Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Vatican Hang.ups New York, N.Y. To the Editors: I was much interested in Frank Getlein's article on "The Vaticanizing of American Art" in the September 6 issue. He...
...His choice of Randall Jarrell as an example of the sort of writer for whom these feelings were overwhelmingly real is tragically exact...
...Marcinkus and Macchi did not deign to traverse the one short block from Madison to Lexington where we are located...
...The grain deal, at today's prices, was still only half the $1 billion sale made to Russia in 1972...
...To the Editors: Once again Frank Getlein has put us in debt...
...These artists cannot be, even remotely, connected with the anachronisms of the Saint Sulpice-Barclay Street church goods industry...
...6], states clearly and fairly what I had planned to write, somewhat more acerbieally, about the Vatican Gallery of Contemporary Art...
...For many of us the actions of the Marcinkus-Macchi team have not only appeared inept but have been extremely frustrating...
...I would have enjoyed watching the ripples of surprise, perhaps anger, surely disgust, of some of the owners of these galleries...
...His article "The Vaticanizing of American Art" [Sept...
...Narrow political considerations were revealed, as well as a selfish concern about the impact that the grain sale would have on food prices in the United States...
...US and Canada...
...Despite the fact that this gallery has been able to place the work of many American artists in churches, monasteries, schools, seminaries and universities, Messrs...
...The only comforting thought that crossed my mind was that most Vatican visitors seem to skip the Gallery altogether...
...113~ Winston Weathers 116 T I l E SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...It would be a slow process, but is the Vatican ever in a hurry...
...000 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 75) merited tribute to Maurice Lavanoux and Eloise Spaeth and several other stalwarts who have lit many candles amid the encircling U.S...
...church art gloom...
...The politicizing of the American seet~on is, I submit, only one major cause of the monumental gaffe...
...Printed in the USA and published weekly, except b|weekly Christmas-New Year's and June to mid.September...
...Thanks to Mr...
...If he had, perhaps, had something of overriding importance to himself to get across to us, then the book's topical organization--sometimes it seems to have not organization at all--might then have worked...
...REV...
...This then allows the reactor to become "critical" while the same amount of fuel without the moderator present would not generally be critical...
...6] is excellent and most timely...
...One discerns no overriding concern for the poor and the aged, whose meager resources have been devastated by food costs, nor for the millions of the New York Times report whose conditions with respect to food supplies can only be described as appalling...
...The analogy of heavy water or graphite and the United Nations force in "Cyprus: Three-Dimensional Problem" [Sept...
...by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...But that hardly mitigated circumstances---the less so since the corn, by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz' own admission, was intended to feed livestock rather than humans, the Soviet being anxious to maintain the size and quality of beef herds for domestic meat consumption...
...American food prices are a matter for serious concern, but if one can read between the lines of official rhetoric, this concern is strongest for those less affected by spiraling food costs: the middle-class, middle-income shopper...
...He outlines this sorry controversy in effective fashion...
...H. Auden was as much a New Yorker as he was British, but he was not at all American...
...To the Editors: Please check the accuracy of the analogies your authors use...
...Still, it doesn't really take us anywhere...
...Might...
...The heavy water or graphite, which are called moderators, slows down the neutrons which are released in fission and ensures that a large number will be absorbed by the fuel rather than escaping or being absorbed elsewhere...
...Foreign $17...
...But this is the band-aid approach...
...I must admit that his references to me tickled my ego but I am really but one of many ignored by the Roman curia bureaucrats in their search for "modern" American art to stock the Vatican Gallery...
...DON P. MO0~ Chairman, Natural Sciences Shimer College Commonweal welcomes letters on sttb]ects treated in its pages...
...MCNASPY, S.J...
...Heavy water or graphite in a reactor instead of keeping the fuel from reaching a critical mass actually does just the opposite...
...The grain shipment to Russia was halted, of course, at the instance of President Ford, and the $500 million sale was eventually canceled...
...S15 a year...
...MAURICE LAVANOUX President, The Society for the Renewal of Christian Art, Inc...
...This is not to say that Love-Hate Relations is not worth reading--merely that it would best be taken as dessert to the main course...
...Getlein, too, for his (Continued on page 95) NEWS & VIEWS: 7 4 CORRESPONDENCE: 7 3 EDITORIALS- 7 5 LAST RESORT I N BOSTON: Michael True 7 6 THE CATHOLIC NOVEL AND THE "INSIDER GOD': Robert E. Laader 711 THE SUBVERSIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA: Raymond A. Schroth 81 VERSE: John Nixon, Jr...
...It is shot through with wit, chatty and informal in style, with marvelously exact observations tossed off in paragraph after paragraph...
...For those seriously interested in the subject, the best thing would be to read through Martin Green's excellent books, A Mirror/or Anglo-Saxons, Reappraisals, The Problem o/Boston and Cities o/ Light and Sons o/ the Morning, before looking at Spender...
...they work in the idiom of today and have brought new and dynamic insights to Christian iconography...
...An example: "W...
...113 QUICK, WATSON, THE NEEDLE" Mark Taylor 115 RECTIFYING THE COST OF FREEDOM: Richard L. Schoenw,/d 117 BOOKS: Wallace Fow/ie, Daniel Stern...
...There are elements of high comedy in the two innocent ignorant envoys barging in Madison Avenue galleries to beg for some name work of art...
...New Orleans, La...
...I write you as the president of a Manhattan gallery which for the past eleven years has been exclusively concerned with the presentation of painting and sculpture of contemporary artists who have drawn upon the great themes of the Judeo-Christian religions in their work...
...The action was decisive and praiseworthy, but the rationale subsequently put forth in explaining it removed much of the gloss...
...6] is so incorrect as to cast doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the article...
...to the silos of Russia...
...10016 MUrray Hill 3.2042...
...Commonweal: 95...
...To the Editors: Frank Getlein's outspoken article [Sept...
...Much of the vastly inflated Italian section can most charitably be dubbed simply gross...
...If there is an elite then everyone ought to accept and recognize it--not just a special public...
...In all, Love-Hate Relations is an interesting, though not really very satisfying book...
...Copyright ~ 1974 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc...
...President Ford's economic message of Oct...
...This, while in parts of Bangladesh people were being reduced to one meal every other day, and while starvation gnawed at the sub-Saharan countries of Africa and threatened Indonesia and parts of Latin America...
...What is needed more than ever is a comprehensive, coordinated food program that takes into consideration the needy of AmerCommonweal: 7J makes on the feelings of isolation felt by the American writer trapped inside that culture: The bitter bread on which he feeds is the reflection that the fire of American genius which flows through his veins is exactly that which cuts him off from the great materialist democracy...
...C.J...
...Embarrassment and shame were my main feelings on visiting the deplorable new Gallery...
...As Whitman wrote, "Great poets must have great audiences...
...All is not lost...
...Letters o] not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance o/ being published...
...EMILY BOUCHARD President, Contemporary Christian Art Gallery Mixed Metaphors Mount Carroll, Ill...
...9 before a joint session of Congress contained some constructive proposals, including the removal of acreage limitations on certain crops and a request for a provision under Public Law 480 whereby the President could authorize food shipments to foreign countries "on national interest or humanitarian grounds...
...Single copies SOc 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 FOOD, FORD AND BUTZ The New York Times' juxtapositioning of a report on malnutrition in vast parts of the world with its story on the latest Soviet grain-deal fiasco pointed up the obscenity whereby 91 million bushels of wheat and 34 million bushels of corn would have moved from the harvest fields of the U.S...
...The prestige of the Vatican in these matters had better be protected by others more knowledgeable in contemporary art and who can search for prime examples of first-rate art among the many fine artists to be found in all parts of the United States...
...Bruce Cook 119 ILLUSTRATIONS: Drawing on page 85: Gardner Rea JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE ROBERTSON: Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry BRIAN WICKER: Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome JOHN COONEY: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN BRUBAKER: Advertising Manager COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...For his idea of democracy is that the whole people should respond to the genius of an Emerson or a Whitman...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 4
