CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Poet's license New York, N.Y. To the Editors: Since Commonweal published some of the poems in my book (To Open, Viking Press), Mr. Heffernan's disparagement of it [Aug. 15] seems...
...samuel menashe Elizabeth Seton Harrisburg, Pa...
...She lived happily through a girlhood marred by family difficulties...
...Novak, from time to time I have been accused by some of my co-religionists of being a traitor to my people, a person more concerned with protecting the rights of schwartze (a sophisticated Yiddishism for niggers) than of Jews, a self-hating Jew, and similar functional equivalents of anti-semitism...
...So women have had something to do with her canonization, too, through their prayers...
...But Elizabeth Seton was a woman's woman, too...
...In New York City, 87 percent of the parents of parochial school children earn less than $10,000 a year, one-third earn less than $5,000 per year...
...Similarly the statement respecting the percentage of black and Spanish-speaking children in Manhattan parochial schools is not of much significance without a comparison to percentages in Queens or Detroit or St...
...The statistics are available...
...EDWARD MENDELSON Literary Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden Parochial Concerns Bayville, N.Y...
...I should perhaps mention that, to my knowledge, none of Auden's work that was in existence at the time of his death has since been lost or destroyed...
...bis view of the general position of the Roman Catholic church in America on the working man is incredible...
...parents need not spend frivolously for clothes nor need the children compete in status by clothes...
...he does not like their race...
...When she found as a widow that she could depend on neither help from relatives and friends nor on earning a living herself by running a school in New York, she packed up her little family and went to Baltimore, where her great life work began...
...his views on infallibility are naive...
...Our first Bishops knew and consulted her as much, perhaps, as she consulted them...
...Nevertheless, I cite him in my behalf...
...Undoubtedly, Calvin Bedient is a gentleman...
...The fact is that Elizabeth Seton was a woman for everyone, for men and women...
...A woman for all women...
...In any event, at the parochial schools near both my home and my office there is now considerably more diversity in the clothes worn by the pupils than there was in the pre-Vatican II period...
...To the Editors: Arlene Swidler seems to be a bit afraid that America's first native-born Saint, Elizabeth Seton, may not be just quite "right" for canonization now [Aug...
...about blacks, as sophisticated racism...
...His simplicity- often a difficult simplicity-is choice, even exquisite...
...About Jews, such com-ments would be regarded as sophisticated anti-semitism...
...MICHAEL NOVAK Reply It is doubtful that Veblen would have concurred in Michael Novak's explanation for the requirement that parochial school children wear "uniforms" (I did not use that term...
...Assuredly the church authorities who have finally decided that Elizabeth Seton is a Saint have all been men...
...Many parents earn considerably less than many of the teachers of the children (whose salaries range from $8,5OO-$15,O0O...
...he does not like their style...
...And it was the National Council of Catholic Women, meeting in New Orleans in 1973, which launched a countrywide prayer crusade among its member Councils calling for special prayers during Mother Seton's Bicentennial Year of 1974 that she might be canonized during or before our country's Bicentennial Year of 1976...
...Sixty percent of all the parochial school children in Manhattan are Black or Spanish-speaking...
...To the Editors: Leo Pfeffer's lack of serious concern for accuracy about Catholics is illustrated in his condescension toward the parochial school near his office [Aug...
...I do not know how widespread the practice of nob requiring uniforms for parochial school children now is, but I think that it will spread and ultimately become the norm, and that the reason for it is the one which explains the same development among nuns and other religious: Vatican II was in substantial measure a revolt-a modest one but nonetheless a revolt against "uniform"-ity...
...It does not surprise me that my article should evoke a charge of anti-Catholic bigotry-albeit sophisticated bigotry...
...Swidler seems worried because canonization, she says, implies that the woman canonized must have been a "man's woman...
...There is no large mass of unpublished work by Auden of any kind whatever...
...An example of what such a comparison could reveal is indicated by a compilation made by the Connecticut state department of education showing that while 1.4 percent of the children attending nonpublic schools in the state in 1970 belonged to families receiving welfare benefits under the Federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program the percentage for children in public schools was 6.3, or almost five times as high...
...He does not like the children's uniforms...
...Novak's statistics on the income of parents of children in parochial schools is of little significance unless compared with the income of parents of children in public schools...
...he does not like their social class...
...they can be found among other places in the report entitled Racial Isolation in the Public Schools made by the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1967), which concluded that "non-public schools absorb a disproportionately large segment of white school-age population in central cities," citing as an example Philadelphia where more than 60 percent of the white school-age population attend nonpublic schools...
...And, when times grew hard, she worked side by side with her husband in his business, even through bankruptcy...
...She fulfilled the social obligations of a young society matron, but also found time to organize her friends to look after the poor...
...I would say that his work is exceptional, and leave it at that...
...Nor would it surprise me that among my black students, past and present, there are some who call me a racist...
...Menashe's hard clarity and brevity may be bis protection money for being a high Romantic in- the contemporary world...
...Moreover, his contempt for my work extends to Stephen Spender whom he dubs a "gentle man" because he has praised it...
...I am too old to be frightened or deterred by such verbal blows, but others having something to say may feel impelled to speak less frankly or not at all...
...That is, half of Auden's work remains to be published in book form, and is thus unknown to almost all his readers...
...If Catholics convert to his values, he likes them...
...If it is any comfort to Mr...
...He confuses a deep Catholic belief in authority with authoritarianism, in a way unworthy of his own intelligence...
...To stick to one brief point: One reason for school uniforms is so that everyone can at least appear to be in the same social class...
...New York Times Book Review...
...It should not hurt him, however, to appreciate the values of others, even if he does not share them...
...Louis or Boston or Louisville...
...Men were important in her life: her father, her husband, her father-in-law, her sons, her Episcopal clergyman, dozens of priests with whom she worked, the Filicchi brothers and Samuel Cooper who helped her financially...
...One out of every four students in New York City attend a parochial school, making the parochial school system there the fourth largest school system in the nation, after the public schools of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago...
...Epithets contribute little to the communication of ideas, but they can be quite destructive to civilized conversation or the search for truth...
...Spender writes, "the answer to your question is that I said there were masses of articles in magazines, poems, different versions of poems in various publications, uncollected in published volumes...
...Pfeffer tries to be fair, and we can be grateful for his honesty if not for his perception...
...through death's terrain I go,' Menashe says finely, 'making my own procession.' His prevailing tone is one of gratitude for existence . . . What an anomaly that he should appear in the midst of a generation of American poets who are envied elsewhere for their energy, their violence...
...While finally granting that Mother Seton was "her own woman," Mrs...
...A short life by today's standards, but she lived it to the fullest...
...To me it seems more hurtful than helpful to poor families for it adds another expense to the clothing budget, since it may be assumed that few of the children, even the poor ones, wear their uniforms after school hours or during weekends...
...Nor has there ever been...
...Still, it was the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae which urged prayers for Elizabeth (Continued on page 541) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 517) Seton's canonization long years before she was even declared Venerable...
...Perhaps he speaks in a small voice because a loud one would be less persuasive, less audible...
...I think too that there was a revolt at Vatican II not against authority but authoritarianism...
...And any woman of any age, in any social station, who admires a "woman doer" and who likes to see women recognized for what they can do, may take pride in realizing that Elizabeth Seton did all she did, and did it for God- well enough, too, to win recognition as our first American-born Saint...
...And she lived less than forty-seven years, from August 28, 1774 to January 4, 1821...
...LEO PFEFFER...
...15] seems harsh indeed...
...And some of them may have helped persuade some of the church authorities, too...
...Spender to expand on his remark that half of Auden's work remained unpublished-a remark I knew to be wrong as it stands...
...Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore told the assembled Bishops of the United States in 1852 that Mother Seton had "done more for the church in America than all of us bishops put together...
...OENEVIEVE BLATT Auden Addenda New Haven, Conn...
...Elizabeth Seton lived, moreover, during two great wars and times of great social and political change...
...To the Editors: Because the chimera of a mass of unpublished work by W. H. Auden originated in a newspaper interview with Stephen Spender, and because the existence of this chimera has been perpetuated in your pages, I asked Mr...
...In fact, about 400 essays and a few dozen poems, all of which appeared only in now-forgotten magazines, remain to be collected...
...The motive is both egalitarian and practical...
Vol. 102 • November 1975 • No. 17
