Going It Alone Planned Parenthood affiliates around the country have decided to forego federal funds rather than comply with a Bush administration ruling banning abortion counseling and referral’s at federally funded family planning clinics. Planned Parenthood’s Wisconsin affiliates rejected $2.25 million in federal aid; as a result three of its 38 clinics will close and … Read more
The Ramsey Colloquium Editor’s note: The Ramsey Colloquium issued the following declaration “to prepare the American public to understand the questions involved in initiatives for euthanasia.” A group of Jewish and Christian theologians, ethicists, philosophers, legal scholars, and others, the Colloquium meets regularly under the auspices of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and … Read more
 SEND EUROPE YOUR POOR Western Europeans sometimes enjoy delectatio morosa about the number of the “poor” in the United States. They conveniently ignore the even larger proportion of Western Europeans that are poor by U.S. standards. Just how poor are the U.S. poor? Of the just over 30 million Americans living “in poverty,” the U.S. … Read more
Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. ~Robert Heilbroner Definition: Liberty is the reign of conscience. ~Lord Acton We are facing a new relation between “the first and second liberties” — religious liberty and economic liberty — as we begin the second hundred … Read more
Military Exorcises The grounds of New York’s Cathedral of St. John Divine were “reconsecrated” in a “service of atonement” after Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf took part in a memorial service June 9. The Reverend Dan Berrigan, S.J., excoriated the trio in remarks reported by the National Catholic Reporter: … Read more
Editor’s note: Arthur F. McGovern, S.J., is a well-respected student of liberation theology and author of Liberation Theology and Its Critics (Orbis). In a recent interview with Crisis editor Scott Walter, Father McGovern discussed how liberation theologians are responding to dramatic economic and political changes in Eastern Europe and Latin America. How do the liberation … Read more
The Horse’s Mouth A group of Cuban dissidents who have suffered imprisonment and torture at the hands of Fidel Castro are making what could turn out to be a most significant visit: they are taking their personal accounts of abuse to the Soviet Union. For the past two decades the Soviet Union has served as … Read more
The novelist Saul Bellow once wrote that “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” For the past half-century, leading American politicians, academics, clergy, and journalists have celebrated the achievements of the Soviet Union and her Communist allies while depreciating the record of liberal democracies in … Read more
Partial Vindication A New York State investigation team has cleared Covenant House, the shelter for runaway children, of all charges of criminal mishandling of charitable contributions. Robert Abrams, the attorney general, said that his office and directors of the shelter were working together to establish financial procedures that would prevent even the perception of wrongdoing … Read more
Conscience or Convenience? The Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has made a name for itself by promising to invest the funds of religious groups in ethical and socially redeeming causes. For example, ICCR pledges not to invest in companies doing business in South Africa, nor in companies that pollute the environment. Thomas Strohbar, one … Read more
The news that the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was considering whether to take a (pro-choice) stand on abortion provoked a number of strong responses. We reprint two: first, a polling report from the Wirthlin Group showing public opinion on the issue; second, a letter sent by 14 United States congressmen to … Read more
Archbishop Roger Mahony Feast of the Sacred Heart, June 2, 1989 In a few weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States will hand down its decision in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. While it is impossible to predict how the Webster decision will affect the abortion liberty as defined by the … Read more
Avery Dulles, S.J. This list probably reflects my own prejudices as a theologian, but I presume that it was as a theologian that I was invited to contributed to this symposium. I make no effort to rank the books. DIVINE COMEDY by Dante CONFESSIONS of St. Augustine ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE by … Read more
Philosopher Sidney Hook Discovers the Limits of Reason R. Sidney Hook is a well-known philosopher and authority on Marxism. In 1927 he joined the philosophy faculty at New York University and was department chairman from 1934 until 1948, when he became chairman of the N.Y.U. graduate school’s Division of Philosophy and Psychology, a position he … Read more
One of the mainstays of the left these days is to speak ill of “individualism,” while employing an uncritical use of “community.” The U.S. Catholic bishops joined this chorus in their pastoral on the U.S. economy. So did Robert Bellah and colleagues in Habits of the Heart, a useful and good but oddly bent argument. … Read more
Still Hope for Seminaries Francis Sullivan’s article on seminaries raises some important questions about the manner in which the Church presently prepares her clergy for orders. I read it with a more than typical curiosity, since I was myself, last year, asked to leave one of the seminaries he indicts: Theological College in Washington, D.C. … Read more
Twenty-five years ago this October, I stood with my wife late at night in the piazza of St. Peter in Rome under a full and silver moon, rejoicing in the victory of “progressive” forces at Vatican II. We could feel the fine spray of the fountains in the light air. Our mood was exultant, there … Read more
Some critics have said of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and on the U.S. economy that they conform too closely to reigning ideologies; e.g., to the reigning ideologies at the New York Times. Everyone these days seems to want to be in opposition, playing David to Goliath. To be “adversarial” to … Read more
Editors’ Note: The following letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which raises questions about the propriety and moral soundness of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ controversial publication, “The Many Faces of AIDS,” was sent to Archbishop John May, President of the NCCB, for distribution to the U.S. bishops prior to their meeting in June at … Read more
In a taping of “Firing Line” last winter and again in his column for the Catholic press, Father Richard McBrien has come out in favor of “cafeteria Catholicism”—on sexual and other matters for progressives, on Catholic social teaching for conservatives. “There are conservatives and neoconservatives in that cafeteria line. And I don’t deplore it. I … Read more