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FaithThe Word
Dianne Bergant
We should not be too quick to criticize the early disciples for their initial lack of faith in the resurrection.
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
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
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
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 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
FaithVantage Point
Thomas M. King
Teilhard was striving for sanctity by working in science, and this effort would require a new understanding of what it means to be holy.
Letters

Missed the Mark

In reviewing Million Dollar Baby (Of Clay and Wattles Made, 2/14), Richard A. Blake, S.J., surprised me by the reference to this intelligent, compassionate priest. I felt that the ordinary, everyday pastoral ministry of the priest sure missed the mark in this film.

(Rev.) Eugene F. McGovern

Thomas M. King
A Jesuit who strove for sanctity by working in science
Arts & CultureBooks
Gerald T. Cobb
When Wendell Berry came to Seattle to read from his new novel Hannah Coulter he was introduced with the words ldquo For those of you who wonder where hope still lies rdquo The audience responded with rapt silence as if to say ldquo Yes we are eager for hope rdquo Berry rsquo s novel d
Valerie Schultz
The angel girls were ready on Easter morning. Their feathered wings were attached, their wreaths securely bobby-pinned to their braided heads, their pastel ribbons around their waists. The nine of them had practiced for this Mass for many hours; they had become an earthly corps of angels. They await
The Word
Dianne Bergant
Generation after generation the Christian community re-examines its teaching regarding the resurrection of Jesus Carefully developed explanations continue to clarify the most minute details of this doctrine Many of us are so familiar with these details that we may have ceased to be amazed at thei
Theater
Leo J. ODonovan
There was a time in the American theater when ordinary people could collect quarters in a cup and, after some weeks, buy a ticket for a Broadway show. It was the decade after World War II, the cataclysm that put horror and hope on a seemingly equal footing. But American idealism had triumphed, or so
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Catholic Family Wants Justice, Not Death, for Murderers Involving I.R.A.A Catholic family’s campaign for justice has put increasing pressure on the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, and its military wing, the outlawed Irish Republican Army.Robert McCartney, 33, a forklift driver from the sma
Jens Soering
Overseas, the war in Iraq has exposed the limits of American military might at an enormous and still-growing cost to taxpayers. At home, meanwhile, this nation’s three-decades-long preference for hiding away social problems behind penitentiary walls has produced the ironic result that the land
Letters

Fields and Tables

The article on genetic engineering by Gerald D. Coleman, S.S., (2/21) lays out a framework for evaluating the arguments for promoting genetically engineered crops to meet the problems of world hunger As one who has been engaged in this debate for some time from a practical, political and ethical perspective, I cannot let pass unchallenged his remark that it was a moral disgrace that in 2002 African governments gave in to G.M.O opponents and returned to the World Food Program tons of G.M.O. corn simply because it was produced in the United States by biotechnology. Had the author been in Zambia in mid-2002, when the government, after very serious scientific study, rejected importation of the G.M.O. maize pushed by the U.S. government, he would have commended this move as a moral necessity to protect lives of both present and future Zambians and to safeguard the agricultural infrastructure of the small-scale farmers who produce 80 percent of the local maize.

In fact, the real moral disgrace was that the U.S. government refused to provide financial assistance for the purchase of the readily available non-G.M.O. maize offered to Zambia by several countries, such as Kenya and India. A more honest analysis would ask whether the United States is so adamantly pushing genetically modified crops on humanitarian grounds to feed the hungry or on economic grounds to support its own heavily subsidized agricultural sector. If there is truly a humanitarian interest as the primary concern, why did the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See reject participation on the panel of its September 2004 conference by any representative of those national bishops’ conferences such as the Philippines, Brazil and South Africa that have cautioned against use of G.M.O. crops, or by any scientific voice critical of this approach? Surely such censorship of divergent opinions is another moral disgrace.

For those who have questions about whether G.M.O. crops are necessary to feed the poor who are hungry, let them leave libraries and laboratories and come to the fields and tables of a country like Zambia to see how local farmers can feed and are feeding people without genetic engineering being introduced.

Peter J. Henriot, S.J.

Arts & CultureBooks
John B. Breslin
It was inevitable the academy has struck back After the early favorable reviews and popular success of Professor Stephen Greenblatt rsquo s ldquo biography rdquo of William Shakespeare his scholarly colleagues have now weighed in to remind him that such success comes at a price The New York Ti
Columns
Terry Golway
It is safe to assume that within the communion of saints, envy doesn’t have a chance. It’s a good thing, too. After all, if saints weren’t so, well, saintly, imagine the plight of a noble Briton named Patrick. He’d surely be the subject of all kinds of begrudgery. Why? Most s
Victor Edwin
"Yah isayi padiri hai. Isayi padri apni zindagi ko waqf kar dete hain.” (“He is a Catholic priest. Catholic priests make their life an endowment [waqf] in the service of God.”)With these words Maulana Muhammad Islam Qasmi introduced me to his students. Maulana Qasmi teaches th
Editorials
The Editors
Crippling debt burdens accumulated over the past several decades still weigh heavily on many of the world’s poorest countries. As they struggle to repay what they owe to rich countries and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they find themselves with