Liberalism and Catholicism collide in Commonweal's article "Benedict at Auschwitz." My thoughts are in the comments, June 17. Jews continue to seem to be an inordinately useful and seemingly fissionably combustible chemical reagent in politics and society. In Pfaff's piece in Commonweal, we learn that the 'clash of civilizations' involving the U.S. and Islam 'results from Washington's largely uncritical support of Israel,' the war in Iraq has as one it's main cause 'to defend and promote Israel's security interest,' and, in case the complex sentences are interfering with your learning, 'Jihad terrorism is merely a sideshow in the affair.' Goebbels call your agent; is methodology patentable? And then again a good article from an American student in Germany on what the pope said in the class he taught as a professor in 1968.