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Letters
Letters
Our readers

Truth and Feeling

I’d like to commend Gerard Quigley’s lovely, evocative illustration for Some Basics About Celibacy (10/28). It is a beautiful example of how symbols communicate both truth and feeling.

William J. O’Malley, S.J.

Editorials
Ordaining Gay Men
The Editors
In the wake of the sexual abuse scandals and numerous reports of priests abusing boys and adolescent males, some Catholics have expressed grave concerns over the ordination to the priesthood of gay men. The question arises: should the church continue ordaining gay priests, that is, homosexual men co
Practicing the Faith
John F. Kavanaugh
Something that was unimaginable 10 or 20 years ago has been happening in the philosophy department of Saint Louis University. While still a department with strong historical, ethical and medieval offerings by professors and with students from a variety of religious and philosophical stances, it has
Books
A Quest of His Own
Gerald T. Cobb
In his new novel Umberto Eco semiotics professor and the author of a number of essays and novels offers a stylistic tour-de-force set in the latter part of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190 The core of the novel is Baudolino mdash an unreliable narrator with
Books
One Weird Country
Peter Heinegg
Back in the 1960 rsquo s some angry radicals liked to call their country Amerika the k vaguely hinting that the land of the free and the home of the brave was in fact a cruel and alien place with a whiff or two of Nazism Really angry radicals sometimes spelled it AmeriKKKa Curiously enough En
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Vatican Names Commission to Revise Sexual Abuse NormsThe Vatican announced the names of the members of a new joint commission set up to study and revise some elements of the U.S. bishops’ sexual abuse norms. The U.S. commission members include Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago and three ot
The Word
Get Me to the Church on Time!
John R. Donahue
The coming weeks present a troika of parables that conclude the public teaching of Jesus in Matthew These constitute his final testament to the disciples a manual of discipleship for life ldquo between the times rdquo of Jesus rsquo earthly presence and his triumphant return They have a menaci
Letters
Letters
Our readers

A Dreadful Mistake

It seems, if I correctly understand the authors responding to Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., (10/21) that I may have made a dreadful mistake. Whatever was I thinking when I responded to Jesus’ gracious invitation and entered the church? Whatever was God thinking? Didn’t he know that I, as a Jew, didn’t need to be evangelized?

Of course, I wasn’t a practicing Jew at the time. Does that matter? Is the Gospel to be irrelevant to Jews as individuals, or to Jews as a people? Perhaps agnostic or atheistic Jews might appropriately be evangelized, while only observant Jews should be exempted from hearing about Jesus? Now, would that be just Orthodox observant Jews, or perhaps also Conservative Jews; what then about Reform Jews? Or are we talking issues of genetics and ethnicity here? (Non-practicing baptized Catholics are part of the covenant toodo they then not need evangelization either?)

St. Edith Stein, help me! Or did you make a dreadful mistake, too? Oh, yes, you died before the rules changed, so you’re O.K.

Of course God’s covenants (plural, please) with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David et al., have never been revoked. But when did Catholic tradition begin to set aside inconvenient biblical truths, rather than learn to live with the tension between seemingly incompatible precepts? We used to call these mysteries.

Cardinal Dulles, always polite, terms the views expressed in Covenant and Mission ambiguous, if not erroneous. To this observer, they appear deficient, defective and distorted. I think it is clear who is making a dreadful mistake. Perhaps evangelization (as opposed to proselytization) might be best understood as proclaiming the Gospel, forthrightly and honestly, to everyone who is willing to listen.

Robert V. Levine

Editorials
Dallas Revisited
The Editors
While acknowledging “the efforts which the bishops of the United States have made through the norms and the guidelines contained in the bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People to protect minors and to avoid future recurrences of these abuses,” the Vatican h
Poetry
Sudden Widow
Barbara J. Morejohn

After he was gone,

Books
Creating a Personal Retreat
John Predmore
The day after I finished reading Margaret Silf rsquo s Wayfaring I had an encounter with a young woman who helped me experience the value of this magnificent book about journeying I was riding my bicycle along the Boston side of the Charles River when I saw a woman whose eyes were filled with tear
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
John Predmore
It was Good Friday 1998. I had concluded that a missionary’s life (even for a Jesuit novice) was miserably difficult. Homesick and exhausted from endless walking, sunburn, lack of food and complete powerlessness, I desperately sought a break from my work as a teacher in the ghettoes of Kingsto
The Life of the Human Community
David Hollenbach
How are we to envision the mission of the church in the aftermath of the horrifying events of Sept. 11? Equally challenging, how can we conceive of the church’s ministry in the midst of the clergy sexual abuse scandal that is tearing the fabric of church life in the United States?   Respo
Addressing Urban Sprawl
Olga Bonfiglio
When leaders of the Archdiocese of Detroit began looking for solutions to the mounting poverty in the Detroit metropolitan area, they discovered that the traditional ministries of soup kitchens, clothing drives and holiday baskets were not changing the impoverished environment of the city. The city&
Books
People, Look East
Jonathan Y. Tan
It is not often that one finds a book on Asian Catholics written by an American and published in the United States that is not only informative and thought-provoking but also presents a deep insight into the developments in the Asian Catholic Church that have thus far garnered very little attention
Columns
Clergy on Politics
Nancy Frazier O
Does ordination mean a Catholic priest gives up his right to speak out on political issues? Does a minister, rabbi or imam have to remain silent when asked which candidate he or she favors? And does the Internal Revenue Service’s ban on political activity by churches rule them out as sites for
Faith in Focus
Meeting Jane Marie
Kathleen Mulhall Haberland
I drove to a retreat house in Wilmington, Del., wondering how I had come to this point in my life. Up until two months earlier, I felt only animosity for the Catholic religion and disdain for its teachings. But now I had driven an hour away from my home, to be with people I didn’t know, on a r
Sisters' Imprisonment Emboldens Others
James L. Bailey
Rarely in our society do individuals choose to risk going to jail because they are protesting what they consider to be unjust practices and institutions. But if they do make such a decision and are imprisoned, how does this affect them, their supporters, others who learn of it and even their cause i
Books
Fingers in the Pie
Charles R. Morris
Shakespeare rsquo s Brutus says There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune It is more than 30 years since Kevin Phillips published The Emerging Republican Majority accurately forecasting a deep-seated shift of American sentiment toward the conservative
The Potential of a Plenary Council
Philip J. Murnion
Eight bishops recently sent a proposal to the administrative committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for the convening of a plenary council of the bishops of the United States. Coincidentally, the editors of Church magazine, of whom I am one, circulated an editorial also calling for a p