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Books
The intent of the authors of Passionate Uncertainty Inside the American Jesuits would seem to be clear from the title Given the relatively uncomplicated prospect of gathering data from a random sample of current Jesuits and from the vast array of documents that guide the direction of the Society o
Have you heard the one about the confirmation liturgy at which a liturgical dancer presented the gifts to the bishop? After receiving them the bishop turned to the pastor and said, If she asks for your head, she can have it! This allusion to the story in Mark’s Gospel about John the Baptist an
Of Many Things
For two decades, I have taken part in a public Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday. At St. Aloysius in Washington, D.C., the procession began after dark. Moving from the church, we would walk through the surrounding low-income neighborhood, flashlights in hand, following a crossbearer and sin
There is a bitter joke circulating among many Guatemalans ever since the nation’s 36-year civil war ended in 1996: Beware the peace, they chide, because now the government is fighting everyone. Guatemalahalf the size of Idahohas endured some of the most unimaginable human abuses in modern hist
Books
From that moment in October 1919 when his doctor cried My God the President is paralyzed until his last meeting with his cabinet in March 1921a meeting at which he could neither control his tears nor walk steadily even with his caneWoodrow Wilson rsquo s every word gesture and act was directed b
On Oct. 9, 2001, an Islamic law court in the State of Sokoto in northern Nigeria ordered Safiyatu Huseini Tungar Tudu to be buried up to her head and shoulders and stoned to death. Sufiya had been found guilty of having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Her child, Adama, 8 months old at the time
Peter Drucker, writing in the Nov. 3, 2001, issue of The Economist, described a revolution that will cause a restructuring of European and American economies and cultures for much of this century. In the developed countries, the dominant factor in the next society will be something to which most peo
FaithExplainer
Nowhere in the current catechism is there any treatment of a belief that was part of the common teaching of the church for over 700 years.
Books
Economics has dabbled in theology from its beginnings Two centuries ago Adam Smith the father of economics got the theological ball rolling with his assertion that prices were determined by the Invisible Hand of competition in the market Karl Marx rsquo s theory of capital was that it was a reli
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, I went to an automobile garage and was greeted by a bearded man of Middle Eastern appearance who asked in a foreign accent how he could be of help. Rather abruptly, I was seized by a disagreeable feeling, along with the urge to say “Forget it.&r
Of Many Things
Nearly 100,000 new books were published in the United States last year, and most of them were ignored by The New York Review of Books and the Sunday book sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Although these three are heavyweights in the book review business, they have space to exam
Columns
A kindly police officer stationed at the corner of Liberty Street and Greenwich Street in downtown Manhattan warned me about ground zero. “It’s really muddy there,” he said. “And you’re wearing good shoes.” I don’t own a pair of “good” shoes, as
Editorials
When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, the problem of the Barbary pirates was waiting for him. These Moorish privateers, outfitted in Algeria, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis, were prowling the seas off the North African coast as their predecessors had done for two centuries. They plundered Brit
Books
The Rev Richard P McBrien the Crowley-O rsquo Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame Lives of the Saints Catholicism in this one-volume treatment provides in portable and more affordable form the quality otherwise found only in the 12-volume 1995 Burns edition of Butle
FaithThe Word
He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7)
News
Bishops Weigh in on Clerical Sexual Abuse of MinorsA number of U.S. bishops reiterated or strengthened their policies against clerical sexual abuse of minors and several removed some of their priests from ministry in the wake of a growing national controversy over the issue that began in the Archdio
Letters
Cautionary Note
Thank you for publishing Thomas A. Shannon’s clear and concise article (2/18) about the complex moral and ethical issues surrounding attempts at human cloning to obtain stem cells for therapeutic use, and the related question of induced parthenogenic cell division of human eggs for the same purpose. This article documents the need for care and caution by the scientific community in continuing such research and, importantly, emphasizes the very preliminary stage of our knowledge in the use of stem cells. Implied also is a cautionary note for the magisterium in its authoritative pronouncements about the beginning of human life, when it fails to consider at all the advances in the science of embryology over the last several decades. I hope we can all benefit from the expertise of Professor Shannon and his colleagues.
Robert M. Rowden
Faith in Focus
After a 24-year teaching career in Catholic education, 20 of those years with the Sisters of Mercy at Mercy High School in Baltimore, I took a big risk and leapt to the public schools. I had always wanted to round out my career with a stint in public education. My move back to my family home in sout
Books
This is a brilliant complex and compelling analysis of emotions and their significance in personal and social life Like most philosophical writing however it is written in an academically analytical style that will limit its readership This is unfortunate and deeply ironic for Nussbaum is a ma
Entering the Kacha Ghari Afghan refugee camp, filled as it is with mud buildings reinforced by straw and dung baked to a brown-pink terra-cotta by the harsh Central Asian sunlight, is like walking into the 14th century. Turbaned shopkeepers hawk wares from pushcarts and lean-tos, meat crawling with