The Best Catholic Writing 2006

Contents

Introduction by Brian Doyle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi A Note on the Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xv

We Want God Peggy Noonan. from The Wall Street Journal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Five Years with Dorothy Day Rober t Ellsberg. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

It Is Not Power, but Love That Redeems Us! .

Pope Benedict XVI. from the homily at his inauguration Mass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Six Recognitions of the Lord Mary Oliver. from Shenandoah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Are Young Catholics Embracing Orthodoxy? .

Amy Welborn and Others. from Open Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

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Contents

Sister Rosemarie Wants You Clare Ansberry. from The Wall Street Journal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

In Praise of Horizontal Prayer Frank Moan, SJ. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The Redemption of Shane Paul O’Doherty Kevin Cullen. from The Boston Globe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

A Gesture Life Colm Tóibín. from The New York Times Magazine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Was Shakespeare Catholic? Clare Asquith. from Commonweal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

A Global Church in a Globalized World John L. Allen Jr.. from a lecture at Dominican University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

God’s Chance Creation George Coyne, SJ. from The Tablet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

The Writer Who Was Full of Grace Jonathan Yardley. from The Washington Post. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Confirmation Day Seamus Heaney. from Agni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

The Existence of Chuck Norris Douglas Beaumont. from Tu Quoque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Tremors of Doubt David Bentley Har t. from The Wall Street Journal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Merry Sunshine Joe Hoover, SJ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Self-Hating Humanity? John F. Kavanaugh, SJ. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Pater Gerardus M. Hopkins, SJ Ron Hansen. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

A Remembrance of Hiroshima Pedro Arrupe, SJ. from The Catholic Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Eddy Brian Doyle. from Portland Magazine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Under the Apricot Trees Sandra Scofield. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

The Truth about the Crusades Rober t P. Lockwood. from This Rock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

The Reality of Torture Mar tin Flanagan. from The Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Don’t Forget Thomas Lynch. from Image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Obedient unto Death Margaret Roche Macey. from America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Going to Chimayó Don Haynes. from Portland Magazine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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My mother, my father, my little sister, and I were with my widowed grandmother, Frieda Hambleton, in her house in a poor Religion/Essays $14.95living U.S. T he H E B est EST

criticallyFalls, acclaimedTexas. annual collection presents h borhood ofThis Wichita We were crowded, but it was what I had always known, and I was happy. Then she built a h

Grant Street, in the developing part of the city, on the very edge of prairie. I thought Twe he would go withBher;est instead, we moved across the most challenging, interesting, and thoughtful Catholic writing of the year

T

Catholic Writing

edition of The Best Catholic Writing celebrate what series editor acks pastBriana2006 Pig Stand Drive-In into county housing. Our duplex was ill furnished, but here my deeply religious mother could set Doyle calls “honest, eloquent, angry, and hilarious” writing that “grapples he twenty-seven essays, articles, poems, and speeches selected for the

Catholic Writing

spellbinding of how Popepictures.

John Paul II changed the course of history, n altar and hangaccount devotional In Frieda’s Lutheran house, we had said our prayers in a bedroom with the door closed.We couldn with the essence of the Catholic idea.” Notable essays include Peggy Noonan’s

vivid Catholic personalitiesbecause to life, address issues in and the spiritualnew house with a man, Collins H ve movedselections with bring Frieda anyway, sheethicallived amon.

2 She 0 called 0 him6by his last name, in t Robert Ellsberg’s moving appreciation of his friend and mentor Dorothy Day, and a challenging look at the changing face of global Catholicism by John Allen. The

anner ofChurch millcondemn workers, nurses. evolution?policemen, Was Shakespeareand a secret Catholic?). They both worked at mills—she packed flour; he packed feed—and they had been friendlyor problems (torture, medical treatment at the end of life, the problem of suffering),

and ask provocative questions (Are young Catholics embracing orthodoxy? Does the

le, but none of usRobert hadLockwood’s ever met him.of theAnd though Iup now remember him vividly, because he behaved in a way I had never seen a man beh the priesthood; debunking urban legends that make Selections include Kevin Cullen’s profile of a former IRA terrorist now studying for

memoryHansen; was anddormant for fifty years, until , a long time after Frieda’s death in 1 983, I began reflecting on certain aspects of her life. a Wall Street Journal portrait of nuns who finance their nursing homes the conventional wisdom about the Crusades; Colm Tóibín’s meditation on the

public face of John Paul II; poetry by Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, and Ron

as well as material first published on the internet. s interested in learning about the Grant Street house because it was the house I had thought of as home base for nearly thirty years, by begging in the streets. The collection contains writing from the UK and Australia,

Brian Doyle’s

2006

have appeared in the American r most of that timeScholar, I Atlantic had essays depended on my grandmother for her unconditional love. Facts are a scaffold for narrative, and though I did Monthly, and Harper’s and they have been

books including Leaping (Loyola Press) and The Wet Engine w it yet, I was searching for my grandmother’s story. From public records, and much to my surprise, I learned that Collins Ha (Paraclete). He is the editor of Portland Magazine and lives in Portland, Oregon.

B r i a n D o y l e ught the Grant Street property in 1 949 for five thousand dollars and transferred ownership to Frieda in January 1 953 for one dolla anthologized in “best essay” collections. He is the author of five

b y

DOYLE

ISBN-10 0-8294-2356-7 ISBN-13 978-0-8294-2356-3

E d i ted

his is not to say that he gave her the house. Records also show that she paid the mortgage from 1 953 to 1 979.)I always thought my gra

ther had the house built, but what I saw must have been a nearly completed house on which she and Hamon did finish work. He h