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Editorials
As the search for housing by poor people grows more desperate year by year, the phrase lack of affordable housing has assumed a mantra-like quality. The title of a recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach, in itself tells the story: the cost of rental housing is indee
The recent hospitalization of Pope John Paul II has revived interest in numerous questions about what happens to the church when a pope is sick and what would happen if he became disabled.What happens to the church when a pope becomes ill? If the pope becomes sick, he can delegate some of his a
Letters
Message Getting Through
This letter has been a long time coming. I’ve often wanted to write to you, having read America for over 40 years. The Word column has been an integral part of my preparation for Sunday Mass. At times I’ve known the authors personally. Of all the authors in the intervening years, Sister Dianne Bergant’s words have most resonated with me. My wife, Louise, and I appreciate her work more than words can convey. I’ve read every word since the first installment; they have been an inspiration for my desire to learn how to pray.
The culminating incentive to write is to share with you a story that any writer would like to hear. We are cafeteria Catholics who seek out the best liturgy and preaching. Our favorite homilist on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time began his sermon with a question: Can you hear me now? (1/17). He began with the advertisement and proceeded to make the sermon his own. The other church we attend is staffed by Dominican priests. A prayer group I’m in at that church closed the meeting on the following Wednesday with the leader quoting the beginning of that pastor’s sermon for the previous Sunday: Can you hear me now? Sister Dianne, regrettably, may not be allowed to preach officially in a Catholic church, but her message is sure getting through in other ways.
Ray Terry
Arts & CultureBooks
You have to warm to a man who spent the night reading The Old Man and the Sea after he received word that he was to be made a bishop The account of the future John Paul II reading Hemingway on a train as he returned after being informed that he was to be made a bishop to a group of young people wi
News
U.S. Theological Society Distressed at Vatican CondemnationThe board of directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America has expressed profound distress at the Vatican action condemning a book by Roger Haight, S.J., an American theologian, and banning him from teaching Catholic theology. Fat
Adam Keller, jailed for refusing to serve in the Israeli Army in Lebanon, has a son, Uri, who was jailed for refusing to serve in the Israeli Army. The senior Keller, a leader of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) and a serial-defier of Israeli governments since he was a teenager (he is now 50), works in Tel
Books
In the wake of the Industrial Revolution an excess of consumer goods flooded the marketplace As it became clear that there was a surplus of interchangeable suppliers a way was needed to differentiate a given product from its competition Out of necessity branding was created as a way of doing ju
Arts & CultureBooks
The ultra right may have the loudest talking heads these days Limbaugh O rsquo Reilly Hannity etc but the left has cornered the market on stylish witty substantial writers Lewis Lapham Frank Rich Maureen Dowd Hendrik Hertzberg and others None of the leftist gang are likely to become
News
Vatican Official’s Comment Reopens Debate Over Possibility That Pope Will ResignWhen a high Vatican official said papal resignation should be left to the conscience of Pope John Paul II, it reignited a debate that has been smoldering for many years. Inside and outside the Vatican, prelates and
Yousif Thomas Mirkis, O.P., is an Iraqi Roman Catholic priest. He recently welcomed me to his community home in Baghdad, the convent of the Dominican friars. In the courtyard, he pointed to the ground. Look, he said. A cross lay molded into the tiles. This is to remind us that the cross is down here
Faith in Focus
To celebrate my 50th birthday, my sister, brother-in-law and their three kids took me on vacation for two weeks to Alaska. It was a wonderful summer vacation, with spectacular scenery and memorable moments. Midway through the vacation, my sister Mary Beth, her husband, Dominic, and I had the opportu
Arts & CultureBooks
Upon John Gregory Dunne's death of a heart attack in December 2003 the many obituaries and eulogies for this famous man of letters stressed the deft touch Dunne brought as a writer to those subjects he knew well.
Editorials
"Put not your trust in princes," the Psalmist advises. Friendly Israeli civil servants have given similar advice to Catholics dealing with today’s Israeli politicians. Given the recent history of relations between the church and the Israeli government, it is a counsel born of hard ex
Columns
It was the final day of Catholic Schools Week, a dreary and wet winter’s day in the Vailsburg section of Newark, N.J. Stepping gingerly on the marble floor of Sacred Heart Church were 500 children from the parish school, who had come to hear the word of God at a special liturgy to mark the wee
Both the developed and developing worlds are facing a critical moral choice in the controversial issue of genetically modified food, also known as genetically modified organisms and genetically engineered crops. Critics of these modifications speak dismissively of biotech foods and genetic pollution
Arts & CultureBooks
One finds in theological circles frequent appeal to the ldquo sacramental imagination rdquo as a distinguishing trait of Catholicism Like all truths when unimaginatively intoned it quickly becomes platitudinous The Rev M Owen Lee rsquo s finely crafted and deeply moving memoir never invokes t
Editorials
As expected, President George W. Bush used his State of the Union address to praise the successful election in Iraq and argue for his private investment model of Social Security reform. The Iraqi election certainly merits great attention. The images of long lines of people waiting to vote, even retu
As one of the world’s last industrialized nations to be without a national health care system, the United States is beleagured by a host of public health problems and contrasting proposals to solve them. Yet all the discourse appears to have generated no great public outcry for universal cover
The Word
We are children of the earth The fact that we live on the land has been reinforced by the biblical story of how God formed the first man out of the clay of the earth Gn 2 7 It might be more accurate to say that we are children of the water Life on earth began in the water and then developed ou