CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Age-Old Prejudice* Wellesley, Mass. To the Editors: How is it possible that suoh an enlightened magazine as Commonweal still innocently uses the patriarchal language of a...
...Not only by those like me, who find ourselves with John McNeill at one end of the curve of human sexuality...
...To say "God Become Man" and "Man Becomes God" is, in fact, either nonsense or heresy...
...I suggest that there is a connection between the painful strained efforts of theologians to reach out to the future without letting go the past—to find a new base for theological truth and still hold to the historic Catholic truths and teachings...
...May we all repent...
...It seems to be among those feelings that idols are raised up, that the easy "virtues" of normality and conformity are emboldened to demand reward and sovereignty, that the believers' freedom and oneness in God are turned against "the others" to become new slaveries and divisions...
...Anyone who has pitched a tent with any movement for reform and renewal in the church should see the relevance of (and welcome gratefully) Dan's counsel...
...Dan propounded a principle that should be engraved in the heart of every professional church person—as well as, and especially all aspirants— and tried to move us deeper than the level of our controversies—to the feelings that escape the reconciling claim of Jesus Christ...
...Somewhere there is a flaw, a defect, in that beautiful (Schall twice notices the failure to achieve perfect beauty) picture...
...All our stories and all our symbols, I am certain, are intended to awaken in each of us the kind of "religious individual" Kierkegaard and Father Berrigan describe...
...If language is an identityforming agency of the human consciousness, as most people now believe it is, then the so-called "generic" simply reinforces age-old prejudices in all of us...
...Why if Rome is the real world has that fact been invisible for nearly two hundred years...
...The discussion of that issue, as far as I can see, is over...
...9] and for enlisting the passionate, discerning and eloquent gifts of Daniel Berrigan to do it...
...To the Editors: Thank you for giving us "The Leveling of John McNeill" [Dec...
...To the Editors: re James V. Schall, "On leaving Rome" [Nov...
...Why did Marx turn to Marxism...
...Something has happened to God...
...H. PAUL SANTMIRE Chaplain and Lecturer in Religion Wellesley College John McNeill Washington, D.C...
...Neither one is worth the ink in your pages...
...JOHN CLARK...
...Dan's reminders and insights are needed by us all...
...To see "God Becomes Man" and "Man Becomes God" as your Christmas lead stories leads me to wonder whether you assume, after all, that salvation is only for men...
...ROBERT W. HOVDA __________Quo Vadis?__________ Poughkeepsie, N.Y...
...How I wish I could join Father Schall in his Truth, Nostalgia, and Reality that equals Rome and—after 25 years of thinking about it and living with it—say "yes" and just simply live...
...MELISSA KAY Washington, D.C...
...Nor is it possible anymore to blithely refer to some alleged "generic meaning" of "man...
...For instance: Why did two such smart men as Lenin and Trotsky turn to Marxism...
...To the Editors: Thank you for Daniel Berrigan's "The Leveling of John McNeilT [Dec...
...To the Editors: How is it possible that suoh an enlightened magazine as Commonweal still innocently uses the patriarchal language of a bygone era...
...That they have been subverted to do the very opposite is the one real perversity alive in our church...
...There is some actuality that Rome does not take in...
...REV...
...It gives hope...
...This temporally schizoid church of ours likes nothing better than to lay some heavy guilt on those who ask it to be true...
Vol. 105 • February 1978 • No. 4
