What’s a Remarried Catholic to Do?

On a hot day in Rome not long ago, I crossed St. Peter’s Square, paused beneath a curving flank of Bernini’s colonnade, and continued to a Swiss Guard standing at a wrought-iron gate, the Porta Cavalleggeri. He examined my credentials, handed them back, and saluted. I hadn’t expected the gesture, and almost returned the salute, but then realized it was intended for a cardinal waddling into the Vatican behind me.

A new report scandalizes an already diminished flock

Why Historical Fact Isn't Enough

Catholic attitudes toward sex and marriage have shifted dramatically over the past fifty years. How should the church respond, pastorally and doctrinally, to this growing disconnect between official teaching and the practice of individual Catholics?

Saint Augustine celebrated Christmas with his community in fifth-century Algeria, presiding over a midnight liturgy in his cathedral. We still possess a number of the sermons he preached on those occasions. He delivered the sermons sitting down while the congregation stood. A scribe, known as a notarius, would take down his words with a stylus, marking a wax tablet in a kind of shorthand.

A Pastoral Opportunity Like No Other

Rembrandt has the power to stretch our imagination and understanding of the New Testament as well as the Old. That was demonstrated to me when I went to the exhibition “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus.” There is a distance between Rembrandt’s early and late visions of Christ corresponding to the distance between his The Sacrifice of Isaac and The Sacrifice of Abraham. There is no going back to the early vision once you have traveled with Rembrandt to the later one.

Report on the new translation of the Roman Missal

The small-government movement has created resistance to the reasonable proposals in the recent Vatican statement on financial reform. Yet, separate from the many strengths of the statement and the many problems in the way it’s been received in this country, there remains a significant hole in official Catholic social teaching on the economy.

A Tribute to Gregory Baum

Twenty-five years ago the U.S. bishops issued their last comprehensive commentary on the moral dimensions of our political economy. The anniversary of their Economic Justice for All arrives during the nation’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, at a time when Americans yearn for a positive vision of an economy that can support struggling families, restrain private greed, and provide resources for enriching the common life.

Boyhood Memories of an Ordinary Bigotry

Remembering Peter Gomes

Must the church always call evil plainly by its proper name, whatever the consequences? Can her priests keep silent in the face of abomination, in the hope of rescuing something positive from chaos, or so that tyranny may bear down a little less cruelly on those who must endure it? Those were the dilemmas confronting Eugenio Pacelli, pope during the Second World War, a diplomat who found himself sitting in the seat of prophecy.

In July, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered a stinging indictment of the Vatican’s handling of the sexual-abuse scandal in his country. Referring to a new report on the scandal in the Diocese of Cloyne, Kenny blasted what he called “the dysfunction, the disconnection, [and] the elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican today.” Last month, the Vatican issued its disappointing reply.

Why immigration officials should steer clear of churches

Learning to Live with Change

It Is Not Death We Fear

Seldom have the man and the moment come together more felicitously than in the life of Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). His furrowed brow and intense, arresting gaze were perfectly suited to the midcentury years of world war and Cold War, of mutual assured destruction and agonizing reappraisals. He may have been born with gravitas; certainly he had acquired more than his share by middle age.

Before I began researching a book about Francis, I’d had the idea that, given his powerful sense of God’s presence, he was always carefree and happy. The truth is more complicated: Francis’s life was encumbered by dark shadows, to the point that he experienced long periods of anguishing separation from God.

Ireland’s New Model Of Church-State Relations

Demystifying Mysticism

When one thinks of Marshall McLuhan—literary scholar, communications theorist, celebrity—Catholicism doesn’t necessarily spring to mind. Not that his biographers have avoided it. The prevailing versions of McLuhan as Catholic include: ardent convert; heir to G. K. Chesterton; religious reactionary opposed to Vatican II; apocalyptic visionary or Catholic Cassandra. Yet McLuhan’s Catholicism is not so neatly categorized.

A somber conclusion arises from our common experience of life: there exist powers, at work in and through humans yet commanding a superhuman blind energy, that labor for the destruction of humans and of all human beauty and grace. Such powers cannot adequately be named by the language of social description; they require the language of myth. It is important to be able to speak of the Devil.

My friend the exorcist

Report from Iran

An exchange

How a rectory saved me

Ten years after the terrible devastation of September 11, we live in sacred time. All time is sacred, the imprint of a timeless, eternal God—the traces of God’s mysterious presence in the toil and stress, the joy and struggle of history.

How persuasively is the church making its case against gay marriage?

A Muslim goes to Mass in Azerbaijan

The Mystery of What God Has Done for Us

In the second part of the interview, Cardinal Francis George discusses the recent study of the "causes and context" of the sexual-abuse crisis, the bishops' role in assessing the Catholic identity of institutions, and retirement.

An interview with Cardinal George

The trouble with the new Roman Missal

The liturgical wars heat up

The second John Jay report & the Vatican's letter to bishops

A new report on the "causes & context" of the sexual-abuse crisis

Unlike the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, this tragedy comes not from the stupidity of man, but from the hand of nature. And unlike hurricanes, which arrive gradually and affect a wide area, tornadoes are localized, sudden, and furious. For that reason, they raise questions of theodicy in an acute way.

The bishops & Elizabeth Johnson

When a Philadelphia grand jury found "substantial evidence of abuse" committed by 37 priests in ministry, it criticized the archdiocese's review board: "In cases where the...review board has made a determination [about those cases], the results have often been even worse than no decision at all.” What happened?

When a Catholic college resists a union

How not to write about the cardinal & his time

The case for the Vatican diplomatic corps

It's time for St. John XXIII

Make it humble & make it persuasive

An excerpt from Jennifer Haigh's new novel, Faith.

To attribute sympathy or “solidarity” to God is to make him seem less involved with us than, as Creator, he must be.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan on 60 Minutes

What I learned from the Jesuits

Ever since Catholic sisters arrived from Europe nearly 300 years ago, they have performed heroic, thankless, and often uncompensated work that significantly shaped and humanized U.S. society. Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America is a touring exhibit that honors these achievements.

Last month, the USCCB issued a statement claiming Elizabeth A. Johnson's latest book “contaminates the traditional Catholic understanding of God.” Regrettably, the bishops' statement reflects, among other problems, a theological failure to take evolution seriously.

The American College of Louvain closes

The abuse crisis resurfaces in Philadelphia

Relativity without Relativism

A thirtysomething compares the world after Facebook & the world before it.

In August, two Islamic TV networks were ordered by the Lebanese government to discontinue their broadcasts of an Iranian movie about Jesus. At the time, a Maronite bishop claimed the film denies the Christian story of Jesus. That remark captured a central problem of Christian-Muslim relations.

A homilist's education

Moral teaching after ‘Humanae Vitae’

Ratzinger, church law & the sexual-abuse crisis

It was in Rome during the heady days of Vatican II. There was to be a meeting of the Consilium, the commission for the reform of the liturgy, where the subject of deaconesses was raised—and not one woman was in the room.

When a patient arrives in extremis at a Catholic hospital in the rare situation reflected in the case of the Arizona woman whose life was endangered by her pregnancy, a conflict arises between the patient’s life and Catholic health care’s right to religious liberty in following its own precepts.

Lisa Sowle Cahill’s middle way

Benedict & condoms

If we forget the Bible, in what sense are we Christian?

 ‘Three Faiths’ at New York’s Public Library

Everyday suffering, everyday sanctity

The pope on condoms

My mother said, “Why didn’t they tell us these things in school?” I had just come into her room. “Like what?” I said. My mother is in an assisted-living facility run by our church. “Well,” she said. “Did you know that after the Blessed Mother gave birth to Jesus, she went into the desert, to a place God had prepared for her? She was there for twelve hundred and sixty days. It’s in the Bible. Did you ever learn that in school?”

The church in the public square

In a church without enemies, what are they to do?

In mid-November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops discussed a report detailing an extensive “review and renewal” of its domestic-poverty program, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. The reevaluation came in response to complaints that the CCHD’s grant recipients were involved in efforts that contradict Catholic teaching.

My devotion to the Sacred Heart

Raimundo Panikkar's long theological journey

We were as close to God as we were to our animals or as close to our animals as we were to God. I was born on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin in 1933 where I lived with my parents, two brothers, two sisters, twenty-five cows, sixty chickens, one three-legged dog, and three semi-feral cats. It was a life of religious labor.

Although I hate to admit that I was ever unhappy in Africa, where I lived for twenty-six years, I have to confess that my first year as a Jesuit scholastic in Nigeria, over forty years ago, was not the easiest, either for me or for the fellow Jesuits with whom I lived, or (to put it more honestly) who had to live with me.

“Nothing changes” is one definition of ritual. And top to bottom the Mass is still a ritual, with little room for deviation. The priest now does a few things he did not do before Vatican II, but the list of changes is quite small and the essence of the liturgy is unaltered. Nothing in the Mass is likely to take you by surprise.

What was Pius XII's opinion of the Jews?

One out of every three Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. That dwarfs the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. Thomas Reese, SJ, recently described that loss as “a disaster.” He added, “You wonder if the bishops have noticed.”

Why some devout Catholics are leaving the church

In the summer of 1983 my favorite day was Tuesday, when Fr. Stu would pick me up at my aunt’s house and take me golfing and then to lunch. Fr. Stu was from Las Vegas, which may explain why he was the source for my knowledge of how a point spread works. Almost all of our bets that summer were restricted to the golf course.

Could the vogue for Herbert McCabe portend a renaissance of liberation theology and the revolutionary spirit of the ’60s? His admirers have not linked his Catholic faith and his socialist politics, and McCabe himself denied an intrinsic connection. Still, there exists a bond between his theology and his radicalism, a bond particularly worth examining today. 

Way back in the twentieth century, when I decided to pursue doctoral work in theology, I never imagined that I would one day teach in an Oxford college. Neither did I imagine that John Henry Newman, of all people, would come to loom large in my day-to-day life.

The story of the first member of Focolare to be beatified

Newman's recent beatification has occasioned several appreciative essays in secular publications. But for Christians, Newman is something more, one of the finest religious minds of his century, whose work exerted a profound influence on the Second Vatican Council and thus on twenty-first-century Catholicism.

A short & unfinished history 

Not all Muslims think alike

Yesterday's anti-Catholicism & today's Islamophobia

The legacy of Avery Dulles

Who is Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet?

In 1922, the Vatican issued norms for handling the canonical crime of the sexual abuse of minors by priests. The document was revised in 1962, and remained in force until 2001. Why did so few bishops know about it?

What does Rome know about pop music?

When bishops speak about health-care policy, Catholics don't have to agree

Might the USCCB be wrong about the health-care law?

Extending the argument against sex-selective abortion

The Catholic vision of Canadian author David Adams Richards

A pope who can and cannot change

How the bishops conference gets health-care legislation wrong

A selection of articles from Commonweal on Benedict XVI.

A profile of the ethicist Gilbert Meilaender

What should a twenty-first-century cathedral look like? Forget the stained glass of Chartres, the sculpture of Amiens, the soaring vaults of Beauvais, the spire of Strasbourg. None of that seemed right for California, where Evangelicals have built modern mega-churches and a crystal cathedral, and where Mormon temples glisten in the sunshine.

No, this “Year of the Priest” has not been the best for priests or for any Catholics. Just when some of us thought we might be turning the corner, moving on, re-establishing some level of trust, it turns out the wounds are far deeper and much more widespread than we thought.

Stanley Hauerwas & the Christian Difference

The New York Times's worldview is secularist and secularizing, and as such it rivals the Catholic worldview. But what makes the Times unique is that it is not just the nation's self-appointed newspaper of record. It is, to paraphrase Chesterton, an institution with the soul of a church.

Hint: It's not Islam

Where do Catholics look for hope?

A gay parent on choosing Catholic school for her kids

In praise of Rep. Bart Stupak's courage

Does religion promote violence?

For centuries we thought God was the source of our sense of God. It came as no surprise, therefore, when historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists discovered that even our remotest ancestors were religious. Isn’t the reality of God—or the presence of the sacred—enough to explain why human beings universally possess a 'faith instinct'? Not anymore. A review of Nicholas Wade's new book The Faith Instinct.

A review of Cardinal Francis George's The Difference God Makes

Much of Pope Benedict's good work in addressing the sexual-abuse crisis is now likely to be brushed aside as the history of his own negligence in handling an abusive priest when he was archbishop of Munich thirty years ago comes to light.

Close encounter with a martyr

Scholarship inspired by Catholicism bears on real-life issues, not just for the benefit of professors or students, but for everyone, and especially the poor. A Catholic intellectual community does not lead students to decide who they want to be; it helps them discover who they have been called to be.

The bishops' take on the health-care bill is wrong

From the archives: the life & death of Oscar Romero

It is now clear that for more than two decades, simultaneous tragedies of episcopal malfeasance played out in both the U.S. and Irish churches, as bishops in both countries systematically mishandled allegations of child sexual abuse committed by their priests.

An interview with Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno

Spiritual Classics, at a Bookstore Near You

Certain modern readers have tended to reconstruct Teresa according to today’s cultural norms—a recent Publisher’s Weekly headline labeled her “a mystic for our times.” But to understand Teresa’s achievements and appeal, it is important to acknowledge that she was, first of all, a woman of her own times.

The great religious battle of our time is not the one being waged between believers and unbelievers. Yes, that's an important and certainly a noisy conflict. But more significant than that struggle is the clash occurring within religious traditions.

An interview with Diana Fritz Cates on Aquinas & the emotions

A review of Nicholas Lash's Theology for Pilgrims

A review of John Meier's landmark A Marginal Jew: Volume 4

David Tracy has God in a box. Or is it the other way around? For Tracy, long regarded as one of the most distinguished and adventuresome contemporary Catholic theologians, such a dilemma might be intriguing, even amusing, were it not so personal.

The Holy See has changed the way the Catholic Church receives Anglicans into full communion. Does this signal a shift in the Catholic Church’s methodology for ecumenical engagement? As a consequence of the shift, will the church eventually alter the very goal of such engagement?

'Mental reservation,' lying & the Irish sexual-abuse crisis

A gay Christian speaks to fundamentalists

These are interesting times for Anglican-Catholic relations in the United Kingdom. Four and a half centuries after Henry VIII effectively made himself pope of England, Britain has more active Roman Catholics than active Anglicans, and the Church of England seems to be threatened with step-by-step disestablishment within England itself.

The necessary challenge of interreligious dialogue

Iran honors an unlikely scholar

The church is already served by a “priesthood” of women, gay bishops, and good Catholics who have long ignored the preachments of the old boys on sexual matters. To be blind to what is while proclaiming what isn’t is not faith. It is denial. The church’s people have moved along, even if the prelates won’t.

How a motley crew of French Catholics inspired Vatican II

Making sense of Rome's 'pastoral provision' for Anglicans

Beware those authorities who criticize the independent Catholic press on the ground that pluralism equals relativism. What they really favor is monopoly. They want a single joint blast on the trumpet, or an orchestra in full flow. What they do not like are the discordant notes.

A conversation with editors past and present

Catholics, the Church & the Culture Wars

If the priest is going to face east during Mass, so should everyone else.

Could the Mother of Jesus have had a greater role in the mission, Passion, and Resurrection of her son than the evangelists tell us? Could women have been important church leaders in early Christianity?

Will Catholic schools become charter schools?

Can they be saved?

Why Is Rome Investigating U.S. Nuns?

Unbelief in Ian McEwan's Fiction

From a new book about St. Francis and the Sultan.

How I became an adult Catholic

Could the issue of abortion derail health-care reform legislation?

Why Obama should have kept the Council on Bioethics

Solidarity and subsidiarity in Benedict XVI’s ’Caritas in veritate’

Bishops need to help heal the wounds of division, not deepen them.

  Teilhard de Chardin’s startling relevance in a post-Darwin age.

  Visiting a priest behind bars.

Bible readers, especially Americans, look for truth in all the wrong places.

  How window legislation in sexual-abuse suits could undermine our legal system.

  The bees are coming back to the Exsultet.

  Was it wrong to invite the president to deliver the commencement address?

  The surprising incoherence of President Obama’s stem-cell research announcement.

  The lasting influence of Augustine’s arguments on behalf of the Jews

From Nostra aetate to Richard Williamson

  A child of the council explains why he feels like an orphan.

  Why the return of indulgences is not cause for rejoicing

  Why Rome’s turning inward does not serve the best interests of the church

The recently elected USCCB president on the pope's call to fight poverty

  A development of doctrine?

  Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

  The trouble with blaming religion for California’s Proposition 8

  Even by modern standards, 2008 was a cacophonous year.

  Catholic writing for a critical age

From the archives: a review of Archbishop Charles Chaput's Render unto Caesar

  A full-throated defense of the humanities as food for the soul

  Is there a double standard at work?

  What does secularism mean for the spiritual quest—of believers & nonbelievers alike?

  The author of ’The Catholic Priesthood and Women’ and her critic square off.

  Covering the pope

  Forty years after Vatican II, what would real collegiality look like?

  Steven Pinker and his crusade against the word "dignity."

A young priest speaks.

  Reviewing Charles Taylor’s ’A Secular Age.’

  It’s time for a more collegial church.

  Scripture, history and women’s ordination.

  Is worship the church’s alternative to war?

  What do the sobering findings of a new study on religious belonging mean for Catholics today?

  Does the pope’s updated pre-Vatican II Good Friday prayer for the Jews go far enough?

  Saints visible and invisible

  Reflections of a postulant at the abbey in the acclaimed film ’Into Great Silence’

  Why did a bishop block a Commonweal contributor from speaking in his diocese?

  Surprising lessons from the Oscar-nominated film ’Juno’

  When Islamic moderates speak, who listens?

  From Nostra aetate to Regensburg.

Benedict’s insightful new encyclical, Spe salvi, is half lecture, half retreat conference.

A view from the East

The late French-American novelist Julian Green on his mother’s conversion, and his own

  Rome’s new ruling on the morality of removing feeding tubes

A Catholic prison chaplain reports on Christian fundamentalism at San Quentin.

  How does the new Vatican statement on feeding tubes square with traditional church teaching?

A review of the controversial new book ’The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy.’

A diagnosis and prescription

Remembering the achievement and grace of Cardinal Aaron Jean-Marie Lustiger

How helpful is the U.S. bishops’ new statement on politics & church teaching?

  Another side of the controversial religion.

Revisiting Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel.

  The Second Vatican Council according to Pope Benedict XVI

The second of our exclusive excerpts from Taylor’s new book ’A Secular Age.’

  An exclusive excerpt from his new book.

  The chair of Notre Dame’s History Department on his institution’s oft-questioned religious identity.

Does schism loom for the Anglican Communion?

Is there room for ROTC on Catholic campuses?

  One hundred years after the so-called Modernist crisis, what lessons does the episode hold for today’s church?

What does the end of ’Crisis’ magazine’s print run mean for the Catholic conversation?

  The Los Angeles Archdiocese’s historic clergy sexual-abuse settlement.

  Welcome back?

Another take on ’Jesus of Nazareth’

  Whatever happened to liturgical reform?

  A Catholic flirts with vegetarianism.

Is peace breaking out among Catholic scholars in the United States?

 All you need to know about the failure of Christopher Hitchens’s latest antireligious screed.

Negotiating the authority of Scripture, tradition & experience

How can you believe that God cares more for humans than for any other part of creation?

 An encounter with the unsayable in Into Great Silence

  A profile.

  What message will the Pope’s visit leave behind?

Remembering Islam’s long history of peaceful coexistence with non-Muslim cultures

How to read the Vatican’s latest notification.

When abuse victims squander their moral authority.

Why won’t the Catholic neocons who supported the Iraq war admit their errors?

  The millstone doesn’t belong around the neck of the Zeitgeist.

  Selling and sanitizing the father of evolution

The theological legacy of John S. Dunne, CSC—from Buber to Bradbury.

  Is Andrew Sullivan right to emphasize the role of doubt in any serious theology?

A new series of financial scandals threatens to further erode the laity’s trust in their bishops.

An unlikely devotion.

Looking east—what Catholics are learning.

The lessons of Regensburg.

  What can we learn from the pope’s successful visit to Turkey?

What to do when a stranger asks for help.

The recent U.S. bishops’ statements contained wisdom, but left much to be desired.

Are U.S. seminaries turning out intellectually formed, mature priests? Not often enough.

Who is prepared to cope with old age?

  A new study of the recently ordained makes clear that the Catholic priesthood is at a crossroads.

A review of David Gibson’s ’The Rule of Benedict’

The fertility industry is booming. What are the risks of technological reproduction?

A program for reform.

  What was the pope really saying in his controversial remarks at Regensburg?

  Evolution and Christianity are not as compatible as some would have you believe.

  A report on four efforts in Europe’s new evangelization.

  Dealing with the spiritual-but-not-religious epidemic.

Why is our movement toward death so full of suffering?

Why efforts to establish nonreligious grounds for human rights so often fail.

  Forty years after Nostra aetate, "much still remains to be done."

The changelessness of the church is a comforting notion, but hardly an accurate one.

Remembering Sr. Rose Thering, OP, a theological force to be reckoned with.

  What is the price of "progress"?

  The pope’s perplexing statement on the Holocaust left much to be desired.

What happened to the celebrated monk when he visited the Buddhist shrine at Gal Vihara?

Becoming orthodox wasn’t high on their to-do list.

"Family values" is a delightful slogan, but what are we really extolling?

Can schism be averted?

Adoption isn’t for everyone—but that has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Whom to trust: the community of believers or, as Dan Brown would have it, ourselves?

  Is the church’s strict ban on condom use in the fight against AIDS morally defensible?

  A former student of Joseph Ratzinger offers insights into the new pope.

  Why Professor Wallace Fowlie was Jim Morrison’s favorite scholar.

At Princeton and other elite secular schools, conservative Catholic voices are dominant.

What does the unlikely pairing of evangelicals and Catholics mean for U.S. politics?

How should we think about the moral status of the early embryo?

Needy children lose out in the Catholic Charities gay adoption controversy.

The Schiavo case threatens to dismantle both Catholic teaching on end-of-life issues and Catholic moral theology generally.

Rick Warren’s theology is great when God’s plan for you works out. What happens when it seems painful?

As the subject of “spirituality” continues to grow in popularity, its definition is increasingly muddied. Lawrence S. Cunningham, Notre Dame theologian and Commonweal columnist, tries to shed some light on the subject. He traces the history of Catholic spirituality, and brings to life several forms of its expression today.

  Is Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things, right about the Vatican Instruction on gay seminarians? Is Benedict XVI tolerating dissent, especially Jesuit dissent, on the gay issue? Will the pope’s “aversion to unpleasantness,” as Neuhaus calls it, lead to a crisis of church authority the likes of which haven’t been seen since Humanae vitae? In short, no, no, and no, argue The Editors.

Rumors of Benedict XVI’s scolding first encyclical have been greatly exaggerated. The Editors on Deus Caritas Est.

  "Suppose we indulge our fondest hopes. Let us imagine that Pope Benedict XVI turns out to be quite unlike what many expected, and that he embraces a spirit of theological openness and generosity. No longer would a respected and respectful editor of a Jesuit journal be removed for the sin of advocating fairness; no more would a leading theological ethicist be removed from a tenured position or a systematic theologian be quelled by the same threat." Luke Timothy Johnson on the role of the Catholic theologian.

Forty years ago, Eugene B. Borowitz attended the first formal Jewish-Catholic colloquy, where “a new spirit of possibility,” ushered in by Vatican II, “hung in the air.” Borowitz remembers that moment, and reports on the state of Jewish-Catholic dialogue today.

How did Pope Pius XII handle the issue of Jewish children orphaned during the Holocaust? Some argued that Pius’s dealings with Jewish leaders were “cold and impersonal.” Others claim that Pius was in fact a great benefactor of the Jews. Which was it? Holocaust scholar Michael R. Marrus provides the historical context.

  Rome’s "Instruction" on gay seminarians is a failure of hope, writes theologian William McDonough. James Martin, SJ says the document will make gay men think twice about entering the priesthood.

So far, Pope Benedict XVI has shown a surprising openness to interfaith dialogue. The Editors.

  "Given the church’s teaching that homosexuals are ’objectively disordered,’ barring homosexuals from ordination may be more charitable than subjecting them to the contradictory demands and rigors of an institution that morally chastises them." Rev. Paul Stanosz reports.

  "Closing the priesthood to gay men, an orientation the church recognizes as involuntary and blameless, would be an extreme and unjust step to take," The Editors write. "Solving the ’problem’ in this way . . . is sure to drive gay priests deeper into a clerical closet, with all the potential that entails for moral and psychological damage and eventual scandal."

The bishops, the Vatican & the English liturgy

  Catholic bishops are usually loath to acknowledge dissent within their ranks. So it was surprising when the U.S. bishops publicly released the results of an internal poll that showed them almost evenly split on new English translations for the Mass. The divisions among the bishops revealed that perhaps they do not walk in lockstep as much as conventional wisdom holds.

  While the Democratic Party lost interest in Catholic voters, the GOP was eager to snap them up. As Daniel Finn, who teaches economics and theology at St. John’s University, Minnesota, argues, the strategic importance of religious voters “has burgeoned to the point where a presidential campaign scorned the conventional wisdom of courting undecided, middle-of-the-road voters and triumphed instead by turning out its church-going base.” Clearly, church-going voters are useful to politicians. But, Finn asks, are politicians useful to churchgoers?

  If intelligent design is to be taught in public-school classrooms, in what course does it belong? Certainly not science class, argues John Boler, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Washington in Seattle. “If [intelligent design] belongs in a high-school curriculum at all,” Boler writes, “it might best be fitted under social studies.”

Bishops should not disagree with one another in public, especially on the most neuralgic issues of the day. For better and more often for worse, that discipline was a cornerstone of John Paul II’s pontificate. Yet disagree they did at the Synod of Bishops last month in Rome, the first of Benedict XVI’s papacy.

How is Benedict XVI, long a defender of orthodoxy and famous critic of the “dictatorship of relativism,” likely to approach interreligious dialogue? Does he see religious pluralism and tolerance as little more than an enticement to indifferentism or as something potentially more spiritually and intellectually fruitful?

"What are churches for? The answer may seem obvious: to preach and try to live the word of God and to celebrate the sacraments. But what does this mean? A recent First Things article argues that two distinct and irreconcilable visions of the church are at war, revealing a theological chasm between a ’church of demands’ and a ’church of acceptance.’" By John Garvey.

  “Catholics are everywhere,” writes David O’Brien. John Roberts is about to be confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Some of the most prominent members of Congress are Catholic. And much of the last presidential campaign was taken up with the issue of whether prochoice Catholic politicians could receive Communion. The Roberts nomination is an occasion for the church to put its social teachings into play in the debates about abortion, privacy, the family, economics, war and peace, and other issues.

In the aftermath of the Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse scandals, there was much talk of “the hour of the laity”—a time when Catholic laypeople would take their rightful place as members of the body of Christ, making their voices heard in the hope of avoiding further crises such as those wrought by priestly sexual abuse. Is anything like that happening? Not quite, reports John C. Cort, a former Commonweal and Catholic Worker editor and resident of the Archdiocese of Boston.

John Roberts came from a socially prominent and financially comfortable family. He attended the most prestigious university in the country before going to law school. An expert advocate, he engaged in vigorous debate about legal matters with the chief justice of the highest court in the land. But this John Roberts was never nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered on December 10, 1610, convicted of the capital offense of being a Catholic priest.

  "Has the church has changed its position on evolution? In a word, no. Catholic thinkers have long maintained that evolutionary biology provides a vitalizing stimulus to religious thought." By John F. Haught.

The Catholic Church’s presence in China dates to 1246, when a Franciscan friar and papal envoy led the first known Catholic mission to the Mongol court at Karakorum. By the early fourteenth century the Franciscans had a missionary presence throughout China. Those missions ended in 1368 with the fall of the Mongols to the anti-Christian Ming emperors. In 1565 the Jesuits established a mission south of Canton, and in 1582, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived and was soon traveling widely in China. Ricci immersed himself in Chinese language and culture, and thus sought to reconcile Catholicism with Confucianism and traditional practices such as ancestor veneration.

Founded in 1855 by a French bishop, the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary were one of the first religious congregations created exclusively for Chinese women. Today they hold a prominent position in the Chinese church. Like other sisters in China, they are beginning to take a more active role in the church. While vocations among priests are down in China, vocations among women are growing. Story by Adam Minter.

  How neither the God rejected by neo-Darwinians nor the God posited by intelligent designers has much to do with the God of the Bible. By John Garvey

Was Shakespeare a papist? Clare Asquith argues that the bard’s plays contained hidden Catholic messages.

Should the church’s response to secularization be a call for a return to Christendom? At least one bishop seems to think so. As William D. Wood reports, Cardinal Francis George advanced this idea at a recent academic conference. According to George, Wood writes, “the current spiritual problem of secularization in Europe is the result of unjust political decisions made by panoply of American and European leaders.” The implication is that secularization is best countered by making the political order less secular.

It was an arresting photograph: President George W. Bush holding a baby, and surrounded by children, all of whom began life as “excess” embryos otherwise destined for destruction or possibly for use in stem-cell experimentation.

John Paul’s last book raises but does not answer the question of God. Bernard G. Prusak reviews.

In removing Thomas Reese, SJ, from the editorship of America magazine, the Vatican and certain bishops may have struck a blow to the highly respected Jesuit journal of opinion, but if “these bishops think that clamping down on Reese will alter the way the Catholic Church is presented in the media, they’re wrong,” argues Paul Moses, former religion reporter for Newsday. Moses explains not only why Reese was a trusted source among journalists, but also how Reese was an exemplar of respectful dialogue within the church.

  From the archives: Joseph Komonchak on Pope Benedict XVI’s theological vision.

The attitude of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI toward other religions has long been appreciated by non-Catholics. “But in the attitudes of both men toward internal Catholic matters there is something many Orthodox find a bit disturbing,” writes John Garvey, an Orthodox priest and Commonweal columnist.

The Editors of Commonweal on the dismissal of Thomas Reese as editor of America magazine: "It is hard to judge what is more appalling, the flimsy case made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)—apparently at the instigation of some American bishops—against Reese’s orthodoxy and stewardship of America, or the senselessness of silencing perhaps the most visible, and certainly one of the most knowledgeable, fair-minded, and intelligent public voices the church has in this country."

  The death of John Paul II, and the outpouring of affection and admiration it has brought forth from every corner of the globe, has reminded all of us what a remarkable individual he was and what a singular institution the papacy is. We asked six commentators, representing four faith traditions, including Rev. Richard P. McBrien and Stanley Hauerwas, to make a preliminary assessment of the significance of the late pope’s life, thought, and ministry.

  I have met Pope Benedict XVI only once. It was seventeen years ago, when I was a graduate student at Yale. Richard John Neuhaus had organized an invitation-only conference in New York on biblical interpretation. Among the invited guests were Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Raymond Brown, the widely respected biblical scholar, and the eminent Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck, my dissertation adviser, who had been a delegated observer at the Second Vatican Council. With the breezy temerity of youth, I wrote Neuhaus (then still Lutheran), and asked to be the “observer from the next generation” at the conference. Much to my amazement, he acceded to my request.

  Timothy Schilling reports on the day Pope Benedict XVI was elected: "When the name Joseph is spoken, the woman on my left cries and the young man next to me thanks God. My first thought is, ’Surely not...’"

Charles E. Curran on the man who revoked his license to teach Catholic theology: "Ratzinger is a theological Augustinian who equates the heavenly city with the church and the earthly city with the world; hence the strong opposition between the church and the world in his thinking....I call myself a theological Thomist—one who accepts the basic goodness of humanity while recognizing that sin often tarnishes human endeavors."

  "No one knows exactly where Pope Benedict XVI will lead the church....one should be cautious in making assumptions about what sort of pope he will be by looking at his record at the CDF. The pastoral dimension of the papacy alone will demand a different set of talents and skills."

  Departing for his epic voyage, the mythic hero Odysseus left his storied bow in his wife’s care. During his absence, it served as an identity test to ward off suitors, for it was so large and difficult to handle only Odysseus, with his almost superhuman strength, could draw the ends together.

In September 2004, Sidney Callahan assessed a Vatican document on the collaboration of men and women authored by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

In 1996, John Paul II issued the apostolic letter Universi dominici gregis, which laid down detailed procedures to govern the election of a new pope. Among the responsibilities of the cardinals, prior to the recent conclave, was to appoint two preachers “known for their sound doctrine, wisdom, and moral authority” who were to offer “meditations on the problems facing the church at the present time and on the need for careful discernment in choosing the new pope.” This requirement of prayerful discernment of spirits carries beyond the conclave and the election of the next pope and constitutes a continuing responsibility of the church gathered in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

A few weeks before the pope died a reporter on the death watch called me. Among her questions: Is the papacy obsolete? My immediate reply was, “Yes, and it always has been.” I later revised my wisecrack, at least in my own head: the older the papacy becomes, the more obsolete it appears, because the longer it goes on, the more it has to preserve. To outsiders, like the reporter, the papacy seems so far behind the times that she could repeat a very old Protestant canard and describe it as obsolete. That, of course, is not how Catholics and many Christians, even Protestants, would describe it today.

  What does the church need in the next pope? Someone who will carry out Vatican II’s teaching that the word of God be addressed to the whole people of God, argues theologian Richard Gaillardetz. Gaillardetz wants a pope who “recognizes that we do not so much possess divine truth as it possesses us.” The first of a series of articles on the challenges facing the next pope. Later today: Margaret O’Brien Steinfels.

  Pope John Paul II was a force of nature, a man of iron will and passionate spirituality, who was also blessed with a quick wit, a magnetic personality, and a fearless moral temperament.

The passions of those on either side of the Terri Schiavo tragedy are not hard to understand. Still, whether Michael Schiavo was right to have his wife’s feeding tube removed is not a judgment that people outside the family should second-guess too quickly or easily. The choices involved cannot simply be reduced to the slogan “err on the side of life” or to accusations of euthanasia or death by starvation. Contested by Terri Schiavo’s parents, Michael Schiavo’s decision was rightfully adjudicated in the courts, not in Congress, the Florida governor’s office, or the White House.

In the October 10, 2003 Commonweal, the editors took stock of John Paul II on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his papacy.

  John Paul II, like Superman, tried to do everything. And in doing so, he may have harmed the church. Luke Timothy Johnson on JPII’s legacy.

Holy Thursday, March 24, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Patrick Jordan, Commonweal’s managing editor, asks: Who was Oscar Arnulfo Romero? And why do people still visit his grave?

Recent reports that a large number of Catholic schools in New York City and Chicago will close at the end of the year weren’t that surprising (inner-city Catholic schools have been in financial trouble for years); but it was saddening nevertheless. For decades, these schools served as neighborhood anchors, providing an identity for communities even after Catholics left for the suburbs. It’s understandable that news of the closings has prompted so much nostalgia from former students and teachers. People need to mourn institutions that were so much a part of their lives.

The U.S. bishops have written a new catechism for American Catholics—and they did it with young adult Catholics in mind. So why did they purge the Trappist monk Thomas Merton from the draft they sent to Rome for approval?

  Lent is a time to take stock, confess sins, and, when necessary, begin anew. It is fitting, then, that the U.S. Catholic bishops have chosen Lent to issue their reports on the church’s catastrophic sexual-abuse crisis. This year’s report from the National Review Board (NRB) and the Office of Child and Youth Protection (OCYP) was published February 12. It makes clear the ongoing need for such an accounting.

Earlier this month, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) barred the theologian Roger Haight, SJ, from teaching Catholic theology until he corrects “grave doctrinal errors” put forth in his book Jesus: Symbol of God. "This way of adjudicating questions of theological fidelity is an invitation to mischief or worse," The Editors write.

Rev. Gerard Thomas, a gay priest forced to write under a pseudonym, argues that banning homosexuals from the priesthood would represent a "serious moral error."

In the wake of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, columnist and Orthodox priest John Garvey asks, “Is God responsible”? As Garvey notes, all tragedy—on scales great and small—cause us to question God’s power.

"What does it mean to ’turn Catholic,’ as they say here in my tiny Midwest parish?" Jean Hughes Raber on her atypical conversion.

Advent, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is the season of diminishing light. The closer we come to the winter solstice, the greater we seem to need hope and reassurance.

"In her book ’The New Faithful,’ Colleen Carroll asserts that young Catholics take a more conservative approach to matters of faith than their elders do. According to James Davidson and Dean Hoge, that assertion is not supported by the empirical data produced in their study and earlier studies they have conducted."

We were two and four years old in 1952 when our family moved east from Chicago so that our father could take up his new post as managing editor of Commonweal. We can still remember the long overnight ride on the train taking us to our new home. For thirty-two of Commonweal’s eighty years, our father, James O’Gara, served on the staff of the magazine-first as managing editor and later as editor.

The late Wilfrid Sheed remembers his time at the magazine

During his tenure as cardinal archbishop of Boston, Bern­ard Law vigorously defended the position of the Catholic Church on abortion, which is sometimes described as an “unspeakable” act in authoritative church teaching. All the while, it turns out, the cardinal was turning a blind eye to another act that most people consider “unspeakable”-the sexual abuse of children or adolescents by Catholic priests within his archdiocese.

Some readers may recall that I have a serendipitous connection with Commonweal’s founding editor, Michael Williams (1877-1950). Williams lived, died, and is buried in Westport, Connecticut, the town where I grew up. Upon learning this, I went on a little expedition to find his grave (see “Our Man in Westport,” February 11, 2001). He’s buried not far from the elementary school I attended, and his funeral Mass was held in the church where I received my First Holy Communion and confirmation. Of all the unlikely occurrences related to my becoming editor of Commonweal, the fact that Williams and I had trod much of the same turf is the oddest.

It’s the start of a new day in Assisi. A chorus of church bells echoes off the well-scrubbed streets. Flowers overflow from the window boxes, cascading down pink stone walls. The Piazza del Commune, the town’s small historic center, is already beginning to fill with the day’s visitors.

The Vatican’s recent document on feminism and “the collaboration of men and woman” explicitly rejects “an outdated conception of femininity”—a good starting point, says former Commonweal columnist and noted feminist author Sidney Callahan. Unfortunately, the Vatican letter also accuses feminists of trying to make themselves “the adversaries of men.”

In the Editors’ open letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops, clarification is sought from the bishops on their own teaching on abortion. They call for greater clarification on whether the bishops intend to translate Catholic moral teaching and enactment into civil law.

“After fifty-nine years of a happy and exciting priesthood,” Msgr. Harry J. Byrne finds that “celibacy has been more of a distraction” “than an enhancement.”

  The pope’s recent address on patients in a persistent vegetative state has left a lot of people scratching their heads. How might we read it if it were a thesis proposal submitted to an committee for review at a Catholic university? Rev. John Tuohey imagines the scenario.

"Defending a Catholic politician’s access to the Eucharist is not the same thing as defending his or her support for unrestricted access to abortion. Sad to say, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s position on the legal status of abortion is extreme." The Editors address Kerry’s "Catholic problem."

What does the pope have to learn from ’Buffy the Vampire Slayer’? A lot, it turns out—especially about "the new feminism." Cathleen Kaveny reports.

  Who could blame the bishops for wanting to do something about abortion? Frans Jozef van Beeck asks. But denying Communion to prochoice Catholic politicians won’t do. This blanket condemnation smacks of the pastoral debacle of Humanae vitae.

What do bishops who propose refusing the Eucharist to prochoice politicians hope to accomplish?

What is it about The Passion of the Christ that appeals to young people? Mark Bosco explains.

Is there any hope in the battle to counter the alarming void in religious education? Yes, argues Notre Dame theologian John Cavadini. But it’s going to take more than "getting back to basics."

From the first issue of Commonweal: "The question will naturally arise why the editors of The Commonweal believe there is room for another journal to discuss public affairs, to review the important publications of the day, and produce original fiction, essays, and poetry."

  The U.S. Catholic bishops’ reports on sexual abuse in the church represent a landmark endeavor. Peter Steinfels goes beyond the numbers to lay out what we’ve learned and what we still don’t know. Fusce fermentum odio quis neque. Phasellus vitae lacus sed enim faucibus euismod.

this is a HIGHLIGHTED film review