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April 21 2003

April 21, 2003 / Vol. 188 / No. 14

Fellowship in Faith: Jewish, Christian and Muslim

Tensions between Jews and Christians and Muslims in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East more generally, as well as violent Christian-Muslim clashes in Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeria in recent months, to say nothing of the war with Iraq, have led to some disturbing stereotyping of the Islami

Forgiveness: A Radical New Factor

A few years ago, a gutsy doctor named Susan Black strode into the merciless mess of Kosovo. She went there as a volunteer expert to help expand medical services in refugee camps, assisted by her trusty translator, Faza, an ethnic Albanian. After traveling with Faza for six weeks, 12 hours a day, she

Contemporary Catholics on Traditional Devotions

During the weeks of Lent, America has offered a series of articles by Catholic writers on traditional devotions. This week we conclude our eight-part series with a look at devotion to St. Joseph and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As some of our essayists have noted, the theological question of the

Of Many Things

Of Many Things

Until I entered the Jesuit novitiate at age 28, I had never attended an Easter Vigil.When I was a boy, it seemed to me that every year, at the morning Mass on Easter Sunday, we read the wrong Gospel passage. Usually the story took place a long time after the resurrection. I couldn’t figure out

Letters

Letters

More Inclusive

Since Cardinal Avery Dulles mentioned me in his article Vatican II: Substantive Teaching (3/31), I would like to make it clear that I also understand the Second Vatican Council to mean that it is only in the Catholic Church that the church of Christ continues to exist with all the institutional elements that Christ…

Editorials

Faith in Focus

Tyler the Tightwad

He saves, he hoards, he gloats over his cache of candy: my grandson, Tyler the Tightwad. He’s never heard of Silas Marner or Shylock or any of those other renowned literary misers, being barely four years old. Nor is he ungenerous in any other direction. In this case, however, he truly is a sk

Books

Paradise Lost

During an interview several years ago Edna O’Brien told me a story about an appearance of hers in the 1960’s on an Irish television program during which the host said to the studio audience: “Hands up all of you who think Edna O’Brien has shamed her country.”

What of St. Peter’s Facade?

In case you have ever wondered why the facade of St Peter rsquo s Basilica in Rome seems so disproportionately and disagreeably wide in relation to its height the explanation is that the final bays on both of its sides are in fact not part of the facade itself They instead represent the lower por

See the Clown and More

From the time of the Devotio Moderna to the present books offering guided meditations on Jesus have been a staple of Christian spirituality Anselm Gr n a Benedictine monk and best-selling spiritual writer in Germany and throughout Europe offers 50 short vignettes of the life and teaching of Jes

Poetry

The Word

‘We Have Seen the Lord!’

We have seen the Lord 8221 Who has not longed to hear those words Or who has not longed for the experience that gave birth to the words Most of us are like Thomas in today 8217 s Gospel 8212 not that we are doubters but that our faith is based on the words of…

Columns

Discussing War With Children

The day the bombing began in Baghdad, my daughter came home from kindergarten and said, “We’re at war with Iraq, right Daddy?” Later that evening, she stopped in the midst of her piano practice to ask, “Daddy, how can music change the world?” Her thinking was, I knew, p

Faith

News

Signs of the Times

Experts Say New Immigration Controls Not Much HelpFormer F.B.I. and C.I.A. counterterrorism experts said on April 3 that most of the immigration restrictions imposed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have done little to improve national security and wouldn’t have kept any of the men implica


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