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Faith in Focus
Lessons Learned
Patrick J. Malone
Two years ago, while plunging into the final stage of studies for Jesuit priesthood, I was diagnosed with recurrent leukemia. My first thought was: why didn’t I enter the Dominicans or Franciscans where I could have finished formation years ago? The correct response is that no one finishes for
Editorials
Saying No to Israel
The Editors
President George W. Bush came to office promising to keep his distance from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which his predecessor, Bill Clinton, was so visibly engaged. So far, the administration has kept this promise and focused on the region as a whole. Its main concern has been securing Middl
The Word
Giving the Devil His Due
John R. Donahue
The first two Sundays of Lent present the temptation and transfiguration of Jesus which form a virtual epitome of the paschal mystery Jesus taking on human form humbled himself even to death and was tested by his Father yet this was a presage of his glorification The following three Sundays in
Books
Three in One
Robert Durback
In June 1994 in an Italian restaurant in Baltimore Michael Downey met with his friend and colleague Catherine Mowry LaCugna a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame Together over linguini and Lonergan they hatched a plot Lamenting the notoriously dense and complex language sur
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
In mid-November, I took the bus down to Washington to sit in on the fall meeting of the U.S. bishops - partly because they were to vote on their pastoral statement regarding the need to re-vamp our draconian criminal justice system, an issue I follow for America. The meeting spanned four days, and o
Our National Sins?
Robert F. Morneau
Back in the 17th century, the Anglican priest-poet George Herbert maintained that the national sin of his day was idleness. Whether that was an accurate portrayal we must leave to historians and sociologists. But Herbert had no qualms in proposing that there was sin—one of a national kind.This
Walking With Susie and Virginia
Virginia Sullivan Finn
From the beginning, it has been hard for me to understand. It’s odd. I have always been ferociously anti-guru. If I sense the slightest odor of charisma, I run for cover. Fortunately, I came to discover that Virginia, a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition, disliked being called a teac
Books
The Making of a Jesuit
Emilie Griffin
I have made quite a study of conversion stories and far from becoming jaded I seem to find each one is a surprise Everyone has an angle God rsquo s angle is also unpredictable Even though the happy ending is more or less assured there are always twists and turns along the way James Martin rs
Faith in Focus
A Change of Heart
Lorraine V. Murray
I spotted the woman the moment I walked into the hospital lobby. Shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, she was talking to someone on the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, yet I felt a strong urge to comfort her. But something stopped me. She’s a stranger, I reminded myself, and i
Letters
Letters
Our readers

What Can Be

I found the column Of Many Things by James Martin, S.J., (1/8) on the role of women religious in the church both inspiring and insightfulright up to his final sentence. After two columns detailing women’s leadership activity in the church today, why would he write that the church does not allow women to lead in its name?

The answer is obvious: Martin equates leadership in the church with ordination to the clerical state and the particular legislative, sanctifying and governance roles reserved to certain church offices open only to clerics. This is much too narrow a definition of church leadership, as Martin himself demonstrates. There are, in fact, both clerical and lay leaders in the church. Problems arise when policy is made without recognizing this fact. What we as a church need to assimilate is that both clerics and laity with vision, gifts and commitment should be a part of the decision-making processes. The good news is that the fathers of Vatican II recognized this and mandated changes in the structure and law of the church that could begin to make this possible. There are consultative bodies mandated and/or suggested by law whereby bishops, pastors and their people can work together to govern, teach and sanctify the people of God. The bad news is that both laity and clerics have not fully appreciated how these bodies could work. Some clerical leaders, for their part, have guarded their power of making the final decision, while some lay leaders have pouted, little understanding their powers in consultation and implementation. The result is a polarized church, with its members deeply suspicious of each other’s motives, and strident/frightened leadership, be it clerical or lay.

My suggestion to all church leaders is that, rather than lamenting what cannot befemale clericslet us concern ourselves with what can and should be: broad-based input in decision-making and broad-based implementation of these decisions. And let us recognize the value and joy in the hard work of sharing our different gifts, all of which are necessary to bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.

Katharine S. Weber

Editorials
Heat Waves Ahead
The Editors
‘From the beginning,” said Pope John Paul II at his weekly general audience on Jan. 17, “God intended man to be the steward of creation and to live in harmony with his Creator, his fellow human beings and the created world.... There is an urgent need for ‘ecological conversio
Books
Connecting With the Gospel Drama
Paul J. Fitzgerald
Following up on his well-received first book Eyes on Jesus Michael Kennedy a Jesuit priest presents the prayerful reader with another set of poetic Ignatian meditations These Gospel dramas rsquo speak to the heart and engage the mind by kindling the imagination and inflaming the affect The pa
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Two Dioceses Object to Program for April N.C.E.A. ConventionCiting objections to programming at the upcoming National Catholic Educational Association convention, officials of the dioceses of Peoria, Ill., and Pittsburgh said they will not allocate diocesan funds to pay for teachers to attend the co
Faith
Why Young Adults Need Ignatian Spirituality
Tim Muldoon
A number of articles and books over the last few years have asked: What will the church look like in 20 years? Underlying this basic concern is an awareness that today’s young Catholic adults have not, it seems, employed the models of earlier generations to appropriate the faith and lack the c
Columns
The Family Business
Terry Golway
Last summer, after the Republican National Convention made history by nominating the son of a former president as its standard-bearer, the writer Andrew Sullivan raised an issue that only now is beginning to make its way onto op-ed pages. How was it, Sullivan wondered, that in a supposedly meritocra
The Power of Popular Religion
Dennis M. Linehan
Nearly 20 years presiding over classrooms of college freshmen provided me ample opportunity to confirm or question the conclusions of developmental psychology. One popular parlor trick used to engage students in the learning experience was to ask them to recall, in as much detail as possible, their
Editorials
A New School Plan
The Editors
George Bush and Bill Clinton both wanted to be an education president and both wanted to make U.S. public schools the best in the world. Neither succeeded, although in his various farewells Mr. Clinton talked as though he thought he had. Two immovable obstacles blocked their way.In the first place,
Books
War on Several Fronts
John B. Breslin
The distinction between fact and fiction is often a contested one Nor does it remain static especially for novelists like Graham Greene and Michael Ondaatje who have drawn their inspiration from the fractured politics of our just past century In The English Patient it was World War II and its ru
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Funding for Faith-Based Initiatives Seen as First HurdleThe first real test of whether President Bush’s proposed faith-based initiatives will succeed in changing the way the nation’s social services are provided will come in his budget proposal, said an official with Catholic Charities U
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Metaphor or Myth

One important conclusion in Creationism and the Catechism, by Joan Acker, H.M. (12/16)that God creates suffering and death (evil?)is empirical tunnel vision. We need to look outside the tunnel to see metaphysical reality.

Focusing our vision of sin on chronological events turns sin into a material action rather than the relationship that it is. The discovery of death in the universe chronologically prior to the existence of humanity is not the intractable problem that Sister Acker’s writing suggests. The real problem is the attempt to judge the relationships of human spirits, such as sin and innocence, within the restrictions that empiricism imposes on human understanding. A more appropriate forum would be a metaphorical courtroom where we can examine a broader range of evidence without being hampered by the prejudice that intangible equals unreal.

For example, there is the common human perception, which cuts across cultures centuries before the Hebrew Scriptures, that two forces are at work in the universe: a good, creative one, and a bad, destructive one, which leads humans into evil. Complementary to that is the common human experience of being born into the relative paradise of innocence, then in two or three years beginning to succumb to the apple of rebellion, and in a few more years beginning to recognize our nakedness. After that we spend a good portion of our lives attempting to convince ourselves and others, especially the One out there, that the devil made me do it.

Are these perceptions and experiences myth, or are we seeing reality through a glass, darkly? Wisps of perfume, or simply nostalgia? I think we make more complete use of our human powers when we recognize that these perceptions and experiences have probative value and make a good circumstantial case. We should look at fallen angels and Adam and Eve as metaphors for reality, not myths. Theologians would do us all a service by working to dispel the notion that God creates suffering and death, an idea that itself fits more neatly into the category of myth.

James Crafton