When being constantly outraged and on the attack is how you make your living, you're bound to get a little sloppy with the details now and then. We've seen before what happens when the Catholic League's William A. Donohue, PhD, starts out with a complaint and then has trouble backing it up with
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Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter suggests that "the announcement Monday that Pope Francis had reaffirmed the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious forces those on the left to reconsider their expectations." Winters thinks those who are
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In the wake of yesterday's disappointing Senate vote that failed to break a filibuster on the proposal of universal background checks for gun sales, don't miss Gabrielle Giffords's opinion piece in today's New York Times: "A Senate in the Gun Lobby's Grip." Lots of people are calling the
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Though we're all understandably wrapped up in other breaking news, there's a report in the New York Times today that shouldn't be overlooked:
A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is
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In my column in the latest issue of Commonweal, "Nothing to Celebrate," I wrote about what seems to me to be a strange unwillingness on the part of gun-control opponents to criticize American gun culture, or acknowledge its effects: "Among conservatives actually willing to address
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Benedict XVI’s announcement Monday morning took nearly everyone by surprise, and left even the experts at sea when it came to the obvious questions: Can he do this? And what happens now?
Actually, the answer to the first question wasn’t so hard: sure he can. Not, as some would have it,
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I admire the courage and humility Pope Benedict shows in stepping down. But looking forward, like any good American, I want to know: how will this change affect us? I took a run at that question for the Guardian, and you can read my answer on their Comment Is Free site today. Short version:
The
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This morning's edition of my local paper has a guest opinion column with the headline "NRA Simply Reflects the Views of Its Membership."
This is what the NRA will tell you, too: They are the voice of "responsible gun owners," protecting Americans' basic rights. It may seem
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Gail Collins is my favorite New York Times columnist (in, yes, a not-very-crowded field). She's funny and she's smart; she does the "writing lightly about serious matters" thing so well it makes me wonder all the more that the same paper should publish someone as bad at that very thing as
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Once again, Salon's Alex Pareene has brightened my holiday season with his mean and wonderful Hack List, an "annual list of the worst of political media." (I posted about last year's installment here, and the 2010 version here.) This year, instead of targeting only individuals, Pareene
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The archdiocese of Philadelphia is looking for someone to address its deacons this spring. Former heads of the USCCB's secretariat for the diaconate need not apply. Not, that is, if they have publicly acknowledged the unsettled question of whether women may be ordained deacons. That might be "
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By now you've likely seen the New York Times story by Sharon Otterman about the push to canonize Dorothy Day: "In Hero of the Catholic Left, a Conservative Cardinal Sees a Saint." We might discuss the pros and cons (mostly cons, I think) of telling this story this way, lining up the
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Since the election results came in, Republicans have been given lots of advice about how to save their party from irrelevancy by broadening their focus, and their working definition of "American." Don Wycliff wrote perceptively here at dotCommonweal about the GOP's "undisguised
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Andrew Bacevich's contribution to our Election 2012 series, "Endless War" (published in our October 12 issue), is a bracing assessment of where the candidates stand, and what choice they offer (or do not offer) voters, when it comes to foreign policy.
Here’s what you need to know about
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Contraception coverage came up at the debate last night as part of President Barack Obama's answer to the question about pay equity for women. (There were a lot of surprising turns in response to that question.) Mitt Romney seemed unprepared to talk contraception -- Or maybe this was another
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As you've probably noticed if you've been keeping up with your Commonweals, this year -- and specifically, this day -- marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. John W. O'Malley, SJ, has an excellent overview of the council on the op-ed page of the New York Times
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And now a word from the pope -- no, not the current one. But if the rhetoric was loftier eighty-one years ago and the pronouns unfashionably regal, the message remains alarmingly relevant:
There is every reason to fear that the plague of Unemployment, which We have already mentioned, will worsen,
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As noted in our editorial "The Wrong Kind," this year a dozen or so Republican-controlled state governments have discovered a reason to favor the expansion of government regulation: new laws requiring voters to present certain kinds of ID at the polls. The stated reason for these laws is
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Like all significant events, Mitt Romney's trouble with frank talk in quiet rooms reminds me of a scene from The Simpsons -- specifically this one, in which Principal Skinner says, a little too loudly, "Oh, come on, Edna, we both know these children have no future!" and then, realizing
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Jonathan Chait has paid a lot of attention to Rep. Paul Ryan. So he finds it amusing that the rest of the world should only now, in the wake of Ryan's convention speech, be figuring out that Ryan's image as a congenitally sincere, unusually honest legislator is out of step with the reality of Paul
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I've seen some bad church art in my day, but I've never seen anything quite like this "restored" Ecce Homo fresco in Spain. Sometimes the line between devotion and vandalism is surprisingly thin
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The presidential address Pat Farrell, OSF, delivered yesterday to the 2012 assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is online for you to read: "Navigating the Shifts." (That link will take you to a page where you can download the .pdf.) It's prayerful, thoughtful, calm --
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Hello all - I've proposed a kind of summer-book-group-for-television over at Verdicts, and I thought I should repeat the invitation here at dotCommonweal in case you haven't visited our arts-and-culture blog lately.
Are you addicted to Breaking Bad? Wondering how you'll make it to next Sunday
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Did anybody else happen to catch our friend E. J. Dionne doing his weekly "political roundtable" gig on "All Things Considered" last night? David Brooks, Dionne's usual amiable sparring partner, was on vacation, and taking his place was Mona Charen. I didn't know Mona Charen
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The good news is, the discussion of religious freedom at the bishops' conference has not focused solely on Catholics or Christians. The bad news is that this is how Muslims came up:
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz: I haven't had a chance to read the Obamacare Protection Act, but somebody told me that
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Women. They're so easily led astray. Culture of Life Foundation ethicist E. Christian Brugger is full of paternal concern for the weaker sex in his response to the CDF's notification regarding Margaret Farley's book Just Love: "Three Cheers for the CDF: A Long Overdue Admonition."
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One response many people had to the USCCB statement "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty" was that the list of examples of current and recent threats to religious freedom in the United States seemed narrower than it could and should have been. In an article posted to our website on Thursday
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A kind correspondent, concerned for our souls here at Commonweal, passed along a photocopy of a column in the latest issue of the Catalyst, which - as you are no doubt aware - is the newsletter of William Donohue's Catholic League. Donohue mentions Commonweal, you see:
A radical atheist
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The latest issue of Catholic New York, our diocesan newspaper, features an "Editor's Report" column by editor-in-chief John Woods titled "A True Religious Freedom Fighter." It is an account of the Becket Fund's annual Canterbury Medal dinner, which this year honored "Kevin
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This one hasn't gotten the attention of the Cardinal Newman Society, but there's another Catholic campus controversy you might want to know about. Fordham University's commencement speaker this year is John O. Brennan, currently Deputy National Security Advisor to the White House. Some students and
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Or, Part Two of Why would anyone think the bishops’ religious-freedom campaign could serve partisan ends?
The USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty’s statement “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty” quotes the pope himself – “a friend of America and an ally in the defense of
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The CDF's "Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious" is, in my reading, rather short on evidence of the LCWR's urgent need for reform. One of the few concrete examples given is a keynote address (pdf) delivered by Laurie Brink, OP, at the 2007 LCWR assembly:
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When Laurie Goodstein wrote in the New York Times about the Catholic Church's attempt to compel SNAP to release its records, she got "no comment" from the church's lawyers and personnel. So, like any journalist with a deadline, she turned to "William Donohue, president of the
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With all the new and unfamiliar liturgical texts in use this Easter, you might not have noticed every tweak to the Exsultet. (After all, you probably didn't have to recite it.) But the sudden appearance of the "mother bees" at the very end probably caught your attention. If you're curious
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From the Catholic Herald online:
I knew His Holiness wasn't a fan of these stadium liturgies, but still, this seems awfully pessimistic
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Yesterday on on WNYC (the local public radio station), I heard a report by Andrea Bernstein on "Super-Commuters." These are people - a growing group, she says - who commute into the city by plane to work every week. Her main example was a man who lives in Florida and works in New York
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On the cover of the newest issue of Commonweal is Richard W. Miller's article "'Global Suicide Pact': Why Don't We Take Climate Change Seriously?" Miller lays out the scientific evidence for climate change - the impacts we are already experiencing and the likely effects of the warming our
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There's much to leave you gobsmacked in the news about the bookkeeper accused of defrauding the Archdiocese of New York to the tune of $1 million. She had done it twice before! She was still on probation from the last arrest when she was hired by the archdiocese to work in accounts payable! She
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From the report on East Haven, CT, Mayor Joseph Maturo's self-inflicted troubles in today's New York Times:
Asked what he was doing for the Latino community in light of the indictments and accusation of harassment, illegal searches and seizures and assaults on Latinos, Mr. Maturo responded on
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Salon's Alex Pareene doesn't know me, but for the second year running he has given me a terrific Christmas present: the Hack List, his roundup of the worst political analysts and commentators in the business. Last year it was called the Hack Thirty, and I posted about it here. This year there are
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Let’s pretend, for a moment, that I have no misgivings about the new translation of the Mass we will all be praying with come this Sunday. Forget the infelicities of language; forget the disconcerting process that produced it. I’m open to the change. I hope it will become the opportunity for
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This I hadn't heard:
OREGON, Ohio — For at least a half-century, “Little Sisters of the Poor” has been used as a euphemism in college sports to describe a weak opponent. Its roots trace back to an emphatic victory by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio in his 1950 re-election, which the mayor of
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Today's New York Times has an article by Kevin Sack headlined "Nuns, a ‘Dying Breed,’ Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals." It probably won't tell you much you don't already know, but it's a good and sensitive summary of the state of Catholic health care and its
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I've written before (in the magazine, and here at dotCommonweal) about the Vatican's official policy regarding female altar servers, which strikes me as an embarrassment because of its inconsistency. I have seen many people misstate or misrepresent this policy, so to recap: it was announced in 1994
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Someone ought to take responsibility. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment in Britain now, as yet another scandal (or yet another wave in a continuing scandal) breaks over unethical journalistic practices at the various outlets of Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corp.
The phone-tapping
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I posted this morning about a NYT elegy for a Catholic school in the Bronx. I've just finished reading, in the July/August issue of the Washington Monthly, a fascinating profile of another face of American Catholic education: Kevin Carey's article "The Trinity Sisters," about the proud
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Yesterday's New York Times had a moving tribute to St. Martin of Tours, a Catholic grade school in the Bronx that is closing after eighty-six years of service. The author, David Gonzalez, is an alum, and he touches on the many factors that are leading to the closure of schools like St. Martin: a
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Last weekend I saw two plays that explore religious and philosophical themes against a backdrop of war. The first is a new American play now on Broadway (through July 3), Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year (although, strangely, not a Tony
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The cover story in our latest issue, "The Cold War on Ice" by John Rodden, is an account of one young woman's experience growing up in Communist East Germany. It's long and full of fascinating detail. Since it's summer-reading season (and we're on our summer schedule, meaning you have
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Our own Daniel Callahan has a notable article written with Sherwin B. Nuland in the June 9 issue of The New Republic: "The Quagmire: How American Medicine Is Destroying Itself." (It's subscriber-only on their Web site.) They begin by asking a broad question about our outlook on medical
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The Guardian poses that question on its Web site today. My response, based on the John Jay Causes and Context report, is here.
While you're there, also check out Andrew Brown's assessment of the report, which I found quite useful
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In the middle of an editorial in yesterday's paper regarding the recent Vatican guidelines for response to sexual abuse ("The Vatican Comes Up Short"), the New York Times editorial board dismissed the just-released John Jay Report Causes and Context (pdf) in two sentences:
The directive
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Torture didn't lead us to bin Laden. Torture is still wrong. And torture is counterproductive. So says Sen. John McCain in a strong opinion piece in today's Washington Post.
McCain debunks the assertions that waterboarding led directly to bin Laden, stating clearly that claims to that effect
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If you've been enjoying Unagidon's serial fiction here at dotCommonweal, you'll be glad to know the magazine publishes short stories too. Most recently we featured "Outside Gravity" by Jennifer Haigh, which describes a young Boston man's experience training for the priesthood at the
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The revelation that Osama Bin Laden was not hiding in a cave somewhere, but in fact living in a quiet Pakistani resort town, reminded me of one of my very favorite Monty Python sketches: the story of Mr. Hilter and his companions and their adventures in Minehead, Somerset.
I can't find an
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Earlier this week I saw a new play on Broadway: High, by Matthew Lombardo. My intention was to review it for this magazine. This morning, however, I read in the Times that High will play its final performance on Sunday. So what follows is more of a eulogy. Still, I don't want to miss the
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Yesterday the USCCB's Committee on Doctrine issued a statement, signed by committee chair Cardinal Donald Wuerl, in response to the recent flap over their critique of Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God (click here for all dotCommonweal posts on the subject). It's called "Bishops as
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Over the weekend there were reports that the Qaddafi government had started using cluster bombs in civilian areas in Misurata, the only rebel stronghold in western Libya. The New York Times reported:
The use of such weapons in these ways could add urgency to the arguments by Britain and France
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The latest Commonweal includes a review by yours truly of Don Brophy's biography Catherine of Siena: A Passionate Life ("The Rest of Her"), which subscribers can read now or save for Catherine's feast day on April 29. It begins:
The head of St. Catherine of Siena, who died in 1380, is
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There are a number of "Catholic" stories in this morning's Times, but what caught my eye most was the photo accompanying this story about Ghanaian-American funerals. It's a picture of a very little boy dancing, grinning, his eyes screwed shut with glee: an excellent capture by
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In his post below about the USCCB's critique of Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, Grant noted that Fr. Thomas Weinandy told the New York Times "The primary concern was not over feminism or nonfeminism. The bishops are saying that the book does not adequately treat a Catholic
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To mark the first anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Atlantic's Chris Good interviewed former Congressman Bart Stupak. (Remember him?) You already know that Stupak's earnest prolife advocacy won him raspberries from those who ought to have been his
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Bob Herbert's final column for the New York Times is a humdinger. And not in a cheerful way.
Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which
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Whatever you think about the Obama administration's handling of the Libya situation so far, I propose we can all take some comfort in the knowledge that decisions made by a McCain administration would likely be much worse. John McCain was gung-ho to bomb Libya, but that's no surprise. It's his
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Albany has provided New Yorkers with no shortage of embarrassing tales lately, but the story of State Senator Carl Kruger, as written up this weekend in the Times, is surely one of the most entertaining. Kruger was charged earlier this month with "accepting bribes in exchange for official acts
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Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article by James C. McKinley Jr. that was, in the opinion of many readers (including me), a textbook example of how not to report on rape. Here are the basics, from the not-objectionable part of the article, headined "Vicious Assault Shakes
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Keep the people of Japan and the Pacific Rim in your Lenten Friday prayers. The BBC has excellent coverage of the earthquake/tsunami and its aftermath
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The announcement about the suspension of 21 priests in Philadelphia has brought renewed attention to Cardinal Justin Rigali's initial response to the grand jury report released last month. But I think Rigali's words have been under-scrutinized by the media, so I'd like to go over it again. The
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The New York Times's Damien Cave has a front-page story today headined "Mexican Church Takes a Closer Look at Donors."
[T]he Roman Catholic Church in Mexico has been trying to confront its historic ties to drug traffickers. Long dependent on gifts, but often less than discriminating
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Yesterday, the New York Times's Clyde Haberman wrote a column that took as its jumping-off point a recent controversy over an anti-abortion billboard in NYC.
A Texas group called Life Always...bought billboard space in SoHo to deliver an anti-abortion message rooted in recent statistics from the
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When I saw the headline "Huckabee: Obama 'Grew up in Kenya'" at Media Matters, I assumed Huckabee must have simply misspoken. It's true that Barack Obama spent some of his boyhood living in Indonesia; Huckabee must have named the wrong country by mistake. But that, it turns out, would be
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The case of Kermit Gosnell and his unregulated, deadly abortion clinic was particularly horrifying, but it wasn't unforeseeable, according to Slate's William Saletan. I linked to columns Saletan wrote on the Gosnell case here and here. This week he's been working on a multi-part series, The Back
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Just over eight years ago, on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell presented the U.S. case for invading Iraq to the UN. The Guardian remembers:
"We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels," Powell said. "The source was an eyewitness — an Iraqi chemical
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At Foreign Policy, Scott Horton ventures a guess as to why Hosni Mubarak is still clinging to his position in Egypt.
It may be because exile isn't what it used to be; over the last 30 years, things have gotten increasingly difficult for dictators in flight. Successor regimes launch criminal
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The January 28 issue of Commonweal features a package of articles on "America's Prison Problem." In "Cruel & Unusual: The True Costs of Our Prison System," sociologists Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon explore the effects that "mass incarceration" has on individuals
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Breaking news from The Onion: "Gap Between Rich And Poor Named 8th Wonder Of The World."
"Of all the epic structures the human race has devised, none is more staggering or imposing than the Gap Between Rich and Poor," committee chairman Henri Jean-Baptiste said. "It is a
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Politics Daily editor (and Commonweal columnist) Melinda Henneberger has a strong piece at PD on "Kermit Gosnell's Pro-Choice Enablers." She digs into the grand jury report (which, by the way, makes for accessible but very disturbing reading) to summarize the horrors of the case -- and
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Every morning on my way to work, I pass a streetlight with a prolife bumper-sticker stuck to its base. It says something fairly nonconfrontational, like "Choose life: your mother did!" Or "Babies are a gift, not a choice." Plastered over it is another, duelling sticker, which I
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I'm a few days late on this, but it makes for good Christmas Eve reading: an online article from the New York Times's David Borenstein about the 100,000 Homes Campaign, an attempt to address chronic homelessness in more than 60 communities.
Each day, roughly 700,000 people in the country are
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There are moments when the New York Times style section lives up to its reputation as a morally relative mirror for shallow, wealthy white people so perfectly that you have to wonder if they're doing it on purpose. This week's "Vows" column is one of those times.
"Vows" is a
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The good news first: the Senate passed the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." There were 33 votes against, if you can believe it, and leading the charge: Senator John McCain. Who would have thought he'd want to be remembered for fighting to keep gay soldiers from disclosing their
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Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story is set in the not-too-distant future, in a society driven by technology and a hyper-intrusive form of social networking. One casualty of this future world is literacy as we know it. Books are out, as I note in my review in the latest Commonweal
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I don't know whether it's a cause or a symptom of the demise of printed newspapers in general, but either way, newspaper opinion columnists are slowly losing the authority, respect, and general prominence they once enjoyed. This is partly because the Internet has made informed and incisive
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I like taking trains to get places. I like the train ride in general — sometimes a few hours of hopefully quiet sitting-still time is just what I need — and I also vastly prefer it to all of the other available options for travel (car, bus, and most of all plane). I will not be visiting an
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So far, on his book tour, President George W. Bush hasn't said much new. (Oh, except for airing his feelings about Kanye West -- thank God that national nightmare is over.) Yet, not suprisingly, the interviews Matt Lauer and others have conducted with the former president are framed as privileged
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In our latest issue, Tom Baker reviews Judith Shulevitz's book The Sabbath World. He begins by noting that, for modern believers, the third commandment is one of the most neglected:
For those of us who go to church, Sunday is still the day we do it. Aside from that, our Sabbath has become, in
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Paul Vitello of the New York Times has a story today about St. Peter's on Barclay Street in lower Manhattan -- the oldest Catholic church in New York State -- and its pastor's speaking out about discrimination against the parish's Muslim neighbors.
The Rev. Kevin V. Madigan, who is the pastor of
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One of the highlights of our latest issue is Eugene McCarraher's profile of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe: "Radical, OP: Herbert McCabe's Revolutionary Faith." McCarraher explores how McCabe's socialism informed his Christianity, and vice-versa:
In a passage [from his 1964
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I was flipping through the just-arrived October 8 issue of The New Yorker this morning when a poem by Billy Collins caught my eye. (You'll find it on pp. 88–89, or here, if you're a subscriber.) It's called "Table Talk," and it recounts a conversation over dinner about "applying
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Last week Grant posted a clip of Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt speaking up in favor of "an amendment to our state constitution to preserve our historic understanding of marriage" to keep the question from being resolved by "a ruling elite." When you hear a bishop using &
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The New York Times is always very interested in the travails of the wealthy, which may explain their interest in the "Debate Over the Definition of Rich" that is allegedly being kicked up as part of arguments over the fate of the Bush tax cuts. The discussion on that topic, according to
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Stephen Colbert testified today at the House judiciary subcommittee hearing on immigration and farm labor. Or was it "Stephen Colbert" testifying? The whole thing was a preview, perhaps, of the dueling "rallies" of Daily Show and Colbert Report fans planned for next month in
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If you've been enjoying Joseph A. Komonchak's many "Newmania" posts here at dotCommonweal, consider them an appetizer course for the latest issue of the magazine. It's online now, and you can all click here to read Fr. Komonchak's survey of the writings and theology of newly beatified
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Tonight, an event at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus that dotCommonweal readers might find particularly interesting: If you can make it to the Pope Auditorium (at 113 West 60th Street) at 6:00, you'll get to hear Fr. Joseph A. Komonchak speak on "Searching for Vatican II: Why a
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The New York Times has a detailed look at the progress and the plans for the World Trade Center site. It was true for a long time -- too long -- that nothing much was getting done. But it's not true anymore.
More details about the project, if you're curious, at the Port Authority's "WTC
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Political discourse about Islam in the United States and abroad too often resorts to a simplistic caricature that presumes all Muslims are the same, and tends to identify them all as seditious and anti-American. The reality is far more complicated, as Patrick J. Ryan, SJ, who holds the Laurence J.
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While we're waiting to hear from the president on the end (sort of) of combat duty in Iraq, this seems as good a time as any to recall how we got there in the first place. The August 19, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books featured an exchange of letters that deserves your attention: "
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The Onion reports on Time magazine's newest venture.
TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults
Sounds great! I just hope they have a source of funding that isn't dependent on print ads
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"Here's a thought," Jonah Goldberg announces at the beginning of his latest opinion column for the Los Angeles Times:
The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is
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Over at the Huffington Post's religion page, Jim O'Grady has some ideas on how Archbishop Dolan might contribute to the Islamic cultural center debate. O'Grady writes that the archbishop is "uniquely qualified to...promote understanding and help tamp down an incendiary issue by telling the
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We've just posted an editorial (to be published in our September 10, 2010, issue) on the controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan. Here's how it begins:
In the past nine years, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have been invoked, distorted, and exploited
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From Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press: "Fact Check: Islam already part of WTC neighborhood." Useful for anyone having trouble separating what's been claimed with what's actually known about the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center (and New York City, and America in general). I've seen
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Over the weekend we posted Commonweal's 1945 response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cover story of our current issue focuses on another horror of the Second World War, the massacre of Polish military officers by Russian secret police at Katyn. In "The Ultimate Crime: Katyn &
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Yesterday was the sixty-fifth anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Monday is the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. When news of the attacks reached the U.S., the editors of Commonweal (led at that time by Edward Skillin) reacted with disgust:
We had to invent the bomb because the
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I went to Mass at a parish out of town a few weekends ago, one with lots of young families (at least during the summer) and a handful of altar servers assisting in the celebration -- boys and girls in basically equal numbers, as I recall. After the Mass there was a coffee social in the parish
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George Packer's article on the Senate in the August 9 New Yorker, "The Empty Chamber," is a wide-ranging, disillusioning, and grimly entertaining study of the dysfunctional U.S. Senate at work. It's also a hot topic on political blogs this week. (See here, here, and here, for example
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When I read that New York's Mayor Bloomberg delivered yesterday's speech (rightly praised by Eduardo Peñalver, below) with several religious leaders standing at his side, I wondered whether the group included a Catholic representative. (That's aside from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, of
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The August 2 New Yorker (the one with that great article by Atul Gawande) has a writeup of Marilynne Robinson's new book, Absence of Mind, in its "Briefly Noted" column. Commonweal published an excerpt from the book, "Thinking Again," in May. The unsigned review in the New
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I often see television commercials for a cancer-treatment center in which "patients" rave about the caring treatment they received there, and compare it to the hopelessness they felt before they checked in. "My doctor told me there was nothing he could do," they say. "The
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Earlier this month, when the New York Times published a story about the CDF and its jurisdiction over clergy sex-abuse cases, Grant Gallicho asked Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer quoted in the article, to comment on the "news." Cafardi's very helpful explanation was posted on our blog
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Among the highlights in our latest issue is a review by associate editor Matthew Boudway of The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, an art exhibit touring the United States (and currently stopping in St. Louis).
Philip the Good had the statues made for the tomb of his father,
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Eight U.S. soldiers were killed in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan yesterday. The cost of the "war on terror" keeps rising, most devastatingly in the widespread loss of human life, but also in terms of defense spending and government debt, and lost opportunities in other areas. In the
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I suppose you've seen today's front-page story in the New York Times, "Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal." Reporters Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger say that, despite the impression the Vatican has given, the CDF actually had responsibility for sex-abuse cases since
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Senator Robert Byrd (D–W.Va.), who died this morning at 92, was born before Commonweal existed. But the earliest mention I could find of Sen. Byrd in our pages was a brief item in a "News and Views" roundup by John Deedy in the April 26, 1968, issue:
It is the type [of] comment to
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In his New York Times column "About New York," Jim Dwyer writes about Marie Ponsot (a former poetry editor for Commonweal): "After Stroke, a Poet Hunts for the Language Lost." Her experience will sound familiar to anyone who's seen a loved one go through temporary or permanent
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John Allen reports at NCR on the status of the USCCB's dispute with the Catholic Health Association over the latter's support for the health-care-reform bill the bishops opposed. His story includes an interview with the USCCB president, Cardinal Francis George, and the results are discouraging
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That's Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on the cover of the latest Commonweal. Peter Quinn reviews three recent biographies -- one of Sullivan and two of Emily Dickinson -- and finds common threads, particularly the importance of Irish "help" in the lives and achievements of Dickinson and
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"The Deepwater Horizon disaster will probably be remembered as the most severe environmental disaster of the early twenty-first century—a man-made disaster that would have been as easy to prevent as it is now difficult to clean up."
That's the verdict of Tom Speight, an environmental
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The folks at Upright Citizens Brigade imagine a catastrophic coffee spill at BP.
The coverage from The Onion on this subject has also been top-notch
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When I was working in book publishing, preparing manuscripts to be typeset, I got pretty handy with the find-and-replace function in Microsoft Word. I eventually created a list of time-saving searches to do as soon as I started working on a document: replace all the double spaces with single spaces
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I wrote here a while back about how much I was enjoying the flurry of reviews and essays occasioned by the publication of two biographies of Ayn Rand. The Nation's June 7 issue has a late entry to this category, "Garbage and Gravitas," by political science professor Corey Robin. I thought
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It's all been written down. We all have our hands in the soup and make the music play just so. But we can only make it play just so much. You can't play the chord God ain't wrote. He wrote the beginning and the end. He let you play around in the middle but he got it all written down. It's his
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Free for all to read:
* "A Pattern of Missteps" -- The Editors on the tactical errors of the U.S. bishops in their prolife advocacy.
* "Episcopal Oversight" -- Timothy Jost on what the USCCB is (still) getting wrong about health-care-reform legislation.
* "
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Did you know the controversial law recently passed in Arizona is officially called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act"? Somehow the name hasn't quite caught on. The law's passage has us arguing once again for comprehensive immigration reform in our latest
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"St. Thérèse Relics to Visit Africa for World Cup"
(Details here
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Kenneth L. Woodward's "Church of the 'Times'" (already under discussion here) is just one of the exciting offerings in the latest issue of Commonweal. Also free for all to read:
* "Thinking Again," an essay by Marilynne Robinson on the attempt to determine what we mean by &
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Via John Allen at NCR: the Vatican's statement on the findings of the "visitation" of the Legion of Christ. I find it puzzling in parts, but I'm guessing that has to do with the translation. Here's a key excerpt:
The Apostolic Visit was able to determine that the conduct of Fr. Marcial
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There is a curious reference to an unnamed "liberal Catholic magazine" in the May 3 Weekly Standard. It comes a few pages into a lengthy article by Joseph Bottum, the editor of First Things, about the current wave of sex-abuse revelations and allegations and the attending "hysteria&
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While the anonymous essay "Sins of Admission," in our latest issue, has been attracting lots of readers to the site, another Commonweal essay that touches on Christianity and homosexuality has gotten some attention elsewhere. "Coming Home" by Jonathan Odell, which you may have
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This week's New York Times Book Review featured a lengthy takedown by Walter Kirn of Ian McEwan's new novel Solar. To put it briefly, Kirn found the book "impressive to behold but something of a virtuous pain to read." Kirn, however, did not put it briefly; he picks the book apart at
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Browsing Google's extensive library of old issues of Life magazine, I came upon an ad that reminded me of a recent Commonweal Last Word -- "Free Birds," by Michael Peppard. You may recall that Peppard wrote about the dilemma of ethical meat-eating, and in particular his impulse to choose
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My big sister just published her first book, so I hope you will permit me a bit of boasting on her behalf. My obvious bias won't prevent me from saying that When Did I Get Like This? by Amy Wilson is funny, insightful, and moving, and the perfect gift for the moms (or dads) in your life.
The
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You've already seen our editorial "Benedict in the Dock." Now you can also read a comment from the editors on Rep. Bart Stupak's fight to make health-care reform "abortion neutral": "No Coward."
Also, Melinda Henneberger protests that the new documentary 12th &
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The results of the now-concluded apostolic visitation of the Legion of Christ are still to come. But the Legion is already formally distancing itself from its disgraced founder, Marcial Maciel, after many years of resisting ugly truths about his life. A "communique" from the order's
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Speaking of responsible journalism and under-edited opinion pages, here's a fun guessing game: which major U.S. newspaper published an op-ed piece on the Church's sexual abuse scandal by -- wait for it -- Sinead O'Connor?
If you guessed the Washington Post, you're absolutely right! Gosh, I
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Let's get one thing straight -- this isn't true:
The only way to prevent public funding for abortion was for [Stupak's] amendment to be added to the Senate bill.
Prolifers were understandably excited about Rep. Bart Stupak's amendment to the House bill. Recall the standard we started out with:
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We already know that Marc Thiessen's case for the acceptability of "enhanced interrogation techniques" under Catholic moral teaching is a jumble of dubious assertions, glaring omissions, and outright falsehoods. You may not be surprised to learn that his new book, Courting Disaster -- a
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A new column by E. J. Dionne just went up on our Web site.
Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health-care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.
In its current incarnation,
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E. J. Dionne's column on last night's vote is online now. The passage of health-care reform, he says, is a major victory for Democrats:
To understand how large a victory this is, consider what defeat would have meant. In light of the president's decision to gamble all of his standing to get this
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During a Q&A session about health-care reform on the Washington Post Web site this afternoon, columnist E. J. Dionne gave us a shout-out:
I believe that to reach their conclusion that the bill does fund abortion, the Bishops have to make a series of assumptions that I believe are highly
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E. J. Dionne's latest column is up on our Web site. When it comes to the Senate bill and its prolife provisions, he takes the side of the Catholic sisters who support it.
Dionne points out something that strikes me as important, especially in light of accusations that the Catholic sisters have
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We've just wrapped up our March 26 issue, but we thought you'd like to see the editorial right away. Our take on the "prolife" push to halt the Senate health-care reform bill is online here.
One needs a good reason to oppose a bill that would cover 30 million uninsured Americans and
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March Madness is here, and the New York Times marks the occasion with a profile of Sr. Rose Ann Fleming, SNDdeN, the academic adviser to the men's basketball team at Xavier University in Cincinnati.
Xavier, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati, is entering the N.C.A.A. tournament seeded sixth in
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Notre Dame has announced that the recipient of this year's Laetare Medal will be Dana Gioia -- the first poet to receive the honor.
“In his vocation as poet and avocation as arts administrator, Dana Gioia has given vivid witness to the mutual flourishing of faith and culture,” said Notre
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Nicholas Cafardi, who served on the USCCB's National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth and wrote a book, Before Dallas, about the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic church, reports on Ireland's scandal in the latest Commonweal. Cafardi finds plenty of similarities between the
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Here's what everyone can read for free from our latest issue:
* "Fraternal Correction": Nicholas P. Cafardi's assessment of the Murphy Report, which evaluated the Irish church's response to sexual abuse in Dublin. Cafardi, who served on the USCCB's National Review Board for the
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Last night I spoke to a "Theology on Tap" group in Brooklyn on the topic of "Religion and Politics." You dotCommonweal readers will not be surprised to hear that I did my best to convince those in attendance to subscribe to our fine magazine -- and to visit us online (hello
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Luke Timothy Johnson's article "Dry Bones: Why Religion Can't Live Without Mysticism," from the Feb. 26 "Spirituality Issue" of Commonweal, inspired today's column from Ross Douthat in the New York Times. Like Fr. Imbelli (who blogged about the article here), Douthat quibbles
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On his blog at The New Republic, Jonathan Chait keeps trying to explain what the Democrats are actually proposing to do to pass health-care reform. Once more, for the record:
Now their plan is to have the House pass the Senate bill, and then use reconciliation to patch up the bill. That means
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The New York Times has a new "Beliefs" columnist, Mark Oppenheimer, and he's taken on a hot topic this week: Marc Thiessen's attempts to justify the Bush Administration's legal maneuvering to permit torture in the "War on Terror" by appealing to Catholic moral teaching. Thiessen
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Have you been enjoying following the fortunes of Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn, et al. in Vancouver? Thank British writer, mountaineer, and Catholic convert Arnold Lunn. He invented the slalom race in 1922, and fought to have downhill and slalom skiing included in the winter Olympics (which they were
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Our Spirituality Issue is online now -- just in time to get Lent off to a good start. Available for all to read:
* Luke Timothy Johnson on how the external and internal dimensions of religion depend on each other: "Dry Bones: Why Religion Can't Live Without Mysticism"
Exoteric and
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As a Scrantonian by birth, I was pleased to hear that the seat vacated by Bishop Joseph Martino in August (an event we discussed here and here) has been filled. And I'm doubly pleased to hear that the new bishop will be Msgr. Joseph Bambera, a native of the diocese. I don't know Msgr. Bambera, but
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In easy-to-navigate Web site form! Is this another must-read for the educated observer of the political scene? If so, I hope you didn't plan to get much work done this week.
I haven't done more than glance at it yet myself. I'm happy to see there's a section on how the Senate bill already
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It's easy for me to tell you (echoing Sullivan) to read this blog post by James Fallows. It's more difficult for me to commit to what he advises. After months of delay, the Office of Professional Responsibility report on the ethical conduct of Bush Administration lawyers has been released (Peggy
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Tim Weiner's obituary in the New York Times for the former Secretary of State -- the self-proclaimed "vicar of foreign policy" -- is a metatextual masterpiece (though you couldn't call it a Haig-iography).
He knew, Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger once said, that “the third paragraph of
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Andrew Sullivan has drawn attention to Catholic teaching on torture in this first week of Lent -- prompted by former Bush speechwriter (and new Washington Post columnist) Mark Thiessen's appearance on EWTN's The World Over. (Sullivan's original, lengthy post is here; follow-ups, which link to other
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Last week, the Oprah Winfrey Show aired a report from the convent of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I recognized the sisters as soon as the video started to play -- my household is on their mailing list (we seem to be on every religious order's
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On Sunday the New York Times continued its moving series by reporter Anne Barnard, "A Parish Tested," which looks at how the earthquake in Haiti has affected a parish in Queens with a large Haitian population. I posted about a previous installment, which focused on SS. Joachim and Anne
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When it comes to putting terrorists on trial, military commissions are obviously more appropriate than criminal courts -- it's just common sense, goes the cable-news refrain. Fortunately, Attorney General Eric Holder has more than common sense at his disposal when it comes to making decisions about
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If you're about to be snowed in -- and/or still digging out from the last storm -- good news: the latest issue of Commonweal is now online. Free for all to read:
* Steven Shiffrin's analysis of the SCOTUS's business-friendly decision in Citizens United: "Who Approves This Message?"
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Jason Linkins of HuffPo's
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Slate's media critic Jack Shafer is inconsistent, but I can't recall seeing him get something this wrong before -- at least not something this significant. Ten days after Harper's posted Scott Horton's troubling account of the many holes in the Guantanamo "suicides" story (which I posted
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To honor the late J. D. Salinger, we've posted two essays from our archives:
The literary critic Donald Barr wrote "Saints, Pilgrims and Artists" for Commonweal more than fifty years ago, in 1957, but its analysis remains sharp and insightful. It helps, of course, that most of
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From Bishop William F. Murphy, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, and Bishop John Wester, to Congress:
On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), we strongly urge Members of Congress to come together and recommit themselves to enacting genuine health care reform that will
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Our "Contemporary Theology" issue is on our Web site now. Free for everyone to read:
* Russel Murray, OFM, wonders whether Anglicanorum coetibus signals a return to "Come home to Rome"-style outreach: "A New Ecumenism"
* Our editorial argues that abortion shouldn
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Yesterday's New York Times had a story about how Sts. Joachim and Anne Catholic School in Queens, New York, is helping its students understand and deal with the tragedy in Haiti. Approximately 80% of the students there are Haitian.
They pray. They scrounge up donations. The quake informs class
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If, like me, you've realized in the past week that you could stand to brush up on your Haitian history, you might profit from reading Mark Danner's op-ed in today's New York Times.
And yet there is nothing mystical in Haiti’s pain, no inescapable curse that haunts the land. From independence
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He joined the Marines as a 19-year-old, in 1983, inspired by the leadership of Ronald Reagan. He excelled as a soldier and served in the Presidential Guard detail. After the September 11 attacks he reenlisted, this time in the National Guard. He was assigned to Camp Delta at Guantanamo, and for his
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In December, Timothy Radcliffe, OP, addressed the clergy of the diocese of Dublin, now reeling from the latest revelations of sexual abuse and duplicity among the hierarchy. "Child abuse is a terrible crisis for the Church," he said. "But I am convinced that it is through crisis that
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In Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" section, an article by David Gibson asked, "Should any pope be made a saint?" The headline posed a question much easier to answer: "Is Every Pontiff a Saint?" Obviously not. But Rome's recent history of proposing popes as
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In the New York Times today: Peter Steinfels's obituary for theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, OP, who died December 23. An excerpt:
Strong emphases on human experience and on the importance of examining church teaching in historical context became hallmarks of Father Schillebeeckx’s work.
His
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Fr. Francis Clooney, SJ, posted a reflection on his late colleague Mary Daly at America's "In All Things" blog. It combines his personal perspective with a big-picture look at who she was and why she mattered.
I would guess that if she ever read or thought about any of my writings, she
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Because between passing on valuable information about what's happening in Iran or Haiti, and offering his analysis of the hypocrisy that plagues conservatives/politicians/religions, he posts juvenile jokes like this. The headline is "How Gay Is the Catholic Priesthood?" And the answer,
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Yesterday marked 8 years since the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray. In this video clip from the BBC, two of those detainees and one of the men who guarded them describe their memories of that day.
On January 27, according to the Washington Post's timeline, Vice President
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We're kicking off 2010 with our Interreligious Issue (full contents here). Online now for everyone to read:
* Pulitzer-Prize winner, Commonweal contributor, and once-Catholic Episcopalian Jack Miles's take on Anglicanorum coetibus: "Trading Places"
* Jonathan Odell's account of
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I depend on Scott Horton's "No Comment" blog at Harper's to help me make sense of the complicated legal issues that keep popping up in political contexts. So I've been waiting for him to comment on the dismissal of the Blackwater case since I heard about it last week. Here's the news as
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Don't miss the final installment of Peter Steinfels's New York Times column on religion, which wraps up twenty years of "Beliefs."
At his "Spiritual Politics" blog, Mark Silk offers a tribute and a farewell -- "As an arbiter of the passing religious scene, 'Beliefs' was
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Back in June I asked about your summer reading plans and got lots of interesting responses. So I thought I'd try again: what's on your reading schedule for the holiday, and for 2010? Did Santa bring you any books -- or an e-reader that you'll need to fill? Perhaps you received (or gave) something
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Sunday's New York Times featured an innovative "year in review" roundup, with a short essay on each of the last ten years written by a "noted author." I thought the concept was more appealing than the execution (and I noticed that their writers all happen to have recently
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This advertisement appeared in a December 1944 issue of The Commonweal:
(You can see the full color version of this design -- and a century's worth of Christmas Seals -- at the American Lung Association Web site.)
Merry Christmas to you and yours
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The new issue is now on the Web, making this the perfect time to acquaint yourself with our newly redesigned Web site. Here's what everyone can read:
Our editorial on the president's plan for Afghanistan: "Obama's Surge"
A second editorial on the new "pastoral provision"
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To mark the significance of December 8, Melinda Henneberger has a lovely column at Politics Daily about her fondness for yesterday's feast and her devotion to the BVM.
I've written before about my attachment to God's mom, whose company I so often sneaked off to enjoy during recess at St. Mary's
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Here's a parish ministry you don't see every day:
"It was an act of God, it really was," says the Rev. Andrew More O'Connor - the fashionista priest of Holy Family Church in Castle Hill.
"I was helping a young woman and her fiancé prepare for their marriage and she said I'm an
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"Could the Mother of Jesus have had a greater role in the mission, Passion, and Resurrection of her son than the evangelists tell us? Could women have been important church leaders in early Christianity?" An early biography of the Virgin Mary by Maximus the Confessor prompts these
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A year ago, Christopher Ruddy reported for us on the most pressing crisis in American Catholicism. I refer, of course, to the losing record of the Fighting Irish and Notre Dame's underperforming football coach, Charlie Weis. Now I see Weis has been dismissed, so there's one fewer thing for the
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The cover of the December 2009 issue of The Atlantic is a cheeky photo illustration of a wooden cross that doubles as a real-estate signpost marked “foreclosure.” Alongside it, this headline: “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”
Is it just me, or have magazines like The Atlantic and
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The New York Times has a helpful interactive chart comparing the various provisions and stipulations of the House and Senate health-care reform bills. Here's how they break down the abortion issue:
HOUSE VERSION
Health plans could choose whether to cover abortion.
Low- and middle-income
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Another issue of Commonweal is headed for your mailbox and available now online. Free for everyone to read:
John Connelly's cover story on how one East German town helped bring down the Berlin Wall, and what the citizens have learned in twenty years: "The Price of Freedom"
Celia
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Two new biographies of Ayn Rand were published recently, and I have no intention of reading either. But I find I can’t get enough of the reviews and essays they’ve occasioned. I’ve rounded up my favorites below -- but first, a little background on my own encounter with Objectivism.
In the
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Here's a story from upstate that caught my eye (via CathNewsUSA): a brand-new, 65-year-old Sister of Mercy. She's a mother and a grandmother, and she won't do much for the order's overall demographics. But her story may be a small reminder that the health and "quality" of religious life
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Commonweal is celebrating its 85th birthday this year, and our anniversary issue is on its way to subscribers now. Here's what you all can read online:
J. Peter Nixon's critique of the way the principle of "subsidiarity" has been abused in the debate over health-care reform: "
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In the Oct. 23 issue of Commonweal, I reviewed Mary Karr's third memoir, Lit. Karr, for those who don't know, is a poet and a celebrated memoirist; her first two autobiographical books, The Liars' Club (1995) and Cherry (2000), were bestsellers. They also set a high literary standard for memoirs of
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If you missed Commonweal Conversations -- our celebration of our 85th Anniversary on Monday night -- you missed a great time. We gathered in an elegant space at Chelsea Piers, with a spectacular sunset view over the Hudson. All your favorite Commonweal contributors and columnists were there, along
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Our "Fall Books" issue is best experienced in person (especially with Vermeer's The Milkmaid gracing the cover). But we've put a few choice articles online for all to read:
Our editorial on the recovering economy: "Stimulate"
A review of the Vermeer exhibition at the Met
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On the front page of the New York Times today: Laurie Goodstein's story about a woman whose son (now sick with cancer) was fathered by her former lover, a still-active Franciscan priest. Don't waste all your outrage on the first page, because it just keeps getting worse.
Ms. Bond’s case offers
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You may know about this already -- and if so you may know more than I do. But here's the background as I understand it: the evidence suggests that a man who was executed in Texas in 2005, Cameron Todd Willingham, was innocent of the crime he was sentenced for: deliberately setting a fire that
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I’ve had the good fortune to know Jeanne Jugan — one of those who will be canonized tomorrow — through the congregation she founded, the Little Sisters of the Poor, since I was a little girl. The sisters have a home for the elderly in Scranton, not far from the house where I grew up, and my
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We've already started the discussion, but for the record: the latest issue of Commonweal is in the mail, and posted online. Here's what you can all read:
A response to the Vatican visitation and investigation of American women religious: "Cross Examination," by "Sister X." (
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The cover story in our latest issue is a response from an (anonymous) American sister to the Vatican's visitation and "doctrinal assessment" of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. It probably won't surprise you that she's not entirely pleased.
I want to offer my own view, as an
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If you haven't already, today would be a great day to read Paul Moses's story in the latest issue of Commonweal: "Mission Improbable: St. Francis and the Sultan." Paul posted about the story here on dotCommonweal back in June (in connection with the president's Cairo speech). Now you can
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Just in case you haven't managed to carve out the time to read all the way through Caritas in veritate, may I recommend reading the official exchange between Miguel Diaz, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and Pope Benedict XVI?
NCR has the full text of both remarks: Diaz's presentation of
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So Mark Shea thinks I was unfair to him yesterday when I wrote this. (He doesn't use my name, but I'm pretty sure he's talking about me.)
The Commonweal blogger seems to think I'm being dishonest or half-hearted in my attempts to right the wrongs. I urge her to remember Mark Twain's dictum: Never
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Did you hear the one about the "Religious Left praying to Obama"? I hope not. Here's the embarrassing story: a video clip of a pro-universal-health-care prayer service, originally posted on the Gamaliel Foundation web site but appropriated, "captioned," and distributed by the
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To mark the release of Dan Brown's latest novel, the Telegraph collects twenty of the worst sentences from his previous works. I've never even cracked the cover of The Da Vinci Code, or any of the others -- a number of people have told me I ought to, but they always qualified their recommendation
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New York's own Archbishop Timothy Dolan is the subject of a feature article in the latest issue of New York magazine: "The Archbishop of Charm," by Robert Kolker. It's primarily concerned with evaluating Dolan as a spokesperson for the Church to the wider world -- or at least to New York
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Believe it or not, another issue of Commonweal is on its way to subscribers. Here's what everyone can read online:
Paul Moses's cover story, "Mission Improbable: St. Francis & the Sultan," an account of St. Francis of Assisi's attempt to end the Crusades in 1219 by converting
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Have you heard about the sixth-century Church council where bishops took a vote on whether women have souls? No, that didn't actually happen, but it has been a popular anecdote for decades -- handy for anyone who wants to paint the Catholic Church (or religion in general) as anti-women and isn't
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You wouldn't guess it by looking at the cover (with its close-up of an electrical plug and the screaming headline "The Case for Killing Granny"), but the September 21 Newsweek has an excellent article on the subject of health care in the U.S. In "No Country for Sick Men," T.R.
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I wouldn't want anyone to miss what commenter (and deacon) Eric Stoltz posted in the thread below about altar girls. He scanned a few pages from a 1940s Catholic grade-school reader that are, as he says on his blog, "quaint, cute, humorous and horrifying, all at the same time." I bet they
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This past March marked fifteen years since the Vatican officially approved women and girls to serve the priest at Mass. I have an article on the subject in the current issue of Commonweal: "Passing on the Alb: My Career as an Altar Girl."
The topic may seem trivial to you if you were
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Last night's speech struck me as, above all, extremely shrewd. President Obama played the middle, as he does whenever he can, stressing the common ground of the issue and marginalizing what belongs to the margins. He began by stressing the moral and financial cases for health-care reform as matters
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We're back to our regular biweekly schedule starting with the September 11 issue of Commonweal -- the "Laity Issue" -- now online and in the mail. Free for all to read:
Our editorial on the president's promise to make health-care reform "abortion-neutral," and the
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Twice today, on different blogs, I've come across links to this Time article: "After Ted Kennedy's Death, Silence from the Pope," by Jeff Israely. It tells the story of how Teddy fell from favor with Catholics, built around a dramatic final rejection: as the (original) article tells it,
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"The diocese of Scranton requires a bishop who is at least physically vigorous. I am not that bishop." *
The resignation of Bishops Martino and Dougherty is official. The Wilkes-Barre, PA Times Leader has the story, and (raw) video of the press conference. It sounds like "health
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It has been four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans and called the world’s attention to the poverty and neglect that plagued so many of its people. Last year a documentary called Trouble the Water was released by Zeitgeist Films, and I watched it many months ago. It
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Anybody else watching? I'm catching up now (thanks to my DVR). But you can tune in live at the Web site of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
UPDATE: Don't miss E.J. Dionne's column about the Liberal Lion. A sample:
He suffered profoundly, made large mistakes and was, to say the least
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Well, this is unusual.
Bishop Joseph F. Martino is expected to resign as head of the Diocese of Scranton next week, sources within the diocese confirmed to The Times-Tribune today. Still waiting for official confirmation, of course. When was the last time a bishop just resigned?
UPDATE: It'
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Ted was the only Kennedy politician I ever knew (the other brothers having died both before their time and before I was born), and I didn't know nearly as much about him as I probably should have. I was mostly aware of him as a caricature and a punch line -- at least until he opposed the Iraq War
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I'm about to do something I'm not used to doing: criticize an act of church-based political activism for not focusing enough on the single issue of abortion.
The headline in the Scranton Times-Tribune today: "Anti-health-reform flier distributed in Church bulletin." The Times-Tribune's
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The New York Times obituary for columnist and political provocateur Bob Novak ends on a punch line:
After largely ignoring religion and dabbling in Unitarianism, Mr. Novak, in 1998, at age 67, converted to Roman Catholicism. In a ceremony, Msgr. Peter Vaghi proclaimed that the “prince of
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Let's say good night with a laugh -- courtesy of Fail Blog.
(I know, I know... he's a bishop, not a cardinal. Anybody recognize the poor guy
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The second story in the "Interrogation, Inc." series, by the New York Times's David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti, focuses on the CIA's secret prisons -- aka "black sites" -- and the man who was commissioned to create them. Like the interrogation "experts" profiled in
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Lots to keep you busy in the latest issue of Commonweal:
We've already been discussing Andrew Bacevich's article "The War We Can't Win," from the new issue of Commonweal. Subscribers will want to check out Joel Hafvenstein's article "The Cost of Peace" for another
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A while back, some of our commenters were floating the idea of a dotCommonweal "book club," inspired by the conversations this blog often hosts about this or that literary work. I like the idea, but I'm not ready to volunteer to coordinate a reading schedule... But that's mainly because,
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Now that President Obama has pledged to refocus attention on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reports that "the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won."
Does it even make sense to talk
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The editorial in the current issue of Commonweal is a reaction to the upheaval in Iran -- the falsified election results, the subsequent protests, and the government's totalitarian response. "The entire world has been outraged by the brutality of the current regime's response to the peaceful
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Jimmy Carter has strong words for religious authorities that defend and perpetuate discrimination against women. He writes in an essay published in The Guardian (and, a few days later, in the Australian paper The Age):
...[M]y decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after
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On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, Eric Metaxas shares a story I hadn't heard.
The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he
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As you can see from our homepage, the latest issue of Commonweal is up online. I have to agree with Fr. Imbelli, who called it "rich and varied" -- there's something for everyone in the July 17 issue. In fact, we've decided to make the entire issue available online, to subscribers and
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Speaking of the Legion of Christ... some time ago I added their news service, Zenit, to my RSS feed. I don't find myself clicking through to the stories very often (although their slogan is "The World Seen From Rome," I find the field of vision is rather narrow), but I do enjoy reading
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This morning, making my usual reading rounds, I saw two articles at the online magazine Slate I wanted to recommend to you all -- and then, when I went back to look them up, a new headline made me reconsider the whole idea. So first I'll tell you about the two stories I think you should read, and
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I've only caught snippets of Michael Jackson tributes on the news during the past week, but this one is definitely worth seeing (or hearing) in full. Robert Ridgell of Trinity Wall Street (Episcopal) Church in New York City, take it away:
(Via Gothamist -- although I wouldn't put much stock
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I was blown away by On the Waterfront when I finally saw it, just a few years ago. I'd always heard it was great, but... it sounded so dull (Dock workers? Pigeons?). And out of context, the clips of Brando slurring "I coulda been a contender!" always seemed like he was parodying himself.
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While you're holding your breath for Caritas in veritate (out July 7, they say), why not revisit some of the greatest hits of the past century? At the USCCB media blog, Don Clemmer has a rundown of social encyclicals you should know, from Leo XIII's Rerum novarum up through Benedict's Deus caritas
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One reason I enjoy dipping into the Commonweal archives is to look at the ads. I have long been fascinated by magazine advertisements from the first half of the twentieth century (and earlier). I love the combination of hand-drawn art and hand-set type. I love how print ads from the 1950s and
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John Thavis of Catholic News Service has a post on the CNS blog giving some background to his story about this week's Oasis conference in Venice. Many important topics were discussed, but I will confess the reason I am posting is to call attention to his blog post's delightful lede:
VENICE, Italy
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New tapes have been released -- always illuminating. The New York Times reports:
On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed
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From a June 18 column by E. J. Dionne, just posted on our homepage:
Where did we get the idea that the only good health-care bill is a bipartisan bill? Is bipartisanship more important than whether a proposal is practical and effective? And if bipartisanship is a legitimate goal, isn’t each
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After abortion provider George Tiller was murdered in Kansas, NPR contacted Commonweal's editor, Paul Baumann, for a response. His contribution is up on their Opinion page today, along with short essays from the president of NARAL and "an anti-abortion doctor."
From Paul's piece:
Anti
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The Ayatollah Khamenei gave a speech during Friday prayers in Iran about the election and its aftermath. Right now the front page of the online NYT has two headlines: "Khamenei Denies Manipulation of Vote" and "Ruling Cleric Warns Protesters." Regarding the former, it might be
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Free for all to read:
Our editorial on what the U.S. bishops ought to be considering during this week's meeting in San Antonio: Episcopal Vacancy
Cathleen Kaveny's column on "empathy," and why it might be a good quality for a judge to cultivate: Rules Are Not Enough
William Bole's
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Our "Summer Reading" issue is out now -- we'll post soon to alert you to what's online. But in the meantime, we've had a few requests for a thread where commenters can post about their summer-reading plans and recommendations. So, dotCommonwealers, what are you planning to read this
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As we are all too aware, as soon as -- and perhaps even before -- President Barack Obama announced his nominee for the Supreme Court, some mischief-maker had the brilliant idea to isolate and circulate a single, easily misconstrued sentence from a speech Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivered in 2001.
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Laurie Goodstein has an entertaining story in the New York Times today about the monastery behind LaserMonks.com -- and the women-in-residence who run the operation.
“We feel we’re stewards of their business, and we really put bread on the table,” said one of the women, Sarah Caniglia,
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Free for all to read:
Barbara Mujica's article about her son's military service in Iraq, and how it helped him pursue his goal of being "a man for others": Tours of Duty
Our editorial on why major health-care reform is so urgent -- and why its time may have finally come: We're Ready
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In 2005 I traveled to Italy with a college friend. We were both on tight budgets, so we weren't about to fritter away our traveling money on fancy new guidebooks. At a used-books store I found a guide to Rome that had been published in 1993, and we decided it would do. After all, this was Rome we
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Thanks to commenter E. Paul Kelly for pointing this out: Fr. Robert Imbelli's "unconventional" take on President Obama's speech at Notre Dame, as published and contextualized online by Sandro Magister.
I would like to call attention to three elements of the President’s address that
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The American Academy of Arts and Letters distributes its 2009 awards at a ceremony today, and Marie Ponsot is receiving an Academy Award in Literature.
Marie has contributed frequently to Commonweal as a poet and critic, and she was poetry editor of the magazine from 1979 to 1985 (sharing the
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Free for all to read:
Robert E. White's analysis of the recent Summit of the Americas and the future of U.S. relations with Latin America: Temperate Zone
Robert Nugent's story of visiting a convicted sex offender--and fellow priest--in prison: Meeting a "Monster"
Our editorial on
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Congratulations to Robert Egan, SJ, John Garvey, John Wilkins, Henry Cohen, Peter Steinfels, Paul Baumann, and all the other Commonweal contributors whose work was recognized by the Associated Church Press in its 2008 awards, announced May 7. All of Commonweal's winning entries -- including the
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As the proud owner of a diploma I can't read, I'm partial to the pointless persistence of Latin in academia. But Christopher A. Francese, in today's New York Times, makes a persuasive case for the opposition:
Latin is a beautiful language and a relief from the incessant novelty and informality of
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As covered by The Daily Show. The sequence is short on real satire, but they got in some very good gags.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cRoadus Triptumthedailyshow.
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When a notable person dies long after their notoriety has faded, the death itself isn't necessarily newsworthy. But it is an excellent excuse to revisit the person's life and remember their notable deeds. I always learn something interesting from the obituaries in the New York Times, or any other
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Melinda Henneberger -- Commonweal columnist and ed-in-chief of the new Web site Politics Daily -- has just posted a long, chatty interview with Washington D.C. archbishop Donald Wuerl. The conversation covers lots of interesting ground on the relationship between Catholicism and politics. Here's a
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A few days ago, in the comments on this post, Bill DeHaas mentioned the April 24 episode of the EWTN "news" program The World Over, which featured the Rev. Robert Sirico -- introduced by host Raymond Arroyo as "a prominent Catholic intellectual" -- discussing the ethics of
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In his "About New York" column in today's New York Times, Jim Dwyer reports on another campus kerfuffle related to student theater. The play isn't one of the usual suspects. Dwyer describes it as "a mildly ribald farce entitled The Well of Horniness." And the school in question
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Church teaching is pretty clear on the negative consequences of unapproved sexual behavior, and its potential to promote human vices. But we tend to hear far less about the potential for sex to promote and foster virtue. What expectations should we have for our sex lives, spiritually speaking? In
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Last Friday night I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater to see Jonathan Miller's staging of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. I didn't realize this was the fourth time Miller's production has been to BAM (the first was in 1997). But I was intrigued by what I read about it at the
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I'm a week late in issuing this recommendation, but I encourage you to read the cover story from the April 13 issue of The Nation, "Tell Her the Truth" by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon. Kushner is a major American playwright (he won the Pulitzer for his two-part drama Angels in America
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If you're tired of hearing about torture -- memos and reports and disputes about waterboarding and so on -- you should be. As Mark Danner explains in his New York Review of Books article "The Red Cross Torture Report: What it Means":
...the broader discussion of torture is by now in its
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Steve Inskeep... Kai Rysdal... Dina Temple-Raston... There's a hypnotic, even totemic quality to the names of National Public Radio personalities. What about you? If you reported in the field for Morning Edition, how would you sign off? Thanks to the efforts of Lianablog (linked from the NPR
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Last night Archbishop Timothy Dolan was formally welcomed to his new home and cathedra at St. Patrick's in New York. He knocked at the doors and was granted entrance and welcomed with applause. Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the apostolic nuncio, read the letter of appointment from Rome (in Italian-
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For me, this video clip captures something of the joy of Easter -- and spring. (Make sure you have your sound on!)
Little D Hatching Out of the Egg from Class 1-208 on Vimeo
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As Rita Ferrone writes in the latest issue of Commonweal, the new translation of the Easter Proclamation will bring back the praise for "mother bee." What's all this about bees, you ask? Read "Virgil & the Vigil" for the details.
You won't hear anything about bees
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Passover begins tomorrow night, as you probably know. But I was surprised to learn that there's another Jewish holiday to celebrate tomorrow morning. Joyce Cohen of the New York Times reports:
Every day, the sun rises. But only once every 28 years does the sun return to the position it occupied at
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On Friday we posted our latest editorial -- a comment on the Obama-at-Notre-Dame dustup -- and alerted blog readers here. Commenter Alan Mitchell and others were curious to know what The Commonweal had to say about Buckley and Mater et magistra back in 1961. Now that I'm back in the office, with
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The Cardinal was hospitalized here in New York late Saturday, with "stomach pain" -- and apparently they've determined that he needs a pacemaker. All the reports I've heard say the situation isn't very serious, but of course the timing is unfortunate. (The timing may also be the reason
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The editorial from our forthcoming issue (dated April 10) is now online.
It would be helpful for those currently leveling charges of disloyalty at the University of Notre Dame and its president, John Jenkins, CSC, to revisit the Buckley imbroglio. The university’s invitation to President Barack
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If you can stand to revisit the "condoms make the problem worse" imbroglio one more time, Fr. Tom Reese has a valuable analysis up at the Newsweek/Washington Post/Georgetown(?) "On Faith" site. (I can't keep track of who's running that store.) He makes some helpful distinctions
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Today's New York Times arts coverage includes an interview with Tovah Feldshuh, the star of the new Broadway show Irena's Vow. The play is based on the true story of Irene Opdyke, a Polish Catholic woman who saved the lives of several Jews during the Shoah. I saw it a few days ago, and expect to
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Busy as he is tracking intramural squabbles in the Church, I'm very glad Rocco Palmo also called my attention to some good news from the Southwest. Governor Bill Richardson has ended the practice of capital punishment in New Mexico. Better still, the statement he issued to explain his decision is
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There is at least one thing about which Pope Benedict XVI and I are unlikely to reach an agreement: he's a cat lover, and I most definitely am not. Now, however, there are signs that we might come together on the pet question after all. As of yesterday, the Holy Father and I are both turtle owners
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If I may suggest an intention or two for your prayers on this Feast of St. Joseph: there are a lot of people out there trying to sell their homes without losing too much in the process (I wonder whether sales of St. Joe statues have increased)? There are many others trying to hold on to their homes
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I hadn't heard of the Sulpician priest Joseph Martin until I read his obituary in the New York Times today. But he is another example of a priest who used the moral authority of his position -- and his own experience of being human -- to make Christ known in the world.
The Rev. Joseph C. Martin,
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It seems we haven't yet linked from dotCommonweal to Paul Elie's excellent profile of Rowan Williams in the March issue of The Atlantic. In this we have been very much remiss, and we owe an apology to our friend Paul, as well as to any of you who didn't find the story on your own. Fortunately, it's
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As you've probably heard by now, President Obama has signed an executive order lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Actually, you might have heard that he "lifted a ban on stem-cell research" (that's how a "snap poll" on local news station New
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Yesterday afternoon my fellow RCIA team members and I had the privilege of accompanying three catechumens from our parish to the Rite of Election at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. On the first Sunday of Lent, parishes from all over the archdiocese gather to present their catechumens -- those
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Since he's in all the headlines, you'll pardon me if I take this opportunity to remind you once again that Bishop Timothy Dolan -- who, you may have heard, is the new archbishop of New York -- has an article in the current issue of Commonweal. Would that everyone were so blessed! Instead, our
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While we were discussing the "news" about indulgences here (and here) at dotCommonweal, the producers of the Canadian public radio program As It Happens contacted our office looking for someone to talk to them about this suddenly hot topic. That's how I ended up on CBC Radio One last
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In the past week, thanks to the New York Times, I've thought about indulgences at least as much as I had in my entire life up to this point. Judging from the lively back-and-forth on this post, I'm not the only one who's been doing some quick self-catechesis.
For those not yet sick of the topic
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The "Year of Saint Paul" is half over, but the New York Times just caught wind of the plenary indulgence available to those who observe it, locally and worldwide. Of course, the word "indulgence" is enough to raise alarms about the Church's past abuses and future directions
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Disappointing news from the Lower Hudson Valley (as if we didn't have enough image problems to deal with!):
[Officer William] Olli placed Christ under arrest after he failed field-sobriety tests, police said.
He was charged with misdemeanor driving while intoxicated. The charge was elevated to
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The pope just named a new bishop in Austria's diocese of Linz. Ordinarily I probably wouldn't hear or care much about European auxiliary bishops. But this one -- as reported by Inquirer.net (as well as the BBC) -- is hard to ignore:
Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, the rector of Windischgarsten parish,
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Thursday's New York Times ran a story on page A6 (and online) about the statement Benedict XVI made at Wednesday's papal audience. He attempted to explain his decision to reach out to the SSPX and reiterated the Church's condemnation of the Shoah. The last line of that article -- a quote from the
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Time magazine has a lovely photo essay (with audio) on their website today, focused on the lives and vocations of cloistered Dominican nuns in Summit, New Jersey. The images are beautiful, and it's enlightening to hear a couple of the sisters discuss their vocations in their own words.
If that
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"In November 2008," says the USCCB "Pro-Life Activities" website, "the full body of bishops voted unanimously to mobilize the resources of the USCCB, dioceses and the entire Catholic community to:
retain current pro-life laws and policies, and
oppose the federal
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Report from the Anchorage Daily News:
A group of 43 Alaska Natives who say they were sexually abused by Catholic priests and church volunteers have sued the Jesuit order, alleging that remote Alaska villages became a worldwide dumping ground for clergy with histories of abuse.
...Some of the
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When do you take down your Christmas decorations? Everyone seems to have their own idea of what's proper. Some think they've done their Christian duty if they hold out till Epiphany (which means you toss the tree the first week in January). The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, this past weekend,
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The New York Times has a story by Abby Goodnough about Catholics resisting the closing of parishes in the Boston Archdiocese by refusing to leave. At St. Frances Xavier Cabrini church in Scituate, Massachusetts, a group of parishioners have been occupying the church in shifts since 2004. What
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I updated my post below about the NYT series on "international priests" to link to the second and third installments (today's third and final article is here). I found all three articles fascinating -- it's a topic that can be considered from any number of angles, and it only gets more
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Today's New York Times has an article by Laurie Goodstein about the phenomenon of foreign priests being recruited to work in U.S. dioceses. It's a colorful look at the ups and downs of this increasingly common arrangement, as observed in the diocese of Owensberg, Kentucky.
[Diocesan Vicar for
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This week the New York Times offered a few different takes on how people answer God's call to serve the poor in the city. On Christmas Eve there was a story about the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who live and minister in the South Bronx. (You probably know the famous Fr. Benedict Groeschel, one
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Peter Steinfels's "Beliefs" column in this weekend's New York Times is a moving recollection of a tragic Catholic-school fire in 1958 Chicago, and its effect on the survivors -- including then-editor of Commonweal John Cogley.
About a year before the fire, John Cogley, who would later
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It seems to start earlier every year, doesn't it? I mean, we haven't even celebrated Thanksgiving yet, and the War-on-Christmas rhetorical drumbeat has already started.
I sometimes wonder whether the whole War-on-Christmas thing is a game to see who can advance the most ludicrous argument with a
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For a calm and serious look at the threat posed by FOCA, check out Commonweal columnist Melinda Henneberger's article for Slate. As usual, she offers sensible analysis alongside her personal take. It's all very helpful, especially as it appears in a forum where abortion rights is generally taken
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Humanae vitae isn't the only thing turning 40 this fall. The Beatles' 1968 double album (the "White Album") is also celebrating a birthday. Historically I have tended to be more on top of Beatles lore than Vatican City trivia, but perhaps it's a sign of maturity that I was reminded of
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On the topic of what counts as kooky fanaticism, The Onion has a funny editorial this week: "I'm Not One of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians."
My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are
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I made my first visit to the Lateran Basilica two months ago (I'm sorry to say it didn't make the itinerary for my very first trip to Rome, but I made sure to get there the second time around!). With this relatively fresh in my memory, I am able to picture what today's feast celebrates more
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Soon enough we'll have to stop basking in the afterglow of racial transcendence and go back to all the work we have left to do, on that and other more mundane fronts. But while we're still focused on the meaning of This Historic Occasion, I'd like to call your attention to this article by Wil
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In case you don't look at our homepage as often as you visit our blog, I'd like to call to your attention to a new web-only article -- one more perspective on the complications of voting as a Catholic in this election. Here's a sample of the piece, which is by William J. Gould:
In this political
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In October 1972, a plane carrying 49 passengers, many of them members of a young men’s rugby team, ran into a snowstorm on its way from Uruguay to Chile and crashed in the Andes mountains. You know what happened next.
Except, of course, you probably don’t know much about what happened
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I haven't had enough coffee yet to process the photo on the front page of NYTimes.com -- you can see it here, accompanying their story about last night's Al Smith Dinner. Cardinal Egan in the middle, with Obama on one side and McCain on the other, and they're all laughing. What country, friends, is
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I was very moved by a post on America's "In All Things" blog this morning. Valerie Schultz wrote about a homily she heard on California's Prop 8, in which the priest jokingly compared gay people seeking marriage to monkeys dressed up in wedding clothes for a gag photo.
I suppose I
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The news in my hometown – Scranton, Pennsylvania, the land of the swing voter – is that Joseph Martino, the bishop of Scranton, has issued a pastoral letter about the duties of the Catholic voter with regard to “life” issues. (I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the gist is that
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The first debate -- does that mean "silly season in politics" is over now? Share your thoughts as you watch here
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I was in college in September 2001, just starting a new semester. I was up early on Tuesday the 11th, hoping to make it to breakfast before my 10:30 class. None of my roommates were awake, and I would have showered, dressed and left without any idea what was going on if I hadn’t signed online for
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We've been talking about VP nominee Sarah Palin's convention speech here. But we haven't said much about the part of Palin's speech that bothered me most -- more than her dismissive reference to the responsibilities of a community organizer; more than her distortions regarding Obama's tax plan;
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Over at the America blog In All Things, Austen Ivereigh has an interesting post about parish realignment, triggered by an incident in the English diocese of Leeds. He says,
As an exercise in church communications, this is a textbook case of what not to do. Give what sounds like a cold, corporate
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I'm not sure who, exactly, is the intended audience for the new film Henry Poole Is Here, which opens (on a limited basis) this weekend. It’s an independent movie with an aggressively trendy soundtrack; it stars Luke Wilson; it premiered at Sundance. But it’s far too mild for the quirky indie
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You already know what I thought of the new film Brideshead Revisted, with its many distortions of the novel on which it is based. But I had the privilege of writing for an audience that I can assume is supportive, or at least respectful, of Waugh's original intent. (That's you.) So I thought it
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If your parish's musical director has Dan Schutte's "You Are Near" or "Yahweh, the Faithful One" on heavy rotation, tell him or her to start looking for alternatives. As reported by Rocco at Whispers, Rome says no more calling God "Yahweh" during worship. This won't
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The USCCB has made the revised-and-approved texts of the mass available online, in PDF form. (Thanks to Whispers in the Loggia for the heads-up.) You can also find a cover letter of sorts here.
I understand it will be quite a while yet before we actually make the switch -- they haven't settled
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