CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPOND. ENCE McCarthytsm and the 'GOs Nashv.Hle, Tenn. To the Editors: Donald Crosby's recent article on McCarthyism and Catholicism [July 21] was quite informative, shedding light on a...
...Our problem, may be more one of timid politicians than of a people's revolt...
...Some even faced jail and death in their efforts...
...Thus, church direction was not "muted and ambiguous," but rather like so many chttrch issues, far too complicated to be digested readily...
...But it is in his writings that he should best be revealed: perhaps in the mystical thread that weaves through and connects four volumes of poetry, two written while a Hindu, and two since becoming a Catholic...
...To the Editors: Donald Crosby's recent article on McCarthyism and Catholicism [July 21] was quite informative, shedding light on a generally unexplored aspect of McCarthyism...
...This type of Catholic understood Communism as a threat to his religion but did not necessarily comprehend the refinements involved...
...Hence, just a few years after McCarthy's death, nuns and priests marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama...
...as a result the general public may not have heard enough of what must be one of the most authentic spiritual quests in our midst...
...If true, Moffitt so far has been doing a good job of disguising his condition...
...They will just have to be more hungry--so, as you put it "the attention of America is focused on the swimming pool in some middleclass California backyard...
...he was unquestionably patriotic, to a group whose own patriotism was always suspect...
...attention-seeking and obvious moral posturing...
...They may be misinterpreting the real will of the American people...
...They could finally become part of the American mainstream which had always eluded them...
...That McCarthy was thought by many to be a spokesman for his church is unfortunate but undeniable...
...To begin with, he was a member of a Hindu monastic order for 25 years...
...Furthermore, Joe McCarthy realized, much as Nixon did with the Silent Majority, the voting power of a largely ignored group--the less, educated, lower-class Catholics--and made the most of his discovery by appealing to their hopes and values...
...The separation of church and sta,~e which American Catholics had so diligently observed faded...
...A good many of them are sorry they did...
...That is, 6.5 million voters cast their ballots on Proposition 13...
...Of these, 2.3 million voted against it...
...FRANK LONEROAN Commonweal: 671...
...The distance is great between the terrors of McCarthyism and the commitment of the Catholic activism of the sixties...
...With a newlyraised conscience, Catholics had been drawn out of isolation by McCarthyism and brought into the reality of the American experience, both political and social...
...As John Cogley has so aptly noted, McCarthyism took the American Carbolic out of the sheltered Catholic ghetto existence and thrust him into the forefront of immediate political issues, especially those of civil liberties...
...This sort of participation grew as the decade progressed, finally embracing the morality of the Vietnam war...
...In Moffitt, however, a true moral center and creative religious expression, dwells...
...Joe was one of their own who had made it...
...Now they could impugn the loyalty of others, as well as engage in xenophobia...
...there was also his seminal book on Eastern spirituality, .tourney to Gorakhpur: An Encounter with Christ Beyond Christianity...
...Yet the article is, in more than a few ways, needlessly defensive and, at times, even misleading, albeit unintentionally...
...Crosby raises at the end of the article may well focus on the most interesting aspect of McCarthy's impact...
...When the head of the New York archdiocese gives his blessing to a political issue, few nonCatholics, or even Catholics, can be faulted for believing the cardinal's views to be those of the church itself...
...Crosby (including an indispensable article by Crosby himself...
...Readers of these books, I am sure, would have no trouble in agreeing that, if not exactly "eastern," there is something assuredly "non-western" at work here...
...4] to John Moffitt on the subject of certain disputed facts in the unfortunate death of Thomas Morton, in which Moffitt was described as having a "western" mind...
...You are correct that there was valid complaint--primarily against the failure of the Legislature to enact a decent law providing relief from property taxes and compensating revenue from other sources...
...I have also recently researched the same topic as F.r...
...And 4.2 million voted for it...
...But you are correct, I am afraid, in your interpretation of the vote as one of resentment--against all government, against the poor, the elderly and the disabled...
...The saddest part of the story is the way most of the nation's politicians are falling all over themselves to make some kind of demi-god out of Howard Jarvis, and to begin to dismantle government programs and forbid growth...
...the need for a civil conscience based on a religious morality became clear to many Catholics who had opposed McCarthy...
...The most cruel blow that has been struck in the aftermath of Proposition 13 is the denial of any cost of living increase to the mothers and children dependent on Aid-to-DependentChildren funds...
...But most Americans have done so with reasonably good spirit for the very reason you give in your editorial--"to help fulfill the promises of the American dream...
...Such a bill failed of passage in the State Senate by the narrowest of margins and with the support it should have had from the administration...
...Yet no less a force than Cardinal Spellman, at the peak of his influence, was a strong supporter of McCarthy and his "ism...
...The tantalizing question Fr...
...No one likes to pay taxes...
...By the standards of the age, Moffitt must be painfully quiet, if I may judge from the fact that he never seems to want to call any attention to himself...
...Crosby, and since I did not have access to his yet-unpublished book, I had to wade through many of the same books, articles and magazines as Fr...
...Nevertheless, by arguing so persuasively against the strength of the McCarthy-church link, Fr...
...JOHN GALLAOHER Proposition 13 Claremont, Calif...
...Yet the link exists between the two, one being the outgrowth of reaction to the other...
...For we are only beginning to feel the effects on our schools, our child care, our health care for the elderly, and in many other w~tys that will soon become apparent...
...To the Editors: My wife and I were amused to read James Baker's reply [Aug...
...To the Editors: Your editorial "The Message from California" [Aug...
...One feels, coming upon Baker's broadside, that he could scarcely have chosen a more unsuitable fellow-countryman to have directed it at...
...4] is by far the best commentary on our state's shameful voting that has yet appeared...
...And in this connection it is interesting to note that despite all the ballyhoo about the "overwhelming" 13 October 1978:642 vote for Proposition 13, the fact is that only 27 percent of eligible voters in California voted for Proposition 13...
...If indeed there is any merit in McCarthyism, it lies in the spiritual activism of both word and deed that formed in reaction to Joe's vicious campaign, That is something of which Catholics can truly be proud...
...In reading Moffitt, I am always made aware of the western egotistical (Continued on page 671) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 643) mentality by virtue of its being so obviously absent in him...
...The church in America had moved from a stagnant monolith to a vigorous, forceful faith in action...
...they were no longer the recipients of the hatred, but now the establishment figures using it...
...Through McCarthy, these Catholics became the political insiders, the offense for a change...
...JERRY VOORmS East Meets West Jackson Hgts., N.Y...
...Crosby very nearly denies the link's existence...
...I feel we can contrast his work profitably to that of other better known "Catholic" poets--for example, to the "Catholic Period" poems of Robert Lowell, who was much given at the time to (western...
...He is quite right in refuting the Walsh story, as well as the spurious analyses of various results of McCarthy-influenced elections...
...Only 42 .percent of the 15.5 million eligible California voters took the trouble to vote at all...
Vol. 105 • October 1978 • No. 20
