journal

On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J.	Tuesday, August 19, 2008
	Vol. 2, No. 50

(A note from John Dear: For your end of summer reading, I offer here excerpts from my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, published last week from Loyola Press. Here, I tell about the beginnings of my conversion at Duke University. Have a peaceful August!)

When I realized how hard my classes would be [during my junior year at Duke], I looked to round out my schedule with something easier. Someone had told me that the easiest class on campus was Abnormal Psychology, taught by Professor Harold Schiffman, an absent-minded professor who looked like Albert Einstein. I signed up. He would raise the grade by one letter for any student who performed a few hours of volunteer work for him each week. I knew an easy A when I saw one, so I volunteered.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 23 -- Aug. 18, 2008

In the old healing practices of many Latinos, we say that wounds are not pointless lacerations. We say that a sacred light emanates from the worst of the wounds... that nations can have wounds; environs can be wounded, that creatures and humans and gifts and ideas can be wounded.

Anyone who's ever learned a foreign language knows that perhaps 50 percent of a language is predictable according to its own rules, and the rest simply is what it is, the product of history and culture rather than logic. Try explaining to an ESL student why the plural of "mouse" is "mice," but the plural of "spouse" is not "spice," and you'll find that going over the rules really doesn't help; in the end, that's just how things are.

It's my conviction that most of us who hear these lessons today, especially the first lesson, can find a lot of comfort in them. I think there are a couple of reasons for this, one of which is very obvious, and the other we have to search a little bit more deeply to discover what God is really saying to us today.

The first reason why these lessons seem so comforting, I think we find in the gospel, how quick Jesus is to reach out to help. As soon as Peter cries in fear and in need, Jesus is right there, disappointed perhaps because Peter has suddenly lacked confidence in him, but nevertheless, he's there to give Peter the help he needs. The first lesson we also find comforting because it reminds us that when we are searching for God, or perhaps when we feel somewhat abandoned by God, if we go apart, we will discover God.

It was a touching, powerful and embarrassing piece of media. In fact, it was enough to make the average, newspaper-reading U.S. citizen blush. There stood the president of the United States speaking passionate words into a Rose Garden microphone. He was excoriating Russia's "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence toward Georgia, "a sovereign neighboring state," in retaliation for Georgia's suppression of Ossetia, its breakaway province. The action, George Bush said with properly restrained indignation, has "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world."

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Summer 2008 is chock full of Catholic anniversaries, from the 40th birthday of Humanae Vitae to the 30th observance of the death of Pope Paul VI. One such milestone, however, does not appear on any official church calendars: it’s now been 25 years since the June 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl and Vatican citizen whose fate has become one of the most enduring Vatican mysteries of the 20th century.

On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J.	Tuesday, August 12, 2008
	Vol. 2, No. 49

(A note from John Dear: For your end of summer reading, I offer here excerpts from my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, published last week from Loyola Press. We'll begin with part of the introduction. Have a peaceful August!)

Since the time I first told my grandmother that e.e. cummings had written: "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten-thousand stars how not to dance..." my grandmother ever after called him Saint E-E, and said he was just the kind of leader of the soul the world was longing for.

The morning of Wednesday, August 6, Pope Benedict XVI met with some 400 priests of the diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone in the local cathedral. He was welcomed by the local bishop, made some brief opening remarks, and then took six questions. The pope spoke in German and Italian; the following is a rush NCR translation of the transcript of the exchange released this morning by the Vatican.

A two-part dramatic miniseries on Pope Paul VI is slated for Italian national TV this fall, marking the 30th anniversary of his death in August 1978. Corriere della Sera, Italy's main daily, reports that eight million Euro are being pumped into the project, which is hardly surprising given the mammoth ratings success of earlier miniseries about the popes between whom Paul VI was sandwiched: John XXIII and John Paul II.