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Of Many Things
Critics have often asked, “When has the just-war theory ever led to the condemnation of a war?” Seldom, if ever, it would seem. As the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir has written, the Just War Theory provides reason “to pause analytically” before going to war, but an outright condemnatio
My daughter is dating a Baptist. Well, she says, he’s not really a Baptist. He was baptized into some Protestant denomination, and he attends a church that happens to be Baptist. In any event, he is non-Catholic. My daughter is 21, almost self-supporting, a woman on the verge of everything. Sh
In a delightful scene in Ang Lee’s splendid comic film Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, the oldest sister of the Taiwanese family at the center of the story, a recently converted and fervent Christian, witnesses her new husband’s baptism by submersion. As he rises from the water, the large congre
The Word
It is very difficult to talk about financial equity in a market-driven economy Some entertainers and sports figures earn extravagant salaries while people in essential service professions like teaching often find it difficult to make ends meet So many people struggle with some form of money probl
Books
In the debate over poverty in the United States there are just two ideas or at least it often seems that way One is that people are poor because of the system and that any real solutions will have to come from forces outside the individual namely government That is the view from the doctrinaire
Editorials
The debate over Senator John Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War sounded a sour and dispiriting note as the presidential campaign of 2004 approached the Labor Day weekend, the traditional start of the final and most serious phase of the campaign. While President Bush prepared to accept the offi
In the wake of the sexual abuse crisis, more than a few people, including priests, are convinced that the morale of priests is bad. In a letter dated Dec. 12, 2003, 69 priests of the Archdiocese of New York wrote to Cardinal Edward Egan, “We need to tell you again what you already know; the mo
Most of the dramatic changes that produced the vast improvement in Jewish-Christian relations in the last half-century have taken place on the Christian side. In light of the historic record of Western Christianity’s teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism, it is understandable that until th
Letters
Hopeful Heart
Several of my community read with delight Living With My Sisters, by Jeffrey J. Guhin (7/19). Here is a young man whose heart is in the right place, regardless of having to sacrifice his vocation to the sisterhood! Sisters need priests of this caliber in their livesthose who question their comfortable lifestyle, their positions of privilege and power, and those who listen rather than lecture. I salute Jeffrey and his vocation. His reflections give me hope.
Mary Ann Foy, R.S.C.J.
Books
In recent decades a growing number of social scientists like Theda Skocpol whose Diminished Democracy I reviewed in this space 10 20 03 have rediscovered the voluntary associations of civil society that flourish in the social space between government agencies and profit-seeking firms Today bus
News
Catholics Rank Abortion Below War, EconomyAbortion was named as a very important priority by 49 percent of Catholics who expect to vote for President George W. Bush, coming behind Iraq, terrorism, moral values and the economy, each of which was named by at least 64 percent in a recent Pew poll. The
If asked to name the most prominent item on the Catholic bioethics agenda, most people in the United States, including Catholics themselves, would no doubt name abortion, closely followed by biomedical uses of embryos, such as stem cell research and cloning. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church p
Faith in Focus
"Mom, can you and Dad pick up Paul and me?” Our 12-year-old Sean sounded strained and rushed during that surprise Saturday afternoon phone call 17 years ago. “Father Ron’s been acting strange. He wanted to wrestle with Paul and Paul said no, but he tried to do it anyway. And h
Of Many Things
A hundred years ago, on the afternoon of Thursday, October 27, 1904, New Yorkers walked into various entrance kiosks of the city’s new Interborough Rapid Transit Company, headed down a flight or two of stairs, and took their very first rides under the sidewalks of New York, the transportation
Books
The insufferable anonymous narrator of Notes From Underground 1864 is the first great example of Dostoyevsky rsquo s genius for creating paradoxical witnesses to Christianitytwisted truth-telling unbelievers like Svidrigaylov in Crime and Punishment Ippolit in The Idiot Shatov in The Possessed
For most of us, the legal system seems something far away. We know of lawyers and lawsuits, crime and punishment. The law keeps things going smoothly, maintains order and apparently insures that justice is served. At least apparently. I’ve had the usual contact: parking tickets, traffic violat
Members of the United States Congress never are in a position to support the legalization of abortion, because in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court legalized it by raw judicial power. The Supreme Court’s imposition does not, however, require those measures conducive to abortion that many members of
Books
Invariably reviewers of writings by the Rev Andrew Greeley feel obliged to mention how much he writes which is a lot Few bother to note how certain basic themes run like threads through his work particularly when Greeley reflects on the mountain of data he has produced over a very long career a
Editorials
The American story has been the “story of flawed and fallible people united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals,” said President George W. Bush in his inaugural address of Jan. 20, 2001. The theme of a united people also ran through the keynote speech of Illinois senatori