Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Clear filter
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Pope, Other Leaders Urge That War With Iraq Be AvoidedAs war clouds darkened the coming of a new year, Pope John Paul II joined other church leaders in asking that a U.S.-led war be avoided with Iraq. In a year-end speech to Vatican officials, he warned against conflicts “that risk exploding again
Books
A Daring Integration
Michael Bisesi
What are public issues What organizations are best prepared to address them Do we have a welfare problem or a poverty problem Is education a concern because of failing schools or failing social equity These important questions have become increasingly perplexing especially if we consider the cen
The Word
Did You Call?
Dianne Bergant
Nowadays we seem to be dissatisfied if we are considered ordinary We seek to be the first or the best or at least to belong to the group that is first or best Yet most of us are really quite ordinary people living ordinary lives Despite this there need be nothing ordinary about being ordinary W
Poetry
What, then?
Kelly Cherry

"Do unto others as you’d be done unto."

Books
Know the Problem, Need the Cure
Donald P. Kommers
The 20th century gave birth to an age of human rights In recent decades the world has witnessed a revolution of moral concern personified by an international community sworn to global standards of justice and decency As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and such documents as the Genocide
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Cardinal Law Resigns After Year of Growing ScandalCardinal Bernard F. Law’s resignation as archbishop of Boston on Dec. 13 came at the end of a year in which the burgeoning clergy sexual abuse scandal practically paralyzed his archdiocese and exploded into a national crisis that consumed the e
House of God
Terrence Murray
Driving on the A1 expressway to Charles de Gaulle Airport, one sees, gradually emerging, the town of St. Denis with its rows of low-income housing. Until recently St. Denis stood out for its urban sprawl, massive soccer stadium and royal burial plot. Then, in early August, hundreds of immigrants sto
Five Moral Crises
John F. Kavanaugh
Just as a daily examination of conscience reviews the past 24 hours and, at the same time, illuminates the next, so also a moral review of the past year reveals the challenges of the next. Perhaps this is more evident this year than ever, because the dominant ethical issues of 2002 are certain to re
Faith
A New Apostolic Era in Vietnam
George M. Anderson
After nine years in Communist prisons and labor camps in Vietnam, Joseph Nguyen Doan emerged with his faith not only intact but deepened, and with a determination to continue serving his people in his native land. A Jesuit, he is now the episcopal vicar for religious in the archdiocese of Ho Chi Min
Books
The Divine Shines Through
Joseph J. Feeney
The title is brave God and the Imagination The book is even braver for in 22 essays the prizewinning biographer and poet Paul Mariani probes himself modern American poetry and the poetic imagination His goal is to link together the making of a poem the worldview of a poet and the shining of Go
Faith in Focus
The Delight of Sunday
Robert A. Senser
“Stop! Don’t Shop on Sunday.” That was the advice of a large poster hanging on a wall of our Catholic Labor Alliance office in Chicago during the 1950’s. We drummed home the same message in our monthly publication, called Work, and in a pamphlet I wrote for Ave Maria Press. I
Is 'Church of the Poor' Just Rhetoric?
Denis Murphy
With Cardinal Jaime Sin sick and plans in the works to divide the present archdiocese into six smaller dioceses, church affairs in Manila, Philippines, are at a standstill. This provides an opportunity to reflect on what the church should be about once the changes are made.Will the proposed changes
With Her People
Michael E. Engh
Life in the barrio changed me as a Jesuit. Part of my heart remains snagged on the razor wire surrounding Central Juvenile Hall; a portion of my soul is entwined with people whose language I speak so poorly. What began as a sabbatical from Loyola Marymount University quickly became a crash course in
The Word
Through the Waters to New Life
Dianne Bergant
The Christmas season closes with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord This is not the end of things but rather the beginning The readings remind us that the one born of our flesh is the servant of God mdash the very Son of God mdash who brings a promise of justice and hope to a world in desperate
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
Good news from Africa may seem a rarity, but some did come our way when two visitors from Tanzania visited New York in September. One was the vice chancellor of St. Augustine University near Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria—the Rev. Deogratias Rweyongeza, who handles the day-to-day runni
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Reliable Course

One could not but be touched by the sincerity of Kevin O’Brien, S.J. and Peter Clark, S.J. in their article Drug Companies and AIDS in Africa (11/25). Unfortunately, they touch on only one aspect of the AIDS plague in that continent. Simply put, the greatest contributor to the spread of the disease is promiscuity and subsequent infection of sexual partner(s). One has only to read of the incidence of the disease among truck drivers and the prostitutes they frequent along the main highways in Central Africa to see that this is the case. This aspect of the spread of this plague is clearly in the hands of the Africans themselves. A second contributor to the spread is the reuse of needles, not only by corner-injectors who provide vitamin and antibacterial injections to anyone who can pay, but also by hospitals and clinics that persist in this type of reuse. Given that the hospital and clinic contribution to the spread of the disease is now put at between 5 percent and 20 percent, might it not be advisable to put some of the vast funds suggested by your authors into a program for supplying single-use needles? Finally, as good as the best of the current treatment regimens are, they are no more than a stopgap, and a poor one at that. The vast bulk of treated patients will succumb to the disease either through resistance development or through noncompliance. Let us not kid ourselves. Throwing money at this disaster will only delay the outcome. A radical change in behavior is the only reliable recourse.

Sean O’Connor

Editorials
The Old Year and the New
The Editors
Even in a nation that is for the moment the richest and most powerful on earth there are many who must be glad to see the year 2002 go. Only an inattentive chronicler could fail to record that this was not a good year for the U.S. Catholic bishops, the managers of the Democratic Party, the frustrate
Books
All in the Family
John B. Breslin
Sebastian Barry first made his mark as a writer with The Steward of Christendom a play about his grandfather who rose from the ranks to become a superintendent of the Irish police force in Dublin under British rule but quickly fell into disrepute and dejection with its passing It made the rounds
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
James Martin, S.J.
One benefit of taking a vow of poverty is that it greatly simplifies Christmas shopping. I realized this during my first year as a Jesuit novice, when our monthly stipend (or personalia, in Jesuit lingo) was set at $35. That year my family and friends, who had long been used to receiving numerous gi
Editorials
Light in the Darkness
The Editors
The Christmas celebration in Bethlehem will be muted this year. Few pilgrims are expected. Since the 40-day occupation and siege of the Church of the Nativity last April, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah told America, the Christians of Palestine feel abandoned by the world (see the interview in this is