Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Homosexuality New York, N.Y. To the Editors: Did I cause a big fuss when Michael Novak supported the Vietnam war, wrote the novel Naked 1 Came, ripped off Bernard...
...But it is the gifts to personal friends--one as high as half a million Commonweal: 203 Give Commonweal this Christmas A gift subscription to Commonweal last Christmas has provided the recipients with such timely features as the following, all through 1974: Women in the Priesthood by Clara Maria Hennings The Vatican by Peter Hebblethwaite The Politics o/Hunger by Richard Neuhaus Divorce and Remarriage by David S. Toolan Energy: End o/an Era...
...214 FACING UP TO THE |NESCAPABLE: Victor Ferkiss 216 ROOKS: Claire Hahn, Michael F. McCauley, Jean Bethke Elshtain 217 ILLUSTRATIONS: Front cover: Liberation News Service JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE ROBERTSON: Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTEREECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry BRYAN WICKER: Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome JOHN COONEY: Dublin EDWARD S, SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN 8RUBAKER: Advertising Manager COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts, Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...These women, who comprise the U.S...
...There are a small number of people in our society who are midgets...
...I find it unfortunate that Ms...
...There are perhaps elements in the Catholic priesthood whose significance depends upon their embodiment in males, and is falsified by the ordination of females...
...Not after Novak suggested the Church has had "occasional homosexual popes" without offering a shred of evidence [Oct...
...What I do with this gift of heterosexuality and my reasons for doing what I do will determine my moral character...
...an all-male presence--as on an all-male campus--stifles something in the spirit...
...May I ask, though, what is a "sin" or where is the "failing" in the mere fact of being a homosexual...
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...27) fails to note the consistency of NAWR's support of the Episcopal bishops and women involved in the Philadelphia ordination with its request for the restoration of the diaconate for women in the Roman Catholic Church...
...The latest disclosures concerning his campaign financing, his gifts to public officials, and his secret sponsorship of the hatchet-job biography of his 1970 gubernatorial opponent Arthur Goldberg--coupled with his apparent moral insensitivity to the impropriety of these actions--have refocused our perspective on the man and the paramount issues: that kind of personal and economic power and the Vice Presidency of the United States (much less the Presidency) must not be combined in one man...
...For women as for men, ordination will be a day of dread as well as joy...
...The family has poured $14 million into his political campaigns...
...In both cases NAWR is supporting the women who, sensing a call to ordained ministry, have conscientiously prepared for this ministry and then organized to effect changes in the church laws...
...All these years I've kept my peace as Novak made a general nuisance of himself...
...It is possible that women priests conspicuous by their holiness of life will give the entire ministry one of those periodic impulses of renewal which in Catholic history have been so necessary, and so thankfully received...
...And who in this century can fail to have some kind of "identity problem...
...But cultural symbolism is a respecter of sex...
...No doubt the church's administration should more nearly reflect feminine symbols...
...Rockefeller is not--like the Roosevelts, Harriman or the Kennedys-just another rich man in public life...
...There are undoubtedly more people...
...Ne~ Nuns Chicago, Ill...
...compared to persons in other ages and other cultures, we appear to be among the least sensitive to the power and significance of symbols---even those by which we ourselves are moved...
...To the Editors: I have just read "The New Nuns" [Sept...
...For the record, let me say that if NAWR did not speak out on ordination to priesthood and episcopacy for Roman Catholic women this time, the reason has much more to do with realism and fairly workable objectives (we do plan to meet again in 1975) than with an "identity problem...
...SISTER DELORES KINCAIDE, S.L...
...Episcopal women, already deacons, judged that an "irregular ceremony" was in order, and NAWR extended support...
...My own guess is that identity problems now come with the effects of original sin for everybody...
...Finally, on the subject of "identity problems," why is it that Cadan makes so much of disagreements on the assembly floor over matters of such complexity as the movement for the liberation of women and the ways of communicating more effectively...
...Novak seems to display compassion for persons whose orientation differs from his own, and he shows an acceptance of sinners that I find quite Christlike...
...If you prefer, order now and we will bill you after New Year's...
...by Michael Kennedy Pentagon Spies at the White House by Peter J. Ognibene Vietnam: We Must Not Forget by George W. Webber Liberating Portuguese A/rica by Joseph P. Carney George Orwell and the American Character by Katharine Byrne An Interview with Heinrich Boll Walker Percy and the Sel/ by Lewis Jerome Taylor, Jr...
...But I am troubled by a sense that more is involved in such matters than a modern, secular education allows us to notice...
...Congress should reject the Rockefeller nomination...
...My heterosexuality cannot be the basis of describing my moral character...
...If we saw it all so clearly, it would hardly be faith or hope at all...
...Single copies S0c 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 "NO" ON ROCKr.Fr.T.L .R When President Gerald R. Ford designated Nelson A. Rockefeller as his choice for Vice President we knew the arguments against him--his money, his pandering to the right wing, his silence on Watergate and Vietnam, his responsibility for the Attica slaughter, his remoteness from the problems of the common man--but we accepted him and said his nomination should be confirmed [September 8...
...And the active presence of so many NAWR members at the triennial assembly of Church Women United in Memphis Oct...
...Until he does, no Holy Father in history is safe from his libel...
...US and Canada...
...Carlan's emphasis was on "Probing the image of the nun today...
...15 a year, Foreign $17...
...Our homosexual brothers and sisters deserve the same intelligent rationale...
...I am in favor of the ordination of women...
...section of the International Association of Women Aspiring to Presbyteral Ministry (led by Mary B. Lynch, former social worker for Catholic Charities in Columbus, O. and 1974 graduate of the Indianapolis Seminary Foundation), judged that the restoration of the diaconate in 1974 would be a reasonable first step toward full ordained ministry, and NAWR supported them by reiterating its 1971 position on the need to restore the diaconate to women...
...I do not at present see what those elements might be...
...How is democracy served by promoting a man whose life witnesses not to equality of opportunity but to the aristocracy of money and power...
...And yet Carlan implies that what she views as an identity problem has dashed the "best hope" of many for "true church renewal...
...Through inherited wealth, foundations, his Critical Choices Committee, and the interlocking directorates of corporations like Chase Manhattan Bank, Standard Oil, Exxon, several airlines, and IBEC (the International Basic Economy Corporation, the largest food business in Latin America, which also dominates investment banking in Brazil and has other businesses in Chile), his family may already be the most powerful in history...
...Both resolutions, it seems to me, illustrate a willingness to affirm the women who are laying their lives on the line (and, in the case of the Roman Catholics particularly, financing the kind of theological educations that are so heavily subsidized for their brothers) in their efforts to live their Christian vocations in the ways that they judge best...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 203) genes, psychic input, and social and cultural experiences, What he does with his gift of homosexuality will determine his moral character...
...Today the needs are not so different from those of earlier days but the magnitude of them has shifted...
...Michael Novak 20G THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Nicholas R. Clifford 207 DOWNSTREAM FROM WATERGATE: Frank Getlein 211 VERSE...
...A homosexual is also a product of (Continued on page 222) NEWS & VIEWS: 202 CORRESPONDENCE: 203 EDITORIAI~: 203 THE SYNOD SAYS NO: Henry ten Kortenaar 204 SHOULD W'OMEN DE PRIESTS...
...So exactly who are these papal pansies, Mr...
...We need some sound and bracing argument on all sides of this issue, so that we may see more clearly what we are doing...
...I think what NAWR is saying in its better moments (on which Carlan preferred not to dwell) is, "hope not in us, but with us in Christ...
...Jack Lindeman 215 MEDIA: Wilbur Mills and Leaay Rruee: Michael Murray 213 THE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The first part of the article, if it was meant to be a convention report, was too concise to do justice to the powerful mandates given by each of the Convention speakers...
...10016 Commonweal: 223...
...The convention, it seems to me, was the culmination of a year-long program followed by nuns throughout the states called "Probing the Gospel...
...Louis meeting was that this was the first time that nuns were no longer looking at themselves but at the issues they could confront in the world today...
...no one can live up to it...
...After all, the reason for the founding of religious orders was to take care of the needs prevalent at a certain time in history...
...But now we know more about Rockefeller...
...but I am concerned when-in the first section of his article--he equates homosexuality with "failing" and with "sin...
...Are sisters still supposed to think alike...
...For the Catholic people, the ordination of women would be the launching of major--perhaps constructive, perhaps destructive--symbolic currents...
...The strategy of a significant group of Roman Catholic laywomen and sisters who feel called to ordained ministry happens to be different...
...I had attended NAWR conventions before and my impression of the St...
...and Canada) City, Stase, Zip m New [] Renewal [] m m Name m MY NAME IS i Street i m m City, State, Zip II New [] Renewal [] City, State, Zip 11-29-74 m | COMMONWEAL 1 I 232 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. 10016 1 m mm m m m mm mm m m m m m m m m m m m m 29 November 1974:222 comes as grace in equal abundance to men and women...
...How are the nation and world served by multiplying the international power of a man who already controls an independent empire of his own...
...These are the things that were given importance and attention at the Convention...
...But I will be silent no longer...
...My heterosexuality is a product of my genes, my psychic input, and my social and cultural experiences...
...27] by Margaret M. Carlan...
...Perhaps she over-idealized the "newnuns" just as so many have over-idealized the "old nuns...
...It seemed that to fight the nomination would only prolong the trouble of shifting Administrations...
...Right-to-Reply Laws by Thomas Powers Law, Morals and Abortion by Daniel A. Degnan Protecting the Unborn by Paul Ramsey Feeding the Un/ed by Martin M. McLaughlin Columns by Sisyphus, Michael Novak and Abigail McCarthy Chile: Terror by Computer by Gary MacEoin Solzhenitsyn's Long Cry o/Rage by Saul Maloff The Vaticanizing o/ American Art by Frank Getlein Arms Sales: The Economics o/Death by Douglas Mattern Commonweal's 50th Anniversary Issue Catholics in South Viemam by Jayne Werner This year's Christmas gift subscriptions to Commonweal will bring a year's equally rewarding abundance of good reading to the friends and relatives you designate...
...Letters o] not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance o/ being published...
...He is a "big" man, perhaps one of the most experienced and, from one point of view, most successful public men in America--so unlike the mediocrities who surrounded Richard Nixon...
...10016 MUrray Hill 3-2042...
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...S. ANNE E. PATRICK, SNJM Chairperson, Committee on Women in Church and Society National Assembly of Women Religious Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...We may not like the characteristic of shortness, but most of us don't make the mistake of describing this condition as "failing" or as "sin...
...m m m m m CHRISTMAS ORDER FORM m m m m m m P l e a s e send t h e s e f r i e n d s m _9 a g i f t subseription a t t h e Name m s p e c i a l Christmas Rates: m 1 Subscription, $ 1 5 ; each Street I m a d d i t i o n a l , $12 (Add $2 for m postage outside U.S...
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...Latent in her final remarks seems to be the view that once upon a time we had hoped in the "new nuns" but now we can no longer do this...
...But more of them are poor, more of them are old, more of them are unemployed, more of them are in a variety of institutions and there are still those who need to be educated and nursed to health...
...Still, on the larger question, I wish we knew more about the balance of the masculine and the feminine in the Catholic symbol system...
...The symbol system is already, as Nietzsche saw, heavily weighted on the feminine side...
...The totality of the article seems to concern our traditional understanding of the overt, sinful, homosexual act that the Church denounces...
...That should have been the title and the emphasis of the article...
...I challenge Novak to name them...
...10-13 is but one instance of our desire not simply to hope with but also to work with other religiously committed persons in what is sure to be a long hard pull toward global justice...
...Which popes...
...Copyright ~ 1974 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc...
...PHILIP NOBILE Detroit, Michigan To the Editors: I found a bit confusing Michael Novak's article Brother McNaught, Brother O'Rourke [Oct...
...Perhaps that is where the present system is shortcircuited...
...SISTER MARY MUNCH Chicago, IlL: To the Editors: Margaret M. Carlan's piece on the National Assembly of Women Religious (Sept...
...To the Editors: Did I cause a big fuss when Michael Novak supported the Vietnam war, wrote the novel Naked 1 Came, ripped off Bernard Lonergan's thought, elevated the Slavs to the Chosen People, conferred a plenary indulgence on Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, etc...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 8
