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During the cold war, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists became famous for its Doomsday Clock. The position of the hands on the clock showed how close the world was, in the judgment of the publication’s board of directors, to the midnight of mass nuclear annihilation. Every time the directors mo
Has the time come to revive the idea of a national pastoral council for the Catholic Church in the United States a quarter-century after the scheme was effectively abandoned? Opinions will differ on that. But two events this year are reminders that establishing some such body really is part of the u
Letters
Call for HopeHow refreshing it was to see such a hope-filled article (On the Church, 4/23). How good it was to see one of our most respected bishops thoughtfully say, No! There is another way of looking at church! How I wish there were more bishops like Walter Kasper.I write this comment as one who
Of Many Things
My job at America is so enjoyable that sometimes I’m amazed that I get paid for it. Well, I don’t actually get paid for it, or rather, technically I do, though my salary is applied to the Jesuit community by virtue of my vow of poverty and, well...you know what I mean.Anyway, it’s
A conference in Washington, D.C., with hunger as its theme? Some might assume that such a conference would be about hunger in the developing world. At this particular gathering on the first three days of April, however, the focus was on the often-hidden but widespread levels of hunger that pose a se
Editorials
The statistics from Sudan appall any decent observer. In the last 17 years, two million persons have been killed, four million have been internally displaced and hundreds of thousands made refugees. Yet the West seems to evince little interest in the hidden holocaust that is consuming Southern Sudan
News
Seventy Percent of Latinos Identify as Catholic, Says SurveyA new national survey reports that 70 percent of the Latino population in the United States identify themselves as Catholic and 22 percent consider themselves Protestant. Forty-five percent of the respondents said they attended church servi
Books
Niall Ferguson is one of the leading mdash and almost certainly the most controversial mdash historian in contemporary Britain He last shocked his compatriots with The Pity of War which argued that Britain was as much to blame as Germany for World War I that the war could have been avoided and th
The Word
Beginning in January 1977 the nation was captivated by the moving drama ldquo Roots rdquo which told of the origin and earliest days of an African-American family It enabled people to see their African-American brothers and sisters in a new light as a people with a noble heritage who had underg
Soaring energy prices rapidly turned last winter into a season of severe discontent. In the Northeast the price of residential heating oil rose by more than 50 percent since the previous winter. In the Midwest homeowners paid at least 60 percent more for natural gas. In California households braced
Faith in Focus
How many times have I uttered those words, sung those jubilant words at Mass, and paid scant heed to their meaning? I’m a poor singer, so mostly I just fake them, scarcely letting a sound escape from a tight mouth and heart. I’ve probably concentrated more on the hairdo of the woman in f
Film
As you might have suspected, neurosis plagues columnists and reviewers. After a quarter century of these near-monthly essays on the state of civilization as mirrored in popular films, I still wonder each time I sit at the word processor if this is the column that will finally reveal, once and for al
Letters
Lucan Glitch
In Cardinal Walter Kasper’s article, On the Church (4/23), there is a puzzling paragraph (p. 11, top of first column): In the Gospel of Luke, the word ecclesia can signify a domestic community as well as a local community; further, Luke already has a theological conception of the universal church. The word ecclesia doesn’t occur at all in the Gospel of Luke. Is the Cardinal talking rather about Luke’s Acts of the Apostles?
George Ratermann, M.M.
A religious sister friend has recently returned from a pilgrimage to sacred sites in eastern Europe. Among her most vivid impressions is the memory of a church in Gdansk, Poland. While the outside of the building had been fully restored and the church offered a full schedule of Masses and devotional
Editorials
In a speech at the Joint Forces Command headquarters in Norfolk, Va., on Feb. 13, President George W. Bush warned that national security can be endangered in two new ways. We must confront the threats that come on a missile, he saidpresumably referring to possible attacks from hostile nations like N
Of Many Things
Everyone knows what a diary is, but a house diary? In earlier times, Jesuit communities kept handwritten records of the comings and goings of their members-their apostolic work, their daily lives, their neighborhoods. The Nativity Jesuit community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has preserved a
News
Pilgrimage of ReconciliationOn a pilgrimage highlighted by bold ecumenical and interreligious gestures, Pope John Paul II reached across centuries of division to Orthodox Christians in Greece and Muslims in Syria. In Greece on May 4-5, the pope issued a dramatic apology for past treatment of the Ort
Books
During World War II Arthur M Schlesinger Jr held a modest position in Elmer Davis rsquo s Office of War Information One of his few thrills was ghostwriting low-level messages for President Roosevelt Schlesinger recollects My first success was a presidential endorsement of Universal Bible Sunday
The Word
For almost four years Tuesdays With Morrie has appeared on the best-seller list of The New York Times It is a moving account by Mitch Albom of conversations with his dying mentor Morrie Schwartz who had earlier taught a course on ldquo The Meaning of Life rdquo and now unfolded even deeper mean
While not every high school teacher regularly dons a purple stole, most of us have heard our share of confessions. In none of these remorse-filled conversations is there more poignancy than when the student realizes that his or her sexual choices are leading to one dead end after another. The popula