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Reporting

	Notes from the alternative nation “It’s hard to understand late 20th-century U.S.A. without taking note that more and more people are putting their treasure where their heart is. Indeed, Americans are spending about $3 billion annually on things Christian.”
	A wanderer no longer wonders where he’s bound “Dion’s own star fell just as quickly as it rose. By 1965, when he recorded a mesmerizing version of ‘Spoonful,’ bluesman Willie Dixon’s paean to love or drugs, he was fully in the thrall of heroin addiction.”
	At Auschwitz, looking for ‘a lost Atlantis ’ “There are Jewish spirits in Catholic Poland, made from flakes of black ash, sealed in a silent sky with the tears of lost memories. These things Rabbi Byron Sherwin believes.”
	Minding their own businesses “The number of worker-owned companies has jumped sharply in the last decade. Advocates see this new way of doing business as a hopeful option for the poor in troubled economic times.”
	Preaching penance in the penitentiary “Cowboy’s sins had multiplied and gone unforgiven for so long that he’d stopped believing they could be. Then came his jailhouse confession.”
	After the fog of war “America’s newest war hero, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, was defiant but on the defensive: ‘Anyone who dares even imply that we did not achieve a great victory doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.”
	Fighting words: Why Catholics disagree about war “A pop-radio station in Erie, Pa. decided to take a poll: Who is the greater monster, Saddam Hussein or the Benedictine nuns who run Pax Christi USA? It was a close vote, but the nuns won.”
	The untold story of abortion in America “The N.Y. Times editorialized in 1870 against ‘the perpetuation of infant murder’ and complained bitterly that ‘the lives of babes are of less account than a few ounces of precious metal or a roll of green backs.’”
	Facing a moral problem in the inner cities “The reality of black inner-city life once more exploded into the national conscience, following the acquital of four white Los Angeles policemen accused of brutally beating a black criminal suspect, Rodney King.”
	Memoirs of a country journalist “Majewski’s prose rambles along like the dirt roads and lazy streams he is so fond of. He writes with a poet’s eye for nature’s beauty and a moralist’s distress about the soul of the republic.”
	Why Rev. Dan Berrigan won't be voting this year (or any other) “These people are totally fragmented. They have a sort of instant conscience in their efforts to get the public on their side. But there’s no real expression of any kind of spiritual conviction.”
	A sermon in the Rocky Mountains “And with their radical living arrangements, simple habits and beautifully ethereal liturgies ... they are changing the way Catholics think about prayer and life in this boomtown of the new global economy.”
	Where are Catholics when the collection basket gets passed? “Today, Catholics are the wealthiest religious group in the nation, with the average Catholic family bringing home $31,475 a year. Yet the Church in America is in the throes of a fiscal crisis.”
	The troubled U.S. visit of Poland’s primate “Rabbi Weiss’ attorney, the noted Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, said Catholics ought to be ashamed to have ‘a bigot’ like Cardinal Glemp among ‘the princes of the Church.’”
	Rabbi loses round in campaign against cardinal “But Judge Patterson found plenty that was not routine about the rabbi’s process server during a dramatic, day-long hearing Feb. 11 in his Manhattan courtroom.”
	In the war on drugs, a plea for mercy “Ten years into his mandatory 15-to-life sentence under the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, Steven Lennon has pinned his hopes on a pardon from Gov. Mario Cuomo.”
	Memories of an Hispanic devotion “Saavedra can still picture the spectacle of devout pilgrims, young and the old, poor and rich, on their knees, making their way in a slow, penitential crawl over the several miles of hard, stone road.”
	Medjugorie: Myth or Miracle? “Nine years after they began, the alleged sitings of Mary at Medjugorie show no sign of letting up. Nor does the battle over their authenticity.”
	At the dimming of the day “At a time when the terminally-ill like Agnes are offered ‘suicide machines’ and manuals on how to make their ‘final exit,’ St. Peter’s Hospice is keeping clear another path for the dying to walk.”
	A vote in Washington state and the growing “death mentality” “The debate about euthanasia sends a distressing message to society’s most vulnerable people—that whether they live or die is a subject for ‘reasonable’ people to dispute in legislatures and courts.”
	After Somalia: The debate over “humanitarian intervention” “In the debate over using military force to promote human rights, some suspect ‘humanitarian intervention’ is just moral window dressing for American ambitions in the post-Cold War world.”
	A desert storm and the future of war “The 43-day war in the Persian Gulf ended on Feb. 27 exactly as it began—amid controversy over its morality.”
	War stories from America’s retiring military archbishop “The Okinawa campaign began on Easter 1945. The previous day—from four o’clock in the afternoon until he celebrated Mass at midnight—Archbishop Ryan heard the confessions of those about to do battle.”
	Catholic leaders and the fight against the next war “In the aftermath of this war, Catholic officials have concluded that, while there may still be just wars, there are no holy wars.”
	The trouble in toyland “The world of childrens’ toys teems with mutated reptiles in sewers, strong men bent on mastering the universe, and helpless, vain women with expensive tastes in fashions.”
	Catholic leaders worldwide growing “green” “Responding to what they see as a growing ecological crisis, bishops from Italy to Indonesia, and America to the Amazon, are finding new natural wisdom in their Scriptures and tradition.”
	Keeping babies healthy in a down economy “Eleven of every 1,000 children born in the state will die before their first birthday and close to eight percent of New York’s babies don’t weigh enough when they’re born.”
	A new frequency of faith “When the nation’s first commercial Catholic radio network went off the air in May 2000 after just 18 months in operation, the signal seemed loud and clear—‘all–Catholic, all–the–time’ is a format without a future.”