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Servant Leadership
After the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Southwest Airlines was the only airline that made a profit, kept all its workers on the job and actually adhered to its full flight schedule. The next year, while other airlines cut thousands of jobs, Southwest hired thousands and f
The Perils of Freedom
When I saw Joe again, my first thought was: I want to kill him! Slowly if possible, though quickly would do in a pinch. Just so long as I could tell him why he had to die before he breathed his last.Joe had come back to prison, and to old-timers like me that was the worst crime imaginable. Back in t
FaithFeatures
Should politicians be refused communion?
When Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, was asked at a press conference in Rome on April 23 whether Senator John F. Kerry should be denied Communion, he responded: “The law of the church is clear. The church exists in the United
Prophecy for Justice: Catholic politicians and bishops
In his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Gregis (“On the Bishop, Servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Hope of the World,” Oct. 16, 2003), Pope John Paul II underlines the scriptural boldness demanded of the bishop as shepherd (No. 66c). In this context, he describes th
Caught Between God and Caesar
When God and Caesar claim controlling jurisdiction over public policy in America, public servants who are Catholic can get caught between a religious rock and a public policy hard place. I know. I’ve been there. In 1965 Lyndon Johnson became the first president to support birth control as a pu
FaithFeatures
Rights of accused priests: Toward a revision of the Dallas charter and the essential norms
The church must protect the community from harm, but it must also protect the human rights of each individual who may face an accusation.
Editorials
Christians in the World
The early Christians lived in a police state and were judged subversive if they refused to worship the Roman emperor. Yet even during periods of persecution, these Christians insisted they were law-abiding citizens. The anonymous author of a short second-century essay known as the Letter to Diognetu
Artificial Feeding
At a recent international congress in Rome on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and the Vegetative State,” Pope John Paul II ignited a controversy that is still smoking. He stated that artificial nutrition and hydration “should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and
Letters
Letters

Something Sacred

I want to thank Drew Christiansen, S.J., for his recent Memorial Day reflection (5/24) and to tell him how much his words and thoughts resonated with my eighth-grade students at The American School in London. Though few of our students here at the A.S.L. are British, we are guests in a country that still reveres Wilfred Owen and the soldier poets of World War I. Every one of my students knows Dulce et Decorum Est, and “the old Lie” is hardly lost on these 13-year-olds, whose perceptions of America have been shaken both by the events themselves and by the BBC’s reports of the war during the past year and a half. However, Father Christiansen’s frustration at being denied the right to honor those who have lost their lives during the Iraq war is something our eighth graders here can understand, perhaps in a slightly different way.

We have just returned from a weeklong excursion visiting the American, British and Canadian landing beaches at Normandy. We laid a wreath at St. Laurent Cemetery; each student placed a poppy (the flower still worn on many a lapel each Remembrance Day) on the grave of a soldier from his or her home state. Our Israeli students walked tentatively around the teutonic crosses marking the German soldiers’ graves at LeCambe Cemetery, and a few kids became emotional reading the poetic inscriptions and viewing all the flowers that adorn the graves at the British cemetery.

Many of these young people had never seen or visited a cemetery. Many do not believe in God, let alone the Resurrection. For some of our 132 eighth graders, this was the first time they had ever experienced something sacred: consecrated ground, hallowed by the thousands of young men just a few years older than themselves, who gave their lives so that we might live. This did sink in, and it is comforting to know that even as the number of World War II veterans is thinning, there are young people who are still moved by their stories and their sacrifices. Perhaps this is the “anthem for doomed youth” our students will carry with them.

Susan O’Connell

Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Cancer cut short the life of my friend Regina. Barely into her 50’s, she had been working on behalf of immigrants in New York City. A lump on her breast turned out to be a malignant tumor. She told me about it on a Sunday autumn afternoon as we sat on a bench in New York’s Bryant Park. T