http://www.godspy.com/ en ajmatera@earthlink.net Copyright 2008 2008-04-18T12:52:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/news/benedicts-discomforting-message/ http://www.godspy.com/news/benedicts-discomforting-message/#When:12:52:00Z "Benedict directly challenged an assumption so many Americans make about religion: that it is a matter of private devotion with few public implications. Not true, said the pope. 'Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted,' he told the country’s Catholic bishops Wednesday. 'Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel.' That is a demanding and unsettling standard for the right and the left alike... This is the thinking of a communitarian counseling against radical individualism... Perhaps it is the task of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to bring discomfort to a people so thoroughly shaped by modernity, as we Americans are. If so, Benedict is succeeding." Faith 2008-04-18T12:52:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/whats-behind-the-new-interest-in-confession/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/whats-behind-the-new-interest-in-confession/#When:04:59:00Z Is the present increase in the popularity of the confession of sins a step toward a realistic religiosity, or is it the popularity of the penitential rite of the American Church of Christ without Christ? Faith 2008-04-10T04:59:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/the-weakerthans-liturgy-of-the-other-hours/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/the-weakerthans-liturgy-of-the-other-hours/#When:04:46:00Z Music 2008-04-10T04:46:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/beauty-goes-underground/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/beauty-goes-underground/#When:23:56:00Z Would St. Augustine ever have experienced his conversion sitting in a pew being subjected to an off-key rendering of “On Eagle’s Wings”? Culture 2008-04-09T23:56:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/reviews/rems-comeback/ http://www.godspy.com/reviews/rems-comeback/#When:20:18:01Z "…for a supposed comeback attempt, R.E.M. doesn't seem desperate to be loved here. Much of Accelerate actually sounds fired-up and angry: ‘Living Well Is the Best Revenge’ is an aggressive opening salvo, the oblique narrative of ‘Mr. Richards’ finds Stipe at his most effectively political, and the gritty, double-speed ‘Horse to Water’ is the album's most self-critical song… If it isn't able to recapture the post-punk energy of Reckoning, the political fury of Life's Rich Pageant, or the epic scope of Automatic for the People, the album, at the very least, finds the band playing to its strengths rather than attempting to explore an increasingly thin artistic mythology. That alone justifies Accelerate's positive buzz, even if the album doesn't quite support the magnitude of it.” Music 2008-04-01T20:18:01-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/on-seeing-others/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/on-seeing-others/#When:00:38:00Z Why are we so hesitant to respect the soul of the person in front of us? 2008-04-01T00:38:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/doubting-doubting-thomas/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/doubting-doubting-thomas/#When:07:39:00Z St. Thomas’s evangelizing journeys after the Pentecost, culminating in his brutal death, tell a quite different story from the role he has been cast in the Christian script. Faith 2008-03-30T07:39:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/magazine/visiting-with-jesus-in-prison/ http://www.godspy.com/magazine/visiting-with-jesus-in-prison/#When:18:53:00Z The InnerChange Freedom Initiative descends into unhappy and often hellish places in obedience to the Christ who was himself obedient to the point of death. Life 2008-03-29T18:53:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/news/the-puzzling-pope-six-surprising-things-about-benedict-xvi/ http://www.godspy.com/news/the-puzzling-pope-six-surprising-things-about-benedict-xvi/#When:03:21:00Z "The head of the CDF has to draw lines, level punishments and basically talk tough, a role that Ratzinger seemed to relish, but one that won him epithets like God's Rottweiller and the old standby, the Panzerkardinal. But now that Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict, he knows better than anyone that he is also the chief pastor of the church. There can be no 'Panzerpope.' His job is to be the good cop, a symbol of unity who tries to encourage people to live their faith more deeply. As he told a dinner companion about his new role: 'It was easy to know the doctrine. It’s much harder to help a billion people live it.'" Faith 2008-03-28T03:21:00-05:00 http://www.godspy.com/news/hiroshima-has-the-ground-zero-of-the-nuclear-age-become-too-normal/ http://www.godspy.com/news/hiroshima-has-the-ground-zero-of-the-nuclear-age-become-too-normal/#When:23:39:00Z ...Hiroshima is still here to remind us of what happened when we first unleashed our "device" and how it can never happen again—supposedly. That's what everyone says after visiting Hiroshima, the statesmen and citizens who sign the guest book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. We will never forget. But maybe we will. The very fact that Hiroshima is thriving with its KFC and Starbucks, with the carefully manicured lawns of its 'Peace Memorial Park'—the only evidence that hell was unleashed here—may have the opposite, anodyne effect. This is not John Hersey's Hiroshima, the Hiroshima of the horrific immediate aftermath, but is to a certain extent a Hiroshima that says a nuclear detonation is a transient thing, something that's eminently recoverable from with a little time and some good landscaping." Issues 2008-03-26T23:39:00-05:00