CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Special Delivery Saxton's River, Vt To the Editors: Early summer heat waves do get to all of us, readers, writers, publishers. This reader found the editorial on the postal system...
...I believe the heavier burden of (Continued on page 477)CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 451) guilt and responsibility lies with Congress, particularly the committees which appropriate American funds for these countries...
...It is the particular responsibility of Congress to find out how our American tax dollars are being used when we so generously dole our money out to ruthless dictatorships...
...MARY H. HIGGINS...
...The NLRB is not involved and neither ordered nor authorized an election, (rev...
...Several groups such as the International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International and others have been working since then to try to obtain their release with little success...
...PETER J. MURPHY Anti-Socialist Hicksville, N.Y...
...To the Editors: I'll bet it would be hard to find any Catholic college graduate of the thirties or forties or even the fifties who had not met Dorothy Day and admired the Catholic Worker movement...
...American money has a great deal of clout and when threatened to be withheld might make some of these people think twice...
...The NLRB did not authorize or order a representational election in the Pittsburgh Catholic Schools...
...Miguel Chase Sardi...
...All the crimes that the military of that troubled nation are allegedly guilty of can be laid at the door of Marxist regimes, yet these nations are rarely criticized in journals of the Left...
...Incontrovertable accounts of the torture of these people have come from eyewitnesses and yet our State Department continues to claim that they are being well treated and we continue to pour money into Paraguay...
...vera a. mcpklomy REPLY: I think the reader may have overlooked my basic point: mat the arousal of public opinion is basic to any change of policy and that that public opinion must come from the acceptance of personal responsibility by each one of us and the belief that human nature can be weaned from an accepted (and, horrible as it is, a pleasurable) evil...
...to admit torture exists and get Congress to cut off the aid...
...American corporations have also poured a large amount of money into South America and in some cases have perhaps overlooked the human oppression which their money is party to...
...The poor state of the Chilean economy is not due to the economic policy recommended by Mr...
...The leader of the project was an anthropologist with the Catholic University in Asuncion, Dr...
...Where is the strong voice of the Vatican to denounce it and excommunicate those who participate in it...
...Only then can we expect action of our representatives...
...I do not wish to avoid the personal responsibility, but I think we learned in the Vietnam war that the "people" have a very hard time convincing our leaders to change their method of operation...
...However, he declines to mention the significant landmark events which took place within the past year in at least four other cities in which other Catholic bishops have, if begrudgingly, placed their "civil rights" on the line by acknowledging, consenting to, or participating in NLRB elections and proceedings...
...I am sure these people are a small percentage of the total number of political prisoners who are being tortured in Paraguay and throughout South America...
...to these countries would do a great deal to stop torture, and the President signed a bill in December enabling us to cut-oil economic aid to countries which deny human rights to their citizens...
...As with all employers, one would hope that the use of highly-placed legal counsel might be for the betterment of "the workers involved" rather than in efforts to prevent unionization through discredited tactics and legalisms peppered with encyclicals which are inoperative...
...Second, that the interposition of the NLRB between the Bishop and the Catholic people of Pittsburgh in an area which so closely effects the teaching authority of the Bishop would have been an unconstitutional entanglement by government with the free exercise of our religion...
...This, incidentally, was after the Pennsylvania LRB had found Philadelphia Cardinal Krol guilty of unfair labor practices, which seems to be no more uplifting to "the social justice rights of the workers involved" than the firing last March of the president of the Catholic Teachers Federation in Gary, bid...
...and stop tinkering with a non-profit, federally funded, insanely expensive business operation, the message is important and informative...
...Some members of Congress, such as Congressmen Drinan, Fraser and Abourezk have been sympathetic and have helped and we can only hope something will be done before they all die or commit suicide from despair at their plight...
...Yet Nixon won in a landslide...
...General Counsel Diocese of Pittsburgh Kept* Father Maida's letter reveals an interesting approach to the very real problem bf dealing with the collective bargaining aspirations of Catholic lay teachers...
...Also, a great deal of this torture is being carried out in South America, in Catholic countries...
...In conclusion, the blue-eyed General Pinochet may seem to be harsh on the Marxist enemy...
...If it means what I think, that our government should get going to restore a federal post office department as public service, which was provided in the Constitution...
...The Constitutional issue thus evaporates and the purported bulwark against the "entanglement by government" in Pittsburgh Catholic schools becomes somewhat hollow when it is de facto in several other cities...
...Cort admires so much [Mar...
...This is the real crime that the Chilean junta is guilty of in the eyes Of the left...
...Both nations have suffered, and beaten back, a ruthless Marxist power grab...
...Indeed, there is a close parallel between Chile and Spain...
...Where are the voices of American Catholic churchmen raised against torture...
...And as an aftermath of his testimony, an NLRB election was ordered...
...Bono makes the assertion that 30,000 people have lost their lives during and after the September 11, 1973 coup...
...26] would be a handicap to most candidates in the Catholic community...
...We support so many of these people simply because they are anti-Communist, but in many ways they are as bad or worse than the Communists and we create fertile fields for Communism when we give money to dictatorships which oppress their people so completely...
...Since Chile halted the attempt promptly, she should recover faster than her Spanish brothers...
...It should be remembered that it took Spain almost twenty years to recover from the depredations of Stalinist foreigners and traitors who almost conquered that gallant, Catholic nation...
...The agreement reached with the unions thus preserves both the social justice rights of the workers involved and the civil rights of the Catholic Church in Pittsburgh...
...As she suggests, each of us bears a responsibility for permitting this to happen, particularly in countries to which we give a great deal of money and have many investments...
...Capitalism is at least consistent, for a job with no share in decision-making or profits is not different from a paid-up bed in a hospital with no choice of doctors or treatment...
...A threat of the cutoff of funds from the U.S...
...To the Editors: Mr...
...At best American socialism seems myopic, at worst, schizophrenic...
...Surely the Vatican has great influence in South America and if it encouraged all churchmen to take a strong stand in denouncing these practices it would carry a great deal of weight...
...If Mra...
...It is a direct result of the wrecking job that the AOende gang performed upon the Chilean currency as a result of their hyper-inflationary economic program...
...Yet the blessing of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee Mr...
...I have been involved in a small way in trying to stop the torture and obtain the release from prison of a group in Paraguay which was jailed for trying to help the native Indians obtain a minimal degree of human rights...
...His associates were Victorio Suarez, Mauricio Schwartzman and Gloria Estrago...
...However, the nature of that enemy may be learned by reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's somber writings...
...Another reason for Chile's plight is the economic isolation caused by the clever propaganda campaign waged on General Pinochet by the Marxists and their leftist allies...
...McCarthy suggests no way in which change can be achieved...
...ABIGAIL MCCARTHY Labor Pains Pittsburgh, Pa...
...By the terms of this agreement the unions withdrew their Petitions for an election before the NLRB and the schools agreed that an election would be held under the auspices of the American Arbitration Association and that they would abide by the results of that elec-ion...
...Yet in Cambodia it has been alleged that 500,000 persons have perished as a result of wrong-headed, criminal, Marxist agricultural policy...
...adam j. maida, j.d...
...Russell W. Gibbons, writing in the April 23, 1976 edition of your magazine, has gotten his facts wrong about the NLRB and the Diocese of Pittsburgh...
...And in a fifth, in Philadelphia, the involvement of another public agency (the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board), some three years ago ted toward ultimate jurisdiction by the NLRB and a decision by a Federal District Court which placed the question of representation before the Board, where it is today...
...Our experience with socialism doesn't equate with freedom (health care in the Armed Forces and what 'we read about the English health care...
...Friedman...
...The economies of both nations were left in ruins by this attempt...
...Surely we have been remiss in not learning more about these situations and working harder to stop them...
...Through this agreement two very important principles were recognized: First, that the teachers in Parish schools, as guaranteed by the social teachings and encyclicals of the Church, have a right to be collectively represented if they so desire...
...Miguel Chase Sardi and his associates from the Marandu Project have been in jail and have been tortured since December...
...Now all we have to do is get the State Dept...
...because of "disloyalty to the bishop...
...Nor is a paid-up seat in a public school with only one belief and value system...
...MRS...
...Why...
...To make what appears to be a broad Constitutional point, he particularizes about the, recent elections in Pittsburgh's Catholic schools in which the offices of the National Labor Relations Board were voluntarily bypassed in order that the third-party (American Arbitration Association) could be utilized...
...RUSSELL W. GIBBONS Left & Right in Chile New Hyde Park, N.Y...
...The Cambodian deaths are a current reminder, should one be needed, that Marxism and its adherents have not changed one iota since Stalin's era...
...Bono's reference to a similarity between General Pinochet and Franco is interesting...
...Americans are now an educated elitist electorate, according to Louis Harris, the pollster, certainly capable of making their own judgments...
...Father Maida is presumably well aware of these developments as he is of the NLRB-oonducted elections for Catholic teachers in the dioceses of Baltimore and Fort Wayne, Ind...
...This reader found the editorial on the postal system [June 18] a bit crypto-rambling for an important message...
...She has done a great sendee by calling attention to the matter, but where else can we go from here...
...To the Editors: Abigail McCarthy brings up an issue which very much needs to be discussed in her article on "Complicity in Torture" [Mar...
...The Catholic Teachers in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who recently won such representation, are familiar with him as Father Maida was called upon at a Los Angeles Board hearing as a witness for die Archbishop prior to the election...
...Then there was Father Keller and the Christophers and we studied, not just read the encyclicals...
...What did happen was mat the Diocese of Pittsburgh, for and on behalf of Parish elementary schools in the Diocese, entered into an agreement with the two unions involved...
...to stop giving aid to countries which engage in these practices...
...Some brave South American priests and nuns have been jailed and killed in their fight for justice, and they have received quite little support from their North American brethren...
...It makes a nice fact sheet for people who won't pressure Congress on an issue they "don't understand enough about" But dear Commonweal, please never, ever again let that noxious old bromide about Topsy's growth get by your editorial blue pencil...
...I believe we should all put pressure on our senators, representatives and the State Dept...
...I suggest it is because the "capitalistic nonsense" is laced with appeals to freedom from big government, freedom from Communism and the loss of freedom it means, and last but not least, freedom of choice in education...
...The project was called the Marandu Project and was financed by an American agency, the Inter-American Foundation...
...I would even say the time is ripe for a "new birth of freedom" for workers to share in the decision-making: and profits...
...Wallace, Carter, Reagan seem to have far more appeal than candidates with more liberal economic and labor stands...
...marjorie murphy Stopping the Torture Conshohocken, Pa...
...As a subscriber to Commonweal, I am still awaiting a critical dissection of the scoundrels running that nation...
...I don't think it could elect a dog catcher, and I'm sorry to have to say that...
...Once the body politic has been infected by the Marxist cancer, it must be ruthlessly extirpated if the patient is to survive...
...In education, freedom of choice is so important to Catholic parents, many work at dull, boring, even frustrating jobs to provide a school that reflects their own belief and value system...
...To the Editors: What is it about the Chilean junta that so agitates the liberal intelligentsia ["Protest in Chile," June 181...
...McCarthy has any ideas which will help put a stop to torture, I am sure a great many of us would be interested in them...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 15
