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The Word
I Would Do Anything...
Dianne Bergant
I would do anything rdquo That rsquo s a phrase we hear often It may even play an important role in our own lives ldquo I would do anything to have your good looks rdquo mdash and some people go to great lengths to try to change their appearance nbsp ldquo I would do anything for your lo
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Conservatives to Meet With Bishops on Sex Abuse CrisisSeveral leading U.S. bishops are expected to attend a discussion forum with self-styled conservative Catholic voices on the clergy sexual abuse crisis on Sept. 8 in Washington, D.C. We should be talking about the 25-year legacy of our pope and ho
Catholic Peacebuilding
R. Scott Appleby
A major theme sounded by the Bush administration before and after the war against Iraq is the right and responsibility of the United States, as the world’s leading democracy, to unseat the forces of tyranny and replace dictatorial regimes with democracies wherever U.S. interests are threatened
Books
What Kind of God?
Howard J. Van Till
In the last decade or two we have witnessed a spirited revival of the rhetoric of design Sometimes this translates into a modest case for a peaceful settlement of the science religion skirmish For the proponents of the modern Intelligent Design I D movement however a negotiated truce is not a
Poetry
Eurydice to Orpheus
Renay Sheehan

oh sweet husband of mine

News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Pope Deplores Bombings in Iraq, Jerusalem, Urges End to ViolencePope John Paul II deplored deadly bombings in Iraq and Jerusalem and urged steps to end the new spiral of violence in the Middle East. The pope spoke at a general audience on Aug. 20, a day after a U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, wa
Nourishing the Spirit
Evelyn Eaton Whitehead
The city of Shenzhen, an hour’s train ride from Hong Kong, was until recently a sleepy fishing village. In 1979 Deng Xiaoping designated this hamlet and a vast tract of surrounding territory as a special economic zone. With generous tax incentives in place for foreign investment, the city has
Faith in Focus
Pay What You Can
Adele Azar-Rucquoi
When my father passed through the gates of Ellis Island as a boy, the life that awaited him would be new and exciting yet fated with a grinding scarcity. For decades, all Dad had to show for it was hard work, more hard work and very little money. Still, before he knew it, this once faceless immigran
Books
Needed: Personal Piety
Tom Beaudoin
Many Catholics today seem content to attend Mass on Sunday send our children to Catholic schools and worship the gods of materialism and secularism for the other 167 hours of the week Matthew Kelly a motivational speaker and unabashed Catholic evangelist is a post-Vatican II Catholic who writes
FaithThe Word
Back to the Present
Dianne Bergant
The future referred to in these readings is not simply the one we want for ourselves. It is God’s future, the one that God wants for us.
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
A gleaming new, state-of-the-art building in a poor section of the South Bronx? One, moreover, that houses free services for local residents? A rarity indeed, and yet there it was: the Mercy Center (www.mercycenterbronx.org), facing me as I turned onto 145th Street for a late afternoon visit. Two Si
Sex. War.
John F. Kavanaugh
The day after Arnold Schwarzenegger announced to Jay Leno and the world that he was running for governor of Californiatoughest decision since getting a bikini wax in 1978Andrew Sullivan, erstwhile conservative Catholic who supported the war in Iraq and considers leaving the church over gay marriage,
Faith
The Vatican Concordat With Hitler's Reich: The Concordat of 1933 was ambiguous in its day and remains so.
Robert A. Krieg
Seventy years ago a fateful meeting occurred in Rome. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), and Germany’s vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, formally signed a concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich on July 20, 1933.
Film
Ruined Paradise: Northfork
Richard A. Blake
Symbolic landscapes shift during the years. For a century or more, starting perhaps with Mark Twain, American writers have looked to the South as a metaphor for failed expectations and ruinous nostalgia. William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Wolfe, Walker Percy and
Books
Agape, First and Foremost
Michael J. Kerlin
In the introduction to Utilitarianism 1861 John Stuart Mill remarks that ethics unlike science must always revert to first principles If we are to argue coherently in favor of some course of action in personal or social life we must appeal to a basic principle or set of principles justifying
Editorials
Catholic Relief Services
The Editors
Faced with the suffering caused by World War 60 years ago the Catholic bishops of the United States founded the War Relief Services. That organization evolved into Catholic Relief Services, which can now look back on a proud heritage of supporting disaster relief efforts throughout the world during
Personal, Private Views: A newly discovered report from 1938 reveals Cardinal Pacelli's anti-Nazi stance.
Charles R. Gallagher
Recently The New York Times writer Peter Steinfels offered a considered examination of the dynamic tension between Pope John Paul II’s moral leadership during Operation Iraqi Freedom and the exercise of papal diplomacy. Morally and religiously, the pope could make sweeping public claims for pe
Teaching English as a Second Language
Yvonne Pesquera
When the bell rings on Monday evenings, the adult students in my class gather their book bags and rush out—eager to end their long day and go home. I shout after them, “Have a good night” and “Get home safely.” They wave back and tell me the same—in English. &nbsp
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Core Reality

Patricia McCann, R.S.M., has provided an excellent, sweeping overview of what has happened to religious life among women religious in the United States since the Second Vatican Council (Catholic Identity, New Age and Women Religious, 7/21). Her knowledge of history is undoubtedly what made possible her judicious synopsis of the decline of religious life, arguably one of the most confusing phenomena in the postmodern world and one that has plagued the church to the present day. Indeed, what will happen to religious life, that rich gift to the 19th- and 20th-century American Catholic Church?

Of particular interest to me is Sister McCann’s willingness to admit the degree to which New Age action and perspectives have invaded the life and thinking of so many active religious congregations today. This is an honest and correct observation, yet it is ignored as a major reason for the obvious problems within congregations and the consequent decline in religious vocations. If not accepted by religious sisters as occasioning points of confusion, it has certainly not been understood by our lay sisters and brothers.

Here is where I wish that Sister McCann had been more emphatic. She says, for example, that we were not yet ready to focus on an evaluative analysis of these changes and suggests, Now it is time for a dialogue between Catholic faith tradition and New Age thought. To my mind, it is time for dialogue to give way to action. It is time for women religious to recognize that a certain New Age secularity has taken priority, one that must be re-evaluated in terms of its consequences for the future of religious life.

In this time of diminishment and mounting secular ridicule, it is time to face the larger questions Sister McCann also poses. The first question she suggests could alone set us all on the path we need to considernamely, Is faith in God made manifest in Jesus and articulated through the Catholic Church and its theological tradition still our core reality? My hope is that the challenge Sister McCann presents in her insightful article will not be left unexamined by today’s women religious.

Dolores Liptak, R.S.M.

Books
Visionary Women
Mary E. Giles
In this admirably researched study of women rsquo s spirituality in 16th- and 17th-century Spain Stephen Haliczer Distinguished Research Professor of History at Northern Illinois University provides a panoramic yet detailed account of women who constructed their religious identity and authority i