CORRESPONDENCE
COIIIIESPONDENCE Gett|n" t o G e t l e t n Carversville, Pa. To the Editors: I'm sure you wouldn't want a letter long enough to point out all the distortions, false conclusions and...
...If he were willing to recognize in the 1968 Novak a fairly representative example of the group denounced by the 1972 Novak, then either (a) he might understand why numerous old admirers tend to discount his swings of enthusiasm--if he once described Mayor Daley in such feverish terms, why take seriously his sweeping descriptions of the "new class'?--or (b) he might, and this would be better yet, temper his judgments...
...National Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 0010.3330...
...He insists that black famliies and kinships thrived and grew----despite the exigencies of slavery, emancipation, migration and urbanizationmbecause they were rooted in an adaptive and resilient cultural base unique to AfroAmericans...
...Also, aside from the poisonous malice which distorts his every sentence, there are some errors in English...
...But if symbolism was subdued, urgency was not...
...It would seem that Kosnick et aL (here and throughout the book) see the divine image lying in sexuality, and the humanness of the human person best defined in terms of sexuality...
...JAMES GAFFNEY Religious Studies Loyola University haps more, by our race, intelligence, economic situation, age and health), but quite another to drift, as Human Sexuality does, from viewing sexuality as ',a pervasive and constitutional factor" in the structure of human experience (p...
...l , 1924, to date available through University MicroBIms...
...The love of tyranny is a national disease," he said, and Ioyot un=ve sm y of chtc Go 6epa tmenl oF 1;heotoGy Spring Session January 17-May 9, 1978 I...
...One may not agree with the solutions presented, but one cannot in all intellectual honesty dispute the fact that there is a problem with our traditional sexual code...
...Aug...
...Such a thinly veiled cry for the extermination of a people deserves no sanctuary in your pages...
...Maybe something will click for you...
...However, recent biological discoveries, e.g...
...Beyond my own work, Peter might find useful Paul H. Weaver's essay, "On Adversary Government and the Liberal Audience," in The Politics ot Planning (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 260 California St., San Francisco, Calif...
...S~ecial two-year rate $29.50...
...Doesn't that seem a mite too sweeping and personal a view...
...To not give the devil its due is to invite it in the back door . . . . MXUI~Y SOLOMOt~ Associate Editor Franklin Watts, Inc...
...The 'new politics,' calling itself leftish, actually represents established power...
...But singling out one people as the eternal arch-evil is a mistake already made too often...
...the late 19th-century knowledge that the sperm impregnates the ovum, and the 1920s learning of ovulation, made the traditional interpretation of Natural Law obsolete...
...America," he declared, "is not yet a democratic country, has not been one, and does not wish to be...
...The kind of thinking evidenced in Human Sexuality and in Vatican documents which inflates sexuality to the dominant position and to the point of obscuring everything else that makes a human person human has done much harm, and will continue to do more as long as it is practiced...
...His rhetoric even becomes expansive with the amazing notion that blowing up buildings is "Nordically satisfying" [Aug...
...But, while the relative importance of sexual gender (whether derived from anatomy or cultural conditioning) for human experience is debatable, it is certain that human personality is not sexually differentiated, and to recognize this is not gnosticism (pace Michael Novak, July 8...
...Richard'Smith, S. J., S. T.D...
...5] Ralph McInerny maintains that the group of authors "accepts as a methodological point that no moral precept that forbids a specified kind of action can be absolute...
...Let's face i t - - publishing is a business, and titles on Hitler sell now...
...He "thinks that is what they are trying to say on p. 97" and "it is surely the assumption of the guideline chapter...
...Let us mail you our free newsletter for young people interested in social action and religion...
...and I find nothing in the "context," nor indeed does Novak specify anything in the context, that 14 October 1977:670...
...He can even find ,praise for the neutron bomb by noting that it "is not in the class with the German death camps...
...The Democratic party's majority was no different from Republicans, and Novak mocked the "businessmen who sing a patriotic hymn at every weekly luncheon...
...MW 7:25 P. M. _9 The Person of Jesus in the New Testament Rev...
...It rather emphatically a~tempts to confront a moral problem that has existed for some time...
...Since college days, when I was assigned to 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 643) lieve---a relatively small part of "the new class...
...They do appear 14 October 19"/7:668 to adopt such a principle with respect specifically to sexual behavior...
...It was the deregulation possibility that brought on the threat of presidential veto...
...CLYDE S. SICKLEa III Alderson, W. Va...
...TTh 6:00 P. M. _9 Theology of the Religious Life Rev...
...RICHARD C. DIETER Biddeford, Maine To the Editors: I am dismayed with Frank Geflein's proposed ultimate solution of the German question [Sept...
...And so, roundabout, I return to my recent column and Michael Novak's reply...
...Just send your name and address to WORD ONE, Room 422,221 W. Madison St., Chicago, IL 60606...
...9 Contemporary Theology: Earl A. Weis, S. J., New Systematic Theology--A Historicist Perspective Chairman Dr...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...I did use the sentences Peter cites, but not quite in the context or with the tone he gives them...
...Marilyn's portrait allowed us not just to see the man, but to see the paradoxical nature that produces such paradoxical works...
...19] Obviously, it is the Germans that he considers to be not quite human...
...Does he suggest Lieutenant Calley and his superiors should have been dealt with in the same manner...
...We have seen the implications for the question of the ordination of women of this virtual identification of sexuality and personality...
...Sept...
...Michael Novak, however, is a most passionate student, one who insists on embracing his new insights and rejecting his old ones with an extraordinary vehemence...
...Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry FRANK GETLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER...
...An exact and careful analysis of "the new class," both on the left and on the right, is further along toward the lucidity Peter seeks than Peter finds...
...Thus in 1968 Richard J. Daley was a "tyrant" and Daley's Chicago was "something close to" fascism...
...In the Star column in question [Aug...
...Getlein, and then getting him back on the road to more detachment, objectivity, and rationality...
...Political writing of course is largely seat-of-the-pants...
...312-274-3000 An equal opportunity educator and employer _9 Loyola University of Chicago admits students without regard to their race, color, sex or national or ethnic origin _9 Qualified persons are not subject to discrimination on the basis Of handicap "Worse, the people love their own disease...
...Well he might have pleaded...
...TTh 4:35 P. M. For application or information, contact: Sr...
...PETER STEINFELS H i t t i n g on B t t l e r New York, N.Y...
...I can only describe his remarks in the past few issues as a German hate campaign...
...And i~ is another convincing testimonial in favor of a black culture that is distinctively ,afro...
...Hope for change rode, first of all, with the "bright, young, suburban voters of liberal bent...
...It tells what others are doing, and how they do it...
...But now that he has cried "Context...
...I relied rather heavily on Jeanne Kirkpatrick's brilliant, long study, The Presidential Elites, which I cited...
...300 H. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich...
...It is one thing to say that our experience of fife is eonditioned by our sexuality (as it is as much, or perBefore you choose a career, figure all the angles What are you shooting formmoney, prestige, security...
...Was I publishing books on Hitler because I wanted to make sure children didn't forget...
...To the Editors: I was delighted to read Marilyn Moorcroft's "Floundering with Grass," and have a chance to know the person .behind the book [July 8...
...The complication is in the natural resiliency of the individual...
...and Toronto, Ontario To the Editors: Ralph Mclnerny observes in his review of Human Sexuality (August 5) that the book suggests "that to .be a woman.., endows one with a capacity to experience reality in a peculiarly feminine way," and wonders "if this goes contrary to feminism...
...And so they have remained ever since...
...Whether right or wrong, that is not an unusual or outrageous view...
...bu~ readers should understand that the volume is more than a history of the black family...
...The slave family question--~because Gutman gives it the most attention and because of its sensitive historical positionmwiU dominate discussions of Gutman's book and perhaps rightly so...
...Perhaps the interests of Commonweal, and its readers, might be well served by finding out what is troubling Mr...
...MW 6:00 P. M. _9 Theology of the Prophets in Ancient Israel Rev...
...48106...
...I was not generalizing about all educators, professors, or intdlectuals...
...I had analogous words about the new class on the right...
...Like it or not, energy is not a fair-weather issue, unless of course there is some queueing up at gas stations, which there happens to be none of at the moment...
...Getlein seems to regard this as a peculiarly horrendous German crime...
...To the Editors: While I confess that I have on occasion enjoyed certain of Mr...
...I find neither on the page nor in the chapter cited any evidence that the authors adopt such a methodological principle in general...
...Hence, we have known for many years that not every act of sex can be procreative according to the Natural Law...
...By 1972 essentially the same group had become the villain of the piece, an obstacle to the kind of politics he favored...
...The House had done well by his program, but the Senate had gutted utility-tax reform, the "gas-guzzler" tax idea, and coal-conversion requirements, was moving in on proposed taxing of industrial usages of oil and natural gas, and had launched into a filibuster for deregulation of natural gas prices...
...MW 4:35 P. M. _9 Western and Eastern Mysticism: English Language Mystics Rev...
...d) not gone to other writings of mine--I am not exactly reticent-in search of just what I mean by the "new class...
...Single copy 75c...
...I will point out that his argument turned, as his column stated, on the fact that "the new class structure in America is altering the cultural base of the Democratic party...
...Getlein's so-called Report on Kappier's escape from prison in Italy [Sept...
...Geflein: "When the Germans try it again . . . we should plan accordingly . . . that that time the end will be the end...
...His recent "Return of the Native" [Sept...
...16...
...The Claretians A Roman Catholic community of priests and brothers 422 Commonweal: 669 the Vatican share) which led recently to the presentation of the natural sighification the priest bears to Christ in sexual, not personal, terms...
...It is not surprising...
...There, I insist, my topic being the knowledge industry and the "new class," I saw no reason to distract readers, and discompose Novak, with any treatment of his changing views of the Democratic party, and all his attendant extravagances, bad advice, and poor predictions...
...This vehemence, furthermore, has a discomforting tendency to be directed outward...
...Brendan McGrath, O. S. R., S. T.D...
...Yet as Carter's strategy seemed to be taking form, it was dropped, almost as if the administration sensed the futility of what it was about...
...Gerald McCulloh, Ph.D...
...Peter always ends up being dragged along into the present: In his recent column, he urges that "the new class" be given the respect "ethnics" have won...
...Much of the history of religious ethics, rabbinic and Koranic as well as Christian, records ceaseless efforts to define murder, theft, and lying in such a way that the prohibitions are both plausible and unexcep, tionable...
...There are many strong and insightful criticisms that need to be made of the misuse of power around the world...
...Sept...
...Copyright ~ 1977 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.mUS and Canada: $17 a year...
...I wrote: "A useful historical name for the organized political movement of the left might be the Know Everythings...
...Their credentials cannot be too carefully examined...
...Whatever else this book is, it is not trendy...
...It has gotten to the point that when Peter attacks me I know I must be onto something, even if I get there too early...
...83) to '~he concrete manifestation of the divine call to human completion" (also p. 83...
...To the Editors: Ralph McInerny's review of Human Sexuality: New Directions in !American Catholic Thought [Aug...
...To the Editors: In his review of Human Sexuality [Aug...
...Microfilms from Vol...
...By the way, isn't Getlein a German name...
...Where was he when "ethnics" needed him...
...THEODORE SNYDER Novok on Novak Bayville, N.Y...
...We can share them with you...
...Juan Lozano, C. M. F., S. T.D...
...Energy is rather a cold-weather issue, as it is then that supplies are the most vulnerable to demand and when the public feels most directly the effects of a shortage of any sort, as last winter when gas and heating-oil supplies dropped to emergency levels in many parts of the country forcing schools to close, factories to shut down, and businesses to curtail operating hours...
...It might be well to find somebody more even-handed to supply your readers with news from Washington...
...indeed to everything but what I wrote last June, strikes me as a stellar example of obfuscation...
...The reviewer also maintains that "nothing is easier than to formulate such precepts" and gives as instances the prohibitions of murder, theft, lying, and adultery...
...Even the New York Times implicitly acknowledged the dullness of the energy story, when it moved it off page one for a few days and back: to the business/finance section, as if the energy story qualified as news in terms of dollars and profits--which it does, although not primarily...
...Our human need is to have villains around to admire and then to be reassured when they suffer well-deserved defeat...
...If it is further "lucidity" he wants, he needn't lecture me before reading me, or others...
...Groat Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMOND FISHER: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher RUTH E. TAYLOR: Advertising Manager Staff: L|NDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETTE BALSKY COMMONWEAL 232 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK...
...It is a s~atement about the legacy of slavery based on hard and continuous research as much as it is a history about slave times, and that is long overdue...
...Obviously, selfconsciousness is not his strong point...
...At all events, to denounce this book is to protect the evil that the book exposes...
...Or would you be happier making some corner of the world a better place for everyone who hangs around...
...And what's so wrong about a soldier, any soldier, trying to escape from imprisonment...
...I am an American of German parentage but I had never heard that justice is "the ancient foe" of Germany...
...To the Editors: While genially accusing me of McCarthyism, Peter Steinfels [June 20] (a) fails to mention the subject of my long column in the Washington Star, from which he quotes...
...JOANNE MC WILLIAM DEWART 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Steinfels ( C o n t . ) "new class" was central...
...As a community of men concerned about social justice and human rights, especially in the inner city and the Third World, we see good things happening...
...I'm speaking of blatant remarks such as, "Germans, to be sure, have always considered Italians not quite human: they're always singing . . . having a good time, instead of killing people...
...v . ) ~LBV ~. Rvvcra New Orleans, La...
...At the time I was writing, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bella Abzug were fighting a major battle on this terrain, as had Hugh Carey and Howard Samuels two years earlier...
...W~ny the authors have made what to many will seem an inversion is unclear (a fully human sexuality can surely be worked out on other bases), and such an omn~um gatherum approach to sexuality can be faulted on many grounds...
...c) asks for further precise discussion, without noting that my column in the Star runs twice a week, and has treated the topic of the "new class" rather often...
...It is, therefore, impossible to agree with McInerny when he accuses the theologians who authored this book of being influenced by a contemporary "'zeitgeist," "charmingly credulous where the secular sciences are concerned," following "revisionary zeal" rather than "tradition...
...By 1972 Novak had discovered that "so many members of the new class" were accusing America of being "sick" and were "sweating contempt from every pore...
...In order to plead for lucidity, he did not have to overlook the distinctions I actually made...
...Oo0"oooooooooooooo0 THE SEHATE AHD EHERGY For a quick few days in late September, it appeared that President Carter was about to go to the public on behalf of his energy program...
...The "new class" has elites in both the Republican and Democratic party...
...16] seems to demonstrate a sort of selfrighteous pride in his bigotry toward Germans, and I wonder that it did n o t serve as an embarrassment to Commonweal...
...I would be the first to unequivocally condemn the atrocities of the Nazis, and I stood with sorrow and anger at the graves of those Italians murdered by Kappler...
...1...
...Courses may be taken in an M. A. program or in an 6525 North Sheridan Road unclassified status...
...I was describing--accurately, I be(Continued on page 667) CORRESPONDENCE: G42 EDITORIAL: G43 WASHINGTON REPORT: The Double Standard: Frank Getlein 644 AS ! IVAL~ SAYING . . .: Peter Steinlels 646 UNEQUAL RUT FAIR: Da.niel C. Maguire 647 AN ACADEMIC PROFILE: Eleanor B. Wymard 652 TIIi~ PRESS: Mark Rudd Returns: Thomas Powers 657 THE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The word is "discomfit," for what he was evidently trying to express...
...But for the same reasons I could not be so blind as to offer a similar "'final solution" as Mr...
...and Rook Review Digest...
...b) falls to observe the distinctions present in that article...
...As long as Hitler can serve to help us see the darker sides of ourselves, and see it be defeated by more likable instinct, he will be worthwhile to know about...
...And perhaps it was with this knowledge that Vatican II in its document on marriage omitted the traditional and essential word "primary" in its definition of sex...
...29, 1976--over a year ago!I, my subjeer was not "the new class" but a new alignment both in the Republican and in the Democratic parties...
...Where such efforts have succeeded it has often been at the cost of making the precepts tautolngous, and to that extent unhelpful as norms...
...To the Editors: I'm sure you wouldn't want a letter long enough to point out all the distortions, false conclusions and vindictivenesses that distinguish Mr...
...I just don't believe it...
...Kappler must have been an almost unique lightweight if he could curl up in a suitcase that his wife was able t o lug away by hand...
...11709.] My subject was the gap between political elites in the Democratic party (and in the Republican party) and their constituencies...
...5] left me dismayed by its hysterical tone of denunciation...
...The setting wasn't a White House drawingroom, and the costume wasn't a cardigan sweater...
...The first sunny"-days of spring whisk away the sting and the memory of winter Commonweal: 643 Gu~nan .insists that "family" cannot be separated from "culture," and that broadens and strengthens his effort...
...to our past exchanges...
...That there are sensitive and justice-loving Germans today seems to thoroughly escape his judgment: "it is easy, too, to understand the sheer bafflement of a German at the idea of not blowing up all the buildings available...
...16]: "Captured, their fate should have been simply to be shot on sight . . . . " This groans with Hitlerian logic...
...Foreign $19...
...94111...
...So what he has offered is a generous slice of Afro-American culture wrapped around the family...
...Printed In the USA and published hi-weekly by Commonweal Publishing Co...
...The public would have yawned more...
...Additional courses are available Chicago, Illinois 60626 through the Loyola Institute of Pastoral Studies...
...One issue taken up in the article is of special interest to me...
...Traditionally, the Church, following the principle of Natural Law, has taught that the primary end of sex is procreation...
...As an editor who deals in children's books, I have witnessed and participated in the re, viral of interest in Hitler and Nazi Germany---but not without some misgivings...
...I am as aware as Peter that many of the nation's top intellectuals are critical of "the new class," particularly of its more radical fringe in the Democratic party, and more exactly of its disproportionate role in the Democratic nominating convention...
...John Kilgallen, S. J., S. S.D...
...American...
...Commonweal Is Indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index...
...650 VERSE: John Fandel 660 PHILOSOPHIZING ON THE PAST: John P. Sisk 661 ROOKS: Ralph Whitehead, Jr., Daniel Aaron, C. Peter Ripley 662 ILLUSTRATIONS: [ront cover, Rita Corbin JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSON...
...Altogether this is extraordinarily emotional reporting...
...By next year this time, he will no doubt have caught up...
...Such ignorance of reality can hardly be exceeded...
...Mary Peter McGinty, C. S.J...
...and (e) not consulted other available work on the subject...
...They, in fact, subsume the notion of person as self-transcendentally relational under the rubric of sexually relational ("sexuality is seen .as that aspect of our fleshly being-in-the-world whereby we axe present .and open to that which is not ourselves, to that which is 'other'," p. 83...
...to his recent reading...
...In short, Novak learned something, which is no discredit to him...
...16], and indirect slurs as, "In Kappler's case the enemy was the ancient foe of his country, justice...
...Getlein's columns, he lately impresses me as being little better than the unthinkingly vituperative sort of demagogue that vents his spleen in the publications of campus radicals...
...It is precisely such focusing on sexuality (which Kosnick et al...
...But that is a very different, much commoner, and far more defensible position...
...More and more young people like you are searching for a lifework rather than a lifestyle...
...I regret the snide quality of the subsequent parenthesis ("doubtful in so trendy a document as this") all the more because I am in general.agreement with McInerny's assessment of the book.] To recocnlze that sexuality conditions experience is not contrary to feminism (or to mascnlism), but Human Sexuality is, in its overall thesis, not only an a~ti-feminist, but a proroundly anti-human book...
...Studies have consistently shown that kids deprived of the ghoufish, grisly stuff Hitler stories are made of, will invent it themselves...
...In 1968 he had thought a "new politics" could be built on at least a portion of this classwthose who had fueled the opposition to the war and to Humphrey's nomination...
...ALICE E. BUTLER Kingston, N.Y...
...Carter was threatening veto in West Virginia, cajoling in Washington, pleading in effect through camera's eye to the great beyond in defense of the wide-ranging proposals intended to relieve shortages and ease American dependency on foreign energy resources...
...It deduced logically that any act subverting the end of procreation, e.g...
...to the "subject," "tone," "context," and "distinctions," of his column...
...Yet at least one check on the tendency to manipulate "abstract terms" or "mythical constructs" to suit one's mood or one's opportunities is a close, though critical, attention to what "facts" we have, what we know, for instance, about the role of the "new class" in the economy and about its cultural attitudes...
...His description of this structural change, in terms of the knowledge industry and the "new class," was in my view exaggerated and unfounded...
...It seems he can't, mention the word German without throwing an ethnic slur at every individual in those countries...
...10016 Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042 A review of Publlc Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...A bit of spirit and warmth are to be encouraged in certain journalistic endeavors, but temper tantrums and self-immolation are not...
...To the Editors: I think Frank Getlein needs to be called to account for his recent remarks in "Washington Report" [Sept...
...Last year, of course, some months before Commonweal printed a long section of the book by Kirkpatrick Sale on the theme, Peter wrote disdainfully of an earlier Commonweal column of mine on "patriots" and "cowboys'--a political development widely accepted now: the sharp cleavage between the real interests (and 14 October 1977:642 cultural styles) of "the Sun Belt" and "the Snow Belt...
...and a body of literature well beyond my own work could have been consulted...
...masturbation, was an act against the fixed and eternal order of nature, and therefore a sin...
...Sex may sometimes be a source of evil, but it does not follow that people, like McInerny, who take offence at it are champions of society...
...Just as Peter wrote, the Democrats were holding a $1,000-a-plate dinner at the Waldorf--the Democrats...
...That the authors of Human Sexuality share the Vatican's preoccupation with sexuality, and so conclude that physiological sexuality is the most important determinant of human life is deplorable...
...For anyone who wishes to see the full text, I will be happy to supply a free copy of the EMPAC newsletter #10---Box 48, Bayville, N.Y...
...Aug...
...masturbation, sterilization, contraception, premarital sex) without specifying particular circumstances or intention, to that extent they cannot be regarded as universal and absolute moral norms...
...Human SeammRtg Chicago, Ill...
...For one, the word "discomfort" used as a verb, went out with Shakespeare...
...What he learned, I believe, is that at least points 1, 2, and 4 of his 1968 strategy conflicted with point 5; and since by 1972 he had become an ethnic and seen McGovern lose, it was point 5 that controlled his new thinking...
...Temperament and even vehemence are crucial...
...What surprised me most was the fact that he seems unaware that f o r many years there has been a serious problem with our traditional sexual moral code...
...Commonweal: 667 read ~'he Tin Drum, I have been an admirer of this man who is so modern, yet so classical...
...Many of them are in affluent professions, secular in their values and tastes and initiatives, indifferent to or hostile to the family, equipped with post-graduate degrees and economic security and cultural power...
...MICHAEL NOVAK REPLY: Michael Novak's letter, with its references to his other writings...
...Trying to puzzle my way through it, I was bit by bit led into the lengthy examination of our apparently incompatible modes of discourse that appears in my regular column...
...What the authors say on p. 97 is that in sexual morality "to the extent that (precepts) refer to concrete physical actions (e.g...
...But that doesn't mean it is wrong of us to do them...
...Forefc~n S33.50...
Vol. 104 • October 1977 • No. 21
