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Pacem in Terris: A Permanent Commitment: Message for the World Day of Peace
Pope John Paul, II
Pope John Paul II's World Day of Peace message for 2003 marked the 40th anniversary of 'Pacem in Terris.'
Poetry
Questions About Courtship
Todd James Pierce

Dear mother, I would like to clear up some things

Books
Statesman and Strategist
Nancy J. Curtin
Winston Churchill is defined by historyhe studied it he wrote it and he made it While the notion that great men shape the course of human events is somewhat outmoded among professional historians Churchill transformed Britain rsquo s darkest hour in 1940 into its finest Inspiring Britons with hi
The Word
Not in My Neighborhood!
Dianne Bergant
Sometimes we may be willing to support good works as long as they are not set up in our neighborhood It may be true that property value plummets when someone opens a halfway house or a hospice around the corner This decline in value may also happen when the owners of that trendy ethnic restaurant
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Prophet Remembered

The Dec. 29, 1990, issue of America (pg. 499) had an excellent comment on the Muslim world by John Alden Williams. I recently reread this editorial and discussed it with my family and friends. It is timely and timeless. It was also prophetic, as the events of 9/11 proved: A form of radical activist Islam has the potential to be much more fearful...because it would be driven by religious energies. Please consider reprinting it. Now, more than ever, we need the voice of prudence and wisdom.

Gerard C. Jebaily, M.D.

Columns
What a Laugh!
Terry Golway
Writing about television in a magazine that already publishes the elegant thoughts of James Martin, S.J., on the subject is fraught with peril, but I will proceed apace. From my perspective, comparison can inspire only humility, and that is not such a bad thing.   Humiliation, on the other hand
The Times and Sexual Abuse by Priests
Andrew M. Greeley
The New York Times labored mightily to bring forth a mountain of priest abusers in its recent census and produced only a mouse, as it admitted in the 12th paragraph of its sensationalist prose in “Decades of Damage” (1/12/03). The Times reported a percent of American priests not greatly
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Growing List of Church Leaders, Groups Oppose War in IraqAs the threat of war in Iraq loomed larger, Christian leaders and associations across the world urged restraint on the use of force and warned of a humanitarian disaster if the country is attacked. From Catholic bishops to interchurch coalitio
Faith in Focus
That's Love
Alma Roberts Giordan
My late husband and I often caught the tail end of a popular television talk show while we were waiting for the news to begin. One evening Tao, a guest of one of the hostesses, got into an animated dialogue over the definition of love. A beautiful actress, whose name escapes me, painted that virtue
The Rising of Bruce Springsteen
Patrick Kelly
I believe in the love that you gave me,
Separate Is Sometimes Better: A case study of a single-sex Catholic high school
John W. Donohue
When 2002 began, there were in the United States approximately 86,000 public schools, elementary and secondary. But from sea to shining sea, according to a count made by the Brighter Choice Foundation in Albany, N.Y., only 11 of these schools qualified for the rather clunky label “single-sex p
Faith
Remembering the Poor: An Interview with Gustavo Gutierrez
Daniel Hartnett
Each year the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences announces the incorporation of new members. This year’s list of honorary fellows includes the world-renowned Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., who is best known for his book A Theology of Liberation (Span. 1971,
Beyond La Pausa Liberation Theologies Live
Allan Figueroa Deck
A veritable “theological feast” took place from Nov. 10 to 13, 2002, at the University of Notre Dame, at a conference called “The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology.” The conference was the brainchild of two Notre Dame theology professors, Daniel Groody, C.S.C., and th
The Word
The Long and the Short of It
Dianne Bergant
Job seems so pessimistic Life is a drudgery I am assigned months of misery I am filled with restlessness Will this ever end And in the next breath he declares My days are swifter than a weaver rsquo s shuttle my life is like the wind Where did the time go nbsp And that is the long and sho
Faith in Focus
Hold On to What Is Good: Home
Richard J. Rodeheffer
It was an unexceptional Catholic childhood in the Rochester, N.Y., of the 1950’s: St. Boniface parochial school, the family rosary (for the conversion of Communist Russia), pennies placed in our cardboard collection boxes to save pagan babies and serving as an altar boy. Although we had neighb
Books
ToleranceThen Solidarity
Todd David Whitmore
The Common Good and Christian Ethics by David Hollenbach S J deserves to be the most read work of American Catholic public philosophy since the late John Courtney Murray rsquo s We Hold These Truths published in 1960 Both Murray and Hollenbach point to pluralism as a given The problem each i
Letters
Letters
Our readers

Keener Comprehension

One of your correspondents (Letters, 1/6) was outraged that the severe penances practiced by Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha were described in a favorable tone in the Of Many Things column on Dec. 2, 2002, by George M. Anderson, S.J. I think the correspondent is forgetting that things were viewed in a different light 300 years ago. Among us, pain is practically a dirty word. We do not wish to suffer a minute of it, and we believe that our doctors should immediately find medications and treatments to relieve us of it. But years ago, pain was simply a fact of life. This was well known to Blessed Kateri. But her deep faith enabled her to understand that the pain Jesus suffered was not a necessary part of our divine Lord’s life; she knew he had suffered pain willingly for our salvation, and she was grateful for that. And her love encouraged her to be like him; since he had suffered, she wished to suffer with him.

Furthermore, saint that she was, she had a much keener comprehension than we do of her human failings, and saw them as more grievous than they really were, or than we would be willing to acknowledge. Her faith made her want to suffer in order to resemble her suffering Savior, but also to make reparation for her failings and those of people who had not responded to the love Jesus poured out for us.

In speaking as he did of Kateri’s penances, I don’t believe Father Anderson was saying, Go thou and do likewise. Rather, he was presenting this indication of the depth of Kateri’s love and devotion that we might admire it and be moved, in our own modern way, toward a similar devotion to him who has loved us so much.

John J. Paret, S.J.

Habla Ingles?
Ernest R. Freeman
The New York Times recently published a book review about a biography of the writer Neil Bissoondath. The reviewer mentions that Bissoondath dedicated his book, Doing the Heart Good, to his uncle and mentor, who had warned him that race is a trap; to make that the center of your worldview limits you
Arts & CultureFilm
Melting Pot: Gangs of New York
Richard A. Blake
Not long ago a distant cousin, a genealogy buff, sent me an antique clipping from a local paper about a possible ancestor on trial for murder. In the labor wars of the 19th century, scabs did not have much longevity in the Irish factory towns of the Middle West. This long-forgotten enforcer simply p
The Next Christianity
Peter C. Phan
In his book The Next Christendom (2002) and his recent article “The Next Christianity” (Atlantic Monthly, October 2002), Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, argues that the current crisis in the Catholic Church, broug