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Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Federal Judge Denies Parents’ Bid to Reinsert Schiavo’s Feeding TubeAfter a Federal judge refused a request by the parents of Terri Schindler Schiavo to have her feeding tube reinserted, church officials condemned the decision and said that the brain-damaged woman must be given nutrition
Arts & CultureBooks
Willie at War
Andrew M. Greeley
It has been 90 years since the beginning of the Great War in 1914 longer than the time between Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor To write about it now is to do history not passionate political attack of the kind Erich Maria Remarque launched in his All Quiet on the Western Front when the war was fres
Arts & CultureBooks
Blooming Where Planted
Ron Hansen
David Plante was born in Providence R I in 1940 the next to last of the seven sons of Anaclet and Albina Plante French-Canadians who were called somewhat sneeringly in Yankee New England Canucks Anaclet was a stoical taciturn quarter-breed Blackfoot Indian who worked humbly for a manufactu
Is God One of Us?
Andrew M. Greeley
Barbara Hall, the creator and executive producer of the CBS television series “Joan of Arcadia,” may have a wider audience than any contemporary American theologian. Most theologians don’t talk about God any more. Sex, race, gender, politics, secularity or whatever are more importa
FaithThe Word
Follow the Leader!
Dianne Bergant
The Fourth Sunday of Easter has traditionally been known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The particular focus today is on leadership Whose leadership do we follow?
News
Annulment
Two articles about the Catholic Church’s process for granting an annulment of marriage were recently published in America: The Annulment, by Joseph A. Califano Jr. (11/15/04), and The Anguish of Annulment (2/28/05). We publish here a representative sampling of the letters prompted by these art
A Passion for Unity
Peter J. Bernardi
Yves-Marie Congar, O.P., was the 20th century’s leading Catholic ecumenical theologian and one of the most influential contributors to the Second Vatican Council. Pope John Paul recognized his outstanding service to the church when he named him a cardinal not long before he died in 1995 at the
Arts & CultureBooks
Thus Always to Tyrants'
Peter Duffy
Sarah Vowell whose idiosyncratic voice in both senses is familiar to listeners of National Public Radio rsquo s This American Life expended a considerable amount of effort trekking to places associated with events of national tragedynamely the murders of Presidents Lincoln Garfield and McKinle
FaithEditorials
Genesis and Darwinism
The Editors
In a message to the Pontifical Academy of Science in October 1996, Pope John Paul II said, New knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. That is to say, this theory is not a guess, but the established framework for understanding the origin of species fr
Iraq's Urgent Need for A Reconciliation Ethic
Daniel Philpott
Christian ethicists are far more reticent about how the United States should proceed in an Iraq exploding with car bombs than they were about whether to launch the present war in the first place. Their reserve is unsurprising, for both just war ethicists and pacifists have much to say about whether
Letters
Letters

Archbishop Replies

An advertisement placed by Voice of the Faithful in the March 14 issue of America erroneously stated that I had dismissed a lay board responsible for reviewing cases of clergy child sexual abuse.

Our Case Review Board was not dismissed. It had concluded its work according to guidelines set out in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and the Essential Norms approved in Dallas in 2002 by the U.S. bishops and the Vatican.

I appointed the Case Review Board following approval of the Dallas charter to review 13 allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy. Concurrent with this, we have had a Policy Review Board in place to review archdiocesan policies for prevention of abuse and protection of children.

Once the Case Review Board concluded its work last year, no further cases remained, and I determined the time was right to bring our review process into conformity with the national model by consolidating the two existing boards into a single board. I took this step to improve efficiency and make the process more cost-effective.

The Case Review Board and the Policy Review Board are currently being reorganized into a single Archdiocesan Review Board. This reorganized board, which will include former members of the Case Review Board and the Policy Review Board, will be responsible for advising me on policies and, when needed, reviewing any new cases that come forward.

If those who purchased the advertisement in your magazine had taken the time to contact local representatives of Voice of the Faithful, they could have corrected this error themselves prior to publication.

(Most Rev.) Alexander J. Brunett

Arts & CultureBooks
The Conjurer
Constance M. McGovern
The Rough Rider the Bull Moose the president who used his office as a bully pulpit the man who carried the big stick the asthmatic child who spent mornings on horseback the hunter of lions who nevertheless spared one teddy bearwhat reader cannot already limn the life of the 26th American presid
Arts & CultureBooks
Confronting a Culture of Fear
Paul Wachter
In the wake of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean as the death toll quickly climbed into the tens of thousands many religious leaders and op-ed pundits focused on a single question Where was God For nonbelievers the catastrophe while tragic was easily explainable Science tells us that a violent
Easter's Beginning: From March 28, 2005
John W. Donohue
For Christians Easter is a reminder that faith can be shaken without being toppled.
Arts & CultureBooks
An Elegaic Portrait
Vincent T. O'Keefe
Since the flurry of biographies of Pope John Paul II appeared in the 1990s an uneasy deathwatch has set in among Vaticanologists who have been predicting his imminent death since 1994 The 84-year-old pontiff has not only refused to follow their scenarios he has actually buried many of his
Self-Hating Humanity?
John F. Kavanaugh
In the fantasy novel That Hideous Strength, a young social scientist, hoping to break into the inner circle of the prestigious National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (acronym: NICE) discovers that the goal of the institute is to eliminate organic life. Filostrato, a physiologist who hates tr
The Myth of Reform: Tougher Is Better
Cecilio Morales
Hours after the 109th Congress convened in early January, Republican majority leaders delivered this startling notice: they intend to transform public aid to the poor into a compulsory work program that offers little opportunity for recipients to lift themselves from poverty. This transformation was
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
John W. Donohue
François de La Rochefoucauld, a 16th-century French aristocrat, made a name for himself by writing tough-minded epigrams that he called maxims. In one of these philosophical wisecracks he noted: “Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.” All the same, there are some people wh
Arts & CultureBooks
New Life in Lima
George M. Anderson
This slender but powerful book describes how an upper-middle-class parish in Lima Peru was transformed in concert with the poor people in its midst largely through the efforts of its founding pastor The pastor who is also the author of Birth of a Church Joseph Nangle O F M recounts how this
Editorials
The Weight of Glory
The Editors
C. S. Lewis compared the risen life to the lightness of an early summer morning when we feel one with sunlight and the gentle air. Of such a morning he wrote in The Weight of Glory, We do not want merely to see beauty...we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into