If, in some weird parallel universe, Pope Benedict XVI were to be a candidate this fall for President of the United States, he could mount a serious run. Polls say Benedict enjoys a 75 percent approval rating after a successful visit last April, he packs obvious appeal to "faith and values" voters, and it would be hard to question his international experience. In an election in which the Republican nominee is 72, even the pope's advanced age wouldn't necessarily be a drawback.

This gospel, the incident described today, happened immediately after last Sunday's gospel, the incident that happened there. That seemed to be such a great moment for Simon Peter and for the other disciples because, as Peter declared, they knew, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." But at the end of that passage, last Sunday, Jesus said something that might have seemed strange to us because he told those disciples at that moment: "Don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody that I am the Messiah."

Wouldn't you think that Jesus would want everybody to know what those disciples had come to know, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Anointed One sent by God? But he had told them, "No, be quiet. Keep it to yourselves." Why? Because as we discovered today, when Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, you're not thinking according to God's ways. You are thinking according to human ways."

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

News Analysis
Debates over when life begins are by now wearily familiar, if no closer to resolution – witness Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama’s recent comment that pegging a precise moment is “above my pay grade.” Yet a Sept. 2 article in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, suggests that an equally agonizing debate is brewing at the other end of the biological continuum – not over when life begins, but when it ends.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 24 -- Sept. 2, 2008

There is a place in soul and psyche, La selva subterránea, The underground forest... a mysterious locus which acts as El refugio, a protected place where the exhausted spirit can safely rest... and where attracted by La luz violeta the violet light from worldly wounds, angels come to tend to souls with infinite tenderness.

        --cpe

Things are torn apart; Things need to be given rest ... Perhaps you grew up in the forests, lake lands and farmlands like I did. There, lightning and hail storms were called “cutting storms,” and “reaper storms,” as in Grim Reaper, for the lightning, the whipping rain and wind cut down living beings all around: livestock, sometimes a woman trying to bring the sheets from the line, a man trying to turn the red tractor towards home.

On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J.	Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Vol. 2, No. 52

(Note: Another excerpt from my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, published by Loyola Press last month. After 10 years of Jesuit formation and studies in philosophy and theology, I was ordained a priest in June 1993. Six months later, I was arrested for walking onto an Air Force base and hammering on a jet fighter equipped to carry nuclear arms. It was an attempt to "turn swords into plowshares." Here's the story of my action and trial.)

It is dark -- early in the morning, Dec. 7, 1993. We will hike through woods, over fields, and onto a tarmac. On the runway, we'll approach an F-15E bomber and swing hammers against steel; then, in the spirit of nonviolence, and with whatever courage we can muster, we will await our arrest. Instead of waiting for the government to begin nuclear disarmament, we will start it ourselves.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

When news broke yesterday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain had named little-known Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate, religion writers across the country and the curious in the blogosphere scrambled to figure out her denominational affiliation.

Palin was briefly touted as the first Pentecostal to run on a major party ticket. A spokesperson, however, told the Associated Press yesterday that although the 44-year-old mother of five grew up in the Assemblies of God, the largest organized Pentecostal denomination in the world with an estimated 57 million members, she does not consider herself a “Pentecostal.”