A Dangerous Fiction
Despite extensive media coverage, one question about Mel Gibson’s latest movie, The Passion of the Christ, that has received little attention in the secular media is how well the film coheres with Catholic teaching on biblical interpretation and on the presentation of Jews and Judaism. In rend
After the Maelstrom
Bishops across the country have spoken publicly about the movie The Passion of the Christ, warning that whatever one thinks of the movie, Catholics should not leave the film believing that all Jews, then or now, are guilty of the death of Jesus. Catholics, say the bishops, also need to bear in mind
Take and Eat
The wrenching story of Terri Schiavo is by now well known. She is 39 years old and has been in a persistent vegetative state (P.V.S.) for 13 years because of brain damage brought on by a heart attack. There has been fierce conflict among her husband, her parents, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and man
Words Without Flesh
In anticipation of moving to Argentina, I asked people about access to the Internet. The response was the same: Computers are everywhere. Every city block in Buenos Aires has at least one locutorio, a place with public telephones and computers, and many of these have close to 100 computers. I live i
The Ministry of the Parish Liturgy Committee
If we think of Sunday Mass as a sacred drama with two or three acts, several scenes, numerous props and a cast composed of presider, deacon, assembly, servers, lectors, eucharistic ministers, hospitality ministers and a choir, it is easy to see the reason for the rise and spread of parish liturgy co
An All Too Common Name
"Never get married or start a journey on Tuesday the 13th, goes a popular Latin American saying. Ignoring this superstition, I returned to the United States after celebrating the 2004 New Year’s festivities in my beloved native land of El Salvador. I was a little anxious about the recentl
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Institutional cultures are notoriously hard to change, whether the institution is a corporation, a university or a not-for-profit organization. Those who are comfortable with unquestioned assumptions and accustomed ways of doing things are not likely to recognize the need for change, even when the i
Letters
Letters
Neo-Nativism
Some things never change. Terry Golway, in Return of the Know-Nothings (3/29), aptly takes Harvard professor Samuel Huntington to task for contending that Hispanics, and in particular Mexicans, are somehow a threat to the values that made America great. But as Mr. Golway notes, much the same was said about the Irish and Italians in…
Editorials
Trading Jobs
For nearly a generation, conventional wisdom held that high-tech would be the wave of the future. Job seekers were advised to train in electrical engineering, software design and information technology. Now, as the jobless economic recovery sputters on, there are cries of alarm that high-tech jobs a
Books
Domestic Dread
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is an award-winning author of 14 books of fiction and non-fiction whose principal terrain is the psychological territory of domestic relationshipsthe minefields or mindfields of marriages family relations couples at the edge and partners in the act of uncoupling or just bar
Needed: More Happy Men
Priests who like being priests are among the happiest men in the world This sentence in Fr Andrew Greeley rsquo s review of The First Five Years of Priesthood by Dean R Hoge lifted me out of my chair when I read it in these pages Am 9 30 02 I sent him an e-mail…
The Charlie Wood Files
How could the world get along without nostalgia Well until 1688 it had to do without that word because it hadn rsquo t been invented until the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer simply translated the humble German Heimweh ldquo homesickness rdquo or literally ldquo home-pain rdquo into Greek
Feet to the Ground
The day Christopher S Wren retired from The New York Times newsroom he made a statement about how he planned to live the rest of his life Rather than just sit passively back and let retirement wash over him the former foreign correspondent strapped on a backpack slipped into his hiking boots and
A Doer of the Word
Lawrence S Cunningham rsquo s small study of St Francis demonstrates the value of sound critical judgment and solid theology for grounding healthy devotion to the saints and deepening the faith in the Christian realities to which they dedicated themselves In A Modest Foreword Cunningham sets out
The Word
What Happened?
If we who profess faith in the resurrection of the body were to visit a grave and find it open and the body gone we would most likely assume that it had been taken It is no wonder that Mary of Magdala Peter and John drew the same conclusion when they arrived at Jesus rsquo…
News
Signs of the Times
Pope Says Patients Must Receive Nutrition, HydrationPatients who are in a persistent vegetative state, even for years, must be given nutrition and hydration as long as their bodies can absorb the nourishment, Pope John Paul II said. The administration of water and food, even when delivered using art
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Podcasts