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Harvesting Organs from Cadavers An Ethical Challenge
“We are being pressured to participate in non-heartbeating cadaver organ transplants at our hospital, and we don’t think it is ethical,” commented the I.C.U. director of a major medical center. He and his staff opposed the process that removes life-sustaining ventilation from a ter
Faith in Focus
Fundamentally, It's Love
For longer than I knew, my father’s Arabic-language Bible lay on the dining table, a thick, gold-leafed tome, warm and fragile with years of page-turning, the family’s sacred text that had sustained Dad on his long journey from Syria to America. That Bible now sits atop my own bookshelf.
News
Signs of the Times
Seminary Enrollment UpU.S. Catholic theological seminaries enrolled 101 more students this year than last year, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate said. The figure rose from 3,483 in the 2000-01 academic year to 3,584 in 2001-02. It marked the fifth straight year of increases and the
Politics & SocietyFeatures
Keeping pedophiles out of the priesthood
A major problem now exists for the future of priestly vocations because of “the alliteration of priest and pedophile.”
Books
Apr 22, 2002 issue
Special Sisters in Antebellum South
Cyprian Davis
At the close of the 19th century a religious sister in New Orleans left to her sisters and to future generations a written history of the community to which she belonged What is unusual is that this history was written by a black woman a member of a community of black sisters founded before the
News
Signs of the Times
Vatican on Scandals—Defensive but Understands SeriousnessAfter months of reticence, the Vatican confronted the painful issue of clerical sex abuse in a twin initiative—a papal letter and a press conference. According to John Thavis of Catholic News Service, statements issued on March 21
Faith
What Thomas Merton taught me about forming young Catholics’ imaginations
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God," wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Merton’s lesson is, "Pay attention, you might miss it."
Letters
Letters

Our Own Penance

To add to the tragedy of pedophile priests (Signs of the Times, 3/18), there have been no words of sorrow, no admissions of complicity, no words of compassion from the pope or his Vatican officials addressed directly to the victims (and their families) of sexual abuse by priests. The victims have been stonewalled and ignored. The only thing we hear about is damage to the church.

Pope John Paul II has repeatedly exhorted us that there is no peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness. In order to make just amends, we must begin by doing our own penance at the highest level in the church. Anything less only adds to this continuing injustice that eats away at any credibility we may yet have.

(Rev.) Charles E. Irvin

Faith in Focus
Mass With an Ailing Pope
We were told to meet at the Bronze Door of the Vatican Palace on the morning of Dec. 23 last year. After the security check and a short wait at the foot of a monumental marble stairway, we were led up through the vast courtyard of St. Damasus, down a long gallery decorated with frescos of old maps a
The WordFourth Sunday of Easter (A), April 21, 2002
The Way of the Shepherd

“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10)