Correspondence
Correspondence Healthy self-love Buffalo, N.Y. To the Editors: I am somewhat uncom- fortable with John Garvey's recent article [Apr. 24] in which he seems to downgrade the...
...DOROTHY J. LEWIS The Catholic kmdowner St...
...The domesticbudget argument theoretically engages conservative versus liberals...
...Hear people in both the legislative and executive branches marvel, in total gloom, at the degree to which government action has become a series of recurrent struggles to paste together a special-interest coalition, good for some one-shot endeavor and needing to be created in some new form for the next maneuver...
...Calvino includes two series of brief tales about Christ and St...
...It is not just those well-subsidized people on the right who have been inveighing against deficit spending over the years (fifty plus), confident in the knowledge that nothing would be done about their own boodle, who are having to revise their arguments...
...All this has gotten more, not less, rigid, and ingrained with the passage of time...
...What did emerge with startling clarity was the increase in murder as~ one went from the North to the South in the U.S...
...The anti-Communist complex poisons the political atmosphere, demonizes the adversary, and carries mistrust to extremes, so that the victim is incapable of "taking the initiative for trust...
...When his church speaks out on this subject, does he turn a deaf ear...
...The first is that the proposed laws will in fact keep guns out of the hands of the people who would misuse them...
...Your recent editorial remarks about weaponry were most exciting...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...Peter...
...Finally the pendulum swung the other way as the electorate voted for a change...
...To the Editors: Sean Cronin, in "Portraits from E1 Salvador" [May 8], vividly described four types of individuals involved in the socially complicated society of El Salvador, and most likely in other Latin American countries as well: the businessman and small coffee plantation-owner, the Catholic missionary, the president of the .junta, and the exiled newspaper publisher...
...There wasn't any...
...lAp...
...10 issue...
...p. 360, Laurie Smaldone, Fordham Point...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 384) all the states on the Northern tier without large cities had low murder rates...
...It has forced people to forget the palaver, the verbal tricks they have been playing for decades, and get down to explaining and defending their own government expenditures (if they can) in serious ways...
...Peter's attempts at miracle-making backfire...
...We kagw very little about this elusive figure e~tcept that his and a few other families for a long time have owned most of the productive land of the country...
...We are told that the political situation is now so far beyond his control that this Catholic landowner is too frightened to come forward...
...16], I wish to suggest to you that anyone --in this case Desmond Fisher --using the adjective "Irish" to mean "bungled," "inappropriate," "straining credulity" (his definition), is unworthy of reporting from Ireland on a regular or indeed on any other basis...
...There are the "constraints...
...for the fascistic military regimes in Latin America and elsewhere, support for the rich against the poor...
...10]: Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also...
...If the state cannot prevent violent crime, cannot protect the citizens, then the citizens must be afforded the means to protect themselves...
...Wyoming, Washington, Montana, and (Continued on page 382) 9 II I Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Review Index...
...There are the "complexities...
...p. 371, Uluschak, Edmonton Journal...
...Where were the liberal voices when these social programs were delivering only a few cents on the dollar to the poor...
...l in the direction of a more pronounced metaphorical symmetry is "The Little Girl Sold with the Pears...
...Our industries cannot be starved, abused and hamstrung and still produce more and more wealth for bureaucrats to redistribute...
...To the Editors: Answering Abigail McCarthy [Apr...
...The fat cats and those multi-national companies could pay it...
...The Mediterranean world has traditionally had a more relaxed relationship not only to its rulers and its legendary heroes, but also to its saints and to God himself...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 00103330...
...In Miami we have a microcosm of the national problem...
...This is one of the few times I find myself in disagreement with Commonweal...
...Listen to your legislators talk about the political action committees that finance their campaigns and pressure their activities ever after...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Banished through their trickery, she returns with a witch's treasure, protected by magical props provided by the prince, whom she marries...
...George Martin's translation of the tales, itself a Herculean undertaking, captures quite competently the vivid, colloquial, and quick-paced spirit of Calvino's Italian rendition...
...This I begs the question of why some states with weak laws have a lower murder rate: In those states guns can be bought easily '~ right there and guns can be brought in, When state laws don't work the argument is for federal law...
...ALFONS BElL Getting his Irish up Copenhagen, Denmark To the Editors: Concerning "An 'Irish' Solution" by Desmond Fisher [Jan...
...13ENCE, ACTION The Cycle of Faith $7.95 Mary Luke Tobin--IIIOPE IS AN OIPF..I~I DOOR $7.95 C~er tt~ vour local Iooolcsto~~ Abing~n abingdon 201 Eigr,th Avenue, So, Naetwille, TN 37202 19 June 1981:383...
...As a German, one has to be reserved and guarded criticizing U.S...
...The s~tes on the Southern tier had high murder rates...
...In truth, the web of subsidies and support systems that has grown up over the years mixes up these people together and creates a common stake in perpetuating programs that already exist...
...Where, in all the words which have been written about El Salvador, is a picture of the rich Catholic landowner...
...It was further clear that the consistent factor was different races living together...
...To say that they should ignore this soul sickness and go out and minister to others is equivalent to saying that one shouldn't concern oneself with a serious physical illness because that would be selfish...
...Peter, one from Friuli and one from Sicily...
...Countless people have had a great deal of guilt laid upon them by the church and/or by parents and are rendered virtually incapable of ministering to others because of personalities crippled by fear and self-dislike...
...This handsome volume, almost a log of Calvino's "journey" through Italy's fairyland, has much to offer both the serious scholar and the casual reader of the folktale...
...Raised there she draws the favor of the king's son and the jealousy of the maid servants...
...p. 370, Mallette, Winnipeg Free Press...
...The objective of the cuts is not to cut social programs as it is to balance the budget...
...2. The administration strives after military preponderance...
...when guns are 9 brought in from the Bahamas and Cub~, Poland and other countries, what then is the proposal...
...He changes the child's name to Perina ("Little Pear") and he invents an episode in which the young girl rec'eives the means for obtaining the treasure from a little old woman under a pear tree...
...To the Editors: I am somewhat uncomfortable with John Garvey's recent article [Apr...
...Much as we hate to admit it, the fact is that the mixing of races engenders tensions that contribute to crime, including murder, probably more than any other single factor...
...I have not heard that many if any have been shot...
...If asked, would he respond that he has acted justly by relinquishing many acres of his land, for which he has not yet been reimbursed, to the "campesinos"-peasants who aren't Catholics, but "marxists," and therefore expendable...
...And of course that is what happens: It happened with federal law banning liquor, it is happening with drugs, and to some extent it is happening with guns now...
...48106...
...That much I can guess about him: from here on I lose him...
...What appears to be radical in the ReaganStockman approach, what we are all still unwilling to credit, is the possibility that some relatively consistent and objective standards might be made the test of whether or not a program should be supported...
...The weakness of the current gun control proposals are that they stand on a foundation of two shaky assumpCommonweal: 354 tions...
...Thus, when Calvino speaks of the hybrid nature of his edition, we must remember the more literary qualities the popular tales assume as they are recast by a contemporary letterato, an accomplished and self-conscious practitioner himself of the art of the fable...
...policy...
...To the Editors: I write in response to your editorial on gun control in the Apr...
...except for the large cities...
...I never heard any concern about making these programs more efficient, getting more of those dollars to those who really need it...
...24] in which he seems to downgrade the concept of learning to love yourself as somehow not appropriate or relevant in the stark, terrible times in which we live...
...He doesn't, however, discuss one of the most interesting types of folktales represented in this collection, the stories about various saints or about Christ and the Apostles...
...Peter comes across as a glutton, a braggart, a well-meaning but blundering fool...
...p. 372, LNS...
...ROBERTF...
...II Illustrations: Cover and p. 374, Mitro, Ta Nea...
...In the traditional tale, a little girl named Margheritina is placed in the bottom of a basket of pears to make it look full, and delivered to the king's kitchen...
...Calvino makes some very interesting and suggestive remarks in his introduction about the nature of love, the imagery of cruelty, and the relation of the world of the king to that of the peasant in the Italian folktale...
...Correspondence Healthy self-love Buffalo, N.Y...
...What promises to be a miracle narration, "Stones to Bread," turns out to be a lesson in the form of a joke played by Christ on St...
...Can government at this late date (asks Meg) really distinguish between the legitimate and essential programs, on the one hand, and, on the other, these unessential borderline scams...
...The liberals who today cry about the budget cuts need to be reminded: The force which powers the pendulum to the right today is fueled by the energy wfiich was stored in it when liberals pushed it so far to the left without regard for the consequences...
...The second is that having kept guns out of the hands of people who would misuse them, those people will not perpetuate the same crime with another weapon to any significant degree...
...3. And what about military support by the U.S...
...I do not feel it is a trivial, selfindulgent pastime to strive toward total self-acceptance and healthy self-love...
...Occasionally we get glimpses of his walled villa in a lush suburb of San Salvador, but does he still live there, or has he departed for a safer place...
...p. 363, Edvard Munch, Puberty...
...What has his Catholic education taught him about social justice...
...In the hands of these story-tellers, who have picked up on hints in the gospel narrative, St...
...But if the balance of the terror is very terrible, the striving after the preponderance of one side, because it drives up the armament spiral, threatens to become catastrophic...
...p. 373, Salo, Rothco...
...Later Christ turns the stones into bread and Peter's subsequent hunger repays his laziness...
...Nonetheless, please permit me to mention the following: 1. The new administration was elected by scarcely a third of the people entitled to vote...
...The author's informative introduction, notes, and bibliography are valuable complements, and the attractive miniature woodcuts are charming...
...The fatalism that marks the other part of Washington's response to the Reagan-Stockman assault is based on the assumption that it can't and/or doesn't want to...
...If he could, would he now use his influence over the military to end the killing and to move the government of his country toward efficient implementation of social reform...
...Where the original tale seemed to put its emphasis on the power and constancy of love, Calvino's adaptation shifts the attention to the pear motif...
...Louis, Mo...
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...I, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N, Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi...
...Along with Meg (now Peg of my heart) the political irreverence of the Reagan approach to the budget has already had its uses (and abuses...
...E. G. MARQUIS Cavalier liberals Southfieid, Mich...
...We write about how little it is possible to do to alter them...
...Pro-gun control people argue that because the crime rate is high we should ban handguns...
...However, Jesus's greatest commandment is framed in the words, "Love thy neighbor as thyself...
...The influx of Cubans (mixing of races) has shot the crime rate up as Commonweal: 382 well as the rate of buying handguns...
...It warms the cockles of my heart (and Meg Greenfield's in Newsweek for Feb...
...He quotes, "He who seeks his life will lose it" as an ifidication from God's Word that we shouldn't be focusing on ourselves...
...A long list of Negroes have been killed in Atlanta...
...SISTER CLAUDE OF JESUS, SNJM Militarism & mistrust Heidelberg, West Germany To the Editors: Please excuse my English...
...The crime rate did not go up because of the surge in handgun ownership...
...Those states had little mixing of races...
...To the Editors: Abigail McCarthy asks, "Why is the administration so set on cutting programs for the poor...
...It is an imperative...
...We sigh...
...It is also that colony of folks who have come to inhabit the lazy left, people who long ago stopped thinking what they were supporting just as long as it could go by some irreproachable general name...
...Peter undergoes the same demystification into a rather buffoonish character that the austere French heroes of the Chanson de Roland underwent when appropriated by the itinerant Italian singers of chivalric romance...
...That is putting the cart before the horse...
...It is because the crime rate is high that handguns should not be banned...
...A liberal Congress voted for social programs which endeared them to many large, well organized voting blocs', but then it did not have the courage to vote the taxes to go with them...
...4. Our Federal German Republic, especially the CDU/CSU, pays tribute to, even suffers from, the antiCommunist complex, if not hysteria or psychosis, incapable of distinguishing between not being Communist and being anti-Communist...
...Almost certainly he was educated in private Catholic schools, as his children are, as his wife was (she may, in fact, have been a boarder in the same American Sacred Heart academy I attended...
...We must never forget that we have been delivered by the Americans, though only externally, from Nazism...
...It is not a selfish quest...
...REV...
...What is so radical (refreshing) in the administration's approach is that they are committed to crashing through that layer of hypocrisy and that structure of legal payoffs that characterize our traditional budget building...
...The attitude was rather cavalier...
...There is something very Italian about these wonderful sketches in which Christ is shown playing tricks on his Apostles and "splitting his sides laughing" when St...
...To be fair to this man, he should be invited to step out of his shadow so that his side of the El Salvadoran story can be heard...
...366, 367, Bas., Tachydromos...
...Then those tax rates which Congress didn't have the courage to index to inflation, started putting more and more working people into the "fat cat" brackets...
...The words, "Know thyself," are a distillation of all the wisdom of all the philosophers of all ages...
...handgun ownership surged because the crime rate went up...
...I had occasion to run a survey in the 1960s to find the relationship, if any, between gun laws and murder...
...There is the terrible fact that --deep down --business, labor, academia, the professions, and even the leadership of some organized supplicants rather like the thing the way it is: THEYKNOWHOWTO WORKIT...
...I hope they can succeed...
...Comparing other countries is invalid...
...Years and years of horrendous federal deficits have ravaged this country...
...Nothing now or in history supports those assumptions...
...Is this not also the defect of the new Reagan administration...
...23 also) to see political and business figures who have made a career of lambasting Uncle Sugar and his profligate ways having it slowly borne in upon them that their own subsidies have turned up in David Stockman's knitting...
...It is, in fact, crucial to our mental and spiritual health and to our ability to love others that we have as little self-hatred within ourselves as possible...
...Does this man attend Mass, participating in the sacraments with a cleat conscience...
...When Christ asks each of the disciples to pick up and carry a stone, Peter chooses the tiniest pebble he can find...
...When it is pointed out that many states and cities have very tough gun laws indeed, and that they have higher murder rates than many states with minimal guR laws, pro-gun-law people respond by saying it is because guns can be brought in from states with weak laws, and the solution is to enact a federal law...
...But why, while he still possessed the power to do so, did he not respond to the needs of his country...
...Italian Folktales is a delightful book...
...ANNE MORRIS Handguns & crime rates New Smyrna Beach, Fla...
...But there was one portrait missing, which I wish he could have provided...
...Copyright 9 1981 Commonweal Publishing Co...
...EDWARD COLLINS Stockman's knitting Albany, N.Y...
...This is my sorrow...
Vol. 108 • June 1981 • No. 12
