard F. Powers
Iraq was a preventive war. As preventive wars are wont to do, it has become a war of occupation (de jure and now de facto). Like other uninvited occupiers, the United States finds itself in a terrible dilemma: its very presence is fueling insurgency and terrorism, yet its premature withdrawal could
Arts & CultureBooks
It's in Our Blood
Rachelle Linner
Reviewed in our pages in 2006, 'One Nation Under God,' offers a vivid portrait of public prayer in American history.
Editorials
The Meanest Cities
The Editors
Cities vary in their responses to the needs of their homeless populations. Some are very mean indeed as the numbers of homeless people continue to rise. Take Sarasota, Fla. After state courts overturned two successive anti-lodging laws as applied to public spaces, the city persisted and this past su
Fasting: A Fresh Look
Thomas Ryan
Have you ever tried to explain the Catholic regulations on fasting to a Muslim, a Jew or a Hindu? Save yourself the raised eyebrows of incomprehension or the smirk that says, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Somehow “one full meal and two lesser ones not equaling it” doesn&r
Faith in Focus
Humbled
William A. Barry
I don’t want to be humbled; you don’t either, I suspect. Yet there are people who say it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, say that they began to move toward sanity and wholeness only after they had been deeply humbled. Likewise,
Arts & CultureBooks
What Lurks Beneath
Gerald T. Cobb
In his new short story collection T C Boyle has gone a step further than William Butler Yeats who conveyed in his poem ldquo The Second Coming rdquo the alienation and disconnectedness of 20th-century life with the memorable image ldquo the falcon cannot hear the falconer rdquo Boyle descr
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
First Lady and Pope Talk of Peace and ViolenceLaura Bush, wife of the U.S. president, and one of her 24-year-old twin daughters, Barbara Bush, met the pope at the Vatican on Feb. 9 during a brief stop in Rome on the way to the Olympics. After the meeting, she told reporters traveling with her that p
After the Tsunami, Peace
Robert N. Lynch
There is definitely a “peace dividend” to disaster relief, as I found in mid-December during my second visit to Banda Aceh, the large city in northern Sumatra (Indonesia) where over 118,000 lives were lost on Dec. 26, 2004. That was the day of the multiple catastrophes of a huge earthqua
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Respectful Appreciation

In Aquinas in Africa (2/6), Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., suggests that an African attitude toward technology and economic growth will influence how Africans think about Christianity. When I read this statement, it seemed to me that the opposite was true: that one’s fuller understanding of Christianity would influence how one regards technology and economic growth. In ordinary parlance, technology and economic growth are equated with progresswhich is never very well defined.

It is fairly clear that current technology is not harmonious with the earth’s processes. We are using the gifts of the earth at an unsustainable rate, which is not only unwise and inequitable, but also an affront to the creator who bestowed them. Is the author implying that the African attitude toward technology and economic growthand presumably toward progressis innately closer to a respectful appreciation and utilization of earth’s treasures than is often accepted? People close to the earth do seem to have a deeper understanding and bond with creation.

Dean Brackley, S.J., well points out in the same issue that while contemporary society [offers students] jobs, the only vocation it seems to propose is getting and spending. It is in our Christian faith that we are taught the vocation to love and serve.

The message of the Gospel, then, should inform the technological and economic strategies that humanity employsin Africa and elsewhere.

Sheila Murphy, O.S.U.

Arts & CultureBooks
Shared Authority
William A. Galston
In Active Liberty Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer offers an alternative to Justice Antonin Scalia rsquo s advocacy of text-focused statutory interpretation and a constitutional jurisprudence that takes its bearings from original intent Instead Breyer argues statutory interpretation should lo
Editorials
Culture Clash
The Editors
The chasm between the Muslim world and the West yawns still wider as a result of the furor over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Some of the protest, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, was government instigated; some was fomented by radicals keen to whip up animosity against the West.
The Francis Next Door
Karen Sue Smith
In the early 13th century, Francis of Assisi stood before Pope Innocent III and asked him to sanction a new way of life, which ultimately became a new religious order with a twist. The Franciscans would not be cloistered monks, but active brothers living in towns and countrysides, sustained by alms.
Ruined for Life
George M. Anderson
"Ruined for life”—that is the humorously ironic phrase used of young women and men who give one or two years of their lives to service in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The phrase was coined by Jack Morris, the Jesuit credited with having started it all—of whom more later. Althou