Looking back, ahead

On New Year’s Eve, my younger son, Mark, put on his most frustrated voice and told his mother (my wife): “It’s the New Year, buy The Man (that’s me) some new tools.”

He had stopped at our house to say hi and got roped into putting a new battery in my car. (Hey, the offer to install it was his idea.) But the frustration came in when I didn’t have the necessary tools.

But that’s the problem with celebrating a new year: no one seems quite certain how it should be done.

New tools, certainly, make for a better celebration than getting sloshed, or resolutions which won’t (or can’t) be kept, or vowing never to sing “Olde Lang Syne” off key again. (Or, for that matter, learning what the heck those words actually mean.)

These new-year musings, of course, are occasioned by the fact that this is the first issue of The Catholic New World published in the Year of Our Lord 2002. Which, also of course, actually is incorrect since the year of Jesus’ birth is unknown, though the best guess is 6 B.C.—an oxymoron that would make this 2008. Or something like that.

Calendar confusion is made worse by the fact that picking Jan. 1 as the official start of the new year is a rather arbitrary thing in the first place. For my money, June 1 would have made more sense. The world is at least warm and bursting with new life.

But, as long as we’re stuck with tradition, we wish you all a Happy New Year.

This edition locked up (a newspaper term meaning “went to bed”—another newspaper term, meaning went to press) Jan. 2. Though the masthead won’t reflect it until September, the year 2002 will mark the 110th year of continuous publication of this newspaper, known originally as The New World when begun in 1892. For over 10 years it carried the nameplate The Chicago Catholic before reverting to The New World in the 1990s. In 1998 we added “Catholic” since, as the voice of the cardinal archbishop of Chicago, that best describes who we are.

We are stuck, however, with the tradition of the New Year as a time of reflection on the year past—on things right and wrong, good and bad—and a time of anticipation of the year ahead, to see what we can do better. So this issue looks back at world and local events through a Catholic prism, with information provided by Catholic News Service and staff sources.

But more important than reviewing a year which, because of acts of terrorism, will long be seen as a turning point in world events, we also do some looking ahead for some other turning points.

On Page 7, The Interview talks with Father William Zavaski about just such a turning point. Zavaski, pastor of St. James Church, Arlington Heights, is deeply involved in the Jan. 13 “Dwell in My Love” Sunday marking efforts to combat racism in the church and in society.

Also on Page 7, Alejandro Castillo reflects on efforts to draw young Hispanic adults more deeply into the church.

On Page 11, columnist Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser offers a spiritual perspective for beginning the New Year.

And, lest we forget the tasks left unfinished by last year, on Page 15 we tell the story of Sister Therese DelGenio’s mission to the homeless and on Page 18, Pope John Paul II’s plea for peace in the world.

Since looking forward and back is the theme of any New Year, here’s a final comment: I no longer have “the right tools” at my house because I have two sons who always managed to lose, break, lend or abscond with them. Hey, that suggestion to get new tools sounds like a great and keepable New Year’s resolution.

Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager