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Film
Facades: Far From Heaven
Richard A. Blake
The rituals of the suburban cocktail party play out predictably. Sometime during the late afternoon, amid the gleaming borrowed chafing dishes and the fluttering corporate wives, one of the guests, grown progressively less inhibited through drink, raises a glass to toast the beautiful hostess. She s
Books
Look and See!
John A. Coleman
Six years ago the dominant mantra sounded ldquo End welfare as we have known it rdquo Progressive and religious voices however challenged this slogan seeking to replace it with ldquo end poverty as we have known it rdquo What has the welfare reform legislation of 1996 done to poverty How
Faith in Focus
Waiting on Church Street
Joanna M. Shea
For me, that January day in 1999 ended as it had begun, pushing my way through crowds to the subway platform and onto the Metro car, closing my eyes, waiting for my stop. As I ascended the escalator into the winter twilight of Washington’s Dupont Circle, I set eyes on a “Missing” f
Columns
True Detachment
Thomas J. McCarthy

I had grandiose expectations for a recent reunion with my five closest friends. Nearly 20 years in the making, the gathering was both less and more than I had imagined. Two of my favorite texts inspired my anticipation and now give shape to my reflection on the event—T. S. Eliot’s poem Four Quartets and Thomas Merton’s essay “Fire Watch, July 4, 1952.” Both works speak to the relationship between relinquishment and spiritual fulfillment. Key to internalizing this connection is learning to embrace the profoundness of the moment while at the same time detaching oneself from it. For me, reconciling this apparent contradiction is bound up with my ongoing reflections about how friendship evolves over time and distance.

 

With age comes a growing awareness of being part of something vast stretching before us—God, the universe, eternity—which tends to focus the mind and spark a kind of conversation that can leave even longtime friends at a loss for words. As we watched the desert sunset, with its many stages of light and color, we drank it in, sharing the wonder and a silence that spoke of the imperceptible passing of days into years. Hence Merton: “Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss.” And the questions, whether voiced or tacit—Are you where you want to be? Are you who you hoped you’d be? What has been gained and what lost?—remain, as ever, part of the Now we must embrace if our friendships are to thrive. At 40, when the concepts of time and eternity start to become rather more tangible, if not poignant, our old motto, carpe diem, carries new weight. Because for those who bother to ask those questions,

every moment is a new and shocking
Crossing the Border
Donald Kerwin
Yolanda González and Hermilo Hernández Velasco grew up in families of subsistence-level farmers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. After they married, Hermilo traveled to the United States and found work as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Portland, Ore. In May of 2000, Yolanda, 19 years old, hired a
Books
Denying Mistakes
Thomas R. Murphy
There are not many memoirs available from people who work beneath the surface of the executive branch of the federal government Usually presidents vice presidents cabinet secretaries and White House staffers publish such accounts Daniel Ellsberg rsquo s reflections however illuminate the tasks
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Christians, Churches Attacked in Rioting Over Miss World PageantAt least 215 people were reported killed (as of Nov. 25), during riots in Kaduna, Nigeria, sparked by a newspaper article about the Miss World pageant, reports Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross. About 12,000 people h
The Religious Dimensions of Life
Randall S. Rosenberg
An important debate carried on among 20th-century Catholic theologians, from Henri de Lubac and Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange to Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, concerned the relationship between nature and gracethe very intersection between the human and the divine. Despite Catholicism’s
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Church Blessed

The editorial on Ordaining Gay Men (11/11) does not want to come to grips with the fact that the overwhelming number of priestly sexual abuse cases that have come to light have been committed by gays. It does no one any good to pretend there isn’t a problem here. This does not, however, mean that the church hasn’t been blessed by many priests who are gay. No doubt it has.

The editorial struggles to say that it would be ill-advised to ban gays from the priesthood. Of course it would be, and for one very good reason: no sooner would the ban go into effect when we would learn that a great gay priest, who is celibate, got past the radar. What then? The scandal that would erupt by bouncing this priest would be nothing compared to what we’ve been going through all year.

The answer, then, is to screen more carefully so that immature men are not allowed to become priests.

William A. Donohue,

Editorials
Prisoners and the Right to Vote
The Editors
Whether they exercised it in the fall elections or not, most citizens of the United States took it for granted that they had the right to cast a vote on Nov. 5. But for close to four million people with felony convictions, no such right existed, because almost all states have disenfranchisement laws
Books
Resurrection in a Small Town
Ed Block
For those familiar with the novels of Jon Hassler coming to his newest novel The Staggerford Flood will be a series of surprise reunions Which is perhaps part of his purpose For The Staggerford Flood is also a series of surprise reunions for the novel rsquo s chief character Agatha McGee th
FaithThe Word
The People Who Walk Upside Down
Dianne Bergant
The Third Sunday of Advent invites us into a world of reversals.
Books
Holy Collaborators?
Marc Saperstein
I cannot identify any constructive role for this new book by Daniel Goldhagen currently an affiliate of the Minda Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University Unlike his previous book Hitler rsquo s Willing Executioners whichfor all its problemswas based on original research into a
The Word
Do You Hear Voices?
Dianne Bergant
The wilderness which can seduce us with its beauty and its majesty has many faces In one part of the country its dense forests and lush vegetation fill up our senses In another its stark barrenness purges us of affectation while its grandeur takes away our breath It is a place of wonder and e
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
The name Kateri Tekakwitha may not strike chords of recognition in the minds of many readers, nor did it in mine until I made a retreat this past summer at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, N.Y. The shrine is dedicated primarily to eight French Jesuits who came to evangelize w
Interreligious Dialogue for Peace
Antonio J. Ledesma
In the Philippines, we have a Muslim minority living together with a Christian majority. One Indonesian bishop explained his country’s situation to me in this way: “The manner in which you majority Christians deal with the minority Muslims in the Philippines will be the way the majority
Editorials
Haitians at Dives's Door
The Editors
The eight million Haitians who share the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic have the unwelcome distinction of populating the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is also a country that has endured for two centuries a series of governments inept and oppressive in vary
The Word
Chosen to Be Holy
Dianne Bergant
The readings for the feast of the Immaculate Conception are rich in meaning but frequently misunderstood when viewed through the lens of the feast itself First contrary to some artistic depictions of the Immaculate Conception the Genesis account states that it is the woman rsquo s offspring rath
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Vatican Official Says New Norms Give Greater ProtectionsFar from weakening the church’s ability to protect children, the revisions to the U.S. bishops’ norms on sexual abuse establish a rigorous procedure for dealing with offending priests and highlight the gravity of such crimes, the Va
Portfolio
Suffering Tenderness
Leo J. ODonovan
Some images are so powerful that, if we take time for them, they can alter our lives. The spirit hovering over the waters, the Lord who is our shepherd, the mountain on which every tear will be wiped away are such images, given us by the Jewish people and still nourishing us centuries later. Others