Just posted to the homepage:
By insisting Tuesday evening that "it's time to turn the page," President Barack Obama was talking about more than the Iraq War, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign.
He was also trying to turn the page
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Last night Michael Bloomberg spoke again, convincingly, on Park51. Bear with me as I quote at length from the superb address:
There are people of good will on both sides of the debate, and I would hope that everyone can carry on a dialogue in a civil and respectful way. In fact, I think most
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p /
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Don't forget, readers, we post content to the main site too. Today's offering: E. J. Dionne Jr. on the Democrats' chances in November: "The Power of Negative Thinking."
Democrats have come up with a loud "no" of their own, asking voters to reject the Republican past one more
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Our own David Gibson offers his reflections on the mosque mess at the New York Times "Room for Debate" forum:
Obama could well invert Gingrich's rhetoric and perhaps stanch the political bleeding -- and help believers overseas -- if he laid out the argument that religious freedom at home
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Let us count the ways.
Suppose the Catholic Church proposed to build a 13-story, 50,000 square-foot showpiece at Ground Zero? Or the 92nd St. Young Men’s Hebrew Association proposed to relocate its facility to the site of the attack on the Twin Towers? Or the Billy Graham Evangelical Association
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John Thavis reports:
The norms on sexual abuse of minors by priests now stipulate:
-- The church law's statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse has been extended, from 10 years after the alleged victim's 18th birthday to 20 years. For several years, Vatican officials have been
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Yesterday the National Right to Life Committee fired off a press release warning that the Department of Health and Human Services had approved the federal funding of elective abortions in Pennsylvania:
The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new “high-risk”
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Recently discovered as the excavation of the editor's old office continues, a form letter to Commonweal's book reviewers:
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to enhance the book review section by printing brief, interesting and representative passages from the books being reviewed.
We would
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Everybody relax. As widely expected, Rome is about to issue new rules for handling priests who sexually abuse minors, including those who view child pornography and abuse adults with mentally disabilities, classifying such acts as grave canonical crimes. Oh, and the new document will include those
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Careful readers of Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger's "Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal" (discussed here) will recall seeing Nicholas P. Cafardi quoted in the piece. Nick is a canon lawyer and a professor of civil law at Duquesne. He was also one of the first members of
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Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna surprised many of us when he called for an "unflinching examination" of mandatory clerical celibacy as a response to the sexual-abuse scandals. He stunned even more people when he went after former Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano
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You'll recall the controversy surrounding Bishop Olmsted's announcement that Sr. McBride had excommunicated herself owing to her participation in a decision to approve an abortion to save the life of a mother. (We discussed it here and here last month.) If you've been struggling with the
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So says Catholic jabberer-in-chief Bill Donohue, explaining how he travels to his frequent TV appearances. Who could doubt it? The man can talk. Donohue shared that tidbit in his fiesty reply to NCR editor Joe Feuerherd's takedown. In a follow-up post, Michael Sean Winters did most of the heavy
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Just posted: "Episcopal Oversight: How the Bishops Get Health-care Legislation Wrong," by health-law expert Timothy S. Jost.
On May 20, 2010, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement supporting H.R. 5111, sponsored by
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In which Congressman Bart Stupak briefly tells the story of "the most grueling period in my nearly twenty years on the hill." That may sound hyperbolic. It's not. Read the whole thing. He has body guards. His wife unplugs the phone because drunks harass the family at all hours and from
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Congratulations to all the winners of the Associated Church Press Awards. You can check out Commonweal's awards right here
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Pope Benedict to reporters on the flight to Lisbon:
Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sins that exist inside the church. This we have always known but today we see it in a really terrifying
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You'll recall the controversy over Archbishop Chaput's decision to bar the children of a lesbian couple from returning to their Catholic school next year. In the course of those conversations on dotCommonweal, several readers asked, "Why would gay parents want to send their kids to Catholic
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Rachel Donadio reports on the pope's spontaneous remarks during his homily today:
“I have to say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word ‘penance,’ which seems too harsh,” Benedict said at a Mass on Thursday morning, Vatican Radio reported.
“Now under the
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Michael Sean Winters continues to call down shame on the secular press for its coverage of the latest phase of the sexual-abuse crisis. Winters doesn't see why anyone should be too troubled by how the CDF handled the case of Stephen Kiesle: "This, we are led to believe, is the smoking gun.
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Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone on celibacy, homosexuality, and pedophilia in the church's sexual-abuse crisis:
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a
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At this moment, Commonweal's Facebook page has 666 fans. Please consider helping us move past the number of the beast by becoming a fan. And don't forget: you can follow us on Twitter too
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Cardinal Sodano is at it again--this time he has a few wing men.
"But it's not Christ's fault if Judas betrayed" him, Sodano said. "It's not a bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible."
"Behind the
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From our April 9 editorial, recently posted on our homepage:
In his last years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and from the beginning of his papacy, Pope Benedict has demonstrated a real understanding of the nature and scope of the clergy sexual-abuse crisis. He came to
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Over at America's In All Things blog, Michael Sean Winters wonders how the Catholic Church can defend itself without being defensive. He begins by expressing gratitude for the work of the secular media in exposing the sexual-abuse scandal. Then the other hand comes out:
Nobody in the press, not
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In her thread on the Legion of Christ's disavowal of Maciel, Mollie linked to an important piece by Sandro Magister, "Legionaries: The 'Nomenklatura' that Must Disappear." Next month, the five bishops who led investigations of the the Legion--Archbishop Chaput in the United States--will
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Jon Ward of the Daily Caller has a stunning interview with Bart Stupak:
“The [National] Right to Life and the bishops, in 2007 when George Bush signed the executive order on embryonic stem cell research, they all applauded the executive order,” Stupak said in an interview with The Daily
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Peter Nixon's comment on Matt Boudway's Jost post is worth highlighting here:
I worked in Washington DC for ten years and am familiar with... “worst case scenarioism,” where opponents of legislation come up with increasingly bizzare predictions of how a particular bill could lead to
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NCR's Tom Fox has an exclusive interview with the lesbian couple whose children are no longer welcome in the Archdiocese of Denver's Catholic schools.
What happened? It all began two weeks ago:
“I went in to turn in our daughter’s kindergarten application and was called into the principal
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"If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed, she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?" -- Cardinal Basil Hume to T. R. Reid, as reported in Reid's Washington Post column, "
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From Sr. Carol Keehan, DC:
The insurance reforms will make the lives of millions more secure, and their coverage more affordable. The reforms will eventually make affordable health insurance available to 31 million of the 47 million Americans currently without coverage.
CHA has a major concern
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As blogged by Paul Moses here, a Catholic school in Boulder, Colorado, has told a lesbian couple that their children cannot re-enroll next year. Yesterday, in a column posted to the Web site of the Archdiocese of Denver, Archbishop Charles Chaput tried to explain that decision.
First,
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A new report by the Social Science Research Council (posted at the Immanent Frame and written by Nathan Schneider) names dotCommonweal as one of the hundred (or so) most influential religion blogs. So, what's the survey all about?
It places this religion blogosphere in the context of the
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Did you miss Mollie's post on Scott Horton's doubters? Give that a read and come back. All set? OK.
Horton just posted a follow-up to his important piece on the three Gitmo prisoners who, as he puts it, died under mysterious circumstances in 2006. Horton describes those circumstances:
According
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Check out the mesmerizing New York Times interactive graphic of Obama's 2011 budget (and compare it with 2010
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Speaker Pelosi says the votes for the Senate bill just aren't there.
"I don't see the votes for it at this time. The members have been very clear in our caucus about the fact that they didn't like it before it had the Nebraska provision and some of the other provisions that are unpalatable to
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A bound galley of Terry Eagleton's forthcoming book On Evil just arrived in our office. Flipping through the front matter, I scanned for the name of the publisher (Yale), the expected pub date (April), and--most interesting--the dedication page. Too often ignored, dedication pages can be telling.
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Via the New York Times Lede blog, Pat Robertson explains why Haiti suffered such devastation yesterday.
[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got
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PrayTell is a joint venture of St. John's Collegeville and the Liturgical Press. The blog features an impressive roster of contributors, including dotCommonweal regular Rita Ferrone (we trust she won't abandon us). What can you expect? Take it away, newly knighted blogmaster Anthony Ruff , OSB:
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As you can see, we've redecorated. With the move to a new site comes the inevitable unforeseeable glitches. Will you give us a hand ferreting them out? Already you'll notice that blog comments are displaying e-mail addresses instead of registered usernames. That's a major problem, and we're on it
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Must-reads from the New York Times: Peter Baker's impressive piece "How Obama Came to Plan for 'Surge' in Afghanistan" and the reporting team's Q&A with readers
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While most of us were gorging ourselves yesterday, Ireland was busy digesting a government report on their own clergy sexual-abuse scandal. Its verdict? Over a period of thirty years, diocesan authorities systematically covered up sexual-abuse allegations against clergy--in collusion with the
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Is this two years in a row or three that I've posted this classic WKRP clip? What the hell?--it's tradition. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. (You can watch the whole episode, and the rest of the first season, at Hulu
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Big news from the AP:
A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex-abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests were more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the study's lead authors said yesterday.
The full $2
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As the USCCB continues to discuss the new liturgical translations, perhaps you'd be interested in reading a backgrounder on the controversy, courtesy of John Wilkins, former editor of the Tablet of London.
On December 4, 1963, at the end of the council’s second session, the [Constitution on
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UPDATE: Show's over, folks, but feel free to continue the discussion below. The USCCB meeting page is here
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The New York Times reports:
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi
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In which he discusses health-care reform and the common good, which he wrote about for Commonweal last month (transcript here
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One of the reasons the Vatican decided to launch an investigation of U.S. women religious? Feminism. Tablet Rome correspondent Robert Mickens reports:
The official that initiated the Vatican's investigation of women religious in the United States admitted this week that the enquiry was fueled by
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In case you missed it, Robert Mickens's comment from Peggy's thread below deserves your attention:
A very helpful piece by John Allen to begin the discussion.
However, in absence of the actual Apostolic Constitution it is difficult and dangerous to draw too many conclusions. We are left only
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Yesterday on the First Thoughts blog Mary Rose Rybak posted a video of First Things Associate Editor David Goldman's appearance on the Larry Kudlow program. Kudlow had convened a panel to discuss the value of the U.S. dollar. "Watch FT’s own David Goldman dominate the discussion on last
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Too many sexual-abuse settlements, not enough money, says the bishop.
The Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware lists assets of as much as $100 million and liabilities of as much as $500 million for the nonprofit.
The diocese encompasses 58 parishes, 21
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Rufus Phillips wonders whether President Obama really grasps the nature of our Afghanistan problem. Who's he? George Packer explains:
Rufus Phillips, raised in rural Virginia and educated at Yale, was a young C.I.A. officer in Saigon in the nineteen-fifties, a protege of the legendary Colonel
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That's a term that appears in the Cardinal George interview mentioned by Cathy Kaveny. It also came up during a 1999 symposium sponsored by Commonweal and held at Loyola University Chicago, "The Crisis of Liberal Catholicism." Speakers included Cardinal George, Peter Steinfels, E. J.
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After you're finished reading Sister X, be sure to check out Dan Callahan's important article "America's Blind Spot: Health Care & the Common Good."
The concept of the common good, ancient in origin, would seem on the face of it an ideal foundation for health-care reform. We
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Maybe it's a bit early to decide, but with most of the nation bathed in sun, it could be a slow day for dotCommonweal. The comment comes from Commonweal contributor Jean Raber (most recent piece on the new Beguines here--subscribers only). Jean was responding to the following comment from Mark
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Good get for Politics Daily:
We teach that health care is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity.... Health care reform especially needs to protect those at the beginning of life and at its end -- the most vulnerable and the voiceless. It is essential that reform
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Are you planning to join us in New York to celebrate our eighty-fifth anniversary?
Date: 10.19.09.
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Place: Pier 60, Chelsea Piers.
Honoree: Tim Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics.
Presenter: Mark Shields, PBS commentator and columnist.
Dinner chair: Rev.
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When it comes to "abortion neutral" health-care reform legislation, Peter writes in today's New York Times, the status quo is in the eye of the beholder.
Currently the federal government does not pay for abortions under Medicaid, except in cases of rape, incest or physical threat to
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First up, the National Right to Life Committee:
"The claim that a federal agency would be spending private funds on abortion, not federal funds, is absurd on its face, a political hoax," [NRLC legislative director Douglas] Johnson said.
Next, Bill Donohue:
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Karl Vick of the Washington Post reports on the pernicious practice of insurance-policy "recission"--when insurers decide to cancel a policy on the grounds that they've been misled:
"They said I never mentioned I had a back problem," said Marrari, 52, whose coverage with Blue
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At Salon:
Let's get on with it, Mr. President. We're up the proverbial creek with spaghetti as our paddle. This healthcare thing could have been the crossing of the Delaware, the turning point in the next American Revolution -- the moment we put the mercenaries to rout, as Gen. Washington did
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A Daily Dish reader reports on his school's absurd response to President Obama's planned nationally televised speech to students:
I teach in a midwestern, upper-middle class suburban school.
(...)
Today there were two more e-mails about the speech from my principal. The first re-affirmed
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(After writing this I realized Dave Gibson already posted on the statement. But, because my post does something a bit different from his, I'm leaving it up.)
Via John Allen: Archbishop Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas and Bishop Joseph Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph have released a "Joint
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Good piece in today's New York Times.
As recently as July, the bishops’ conference had largely embraced the president’s goals, although with the caveat that any health care overhaul avoid new federal financing of abortions. But in the last two weeks some leaders of the conference, like
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In what seems to be a rejoinder to America magazine's strong, persuasive editorial on the controversy surrounding President Obama and Notre Dame, Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne/South Bend restates his case against inviting the president to speak at commencement and awarding him an honorary doctor
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Today's must-read: the first, jaw-dropping article in the Times' important two-part series "Interrogation, Inc." Bear with me as I quote at some length:
Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an
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From the New York Times obituary:
Mrs. Shriver’s official efforts on behalf of people with developmental challenges began after she became the executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957. The foundation was established in 1946 as a memorial to her oldest brother, who
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Last week half-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin delivered her unhinged description of Obamacare:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a
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From the Times obit:
Budd Schulberg, who wrote the award-winning screenplay for “On the Waterfront” and created a classic American archetype of naked ambition, Sammy Glick, in his novel “What Makes Sammy Run?,” died on Wednesday. He was 95 and lived in the Brookside section of Westhampton
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...provided it stays off TV.
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cThe Word - A Perfect Worldwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorMark Sanford
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And now a brief PSA: For those of you plugged into these newfangled social networking sites, you may want to check out our fan page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The future is now
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Peter Steinfels wants to know.
That is meant as a serious, honest question, not a snap way of dismissing a remarkable document, brimming with profound ideas and moral passion and issued at a time when it could hardly be more relevant. The matter is all the more confounding since Benedict has often
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John Allen reports:
In what could be seen as another piece of fallout from Benedict XVI’s January decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, the pope today restructured the Vatican office that handles relations with the
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We're just about to put the July 17 issue to bed. But before we do, we thought you'd be interested in Editor Paul Baumann's account of last week's POTUS/Catholic press meeting--just posted to the homepage. It begins:
“Apologies for the short notice,” began the e-mail I received late in the
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Via Melinda Henneberger at Politcs Daily, a disturbing report from Politico about the Washington Post's latest fundraising plan, apparently cooked up by CEO and publisher Katherine Weymouth:
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-
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You know how to bank. In honor of Canada Day, we're de-firewalling our piece on the Canadian banking system, "Northern Light." Kick back, pour yourself a glass of maple syrup, and marvel at their sound financial management
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(H/T Andrew Sullivan, who has more on the BBC report right here.)
For more on detainee abuse in the "war on terror," read Michael Peppard's article "Disgrace," now the lead story on our home page
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What's going to happen tomorrow? Will Ahmadinejad lose to the reformer Hossein Mousavi? Will the Revolutionary Guard crack down on Mousavi's youth movement? Read all about it:
The all-night street rallies and the joyful campaign of Mousavi's supporters have rekindled the passions and hopes of
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William Saletan has some good advice for participants in the president's abortion-reduction meetings.
Dear Ms. Barnes and other pro-choice participants in these meetings: Please give up this distinction [between "reducing the need for abortions" and "reducing abortions"]. No
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Really, Christianity Today? A Q&A with Samuel Wurzelbacher? Really? "They know where I stand," W2 says, "and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing." (HT TPM
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Free for all to read:
Ananda Rose Robinson's piece on the new deportees: "Borderline: Stranded in Nogales"
Cathy Kaveny's column on conscience protections: "The Right to Refuse"
Mollie Wilson O'Reilly's review of the play Irena's Vow: "The Miracle Worker&
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On last weekend's episode of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Be sure to watch the second clip, too (by clicking the "extended discussion" tab below the video box). Regrettably, there's no transcript for the online-only portion of the interview, but here is an excerpt from the
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Over at the Vox Nova blog, Morning's Minion has posted a long, thoughtful reflection on l'affaire Notre Dame. In case you can't read the whole thing right now, here's the outtro:
The Catholic right may think they have won a major tactical victory with the “watershed moment” over Obama’s
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The AP reports:
When President Barack Obama eased limits on taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research, the big question became how far scientists could go. Friday, the government answered: They must use cells culled from fertility clinic embryos that otherwise would be thrown away.
(...)
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I hesitate to give this any space at all, but here goes. Another Obama-hates-Jesus meme is spreading around the conservative blogosphere. An outfit called CNSNews (no relation to Catholic News Service) published a piece claiming that, at the request of the White House, Georgetown covered the
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Richard Armitage on his tenure with the Bush administration.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hEvvUBkYDk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2009%2F04%2F15%2Frichard-armitage-on-tortu_n_187391.html&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
(H/T HuffPo
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Randall Thompson: Alleluia - Voices of Ascension, Dennis Keene (conductor), Mark Kruczek (organ
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Stainer: God so loved the world - The Chapel Choir of University College,
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Been meaning to post a music-recommendation thread for months now. What's on your iPod--or your turntable? What are you playing, singing? This is the time of year when I spend my commute brushing up on choral pieces for the Triduum. I'll be back in the motherland this Easter--subject to the musical
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Brilliant.
Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating
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Ken Woodward makes his case in today's Washington Post:
I am an alumnus of Notre Dame. I am adamantly pro-life, independent as a voter -- and greatly pleased that Obama has agreed to speak at my alma mater. He joins six other sitting presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower -- including
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Paul Lauritzen interviews the Nigerian Jesuit Uwem Akpan, whose critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Say You’re One of Them, won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa region
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Housekeeping memo. From now on the E. J. Dionne Jr. columns that we aren't able to run in the print edition will appear on our Web site. The first one--"Fighting the Politics of Evasion"--is available right here. Be sure to check the home page regularly for updates
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The Times recently reported that New York Gov. David Paterson has favored legislation that would suspend the statute of limitations in sex-abuse cases involving private institutions. (Their editorial page opined on the matter here.) Apparently he's had a change of heart.
"These types of cases
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Darius Rejali looks at the history behind the CIA's torture techniques.
In the 20th century, there were two main traditions of clean torture—the kind that doesn't leave marks, as modern torturers prefer. The first is French modern, a combination of water- and electro-torture. The second is Anglo
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The New York State Assembly Codes Committee approved a controversial bill that would suspend the statutes of limitations in cases of sexual abuse involving private institutions. Now the bill will go to the Assembly floor for a vote.
For those who would rather not read the whole piece, excerpts
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It's true. Against the advice of Tim Geithner, AIG will pay out roughly half a billion in bonuses to the 370 people who bankrupted the company. In a letter to Secretary Geithner, AIG CEO Liddy claims that when it comes to these bonuses, "AIG's hands are tied." Liddy trots out the same
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Must read: Mark Danner's harrowing review of the Red Cross report on the CIA's treatment of fourteen "high value" detainees.
And so, after a devastating and unprecedented attack, the gloves came off. Guided by the President and his closest advisers, the United States transformed itself
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Stewart vs. Cramer (H/T everyone):
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Breaking details about Commonweal's eighty-fifth anniversary celebration, Commonweal Conversations:
Date: Monday, October 19, 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Place: Pier 60, Chelsea Piers, New York City
Receiving the second Catholic in the Public Square Award: Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics
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On March 26, the National Pastoral Life Center will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary with a symposium on St. Paul--featuring Peggy Steinfels, Tom Beaudoin, Cardinal Maradiaga, and Fr. Robert Schreiter--followed by a banquet honoring Commonweal contributors E. J. Dionne Jr. and Msgr. Harry
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So I neglected to mention that a few of us from Team Commonweal have invaded the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. Any other Commonwealers among the throngs? Stop by booth 213 and say hello. Free issues for those who mention dotCommonweal! For every copy of America you turn in, get two
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Just as the AP calls it, the Journal-Sentinel reports that Timothy Dolan will be New York's next archbishop.
It's official. Here's the press release from the Archdiocese of New York.
Even if they're mistaken, and I seriously doubt that, you'll be interested And be sure to read Archbishop
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Ten years ago today, film critic Gene Siskel passed away. On the Sun-Times Web site, Roger Ebert has posted a moving remembrance of his long-time sparring partner, some-time nemesis, and dear friend. It's a long, rich piece, so I encourage you to read it all, but here's one of the more interesting
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Facing more than 200 sexual-abuse lawsuits, the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the filing, the province claims about $5 million in assets with liabilities nearing $62 million. CNS has the story.
"Our decision to file Chapter 11 was
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Finding it hard to keep things interesting with your spouse in these dire economic times? Fear not. ForYourMarriage.org, an initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is on it. The Web site recently published a list of "ten cheap dates."
Heart: right place. Execution...
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Remember when Roland Burris swore up and down (and apparently under oath) that he had not been in contact with Blago or the disgraced guv's people about that vacant U.S. Senate seat--until he was appointed? Yeah, not so much.
In the latest in a series of shifting accounts of his conduct, Sen.
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From the New York Times liveblog of the A-Rod presser :
2:13 p.m.
Freudian Slip of the Decade:
“I’m here to take my medicine.”
Alex Rodriguez, February 17,
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For 25 years. (I've mentioned him before here, here, and here.) The Trib reports:
The white-haired McGuire, convicted by a federal jury last October of traveling to engage in sex acts with a teenage boy, showed little reaction to the testimony. When it finally came time for him to speak, McGuire,
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Pranksters, take heed. As the AP reports, various state departments of transportation have had it with hackers who reprogram digital road-side signs to say things like...
And...
And...
Yes those are real. And if you're caught tampering with road-side signs in Indiana, where
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The head of the Legion of Christ has written a letter to the group's lay movement in response to the revelations about Maciel. He doesn't allude to the news until the sixth paragraph.
As regards truth, the first thing we see in Christ’s presence is that he is the Truth, which leads us to look
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I updated my post below, but just in case people aren't checking that thread, here's the latest development in the Williamson saga.
John Allen reports today that the Vatican has released a statement from SSPX superior Bishop Bernard Fellay, who apologizes for Williamson’s offenses. It reads,
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Just posted by John Allen at NCR:
When the Vatican lifted the excommunication of four traditionalist Catholic bishops Jan. 21, it’s entirely possible Rome was unaware that one of those bishops, an Englishman named Richard Williamson, had just given an interview to Swedish television in which
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One of the bishops recently welcomed back into the Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI
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You remember Fr. Rodney Rodis. He's just been sentenced to thirteen years for embezzling nearly half a million dollars from his parish in Louisa County, Virginia. (Technically, the judge sentenced him to 200 years--the maximum--but suspended 187 of them.) AP story is here.
Authorities said Rodis
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This brief reflection from First Things editor Joseph Bottum was just posted to the On the Square blog:
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day
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Slate's William Saletan has a few choice words for one section of Dignitas personae:
This document covers several interesting topics, which I hope to get to in the days ahead. But the one that calls for rebuttal right away is the section on "[n]ew forms of interception and contragestation.&
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The Trib reports:
As legislators weigh impeaching Gov. Rod Blagojevich and federal prosecutors prepare to indict him on corruption charges, his acting chief of staff and a deputy governor will be keynote speakers Wednesday at an "Ethics in the Workplace" seminar for some 200 state
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Today the Boston Globe published a curious op-ed by the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops' National Review Board, Judge Michael Merz. The occasion for the piece is the release of the film Doubt, adapted from John Patrick Shanley's Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play about an accused
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According to the feds, he tried to sell President-elect Obama's Senate seat. And that's not all. Brief summary at HuffPo. WaPo article here. Running Chicago Tribune updates here. Astonishing charges. Talking Points Memo is all over it
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Our exclusive report on the USCCB's emergency meeting to address l'affaire Weis:
Chicago, Dec. 3 — The Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will convene an emergency meeting here today to discuss the University of Notre Dame’s decision to
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Just posted: the cover story of the December 5 issue, Michael Peppard's "The Secret Weapon: Religious Abuse in the 'War on Terror.'"
“One time there was a long, tortured cry. I turned around. There was a second and then a third cry, but they sounded different from the cries of people
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The classic WKRP turkey drop. Look out below. And happy Thanksgiving
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According to the Sun-Times:
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, author and Sun-Times columnist, is now recovering at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, weeks after he fell and suffered a head injury, a spokeswoman for the Catholic scholar said Tuesday.
Great news. Updates available here
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As mentioned in a recent thread, George Weigel's latest column declares: "this year's election cycle clarified decisively...that the great public fissure in these United States is between the culture of life and the culture of death." How does he know? To wit:
Washingtonians
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Maybe not. But, if you're interested, you can watch EWTN's live stream of the USCCB meeting here. They're discussing "Catholic Teaching in Political Life" right now. Start your air-poppers
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Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a column on its coverage of the controversial Terrence McNally play Corpus Christi. Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes:
When Terrence McNally’s “Corpus Christi” was first produced in New York 10 years earlier, the Manhattan Theater Club said there were
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The Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, which entered bankruptcy in 2006, announced yesterday that it has evidence that four clergymen sexually abused minors, including retired Bishop Lawrence Soens, whose case has been referred to the Vatican.
A five-member review board found Soens, who served as bishop
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I've seen versions of this quote before. One of my favorites:
"Studs is a character," said Scott Craig, the producer of a 1989 WTTW-Ch. 11 documentary titled, simply, "Studs." "But that doesn't make him a caricature. He's been famous around here for so long that people
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Then enroll at your nearest institution of higher learning. We're offering free subscriptions to undergraduates and grad students. All you have to do is e-mail your name, address, school, and expected year of graduation to Marketing Coordinator Nicole Benevenia: nicole-at-commonwealmagazine.org.
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You think the presidential race has taken a nasty turn? Get a load of this brutal mailer sent out by Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock, who accuses his opponent, Ed Hermes, of--are you sitting down?--living with his parents. It gets worse:
(View the full image here
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I'm going to open up a thread during the debate tonight for those who'd like to mix it up in the comboxes. Think of it as a group liveblog. So come back when the grudge match starts. BYOB
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP12aNzocSc[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2kjFn4s4sU[/youtube]
Watch CBS Videos
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I can't find an image of the hilarious ad for Bill O'Reilly's new book that appeared in today's New York Times, so here's an approximation:
"William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity."--Sr. Mary Lurana, St. Brigid's School, 1957
Some things never change.
He's the host of
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Obama calls McCain this morning to see if they can hammer out a joint statement on bailout principles. McCain returns call to accept the offer, then announces he will suspend his campaign tomorrow to focus on the crisis in Washington, urges Obama to do the same, and asks that Friday's debate be
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We just posted our September 26 editorial on the home page. Here's the lede:
It is hard to know what is more exasperating, the ill-informed statements of Catholic prochoice politicians about the church’s teaching on abortion, or the response of certain bishops, whose criticism of politicians
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A friend sent me the following reflection from one of his parishioners, who asked not to have his name attached. Well worth reading:
I am an alcoholic. I can say that now and know what it means- that was not always the case. When I first started coming to the rooms of AA I couldn’t say it. I
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OBAMA AND JESUS: TWO “COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS”
September 10, 2008
On the floor of the House of Representatives today, Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen said that “Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus.”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:
“
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For those who missed Bob Woodward's appearance on CBS last night
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Anyone watching the speech and dotCom at the same time? Feel free to post your thoughts in this open thread
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Google is great. Terrific search engine. Quick. Accurate. Free of clutter. Mettle-proving. Their e-mail client? Robust. Sure, there was a minor flap about "contextual ads" that appear on the basis of the words in your e-mails. But for limitless storage, who isn't willing to sacrifice a
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From the Belleville News-Democrat:
A jury awarded $5 million to a former altar boy Wednesday, validating arguments by his attorneys that the Rev. Raymond Kownacki sexually abused him and other youths and that top officials of the Belleville Diocese covered it up for decades.
(...)
The jury
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From Peter's column today--a Q&A with Doug Kmiec:
A. There is a widespread misconception that overturning Roe is the only way to be pro-life. In fact, overturning Roe simply returns the matter to the states, which in their individual legislative determinations could then be entirely pro-
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We just posted a Web exclusive from Laura Sheahen of CRS--a journal from the first week of her deployment as an aid worker in Georgia.
Day Three: Friday, August 15
A CRS colleague waits in a tedious bank line to transfer $25,000—a first installment of several to come—so Caritas Georgia can
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George Pawlaczyk of the Belleville News-Democrat reports:
While reports that the Rev. Raymond Kownacki was sexually molesting minors were piling up, Belleville Diocese bishops and other top church officials failed to investigate and routinely reassigned the priest six times to unsuspecting
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For those who missed Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyers tonight, check out the PBS Web site for the video and transcript. Commonweal readers will recognize Bacevich's arguments--he's offered versions of them here--but the whole interview is worth watching.
BILL MOYERS: You dedicate the book to your
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Today the Chicago Tribune published its summary of Cardinal George's deposition in the $12-million settlement with abuse victims. It isn't pretty. Bear with me as I quote the piece at length.
In his deposition, George revealed under oath the steps, missteps and lies that led to McCormack's tenure
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WBBM reports:
Cardinal Francis George announced the $12.675 million settlement himself, which involves ten Chicagoland priests and 16 abuse cases.
These abuse cases date back to the 1960s and extend through 2006. All of the priests have been removed from public ministry.
Its unclear how
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Is anyone watching this? My rough transcription:
Costas: What are your impressions so far?
Bush: First of all, I think the Chinese are being great hosts. The venues are fantastic. And our team's fired up, and so am I. I'm excited to be here. It's such a thrill to watch our men and women compete
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Just when you thought the HV anniversary rituals were over... For those who missed Peter Steinfels's excellent column in the New York Times yesterday, give it a read.
Often lost in these anniversary rituals is exactly what “Humanae Vitae” was about.
It was not, for example, an analysis and
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I am a bit surprised that John Allen's Sunday Times op-ed has not yet occasioned comment at dotCom. I found it disappointing and, at points, quite strange--I'll try to say more about why later. In the meantime, pop over to Pontifications for David Gibson's astute analysis:
The principal comment on
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What did you miss at the Museum of the City of New York last night? Sewell Chan reports at his Times blog, City Room:
Like the exhibition, the 90-minute discussion — moderated by Paul Baumann, editor of Commonweal magazine, a Catholic biweekly opinion journal — was heavy on history, but the
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Find out tomorrow night tonight at the Museum of the City of New York:
Tuesday • July 22 • 6:30 PM
Is Anti-Catholicism Dead?
Paul Baumann, editor of Commonweal, will moderate a discussion about the history of anti-Catholicism and its resonance today. From the virulent nativist movements
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Pat Lang wants to know why Bill Kristol was invited to a private meeting at Ft. Hood with Gen. Odierno, who is about to take over for Gen. Petraeus in Iraq:
Why was Kristol invited by the Defense department to Ft. Hood, Texas to talk to Odierno? Who were the other member of the "small group
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Virginia Heffernan on the perils of quoting sources on the Interwebs:
I am stumped by how to excerpt the language on message boards and blogs.
Take a passage signed by zipthwung, an astute online commenter: “pornography if for the ruling classes and their violent vulgar all consuming
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...to legitimate torture. Read Andrew Bacevich's review of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side.
In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. Her achievement lies less in bringing new
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We just updated the Web site with the July 8 issue. Be sure to read dotCommonweal regular Gene Palumbo's moving remembrance of Bill Ford, long-time friend of the magazine. Here's how it starts:
When William P. Ford died last month at the age of seventy-two, after a battle with esophageal cancer
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Australia's ABC TV seems to have caught Cardinal George Pell of Sydney in a rather serious error. In a letter dated February 14, 2003, Pell wrote to abuse victim Anthony Jones to dismiss the allegation because, Pell claimed, he had received no other complaints against the accused priest, Fr.
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It appears the pope has made them an offer--can they refuse
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In his great column today, Peter Steinfels asks an important question about NRLC's decision to feature Karl Rove as a keynote speaker at its annual convention:
Is it politically naïve to be surprised that the nation’s leading anti-abortion organization, which describes itself as nonpartisan,
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Just in from the National Pastoral Life Center:
Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News will speak at the Philip J. Murnion Lecture for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative Friday, June 27 at 8 p.m. at the Pryzbyla Center of the Catholic University of America in
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As noted by several blogs this week, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore has issued a letter to the Legionaries of Christ and its lay movement Regnum Christi requiring them to inform him of all their activities within the archdiocese--including names of priests, recruitment methods, the locations
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Today the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that foreign terrorist suspects imprisoned at Gitmo have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. The NY Times reports:
In a harsh rebuke of the Bush administration, the justices rejected the administration’s argument that the individual
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On the off chance that any dotCommonweal readers were hankering for a break from the abortion debates, I thought I'd point out this great piece by Natalie Angier on the odobenus rosmarus, the only pinniped that walks with its teeth.
“The first thing the walruses will do when they come over is
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Just posted as a Web exclusive: Don Wycliff's take on l'affaire Wright. A snippet:
Whatever may have been Wright’s motives for speaking out now, he stands to earn a dubious distinction in American history: the man who torpedoed the presidential chances of the first African American with a
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Talking Points Memo reports on some very suspicious robocalls being made in North Carolina. In the calls, a man identifying himself as Lamont Williams delivers the following message:
In the next few days you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out,
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Something much more important than Rev. Wright's performances happened yesterday. Morris Davis, the DoD's former chief prosecutor for terrorism, took the stand at Gitmo in defense of a terrorism suspect and declared in so many words that the U.S. military tribunal system is a sham. The Washington
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A view from the Tablet's Rome correspondent:
"Before he became Pope, Joseph Ratzinger was known as a very staunch Catholic," said one of New York's local TV personalities. The reporter said Benedict XVI had shown that "he really is a ‘people person', and that he is very open
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The New Republic recently posted a Q&A with Philippe Sands, the author of an important new book on the role of lawyers in the Bush administration's so-called coercive interrogation techniques. A snippet:
One of the lawyers you focus on is Doug Feith--though he makes clear in his interview
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Just as we learn that the Wall Street Journal's managing editor is expected resign after less than one year in the position, news comes that Rupert Murdoch has agreed to buy yet another New York-area paper, Newsday.
Selling the paper would be key to Tribune Chief Executive and Chicago real estate
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Amid the overwhelmingly positive coverage of the pope's visit, Rocco Palmo's praise stood out especially fulsome. He described New York City as buzzing with energy over Benedict's visit. Perhaps Brooklyn doesn't count, but having spent some time this weekend in several neighborhoods in both the
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Now this is genuinely surprising. John Allen reports that today Pope Benedict met privately with five victims at the Vatican embassy in Washington.
Prior to this afternoon, no pope had ever met with victims of sexual abuse by priests. That omission has been oft-cited by critics of the church’s
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You know, I think he really meant it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2bgmBqYDgA[/youtube
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Posted to our Web site just moments ago
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The New York Times is assembling an impressive amount of coverage for the papal visit, but its diagram of the Communion-distribution plan for Yankee Stadium contained an amusing gaffe. Can you find it
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As noted below, Barack Obama just announced his National Catholic Advisory Council, which includes Commonweal columnist Cathleen Kaveny and me (and other Commonweal contributors, such as David O'Brien and Richard Gaillardetz). Diligent readers of dotCommonweal won't be terribly surprised by my
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President Bush approved conversations detailing "enhanced interrogation" of detainees in the "war on terror." ABC News reports:
The most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be
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A bit late to the party--which is just fine--Marquette theologian Fr. Bryan Massingale offers a thoughtful op-ed on the Jeremiah Wright controversy (from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal):
The fact that many seem unable to move on is a signal that something more is fueling this ongoing discussion.
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One of John Yoo's fateful 9/11-justifies-all memos was released this week, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed several years ago. Lowlights from the Washington Post:
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might
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Finally, a piece about John McCain's flirtations with the Democratic Party. This will be a serious problem for McCain once the Dems have their nominee
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The New York Times has the prepared text. Update: essential reading. Those of you contributing to Robert Imbelli's thread should call a time-out and read the speech immediately. It's brilliant
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In all the hoopla surrounding Rev. Wright, a very important news item has gone ignored.
Brooklyn's Sixpoint beer just released "Hop Obama" ale in New York and Massachusetts. From the press release:
In keeping with the Illinois senator's unifying theme, the "Hop Obama" is an
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From the Dept. of Tit for Tat: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Last week, Geraldine Ferraro
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Over at his blog Get Religion, Terry Mattingly--nom de Web "tmatt"--links to an L.A. Times story on the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, which I returned from last week. Mattingly, a religion journo who apparently has never heard of the nearly forty-year-old event, finds the
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I tried to get Leonard Nimoy to plug this, but turns out he's a busy man. So you're stuck with me. The big news for the Commonweal Web site this a.m. is that after many months of work spanning several continents (really), the complete Commonweal archive is now live. You can search everything we've
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Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida finds it "unconscionable" that Democratic delegates from his state and from Michigan will not be seated at the Democratic convention this summer (the GOP delegate counts in those states were only halved by the RNC), so he's calling for a re-vote.
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TPM has put together a series of Hagee-related clips, including several moments of unhinged ranting (viewer discretion advised) and McCain's acceptance of his endorsement. What some of us Catholics are still waiting for is not simply an acknowledgment that McCain doesn't endorse everything Hagee
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Just posted on the home page: Robert N. Bellah's case for Barack Obama, which will run in the March 14 issue, and Wilfrid Sheed's review of John Judis's 1998 book William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives. Check them out
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Completely forgot to mention this: fellow Commonweal staffer Marianne Tierney and I will be hosting the magazine's booth at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress--starting tomorrow. (The Commonweal jet touched down just a few hours ago.) If you'll be among the horde of 30,000, swing by booth
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I knew we couldn't trust those newfangled voting machines...
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
[Thanks, Joe
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Speaking of Augustine...the Department of Justice has announced an investigation into waterboarding--sort of. Not a criminal investigation, of course--Attorney General Mukasey has already promised not to look into that (thank you, Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein). Rather, DOJ's Office of
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Hope I'm not stealing Peggy's thunder, but...
Here are CNN's Democratic exit polls, and here are their GOP exits.
Worth noting in the Democratic race: While Clinton and Obama nearly split the overall Catholic vote, 50 percent (Hillary) to 48 percent (Barack), Clinton won the weekly-Mass-
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The latest issue of Commonweal went live yesterday--including our editorial, "Bridge Closed," on Bishop Edward K. Braxton's decision to refuse permission for Luke Timothy Johnson to speak in the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois.
Commonweal sponsors a speakers bureau that sends a handful
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The Irish Times reports:
Former archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell, has withdrawn an attempt to stop documents handed over by his successor from being considered by the Government's inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
The withdrawal of the legal
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After refusing to admit that waterboarding is torture, Attorney General Mukasey now says he won't bother to investigate whether the waterboarding inflicted by U.S. personnel--now admitted by the White House--was illegal. (He also won't investigate warrantless wiretapping.) Why? Because the Justice
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As part of the Commonweal Speakers Program, Managing Editor Patrick Jordan recently gave a talk at St. John Student Parish at the Michigan State University. They run a very impressive operation--to wit, audio of Patrick's talk, titled "Dorothy Day: Her Message for Our Times," has already
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What's happening to undersea cables delivering the Internet to the Middle East? Nobody seems to know
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Check out the great NY Times feature "Voices from the Polls" for audio interviews with voters from polling places across the country today.
Update: And while we're at it, why not offer your own reports from your polling places? What did you see and hear
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Item one: Fr. Tom Doyle recently penned an open letter to and about Voice of the Faithful--to which VOTF Board Chair Bill Casey responded. The exchange is not exactly a lovefest. I'd post Doyle's letter here, but it is long. You can read it at Voices in the Desert (scroll to the bottom of the post
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Attorney General Michael Mukasey disappoints Sen. Charles Schumer--who voted to confirm Mukasey--by refusing to support a statute banning waterboarding, which is already illegal:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iERRrY1m_Mo&eurl=http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005179.php[/
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For those who missed 60 Minutes last night, check out the fascinating interview with FBI Agent George Piro, lead interrogator of Saddam Hussein.
"He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were
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Not to pile on, but of all the commentary on the Clintons' attacks on Barack Obama, E. J. Dionne's is the best I've seen so far.Let's grant the Clintons their claims: The press is tougher on Hillary Clinton than it is on Barack Obama; the old, irrational Clinton hatred is alive and well in certain
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No, not latest Hollywood adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. Rather, the results of a study released by the Center for Public Integrity.
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
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As Eduardo mentioned here recently, the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA) along with six Nevada residents have filed a federal lawsuit to block caucus sites on the Vegas strip on the grounds that the process unfairly favors casino workers. Last year, the Nevada Democratic Party set up
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On the latest Commonweal podcast, Paul Lauritzen interviews William B. Hurlbut, physician and consulting professor at Stanford's Neuroscience Institute. Hurlbut's main area of interest involves the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral
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SNAP has released a 1983 letter from the late bishop Aloysius Wycislo of Green Bay to Fr. John Patrick Feeney, who was convicted of molestation in 2004 and laicized in 2005. The letter reads in part:
As I go through the total file of the hearings, your meetings with the personnel board, and your
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So, what happened? A late break for Hillary that polls couldn't detect? Did the pollsters have the bad luck of stumbling on a group of liar-respondents? Theories abound: Her choke-up moment humanized her. Coupled with her debate performance, women were inspired to show their support. Bill's late
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What did you see? What did you like? Dislike? Who succeeded? Who didn't? Who wants to adopt Bill Richardson
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David Brooks's column on the Iowa results is well worth reading--and discussing, so have at it in the comboxes.Obama has achieved something remarkable. At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift — filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the
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When I called the Kiriakou interview a Rorschach test I had in mind the probability that he wasn't being entirely above-board. First, while he was part of the team that captured Zubaydah, he wasn't present for the interrogations he describes. Second, his testimony gives aid and comfort to the Bush
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Former JAG officer Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) put a hold on the bill in the Senate last week, claiming that "applying the Army Field Manual to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think it lawful and helps the country." As Steve Benen points out, Graham's
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Broken-record time again. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner darkly summarizes her study of the state's five electronic voting systems like so: “It was worse than I anticipated. I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.” Instead, the report found what we e-
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Over at the First Things blog, Thomas Sieger Derr cites Pope Benedict as a supporter of his skepticism of the "climate-alarmism movement":
...in a message prepared for World Peace Day on January 1, but released today, [the pope is] warning us against the climate change prophets of doom.
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Yesterday the House narrowly passed a bill that would outlaw a set of harsh interrogation methods. Predictably, President Bush threatened to veto it.
The administration particularly opposes restricting the CIA to interrogation methods approved by the military in 2006. That document prohibits
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Now that the hot stove has cooled, it's time for Major League Baseball's steroid bombshell to drop: the Mitchel Report was released today (PDF). The four-hundred-page report implicates several top players, including Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch (sensing
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Brian Ross's long, fascinating interview with the former CIA agent John Kiriakou contains a wealth of information, including that all the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used by Kiriakou's team were approved by higher-ups--even waterboarding, which Kiriakou correctly calls torture. (
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Over at Mirror of Justice, Rick Garnett isn't too taken with Eduardo's post on the Vatican and climate change.Eduardo writes, with respect to the news that the Holy See is sending a delegation to the climate-change conference in Bali:Let’s hope this signals the beginning of a shift away from the
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All that flag says to me is Cardinal Rocky. (And the Liberty Bell?!) Other nominees
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If anyone was wondering just how bad things have been at the CIA, the destroyed-interrogation-tapes controversy makes it clear: very. Today the New York Times reports that in 2003 officials in the White House and in the Department of Justice warned the CIA not to destroy the tapes, and at that time
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This is been much blogged elsewhere, but in case you missed it, read the blockbuster New York Times story on the CIA's decision first to hide then to destroy two videotapes of detainee interrogations. Highlights:
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting
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Quick round-up before lunch: In case you missed it, check out Ken Woodward's perceptive op-ed on Romney (published before the Big Speech). Commentary collection courtesy of Andrew Sullivan right here. Also have a look at Mathew Schmalz's Commonweal piece, "Meet the Mormons."
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So, we made the big switch to dotCommonweal 1.5--apparently without a major hitch. We've already addressed a handful of minor problems, but if you encounter any more, please let us know in the comment boxes below. (If you find that the site is not displaying correctly in Safari or Firefox [Mac], as
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Spencer Ackerman at TPM has been reading the recently leaked 2004 operations manual for military detentions at Gitmo.
Last month, Wikileaks published
the 2003 edition of the manual. Among other controversial provisions,
the manual instructed officials to hide certain detainees from the
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Incoming: very early Thursday morning, dotCommonweal (but not the main site) will be down for about two hours while our Web developers install several upgrades, most of which are behind-the-scenes improvements. Here's how the user interface will change come Thursday: First--are you sitting down,
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Today the New York Times published Linda Greenhouse's helpful preview of Wednesday's Supreme Court hearings, when detainee lawyer Seth Waxman will argue that--contra the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA)--federal judges do have jurisdiction to hear the cases of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The
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Welcome to the blogosphere, America! Be sure to check out their new blog, In All Things, which debuted this week
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Andrew Sullivan links to Deal Hudson's post on Rudy Giuliani's paid consultant (and childhood friend) Msgr. Alan Placa, who was accused of sexual abuse in a 2003 grand-jury report and has been suspended from ministry for the past five years. Andrew asks the right question: Where's the press on this
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Chicago Sun-Times writer Steve Patterson reports today on the disconcerting story of a parish business manager who warned the chancery about his pastor's questionable spending habits and was told to keep his yap shut--then fired.
Brockhagen was business manager at St. Margaret Mary -- the
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"There's no chin behind Chuck Norris's beard. Only another fist." Classic. I don't know who thought up this spot, but he deserves a raise
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The convicted sexual abuser Rev. Donald McGuire plans to fight the Jesuits' decision to dismiss him from the order. No surprise there. "They can't abandon me," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Sure they can. The conviction isn't going to help his cause when the Congregation for the Doctrine
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Jason Berry thinks not.
Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, is currently
preparing to assume the presidency of the Conference of Catholic
Bishops, whose annual meeting begins Monday in Baltimore. His new
position would make George highly visible when Pope Benedict XVI
arrives
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Religion reporter Susan Hogan/Albach has a piece in today's Chicago Sun-Times that asks, "When and what did the archdiocese know?" She reports that in December 2002 a concerned father contacted the Archdiocese of Chicago to complain about Donald McGuire, SJ--convicted last year of
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Those of you who have been following the depressing case of Donald McGuire, SJ, convicted last year of molesting two high-schoolers, will be interested to know that U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys just released Maguire on a $50K bond. McGuire was recently picked up by feds and charged with
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Here's a sneak peek at our Nov. 9 issue, which will go up on the home page later this afternoon: "Torture's Enablers".
First you are strapped to a plank. Then the
plank is tilted so that your feet are above your head. Next a cloth is
pulled taut across your mouth, and finally water
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Apparently Mukasey's unwillingness to call waterboarding torture along with his view that the president of the United States can operate outside the law weren't enough to persuade Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that he's the wrong man for the job. Their endorsement
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Yesterday President Bush invited reporters into the Oval Office for a preview of a speech he gave later that day at the Heritage Foundation. He's annoyed by how long the Mukasey confirmation is taking. Implying that the United States is at risk in the "war on terror" while operating
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No, of course not. But you wouldn't know it from Diogenes' post on the magazine's recent editorial on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Here it is, in its entirety:
America ♥ Gordon
Posted by: Diogenes
- Oct. 29, 2007 1:51 PM ET USA
America Magazine is
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Rudy says that whether waterboarding is torture "depends"--not only on what's being done but also, remarkably, who's doing it. John McCain disagrees.
“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s
genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports
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At an Iowa town-hall meeting, Linda Gustitus, president of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, put a couple of questions to America's mayor. Noting that Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey had "fudged" when asked whether waterboarding is torture, Gustitus said:
“I
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Congressional hearings on the absurdly unfair postal rate hike will be held on October 30 at 10 a.m. Victor Navasky of the Nation and Jeff Hollingsworth of Human Events are going to testify about the damage the rate increase is doing to political and cultural periodicals. Remember, the National
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The Tribune's Mark Silva has a partial transcript.
RUSSERT: You know, if you look at the voting blocs that exist in
South Carolina and around the country, I'm quite surprised the way you
treat them in this book. Senior citizens -- this is what you call them
-- "old people." "
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Several friends have sent this image to me. Supposedly, the direction in which you see the dancer spinning reflects which side of your brain is dominant. Apparently
most people see the dancer rotating in a counterclockwise direction. When I first looked, I
saw her spinning clockwise. But with
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Bill Cork on John Allen on Pope Benedict's upcoming beatification of Fr. Gabino Olaso Zabala. First Allen:
According to written testimony from the victim, Olaso
participated in the 1896 torture of a Filipino priest named Fr. Mariano
Dacanay, who was suspected of sympathy for anti-Spanish
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Courtesy of the preposterously unfair postal-rate hike, which will cost NCR an additional $95,000 annually. They're going to publish twenty-four times a year, and increase the page count of each issue. I can't find any announcements online yet, but below is a scan of the letter they sent to
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For God Is Not Great, natch. Gene McCarraher, start your engines
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Paul Lauritzen is back with his latest podcast: an interview with longtime friend of Commonweal, Sidney Callahan. You may recall that Sidney's new book Created for Joy was positively reviewed by dotCommonwealer Robert Imbelli. Give a listen below, download it directly, or subscribe via iTunes
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Iraq was just the beginning:
Founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives, the nonprofit
group [Freedom's Watch] is set apart from most advocacy groups by the immense wealth of
its core group of benefactors, its intention to far outspend its rivals
and its ambition to pursue a
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America magazine has posted a slew of letters they received in response to Fr. Miscamble's article on Catholic identity at Notre Dame. Keep an eye out for a few Commonweal and dotCommonweal regulars. (Registration is required.)And don't forget:
John McGreevy's response to Miscamble in Commonweal
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About those armed nuclear missiles that were transported by plane through U.S. airspace... The WaPost reports that it was the result of a "simple error." One Talking Points Memo writer isn't buying it:
So let’s see: not only did the munitions custodian officer lose track
of the
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At the Fordham forum on Iraq last night, one of many astute audience members asked whether there can be a genuine moral accounting for the injustice of the war without a mea culpa from those responsible. In that vein, have a look at the trailer to the film No End in Sight, which Andrew Sullivan dug
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A small housekeeping matter, dotCommonwealers: We've been hit with our first comment spam (took them long enough), so we've had to implement image verification with every comment. I know it's a pain in the neck, but spammers are a clever lot, and this is a relatively painless way to keep our blog
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Georgetown University theologian--and Commonweal contributor--Rev. Peter Phan (a priest of Dallas) is being looked at, according to John Allen:
Both the Vatican and the U.S. bishops are
investigating a book by a prominent American Catholic theologian, Vietnam-born
Fr. Peter Phan of
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Talking Points Memo has helpfully posted a slew of videos related to the general and his report. Here are a few worth watching.First up, a snippet from Petraeus's exclusive interview with that bastion of fairminded journalism, Fox News. Take it away, Brit...Did you catch that? Hume asked Petraeus
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That's the title of our editorial in the new issue of Commonweal, which went live on the homepage today. Serendipitously, the new iteration of Crisis magazine also launched today: Inside Catholic is the umbrella Web site that hosts the now online-only Crisis, its parent organization the Morley
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The New Republic has posted a useful primer on the myriad Iraq reports that have already been issued. It's worth reading before General Petraeus delivers his tomorrow.Also worth reading: today's New York Times editorial on the general's report.
As Congress waited anxiously for General Petraeus
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Reuters reports:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego has settled lawsuits with
144 victims of sexual abuse by priests for $198 million, the diocese
and lawyers for the victims said on Friday.
The settlement was twice as much as the diocese offered five months
ago to resolve
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As predicted, Virginia authorities have dropped their embezzlement charges against Fr. Rodney Rodis to make way for the feds, who arraigned Rodis today new charges of stealing half a million dollars from his two parishes, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. According to prosecutors, Fr
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Bracing figures from the Census Bureau: 47 million Americans (15.8 percent of the population) lack health insurance, up from 44.8 million last year. And the number of uninsured children rose for the second consecutive year--after years of steady decline. The Los Angeles Times reports:
Most of the
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I realize I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on this topic, but it's an important one. The cable channel HDNet recently aired a Dan Rather special on the myriad and very serious problems with computer touchscreen voting machines that is well worth watching. (Warning: it's about an hour
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Big news in today's (or, technically, tomorrow's) the Age of Melbourne :
THE Catholic Church is still not serious about confronting
sexual abuse, only "managing" it, according to the Sydney bishop
who headed Australian efforts to tackle abuse.(...)
Bishop Robinson, 70, who was
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Mark Lilla's New York Times Magazine article has garnered some attention on this blog and elsewhere. I recently received the following helpful response to the piece from Dean Brackley, SJ, of the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador. Have a look:
Mark Lilla's essay "The Politics of
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Late last year, I blogged on the decision of the Priests of Holy Cross, Indiana Province, to close Notre Dame High School for Boys (my alma mater). A few months later, I wrote a piece for the National Catholic Reporter detailing how province came to that difficult decision, and how the school would
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I recently bumped Peter Galbraith's New York Review of Books article, "Iraq: The Way To Go." The NYRB had the bright idea of fielding readers' questions about the piece and forwarding them to Galbraith for his response. You can read the exchange right here. From Galbraith's replies:
I
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A few items I've been meaning to plug...
Cardinal George spoke to local Chicago news about the sentencing of admitted molester Fr. Daniel McCormack. He admitted his own mistakes in the case--which, along with the errors of several others, were very serious--but refused to say exactly what
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Rejoice: the August 17 Commonweal was just posted on the homepage. Some highlights:
"$660 Million"--our editorial on the Los Angeles sexual-abuse settlement.
"The Face of God"--Peter Steinfels's take on Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth.
"All Too Real"--
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The most recent New York Review of Books contains the usual selection of excellent articles. (Regretably, they firewalled a review of Wilfrid Sheed's new book, so read Garrison Keillor's NY Times review instead.) But before you dip into the somewhat less depressing fare, be sure to read Peter
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In the comment boxes of Peter Nixon's post on the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Robert Imbelli mentioned the marvelous fresco La Madonna della Strada, which was recently--and rather dramatically--restored. Thanks to the cybersleuthing of dotCom reader Alan Andolsen, you can have a look at the
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As if the they needed more exposure, in the latest Civilita Cattolica a Jesuit argues for the SJs to set up shop in the online virtual-world game Second Life--a game not exactly known for its spiritual depth.
Father Antonio Spadaro, the literary critic of "Civilta' Cattolica" and
an
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Today's New York Times contains an Editorial Observer piece on the return of the old Mass. Writer Lawrence Downes recounts his experience at a Tridentine "low" Mass at a Chicago church:
I went up the steps of the Renaissance-baroque church, through a
stone doorway and back into my
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The New York City Department of Buildings Web site shows that an undated demolition permit for the ill-fated parish is on file. A curious squib recently appeared in the Villager, a local paper covering Vilnius's neighborhood:
On a stroll through Hudson Square on Monday, we passed Our Lady of
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There isn't a tremendous amount of attention being paid to the issue of computer voting machines, but there ought to be. It seems that every tech-head who's had a chance to hack the machines has been successful. They are not the solution to the hanging-chad problem. They are a disaster waiting to
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In his second Commonweal podcast, Paul Lauritzen interviews Karen Long, book review editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, about the magazine's summer-reading feature, along with other notable books, such as Be Near Me and The Gravedigger's Daughter. You can listen to the show via the embedded
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Katie Couric puts the former chairman of the National Review Board in the hot seat
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On September 1, Crisis will go online-only under the new domain TheCatholicInsider.com, which will also host the Morley Institute. In the Morley Publishing Group's press release, Brian Saint-Paul, editor of Crisis, explained: "With this transition, we're actually able to expand our mission,
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Some notable items in the L.A. abuse scandal story:
Reuters reports that Latinos in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (half the city) continue to support Cardinal Mahony. Shocker.
The civil suits may have been settled, but there remains the possibility of criminal prosecution.
An L.A. Daily
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The figure is astonishing--over half a billion dollars in abuse settlements involving 508 victims. And that is not including the $114 million the L.A. Archdiocese paid out earlier this year. No wonder Cardinal Mahony announced he was selling the chancery in May. But that building won't come close
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Andrew Sullivan isn't optimistic about the president's press conference on Iraq (transcript):
He's arguing he didn't decide to go to war; Saddam did. He's saying he
agrees with his Republican critics. He's blaming the generals for all
the combat decisions that have made this war a failure. His
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Be sure to jump over to the home page to read the just-released issue of Commonweal, including Jack Miles's review of the pope's book on Jesus, the editorial on dialogue among Catholic scholars, and Richard Alleva's latest film review. Anxious to get at some of the subscribers-only features (you'
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From the Congressmen and -women's press release:
Fourteen Members of Congress including Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and
Congressman Tim Ryan (OH-17) sent a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops (USCCB) last Thursday, calling on the Bishops to increase their
involvement in
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Today, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released something called "Responses to some Questions
Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church." I'm not sure who was asking, but here's the link to the Vatican Information Service story about the document, which
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And--hard to believe, I know--much more pressing (not that I'm expecting motu-level comments here): Yesterday the New York Times editorial page called for the United States to withdraw from Iraq. Some highlights:
Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is
wrong. The war
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I meant to blog this sooner, but in case you missed it, take the time to read the Washington Post's much-talked-about four-part blockbuster on Dick Cheney. The articles provide plenty of context for today's news.And while you're at it, have a look at the hilarious, and at times frightening, piece
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So, he did it. He really did it. The convicted purjurer Libby is guilty still, but the president found the prison sentence "excessive," so he commuted it (Scooter still has to pay the fine, though--see, crime doesn't pay). In making the decision, the president opted out of running it
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Several months ago, I blogged on the painful case of Fr. Daniel McCormack, 38, whose alleged abuses made the holes in the Archdiocese of Chicago's abuse policy all too clear. Now it appears that he'll plead guilty to charges that he abused five boys at his West Side church. Allegedly, abuse took
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A few weeks back, dotCommonweal contributor Paul Lauritzen generously offered to helm an experiment in podcasting for the site. His first effort is an interview with Fr. Donald Cozzens, author of Freeing Celibacy. The interview focuses on the sexual-abuse scandals--including due process for accused
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Since this subject popped up in the iPope thread (God knows why), here's a place for dotCom readers to discuss--with exemplary civility--the looming motu propio. From Vatican Information Service:
VATICAN CITY, JUN 28, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is the text of a communique released today by the Holy
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Commonweal contributor Andrew Bacevich in Monday's L.A. Times:
In fact, the great lesson of Iraq (further affirmed in Afghanistan) is that the umma
— the Arabic name for the entire Muslim community — is all but
impervious to change imposed from the outside. If anything, our
ham-handed
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Seymour Hersch's infuriating piece on General Taguba and his hamstrung investigation of the Abu Ghraib atrocities.
If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the
thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The
inquiry had begun in January, and was led by
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Andrew Sullivan posted this over the weekend--The Simpsons on heaven
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Some of you nonsubscribers out there (for shame!) may have noticed that we had placed Eugene McCarraher's review of Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great behind the subscriber-only firewall. Well, we decided that it was far too good to hide under a bushel, so now the piece is free to the masses
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I hate to interrupt the orgy of pop-culture commentary, but in case you weren't able to access our Web site yesterday, don't forget to check out the home page, which was updated on Monday--especially Luke Johnson's and Eve Tushnet's pieces on homosexuality and Scripture. Read, digest, discuss.P.S.
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Or even good. So says Paul Baumann in his review of Christopher Hitchens's latest book, which appears in the June issue of the Washington Monthly. Regretably, it's not online. But maybe someone with better Intertube skills than I can crack their confusing Web site. In the meantime, here's a
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Meant to bump this last week, but be sure to check out America's spiffy new Web site. Rebuilding a site from the ground up isn't easy; they've done a heck of a job
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In today's edition, Emily Brady briefly updates New York Times readers on the situation of Our Lady of Vilnius. Readers of dotCommonweal won't learn much from the piece, although it does contain one surprise: Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese of New York explains the
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Let's see, where was I? Right. The failures of the Bush administration. Arriving a tad late to the party, Peggy Noonan has issued a call to conservatives, even Republicans, to dump the president.
The beginning of my own sense of
separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when
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Coming in the May 21 issue of America: Bishop Donald Trautman's strong--and I mean strong--critique of the new Mass translations. He singles out, for example, an Advent prayer over the gifts:
Accept, O Lord, these gifts,and by your power change theminto the sacrament of salvation,in which the
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Who got the better of the debate? The Empire Zone, a New York Times blog, has the goods
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Dan Mangan of the New York Post has the scoop. You've seen the term "lay trustee" bandied about in stories about Our Lady of Vilnius. What does it mean? In New York, parishes are separately incorporated, and each is governed by a set of five trustees: the bishop, usually his secretary,
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In an earlier post, I summarized the latest developments in the case of Our Lady of Vilnius, a Lithuanian parish in Manhattan whose closure was questionably carried out by Cardinal Egan. As photographs have shown, not only have the pews, stained glass, altar, and icon been removed--for
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We're delighted to announce another new addition to our stable of illustrious dotCommonweal contributors: David Gibson, author of The Rule of Benedict and The Coming Catholic Church. You've seen David popping up in the comment boxes of various threads (even when they concern his own work). So we
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As you know, Bill Donohue tirelessly beats back anti-Catholicism wherever it may rear its ugly head. Look at his latest press release:
If the same standard that was applied to President
George W. Bush were to be applied to Senator Barack Obama, then Obama
must be considered
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There have been a few interesting developments in the story of Cardinal Egan's conduct in closing Our Lady of Vilnius, a Lithuanian parish in Manhattan. (For background, read my post on the subject and my piece in the March 23 Commonweal. And it can't hurt to read Michael Powell's recent profile
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David Pogue, guru of all things technological at the New York Times, wrote a great post on the issue of codes of conduct in the blogosphere, including those who leave anonymous, not entirely courteous, comments.
The quality of the discussion at nytimes.com/pogue is very, very high, as a
number
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A housekeeping question for those of you who subscribe to Commonweal via snail mail: when did you receive the April 6 issue (the one with the Easter eggs on the cover), and in what part of the country do you live? Thanks for your help
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NCR's Joe Feuerherd reports on the issue of due process for priests who are accused of sexual abuse.
Four years ago, an adult woman informed her local diocese that a
recently ordained priest had groped her. No criminal or civil charges
were filed, but the initial investigation showed that the
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Check out David Gibson's op-ed in Monday's New York Times, "His Own Pope Yet?":
Above all, in his pronouncements and writings, he carefully accentuated the positive. His first encyclical was titled “God Is Love,” and charity has become the recurring byword of his apparently irenic
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Who's behind the postal rate hike that will punish smaller periodicals to the tune of 30-percent in rate increases, and reward larger publications with hikes of less than 10 percent? Click here to find out. (Hint: it rhymes with Wime Torner.) I've signed the petition at that site, and urge you to
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You may have noticed the lead story on the home page, Mark Sargent's "Vengeance Time: When Abuse Victims Squander Their Moral Authority." We're already getting...somewhat heated letters about it--not that anyone is surprised. Mark gives voice to the concerns of many observers of the
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As promised, here's a link to the lead editorial in our April 20 issue, "Bishops & Their Critics," which was mentioned in Peter Steinfels's "Beliefs" column in Saturday's New York Times. A sample:
President George W. Bush’s decision
to go to war with Iraq was initially
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Peter Steinfels's "Beliefs" column on Saturday offered a preview of Commonweal's April 20 editorial, which will be available on our Web site this afternoon (I'll bump it here):
For over four years, George Weigel, staunch supporter of President Bush and biographer of Pope John
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Jonathan Glater and Karen Arenson report:
In a fierce contest to control the student loan market, the nation’s banks and lenders have for years waged a successful campaign to limit a federal program that was intended to make borrowing less costly by having the government provide loans directly
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John Allen's "The Real Ratzinger Revealed" is free on the Tablet's Web site. Were you expecting a "fundamentalist" pope? If so, how are you coping with having the expectation confounded?
If the danger of the John XXIII and Paul VI era was throwing the baby
out with the
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I'm pleased to announce that Paul Lauritzen, director of the Program in Applied Ethics at John Carroll University, has agreed to join our esteemed roster of dotCommonweal contributors. You may recall Paul's most recent Commonweal article, "Holy Alliance? The Danger of Mixing Politics &
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Just wanted to bump Andrew Bacevich's op-ed in today's L.A. Times, along with his Commonweal piece, currently the lead story on our homepage. (Cliff May responds at the Corner
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DotCommonweal contributor Joe Komonchak sent me two photos of the spectacular San Clemente mosaic discussed here earlier this week, and asked me to post them. Without further ado, and just in time for Easter, here they are. And the detail: 
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Just in time for Good Friday:
In a bankruptcy reorganization plan filed March 28, the San Diego
Diocese proposed a $95 million pool to compensate 143 people who claim
childhood sexual abuse by priests.
Under the proposal 83 victims who say they were forced to have
sexual intercourse could
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Bill Cork has a post on the rumored universal indult for the Tridentine Mass that put me in mind of Cathy Kaveny's phrase describing those who are eager for the "restoration" but don't know Latin, or--as Bill points out--don't want to learn Latin
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The March 24 edition of the Tablet of London contains reader responses to Robert Mickens's article on Jon Sobrino's "notification" by the CDF. The full letters pages are available only to subscribers, but here's an excerpt from the best of the bunch.
We used to have a complex system of
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It's been a long time since I left a movie theater believing I had seen a great American film, but that's exactly what was buzzing around my head as I walked out of Zodiac, David Fincher's brilliant, obsessive recreation of the hunt for the serial killer who terrorized northern California in the
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The following e-mail went out to the Ave Maria University community this afternoon:
To the Ave Maria University community: I have been asked to resign my position as provost and leave the campus immediately.
I will miss Ave Maria and the many of you whom I hold dear.Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
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Fr. Daniel McCormack will have his day in court after all. From the AP:
A May first hearing is scheduled for a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing several children in Chicago. Daniel
McCormack appeared in a Cook County courtroom today. And Judge Thomas
Sumner agreed to a
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If you're in the Philadelphia area, you may want to drop in on this event tomorrow night.Update: By the way, please feel free to share your ideas about the subject of tomorrow's panel discussion. What intrigues you about the blogosphere--Catholic and otherwise? What worries you?Post-event update:
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More proof that Stephen Colbert is the best TV interviewer working today
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The story hasn't made much of a splash Stateside, but Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ, a well-known liberation theologian, is the subject of a "notification" by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which takes issue with several aspects of his Christology. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo
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From the Revealer, an interview with the director of a remarkable-sounding new film (I haven't seen it yet):
Tiny bottle of Chartreuse in hand, I emerged in mid-town a few weeks ago from
watching Into Great
Silence, my promised dinner date long-gone. The two-hour
documentary about a
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Be sure to visit the home page and check out the new issue, which went live today--especially Peter Quinn's article, "The Gentle Darwinians: What Darwin's Champions Won't Mention." Col. Blimp or Lt. Columbo
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Live from exhibit hall of the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress:A sixty-something woman just approached a Scott Foresman representative in the booth next to Commonweal's, and asked, "You don't have any adult videos, do you?" Maybe those critics are right, after all
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You'll recall my previous posts (two links there) on Bishop Bruskewitz's decision to excommunicate members of about a dozen groups, including Call to Action and SSPX, en masse. CTA apparently appealed to the Signatura, which declined to rule on the issue. News reports have tended to treat this non-
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Try to ignore the overheated evaluations of the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress that issue annually from some corners of the Catholic blogosphere. It's an impressive event. And this year, again, Commonweal will be there. If you're going to attend, why don't you stop by our booth to say
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Cardinal Egan does himself no favors with this move.
Edward Cardinal Egan pulled a fast one on a lower Manhattan parish
pastor yesterday, summoning the priest to meet with him - then
dispatching security guards to permanently lock the cleric's church
doors.
The priest returned to Our Lady of
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John Allen's recent Web column has occasioned some teeth-gnashing among those who want bishops to refuse Communion to prochoice Catholic politicians (see here, here, and here).But I wonder what such critics make of the fact that the former mayor of Rome, well known as a prochoice Catholic
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Some highlights from the current issue of Commonweal, now available on the home page:
Our editorial on the new series of church financial scandals, which threatens to further erode the laity's trust in their bishops.
Mathew Schmalz's fascinating article on Audrey Santo, and the devotion that
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Accusations abound in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Former Cleveland Catholic Bishop Anthony Pilla received
$177,000 in money and furniture over a decade from an
off-the-books church account set up to hide the
transactions, a former diocesan official said.
The accusation came in a 40-page
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A former staffer for Joe Lieberman's 2006 campaign takes the lefty netroots folks to task for their tactics in the flap surrounding John Edwards's now-resigned bloggers. He points out the obvious--though apparently not obvious enough to Edwards and the blogging Left: Catholic voters matter.
One
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BustedHalo recently published a favorable take on the play by a young woman religious. And Bill Cork doesn't see why it shouldn't serve as a jumping-off point for a discussion of moral theology. 
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On Sunday, about twenty parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Angels began their vigil to protest the decision of the Archdiocese of New York to close the parish. (Read the New York Times story here.) The Times reports on its conclusion:
Six women were led away in handcuffs from an East Harlem
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Commonweal is establishing a new
internship program that will provide promising young Catholic scholars, writers,
journalists and critics with real-world experience in opinion journalism as well
as stimulating opportunities to meet and work with potential mentors and
teachers in academia,
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Amanda Marcotte has resigned.Update: Bill Donohue remains unsatisfied.Update 2: McEwan has also resigned
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A few new developments on the Donohue vs. Edwards front. First, Commonweal columnist Melinda Henneberger picked up Eduardo's post below over at the Huffington Post. Second, the New York Times published a follow-up story, which made no mention of the offended who are not on the Right. Third and
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From Vatican Information Service:
VATICAN CITY, FEB 7, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a declaration of the
Holy See delivered during the course of a world congress on the death penalty,
held in Paris, France from February 1 to 3.
"The Paris congress," reads
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Some of you may recall my Religion News Service (RNS) piece criticizing the clergy-abuse documentary Deliver Us from Evil. Apparently it had no effect on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, because they have nominated the film for an Oscar. Later this month, Deliver Us will have its
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Two items, briefly: One, check out this map of the imperial history of the Middle East (give it time to load)--from the folks at Maps of War, who also ginned up a map of the history of religion. (HT, I'm told, goes to Martin Marty.)Two: Cathy Kaveny's long-awaited article, "Salvation & '
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Play it, Chicago Symphony Orchestra.(Thanks for the opening, Eduardo
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The PBS ombudsman has looked into the controversy surrounding a local affiliate's decision not to air the clergy-abuse documentary Hand of God at its scheduled time, even though the vast majority of other PBS station did. He published his findings earlier this week. (More on this in my posts here
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Here is the must-read statement delivered by Zbigniew Brzezinski in today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. It's long, I realize, but stick with it. Take it all in.
Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice
in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for
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Media Matters has posted a useful timeline of the events following a nasty piece of yellow journalism published by InsightMag.com--a "news" outfit owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church--that claimed the Clinton camp "has discovered" that Barack Obama attended a madrassa
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I meant to blog this a few weeks ago, but never got around to it. On my flight to San Diego for the Catholic Campus Ministry Association conference earlier this month, I was treated to a rare flying pleasure: a good in-flight movie--The Queen, which is up for Best Picture. The PG-13-rated film
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The latest issue of New York magazine contains David Gibson's revealing, well-reported article on the state of the Archdiocese of New York, its priests, and its archbishop. Those of you keeping tabs on ArchNY may recall the controversy surrounding an anonymous letter that was quite critical of
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In case you missed it, worth your while (including the definitive revelation of the nature of his hair
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Lots more happening in the dustup over the decision of a Catholic-diocese-owned PBS affiliate not to air the clergy abuse documentary Hand of God on January 16 at its scheduled time, as did most other PBS stations.* Published TV listings and the station's own Web site listed the program as
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As Andrew Sullivan has noted, Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vermont) has had quite enough of Attorney General Gonzales's dismissive answers in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on detainee policy. Here's the video from the CBC (CNN's account curiously edited some of the better moments). Andrew also
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If you live in the Rio Grande Valley, that is. The local PBS affiliate there decided not to show the Hand of God episode of Frontline on Tuesday night, although it was broadcast on most other PBS stations around the country.* Instead, KMBH-TV ran last week's episode of Frontline, which focused on
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Commonweal columnist and Huffington Post contributor Melinda Henneberger reports on former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee.
One of the sharpest exchanges of the day was between Albright and a
fellow Democrat. Responding to her
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If you missed Frontline last night, you can now watch the documentary Hand of God in its entirety on the robust Web site PBS set up for the film. It's helpfully broken up into ten segments, so if you aren't conditioned for 90-minute sessions in front of your computer, you can watch it in parts.&
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Are you having trouble leaving comments on the blog? Experiencing other Web-site-related weirdness? If you can manage to leave a comment on this post, please explain in detail the technical difficulties you're having. It will be helpful to know what operating system you use (Windows 98, XP, or Mac
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Tuesday night, PBS will air a Frontline documentary, Hand of God (9 p.m. Eastern, but check local listings, or watch online). I watched a screener on the flight home for the holidays--nothing says Christmas like a sexual-abuse documentary--and intended to blog on it much sooner, but the holiday
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Commonweal contributor David Gibson has an op-ed in the Newark Star-Ledger on the Catholic topic du jour:
Throughout its history, Poland has been fiercely Roman Catholic, rallying to the faith even as the nation was regularly overrun by invaders, to the point that Poland was known in Rome as the
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The New York Times has published the first in a long-awaited (at least by me), major series of articles by David Gonzalez on a Pentecostal church in Harlem, and "los aleluyas" who run it. (You should also check out the interactive feature
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[Update: The good folks at America have decided to make Bishop Curry's article and the letters responding to it free. Christmas in January!]
Last month I noted an unwieldy and finally disappointing article by Bishop Thomas J. Curry in the November 20 edition of America, "The Best and Worst
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Der Spiegel on the Polish question. Anne Applebaum on l'affaire Wielgus. (H/T to dotCom reader Jimmy Mac.) And Sandro Magister lays out the case. (H/T Amy Welborn.)And, of course, check out the Piotr Mazurkiewicz piece from the current issue of Commonweal, "The Polish Paradox," written
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Lots of commentary on the address already. Are his premises wrong? Are the Iraqi government and military up to the task? Has Joe Lieberman decamped from the reality-based community? If the Democrats reject the "surge," can they stop it? What about the Republicans? What happens in '08?
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It's come to our attention that many users are having a hard time moving their accounts over to the new system, and it isn't hard to see why. Here's the deal:If you are a print subscriber and want to receive full access to our archive online, you need to login and click the My Account link near
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Effective this weekend, Commonweal is introducing some changes at its Web site. Probably the most significant change is that while stories from each current issue of the magazine remain available for free, almost all stories prior to the current issue, and our extensive searchable archive of past
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What happened at Gitmo (WaPo, free registration req'd)?
FBI agents witnessed possible mistreatment of the Koran at the military
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including at least one instance in
which an interrogator squatted over Islam's holy text in an apparent
attempt to offend a captive
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As I promised in an earlier post, I did some digging to find out the canonical significance of Bishop Bruskewitz's 1996 decision to excommunicate members of Call to Action (and several other groups) in his diocese, along with its recent affirmation by Cardinal Re, prefect of the Congregation for
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For those of you who missed this important announcement before last night's broadcast of Monday Night Football
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Quick, somebody give our lawmakers a crash course in computer technology. From the same part of the legislative brain that brought you computer voting machines comes a proposed law to have sex offenders register their e-mail addresses and instant-message screen names.
Here's how the plan would
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From the University of Notre Dame newswire:
The Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education—a national group of Catholic educators, administrators, diocesan representatives, philanthropists, and investment specialists—has released a report on the challenges and opportunities confronting
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On March 19, 1996, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, issued a warning to Catholic members of a dozen groups to sever ties with the organizations by April 15, 1996, or face excommunication within his diocese. One of the groups, Call to Action, appealed to the Vatican.
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Lorne Michaels, I think you just found your next stars
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From "The Best and Worst of Times," by Bishop Thomas J. Curry, an auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in the November 20 issue of America:
In
parish life, I find little evidence of the supposedly polarized church.
The pastoral conflicts that occupy me center on personnel,
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From the Chicago Tribune:
A Sister of Mercy who taught in Chicago-area Catholic schools for more
than three decades has been indicted in Wisconsin over allegations that
she abused pupils at a Milwaukee school nearly 40 years ago.
Sister Norma Giannini is accused of having sexual intercourse
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When Bishop Michael Saltarelli of Wilmington, Delaware, released the names of twenty priests or former priests of his diocese who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse, I wonder if he imagined the following scenario as a possible consequence.
Members of two groups representing victims of
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A dotCommonweal reader with great taste (redundant, I realize) recommended Sufjan Stevens's new collection, Songs for Christmas, in John McGreevy's Sufjan post a couple of weeks ago. (The article he links to in Books and Culture is, I think, way off the mark.)I was able to snag a promotional copy
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Rocco Palmo, who writes the blog Whispers in the Loggia, noted two recent pieces in Commonweal on the subject of the future of the priesthood in the United States, our editorial and Paul Stanosz's Continuing the Conversation article. (The Stanosz is available to registered users only. If you haven'
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There have been some developments in the sexual-abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Here are a few stories on the happy subject.First, a summary Q&A on the L.A. story.Second, the $60 million settlement. Third, what about criminal charges against the archdiocese
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Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor of science and bestselling author of books of militant atheism, has not received the warmest of welcomes in the media for his latest effort to persuade you that religion is nonsensical, The God Delusion. The New York Times didn't recommend it. Neither did the
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Ian Fisher and Sabrina Tavernise report:
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters after a brief meeting with Benedict at the airport here that he had asked the pope to support Turkey in its attempt to become a member of the European Union.“He said, ‘You know we don’t
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He'd been quiet for a while, but recently Ur-Diogenes over at Off the Record, the blog of Catholic World News, has gotten back on the horse. (We've discussed him before here and here.) Seemingly brought out of hibernation by the midterm elections (Ur-Diogenes is nothing if not deeply interested in
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No, not Michael Richards's racist rant. I'm talking about the main hed on the front page of today's New York Post. No doubt the headline and sports writers at the Post are giving voice to the resentment Yankee fans feel after seeing their veteran shortstop Derek Jeter edged out of the MVP award by
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P.R./Newswire reports:
Double Murder in Wisconsin Prompts Lawsuit Against All US Bishops
But Delaware's Top Church Official Will Be Removed As Defendant
Saltarelli's Disclosure of Names of Alleged Predator Priests is the ReasonA family whose relative was
murdered by a priest and who has filed
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Commonweal editor Paul Baumann is on today's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, which is streaming live right here (links on the left side of the page) right now. As I understand it, they'll be discussing the bishops' meeting
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Press releases and approved statements from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting are available here. 
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You'll notice our roster of contributors just got longer. We'd like to welcome the latest additions to the dotCommonweal crowd: Lawrence S. Cunningham, James T. Fisher, Michael W. Higgins, Eduardo Peñalver, Jean Raber, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. Who are these people? Some are familar to
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From TNR Online:
Americans who attend religious services on a weekly basis voted 51 percent for
Republican candidates and 48 percent for Democrats, a statistically meaningless
difference. Nationally, Democrats made modest gains among two important groups
of religious voters--they matched
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How did it go yesterday? CIAFTCG has preliminary results. (H/T Daily Dish
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And you should give it a look straightaway. (Don't worry, it's much cheaper than the print magazine: free.) 
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Too many polling-place reports to keep track of, but here are a few worth reading.
To be a Latino voter in Arizona...
Or any kind of voter in Maryland...
Or in Virgina... (audio bonus)
Or an Ohio Congressman
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My take on the new documentary on clergy sexual abuse.Update: Apparently, you need to login. You can use the following to gain access:
username: noone@kansascity.compassword:123456Update 2: I'm getting some reports that the link isn't working right. Here is it in full and live, if you have to copy
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Ted Haggard gave the keynote at the Religion Newswriters Association conference in September. He opened the talk by discussing his early interest in journalism. (Audio can be found here. The following transcriptions are mine.)"I was excited about telling the truth, and helping people to be
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Last week, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago delivered a homily at the Catholic Theological Union in which he candidly explained why he thinks the world casts a suspicious eye on the United States. Cathleen Falsani reports:
"The world distrusts us not because we are rich and free. Many of us
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The New York Times reports.And from the BBC story:
As the judge began reading the death sentence Saddam
Hussein shouted out "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Great) and "Long live Iraq!
Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!"The former leader looked shocked and furious
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Bill McGarvey, editor of BustedHalo, interviews blogger-in-chief Andrew Sullivan. Within moments of its posting, Catholic World "News" blogger Diogenes offered his (their?) predictable response
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The San Diego Civic Theater is home to the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony-winning play by John Patrick Shanley for just four days, so act fast. Here's Welton Jones's review of the production, which includes two of the original cast members, the fantastic Cherry Jones and Adriane Lenox. And here's my
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Citing the women-priests' planned eucharistic celebration at the Call to Action (CTA) conference this weekend, the officers of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) have decided to withdraw the from the meeting. Here's the full text of the letter from VOTF President Mary Pat Fox explaining the withdrawal
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We've been hacked! Sort of. The home page wasn't updated yesterday because someone or something dropped malicious code into our user database, which crippled our ability to post new content. After many unhappy hours of digging for the problem, I now support abrogating habeas corpus. Hackers, we're
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Are you in Chicago or in the Chicagoland area? Free Tuesday night around, say, 7? Yes, I realize game three of the World Series is on. But unless you're a displaced Tigers fan, or encamped in some secret Redbird-fan enclave, you don't really have a dog in that fight. So, what do you say? Come on
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According to plaintiffs' attorney Lynne Cadigan in Tuscon, yes.
“We were very skeptical and we initially thought the bankruptcy was
just one more way to scam the victims,” she said. “Financially and
emotionally it was a good tool to heal the (victims). I don’t like
admitting that, but
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For those of you who missed the home-page update, be sure to read Commonweal columnist Melinda Henneberger's review of Damon Linker's controversial book. Turns out she wasn't too impressed. Here's the lede:
The Theocons, Damon Linker’s new book about his former boss, First Things editor Fr.
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The Washington Post reports:
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.(snip)Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,
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And now for something completely different. Which is to say hugely geeky. I'm here to discuss the best television show not on HBO: the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, whose third-season premiere aired Friday night. (The best show on TV including HBO is--sorry, Sopranos fans--Deadwood.) No
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As usual, Catholic League President Bill Donohue has it all figured out. In his press release on disgraced Republican Rep. Mark Foley, he has some "tough questions" for the congressman. Such as, why did he let himself be molested by a member of the clergy when he was between 13 and 15
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University of Chicago historian David Nirenberg dissects the pope's Regensburg lecture at the New Republic. A sample:
Benedict's plea for Hellenization draws on a German philosophical tradition--stretching from Hegel's The Spirit of Christianity
through Weber's sociology of religions to the post
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In August, Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, Illinois, wrote a column in which he announced that the "seven 'sacraments' of [the Democrats'] secular culture are" -- in alphabetical order -- "abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and
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If you haven't yet, check out our Web-only interview with Daniel Madigan, SJ, president of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, on Benedict XVI's controversial address at Regensburg
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I've heard of The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, but "The 9/11 of Pope Benedict XVI"? I'll let Deal Hudson, of the Morley Institute for Chuch and Culture, explain:
Ever since he emerged smiling through the doors of St. Peter’s, as the Cardinals’ choice to lead the Church,
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Yes, they've reached an accord on the interrogation bill, they say (the president's 90-second commentary is viewable in this story). But what kind? What is the nature of the agreement? Why are McCain, Graham, and Warner now satisfied? Details remain scarce.Update: The text of the "compromise&
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DotCommonwealer and Notre Dame historian John McGreevy has generously offered to answer reader questions on his latest article here on Monday, September 25. So get reading, and keep your eyes peeled for John's Q&A post. N.B.: Only registered users of the Commonweal Web site are able to post
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President Bush: "The bottom line is simple: if Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules, if they do not do that, the [interrogation] program is not going forward."The question David Gregory asked in response, which the president ignored, was, "And it will not endanger U.
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Sojourners editor Jim Wallis has launched, in collaboration with Beliefnet, a new group blog, God's Politics, named after his most book, which recently came out in paperback. Among their writers are sometime Commonweal contributor Amy Sullivan and Sr. Helen Prejean. First up, a weeklong exchange
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Click here for the live stream of his Catholic University speech (ends at 4:30 p.m. Eastern), much maligned by Cardinal Newman Society president Patrick Reilly at National Review Online (shocker) . 
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Catholic University sociologist Dean Hoge has just released his new study of recently ordained priests--the first since 1990--and the findings are telling.
Since 1990, the average age of priests ordained five to nine years has increased from 34.1 years to 42.6 for diocesan priests, and from
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The New Republic's new blog, Open University, which is written by approximately seven thousand academics, has taken note of Paul Baumann's Washington Monthly review of Damon Linker's The Theocons, which I mentioned earlier this week.
Columbia University historian Casey N. Blake recommends the
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Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has had it with the politicization of 9/11 and the "war on terror."
We're at war
against an enemy that I happen to believe is the most dangerous enemy
ever to confront this country. We play petty politics constantly here
on the floor of the Senate, even
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Matt Lauer asks President Bush about his interrogation policy (hat tip, Andrew Sullivan
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Is Damon Linker's The Theocons: Secular America Under Seige the slam-dunk some made it out to be? Not quite. Commonweal editor Paul Baumann explains in the most recent issue of the Washington Monthly
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Where to go for the latest poll-data crunching as the midterm elections approach: electoral-vote.com
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Several people have commented on what's really behind President Bush's decision to grant 14 "war on terror" prisoners POW status, and what it means for U.S. policy on torture. Here's a roundup:
The Plank (and here, previously linked to)
Balkinization (several posts there worth reading
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The National Catholic Reporter profiles sometime contributor to Commonweal, and my friend, Bill McGarvey--musician, editor, young Catholic. Be sure to check out the free--and legal!--song downloads
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Jonathan Karl at ABC News reports:
ABC News has learned that President Bush will
announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons
will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted
protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will be the first
time the
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As reported by the Washington Times on August 26 (and the WaPost on August 27), Georgetown's Protestant chaplaincy has ordered six evangelical Protestant groups not affiliated with the university to cease their ministry activities and presence on campus. (They aren't going without a fight.)The
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First Things blogger R. R. Reno, associate professor of theology at Creighton University (PhD Yale), has compiled his own rankings of the best theology programs in the country. His list in part:
5. The Catholic University of America, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Trinity Evangelical
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Thursday's NewsHour included an energetic exchange between Dr. Robert Lanza, leader of the research team behind the controversial new procedure, and Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. A snippet:
RAY SUAREZ: Well, Richard Doerflinger, Dr. Lanza's group
has maintained
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CJR Daily, Columbia Journalism Review's excellent blog, points to some criticisms of Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece on pensions, mentioned by John yesterday. To refresh your memory, we turn to Paul McLeary's helpful summary:
Gladwell notes in his story that General Motors currently finds
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The Plank points out the breathless descriptions of a Power Line contributor who recently met with President George W. Bush:
I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small
group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty
minutes. It was an absolutely
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From the 2006 Official Catholic Directory, page A-13
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The Chicago Sun-Times published a very strange story about a twenty-six-year-old's charge that he was sexually abused by one priest in the presence of his pastor.
[John] Doe said the priests invited him for beers on Saturday night, Aug. 5.
"They kept telling me, 'Here, have another beer
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The Chicago Tribune reports: "Elvira Arellano, who became a national spokeswoman for families facing
deportation, had been ordered to report to the Department of Homeland
Security by 9 a.m. Tuesday." She went to church instead. And says she isn't leaving
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Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, rightfully takes issue with some statements that appeared in the comments boxes of our threads on Charlotte Allen's critique of Commonweal. After quoting some of the more outlandish comments--left by readers of the blog, not by its contributors--Bottum writes
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"If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date
certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people
who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It
will strengthen them and they will strike again."
--Joe Lieberman
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The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, has released a brief report (warning: PDF) from the Special Panel on Clergy Misconduct, convened by Bishop George Lucas to review the results of an investigation into allegations against priests in the diocese. (The investigation was limited to charges
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Here's a sure-fire test, as offered by Stephen H. Webb, professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, courtesy of the new First Things blog:
You know you are a liberal if you think that the poor need money more than they need moral discipline
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Another former priest and seminarian with the Legionaries of Christ has come forward with allegations against Fr. Marcial Maciel, the suspended founder of the Legionaries. Brian Mershon has the story, and the letter alleging the abuse. Mershon also notes that Jim Fair, U.S. spokesman for the
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They have lists, those e-mail spammers, and after finding this link in my morning mail, I fear they may have me pegged. (Google shortcut for "Christian lending network" right here
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Ur-Diogenes is back from vacation. Today he posts on a dustup regarding the happy subject of divorced Catholics and Communion. Fr. Alberto Bonandi, Ur-Diogenes summarizes, "has proposed that divorced and remarried Catholics can be admitted to Communion even if they are not 'living as brother
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A journalist, that is. Columbia Journalism School dean Nicholas Lemann has a few choice words for self-aggrandizing bloggers. This ought to send them into a fugue state.One of the more amusing examples of bloggish journalism Lemann offers is an "interview" with New York Times tech
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Hackers are just too smart--not that they'd need to be, when voting machines like this are being built. 
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The Denver Catholic Register, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver, led by Archbishop Charles Chaput, published a George Weigel column aimed squarely at Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C. (The Register distributes Weigel's column to more than sixty U.S. Catholic
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The Colbert Report Web site has broken the interview into two parts here. Honestly, I was hoping for something more on par with what he did with Peggy Noonan, but Donohue was obviously a very good sport. He even brandished a ruler to remind Colbert of their shared Catholic upbringing.Update: here's
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Cardinal Francis George of Chicago will undergo surgery tomorrow for cancer of the bladder. If there's good news in this, it's that doctors believe the cancer hasn't spread to other parts of his body. 
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Anticipating the ritual flaying of the electoral college two-plus years in advance of the presidental election, a Stanford computer-science professor has an idea to revamp the oft-maligned system:
[John] Koza's scheme calls for an interstate compact that would require states to
throw all of
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Mirror of Justice contributor Thomas Berg has an excellent post on what Catholic social teaching may have to say about growing economic inequality. 1. "Great disparity seems likely to make it harder for people to practice
the value of solidarity, that is, 'see[ing] the "other"--
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For those of you who haven't seen George Will's latest slam dunk, here are some of the more exciting bits from his evisceration of the Bill Kristol's absurd call for war with Iran--now. From Will's column (the quotes are from Kristol):
"We might consider countering this act of Iranian
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Those who find U.S. treatment of prisoners in the "war on terror" morally repugnant and strategically daft had their spirits lifted on Tuesday, when the White House announced that terrorist suspects would enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions, bringing their policy in line with
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As Tim Reidy pointed out a few weeks ago, I'm a big fan of Sufjan (pronounced SOOF-YAHN) Stevens. (See my review of his album Seven Swans.) The overtly religious themes of that record made it an obvious subject for a Commonweal review.Less obvious Commonweal fodder, though, was his follow-up album
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The July 1 Tablet of London--their Independence Day issue, natch--has a great piece by David Gibson on Tom Monaghan's Ave Maria Town. The crux of it:
But the paradox of Monaghan's plan to build a bastion of orthodoxy is
that his impulse is in reality more American than it is Catholic. Since
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Very good news (AP). Here's the WaPost story.As is now becoming clear, the Court's ruling that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the detainee Hamdan has major implications for the mistreatment of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere. Common Article 3 requires that prisoners of war
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Anne Lamott had a provocative op-ed in Monday's L.A. Times on her participation in an assisted suicide. It certainly gets the wheels turning, and I have some thoughts about this powerful piece. I hope I can put them together later, but in the meantime, have a look. (Hat tip: Amy Welborn
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What's the point of "social networking" sites? I mean really. 
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Several people in the comboxes to Tim's post on Roe below expressed their appreciation for the link to Mark Sargent's paper, "The Importance and Coherence of a Prolife Progressivism." So I thought I should post it here (warning: PDF) for those who weren't following the Roe thread
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How the U.S. government explains its opposition to legal review of its domestic surveillance program.UpdateMore on this from Wired News
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Catholic World News's pseudonymous scribe Diogenes has kept his eagle eye on the liturgical-translation debates for some time now. Little escapes his gaze--not even what he perceives as the grammatical mistakes of those who dare to speak on the subject.Exhibit A: Diogenes (in this case ur-Diogenes
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The National Catholic Reporter's June 16 editorial, "Spin without End in Abuse Scandal," takes issue with the Catholic League's ad on the June 7 New York Times op-ed page. NCR writes:
The clergy sex abuse crisis -- some would have us believe -- is largely about priests taking advantage
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The bishops are meeting later this week to vote on the new translation of the Order of Mass. Many thanks to Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia, who bumped two articles we ran on the liturgical translation debates last year: John Wilkins's "Lost in Translation" and Kevin Eckstrom's &
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The Chicago Tribune profiles archdiocesan chancellor Jimmy Lago.You can read the independent audits commissioned by the archdiocese by clicking here
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Psst. The last issue of Commonweal's regular publishing schedule before our summer slowdown (one issue in July and one in August) just went live. Be sure to check out William Pfaff's article, "Clash of Cultures," and the many other must-reads over on the home page. Then come back here and
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Here's a sneak preview of our June 16 editorial. A sample:
Ostensibly designed to draw attention to the church’s Jewish origins,
and to embrace the two faiths’ shared love for God, Benedict’s remarks
may have the opposite effect. It seems unlikely that many Jews will
take consolation
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I'll try to comment on these later, but be sure to read Commonweal contributor Charles R. Morris on "Freakoutonomics" and Opus Dei numerary Paul Fortunato on "Opus Dei's Box-Office Triumph." Comments are open
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Remember when Homeland Security officials promised a new grant-steering system would be put in place to ensure those areas most likely to be targeted by terrorists would receive the lion's share of anti-terrorism funding? Well, that didn't work out so well:
The net effect was that the grant to New
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The latest issue of Commonweal just went up online. Apropos of the must-read thread on Gnosticism below, here's a snippet from Jack Miles's piece on Gnosticism and the Gospel of Judas--now the lead story on our home page.
The recently published Gospel of Judas, writes biblical scholar
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New York Review of Books critics say no. In their review of The Gospel of Judas from Codex Tchacos (National Geographic), Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, and Philippa Townsend--all Princeton doctoral candidates studying religions of late antiquity--argue:
Scholars have commonly approached such
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Catholic World News published a leaked letter from Cardinal Arinze to USCCB President William Skylstad, the content of which ur-Diogenes summarized as "sorry, not buying it." Arinze, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, was following up on a meeting in which, it's surmised,
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This morning, James Martin, SJ, appeared on CNN to discuss the abiding relevance of Gaudiem et—wait, no. It was to talk about The Da Vinci Code. There's some great stuff in the interview. Here's my rough transcription:
Martin: As a moviegoer I found it really tedious and really long, and as a
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Did you know that the late novelist Muriel Spark had just completed a novel before she died? The editors of Commonweal have the scoop. 
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Here it is, in toto, from the Vatican Information Service:
COMMUNIQUE CONCERNING FOUNDER OF LEGIONARIES OF CHRIST VATICAN CITY, MAY 19, 2006 (VIS) - With reference to recent news concerning the person of Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, the Holy See Press
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We haven't yet set down a formal terms-of-service agreement for users of dotCommonweal, so let me try to sketch what's expected of those who comment on our posts.
1. No cursing or lewdness of any kind. If you don't think the vocabulary you're using would appear in Commonweal magazine, then try
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John Allen reports:
Capping a decade-long on-again, off-again investigation of accusations of sexual abuse, the Vatican has asked Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, to observe a series of restrictions on his ministry. In effect, Vatican sources told NCR this
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Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to this article in New York magazine (May 22), called:
On the Rabbi's KneeDo the Orthodox Jews have a Catholic-priest problem?Can you guess what the problem is? That's right. The sexual abuse of children. It's bad enough that this headline appears
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It's become difficult to muster surprise at the bad behavior of the NSA these days, but the first question that occured to me after learning the government is assembling a database of millions of Americans' phone calls was: how long before Seymour Hersh's sources are identified? Even as I
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Has the mysterious ur-Diogenes awakened from his slumber? As I noted in a previous post, Philip Lawler, the editor of Catholic World News, which hosts the subtle and charitable musings of the pseudonymous blogger Diogenes, informed me that "more than one contributor" writes under the name
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Or at least "more than one." That's how Catholic World News (CWN) editor Philip F. Lawler described the identity of CWN's Off the Record scribe "Diogenes."
After several dotCommonweal readers chimed in with theories about the true identity of Diogenes, I sent Lawler a note
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The next chapter in the immigration saga
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That settles it. The flap at BC over honoring Condi Rice as commencement speaker has now entered the immortal realm of the Rorschach Test. Jonah Goldberg has issued a column on the controversy. His opening salvo:
How is academic freedom like Catholicism? Well, if you are a left-wing academic, the
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Now that dotCommonweal has been humming along for couple months, we’ve had time to get our bearings in the wider blogosphere—Catholic and otherwise. There’s a lot going on out there. You’ve seen links to Amy Welborn’s blog, Rocco Palmo’s, Andrew Sullivan’s, Josh Marshall’s, Mirror
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Together at last. A minor dustup followed the announcement (free registration required) that this year's Boston College commencement speaker would be Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. This entails bestowing the customary honorary degree, something several B.C. professors object to for her role
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The United States spends an average of $5,200 in health-care per person. So why do we rank twenty-fifth in life expectancy, as a surprising new study shows?
Americans had higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer — findings that held true no matter what income or
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Dan Froomkin dishes up everything you wanted to know about Stephen Colbert's reception at the White House Correspondent Dinner. And then some:
Once upon a time, I imagine, there was great value in throwing a party where journalists and politicians could mingle and shmooze and celebrate the
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As you may have noticed, the main site is borderline nonresponsive. We're experiencing--how to put this kindly--server issues. So if you're having trouble logging in, give it a few hours. In the meantime, here are direct links to some of the latest articles.
Are Illegal Immigrants Pioneers? (by
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The L.A. Times reports that Medicare is in frighteningly bad shape. Again.
The huge Medicare fund for inpatient hospital care will not be able to cover the full amount of billings beginning in 2018, two years earlier than estimated last year. The Medicare fund has been in dire straits before
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President Bush seemed relatively amused for the first fifteen minutes of Stephen Colbert's routine at Saturday night's White House Correspondent Dinner. Or at least he looked like he was trying to appear amused. Which couldn't have been easy, considering that Colbert, in full Fox News
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Lee Siegel's post on the film United 93 over at TNR.com is sort of amazing. He calls out his "posturing scrivening peers" for their bogus emoting over the heroics of Flight 93 passengers. (Whether a writer who uses terms like "scrivening peers" can legitimately level the
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"Given enough time, some disputes do get clarified," Fr. Richard John Neuhaus writes in the May issue of First Things (regrettably, the "Public Square" is not available online). He is referring, of course, to the discussion of Tom Reese's May 2005 departure from America magazine
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The Opus Dei charm offensive has worked wonders for the organization. If David Van Biema's cover story in Time has a thesis statement, it's this: "Opus Dei--not as bad as you thought." This, it seems, is the line taken by many recent investigations of the group, such as John Allen's
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Rocco Palmo points out this BBC story, which reports that Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one-time papabile, told L'Espresso that "in couples where one had HIV/AIDS, which could pass to the partner, the use of condoms was 'a lesser evil.'" For more on the subject, see the cover story in the
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The Los Angeles Times tracks some troubling omissions from Cardinal Mahony's 2004 "Report to the People of God."
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There's an interesting exchange over at Mirror of Justice that was prompted by a post from Eduardo Moises Penalver (apologies for not knowing how to add appropriate diacritical marks) regarding the credibility of Catholic scholarship vis-a-vis magisterial authority. Here's a snippet of the
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I'm sure that somewhere buried deep in the dotCommonweal bylaws is a rule barring what I'm about to do, but I'm going to do it anyway. Which is to post on baseball. (Click the play button in the center of the image to make the magic happen.)
What you're witnessing is a selection of home
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As I exited the controlled climate of the L.A. Religious Education
Congress exhibit hall to enter the crisp Anaheim air, I looked up.
After two days of intermittent rain and overcast skies, the clouds were
gone--welcome relief. Palm tree tops against blue sky. California. As
my gaze returned to
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Here's a snippet from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's wide-ranging, and even topical, Easter sermon:
Beyond all the history of confusion and betrayal that surrounds a lot of the Church’s history, beyond the power games that we still play in the churches, this one rocklike conviction
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Commonweal just launched a speakers program. The inaugural event took place last weekend at St. John's Student Parish at Michigan State University, where Luke Timothy Johnson spoke on "The Da Vinci Code, the Culture Wars and the New Gnosticism." With impressive swiftness, the techies at
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President Bush answers a grad student's question about the controlling legal authority over private military contractors in Iraq (click the play button in the center of the image): It's astonishing that at this late date, the president seems (or wants to seem) that he's never entertained the
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In a surprising move, the Cardinal Newman Society has responded with great dismay to Notre Dame president John Jenkins's decision not to put the kibosh on Vagina Monologues performances. As with most of CNS's output, the statement is a touch overheated:
Fr. Jenkins has now given
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John Jenkins, CSJ, speaks:
Thanks to the efforts of some
faculty members, this year's performance of The Vagina Monologues
was brought into dialogue with Catholic tradition through panels that followed
each performance. Panelists presented the Catholic teaching on human sexuality,
and students
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Is there anything worse than "liveblogging"? Well, here I go, anyway--from the L.A. Religious Education Congress (that hotbed of liberal loopiness). Just got out of a talk by Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former master of the Dominicans, on the important issue of healing divisions within the
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Bishop Fabien Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska--who has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the National Review Board's annual audits since they began--has a few choice words for the chairwoman of the NRB. As reported in Catholic World News, he released the following statement in response to the
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The third annual national audit results will be released tomorrow at noon (Eastern) on the USCCB Web site. Two other reports will be issued:
Also to be released as part of the Charter implementation report is the annual survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), Georgetown
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Are you planning on joining the cast of thousands at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress this year (March 30-April 2)? We are. If so, stop by booth 688 and say hello to Commonweal people Paul Baumann, Tom Baker, and me. Free magazines for those who say they heard about the booth on
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As anticipated, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a more moderate version of HR 4437, the controversial immigration bill that had Cardinal Mahony threatening civil disobedience. The committee adopted an ammendment offered by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) that would shelter churches and other
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Last week, Peggy Steinfels posted on John Allen's interview with Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, culling from the brief, but fascinating exchange the question, What's a magazine for? In reading Kolvenbach's response to a question about Tom Reese's departure
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Damon Linker reviews Neuhaus's new book, Catholic Matters:
Several Catholic writers have contributed
to fashioning a potent governing philosophy for traditionalist
Christians, but the one who has exercised the greatest influence on the
ideological agenda of the religious right is Richard John
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Amy Welborn asks whether we're really having an honest debate about HR 4437. The National Review, as I noted below, thinks Cardinal Mahony's staunch opposition to the bill is much ado about nothing. It's been suggested that the bill doesn't really say what the cardinal says it does. From my post
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According to the editors of the National Review:
The American Catholic bishops are waging an intense, sophisticated campaign to promote their version of immigration reform, which happens also to be big business's version of immigration reform. The campaign comes complete with brochures, a well-
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Andrew Sullivan posts on a disturbing poll indicating that U.S. Christians generally favor torturing suspected terrorists. Catholics, it turns out, are most hospitible to the idea:
Twenty-one percent of Catholics surveyed said it is “often” justified and 35
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Look at the Right go. Yet another salvo from the National Review shot across the bow of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Buckley's conclusion is worth quoting in toto:
President Bush endorsed the House bill and asks the Senate to act on
it. He hardly understands himself to be rejecting
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After two days of technical difficulties (maddeningly slow server response), the March 24 issue of Commonweal is finally available. Be sure to check out John J. DiIulio Jr.'s piece, "The Catholic Voter: A Description with Recommendations," Paul Lauritzen's article "Holy Alliance
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A good summary of the findings in the audits released yesterday by the Chicago Archdiocese. (Here's the Chicago Tribune's story.) I haven't had a chance to digest the nearly 100 pages of material, but I invite those who have to evalute the response of Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors
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Rumors of Deal Hudson's disappearance have been greatly exaggerated. Although the one-time publisher of Crisis left that magazine and his position advising the White House on Catholic matters under a cloud of scandal, he's kept a foot in the game under new auspices. Since January 2005, the Morley
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No, not that FT. The basic-principles variety. You could fill the Grand Canyon with the ink that's been spilled on the subject of the Democrats' post-2004 soul-searching expedition, but every so often something really interesting surfaces in that debate (even the Corner found it intriguing). Just
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"The United States has always been and remains a great defender of human rights and the rule of law," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told a London think-tank last Tuesday. "I regret that there has been concern or confusion about our commitment to the rule of law."Now why
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Over at the First Things blog, Editor Jody Bottum floats the following theory about the 55 Catholic Democrats' motive for drafting their "Statement of Principles":
But still the question remains: Why the statement now? For someone like Rosa L. DeLauro—or for such signers as Bart Stupak
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(If you've already read this entry, scroll down for new posts.)
Commonweal has never been given to taking up fads. The magazine's concerns regarding the medium of TV, after all, are a matter of public record (see especially our coverage of Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts on Senator Joseph McCarthy
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Was John Paul II responsible for a French nun's sudden recovery from Parkinson's?
"Exactly two months after the death of the pope, from one minute to another, the nun didn't show the symptoms of the illness anymore," Oder told The Associated Press in one of his most extensive
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Wow. The dotCom isn't even a week old and we're already asking whether Commonweal Catholics have a future. It's all so Lenten. For more on the topic du jour, take a look at Mirror of Justice, where Mark's initial post on the subject has generated some interesting responses--including one from
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Take a look at the post below, "A bishop accused." In that post, I quoted one of the more intriguing elements of the AP story about the accusation of abuse against Skylstad, which noted that Stephen Rubino was hired by the woman's legal team to investigate the claim. He's the same lawyer
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The Chicago Tribune reports that Voice of the Faithful has urged Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane and Cardinal Francis George of Chicago to step down temporarily from their positions as president and vice president, respectively, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.Earlier this
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Another piece falls into place, reported by Salon. Read the whole article. (And, if you haven't yet, take in Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on former general counsel to the Navy, Alberto Mora, and his admirable attempts to stem the tide of torture.) Army Reserve Capt. Christopher R. Brinson was in
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Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been accused by a woman of sexually abusing her over four decades ago, when she was under eighteen and he was in his late twenties. Skylstad denies all charges. Obviously, it's too early to tell
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