With Clumsy Grace

...and the Common Market with its Voluntary Retirement Scheme, paving the way for "agribusiness" and the rape Of the small farmer and shepherd and fisherman...

...Omitted are Dorothy Day, Gordon Zahn and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, to say nothing of the hundreds of persons equally opposed to "poverty, racism and war" but unsure that the "core group" l~new what it was doing...

...Symbolic thinking has everything to do with emotional health and anyone who has done their homework in psychology and child development knows it...

...Callahan would protest) it was only to record the old woman's confusion and ambivalence toward the sacrament, not to reveal any personal informarion on the state of her soul...

...Callahan asks why I never raise the question as t8 whether "some repressions are worth the price...

...Many then stumbled into a supposedly revolutionary commitment to end capitalism and imperialism...

...In the text, Meconis provides little analysis of his data, relying instead upon his interviews and selected publications...

...then came the final realization that the radical commitment must be universal, embracing all the above and patriarchy as well...

...Dm4d O'Brlon T HE FRONT-PAGE evening-TV appearanee of priest-criminals and sisterradicals remains one of the most startling features of a period of American history best captured in historian William O'Neal's Coming Apart...

...Words, words, words, as Hamletsaid...

...Reading Charles Meconis's admittedly flawed book may help insure that some at least learn something and do not forget everything...

...Unfortunately, in western Ireland I was to observe a socio-cultural system that (for the most part) constrained the expression of love and tenderness and the flowering of human potential...

...In their shocked confrontation with the brutalities of the modern world, these people found little guidance and less help from theologians, scholars, political or ecclesiastical leaders...

...That such protesting Catholics once existed, to say nothing of the fact that some are still around, is enough to draw regular outbursts of sarcastic scorn from Andrew Greeley...

...for us there never was...

...While agreeing that the media title "Catholic Left" is "sociologically inaccurate," Meconis nevertheless supplies an appendix of 232 names of the "core members" of just that group, those who took part in " 'serious' (e.g...

...Meconis traces their paths including his own, from early personal decisions to resist the war, through pacifist draft card burning, the wildfire spread of draft board raids, and the long trials which drained funds and divided friends, to the gradual erosion of networks of communications and "actions communities" amid charges of "elitism and sexism...

...None suggested any changes...

...Finally, critics will find plenty of ammunition in the interviews: here is a woman who reports that by the time she joined the resistance, she had come to look upon her religious community "only as a base of operations...

...I sent advance copies of the page proofs to a number of key persons in the Republic, including a village "key informant...

...Might we suspect, in some dark recess of our hearts, that someday there must be...

...He claims that the group significantly influenced opinion in and out of the church, but provides no real evidence to support the contention...

...If I dared to quote a Villager's comment to me as we "waited on a slow moving confessional line" (as a rather shocked Ms...

...Yet the years of resistance were for some participants a "holy time" when they "were living at the top of [their] freedom," when lives were changed, ripples spread, and for them at least, things would never again be the same...

...Indeed, if this were so it might stem the tide of female emigrations...

...NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHF.~ Dr...

...JOHN M. GESSgJJEditor, St...

...Unfortunately, what is psychologically destructive to one sex, cannot help but ~egatively affect the other...

...Would that words were magical and powerful and could invade and undo the sorrowful laments of the Irish country people--saints, scholars and schizophrenics among them...

...I was careful to present only case history materials of mental patients who did not originate from the parish in which I was based...

...Another appendix indicates that only 54% of the identified membership on whom information was available identified themselves as Catholic...

...Media and participants alike exaggerated the importance of the "Catholic Left...

...While I do make the point that rural Irish socialization is less stressful for girls than boys, I would not go so far as Ms...

...Those of us who are more' 'responsible" than the Berrigans and their friends refuse to admit that things are that bad...

...Perhaps in our uneasy arrogance we have reason to be grateful that at least s~.me people insisted, and continue to ingist, that more is needed...

...Nay--after the English comes the invasions of the condescending Yankee tourist...

...national politics changed little, the cultural revolution was the shortest lived in history, and the church was hardly reconstructed on pacifist or socialist lines...

...The author replies Limitations of space keep me from arguing the points in my review all over again, although there is a lot more evidence for my judgments than I could cram into the original short review...

...Neither the author nor his subjects yet realize that the progression has been experienced before...

...To the Editors: Thanks for running Fleming Rutledge's "The Pope and the Nations" in your September 14 issue...

...Luke's Journal of Theology 9 November 1979:639...

...It is The Female Eunuch gone artsy and gussied up with footnotes (listing sources in the obligatory French and German) in a strained attempt at academic respectability...

...Why would I'want to bow to the very au courant Kagan and Piaget who have so very little to say about my primary concern-the emotional health and well-being of children...

...hostile to established peace organizations and leaders, suspicious of all forms of"elitism" and in many cases well distanced from the church, if not its faith, they remain unable to understand their world or to seize their time...

...much less are they able yet to write their own history...

...An unemployed, alcoholic, or depressed or emotionally disturbed father or husband or brother is certainly no boon to the "matrifocal" household...

...Scheper-Hughes can ignore at will what has been called psychology's cognitive revolution...

...As to whether the people of Ball3~bran are going to feel "betrayed" by what ~[ wrote, I cannot deny that this is a possibility...

...Callahan in representing the rural village as a kind of feminist haven...

...A truly responsive human community is one that is sensitive to the needs of young as well as old, male as well as female...

...After the English, says Callahan, comes the invading social scientist...

...Sheper-Hughes is presently a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Human Development, Graduate Schoo~ of Education, Harvard University...

...I find it difficult to believe that she considers the alarming rates of mental hospitalization, alcoholism and permanent celibacy in rural Ireland today as a small price to pay in the name of preserving the Jansenist "ideals" of "self-discipline," sexual repression, and the value of a "happy death...

...The real reason they continue to disturb, even enrage, is that they exposed the reality of our situation in this century of war...

...But one point simply can't be passed over, and that is the claim that Dr...

...felonious) nonviolent action to protest the war in Indochina," admitting as well some who took "equivalent risks," such as refusing to testify before grand juries...

...Yet, we also find the innocence, seriousness, and real courage which marked the resistance...

...It cuts quickly and clearly to the heart of the problem and is especially apt in relating the biblical understanding of power to the nuclear arms race...

...For a while "the Berrigans" symbolized the apparent disintegration of the nation and its supposedly most conservative, dependable religions institution...

...SIDNEY CALLAHAN Thmtl~ Sewanee, Tenn...

...The powerless and penniless ~thropologist only watches and listens and records...

...I used no hidden or "unobtrusive measures" other than those which my own body provided: eyes, ears, touch...

...here too, is that awkward, embarrassing use of profanity and street jargon by priests and sisters with MAs and PhDs...

...Meconis has not written as he intended the "critical history of the Catholic Left as a social movement," but he has provided a story of real people living "with clumsy grace" in a hard time...

...With Clumsy Grace is a kind of collecfive autobiography, a memoir, based on trial transcripts,some excellent oral history, and a poorly selected list of publications...

...For all its lack of analysis and insight, Meconis's book brings the ripples of real llvesof real Americans, some of the best, to the shores of our consciences, and for that we should be grateful...

...Interested readers will have to read the book, my review and this exchange in order to decide upon the disputed questions...

...I took copious notes quite openly, and struck from the record of a conversation whatever villagers requested me to delete...

...This, from a "devout" feminist...

...I cannot reply except to suggest that the reviewer spend some time in a mental hospital, or in a pub for that matter, talking with a self-hating alcoholic or a morbidly depressed 48-year-old bachelor son...

...if we can only find the right combination of critical intelligence, military power, moral realism, and personal patience, everything will come out sane in the end...

...Some, I trust, will take courage in seeing that their own personal troubles are but manifestations of larger social and cultural ills that can be reversed and changed...

...Their awakened consciences led them to a simple opposition to the war...

...Many will no doubt see themselves in those pages--and that will be a painful experience for some, and cause anger in still others...

...It turns out that feelings, emotions and even a sense of self, are no longer seen as separate from perception and cognitive processing of information...

...Emotions may be pass6 in sophisticated and cognitively oriented psychological circles, but for those who still share Silvan Tomkin's conviction that "affects are the primary motives of man," then serious attention must be given to the ways in which young and old feel about themselves, their past histories, the quality of their personal relationships and their institutions...

...Correspondence (Continued from page 612) on "old psychoanalytic sources" and never seem to "have heard of the likes of Kagen and Piaget who cast a different light on early child development...

...Asking that question need not mean we move into Philip Berrigan and Liz McAlister's Jonah House, but it could suggest that now as in 1968, the proper response to Commonweal: 638these lives is to deal as best we can with the realities of war and injustice, not to dismiss,discredit, and denounce those naive enough to name the evils...

...For those less insecure, there are life stories in the anti-war resistance as important for us as was the lonely witness of a Jagerstatter for the postwar generation...

...Finally, the word "left" itself is questionable, for the "risky action" criteria fits no clear political or ideological category...

...Here is the history of an important portion of the Catholic peace movement, those who risked jail, as they understand that history...

...Beneath it all are large, very large truths we would all prefer to forget...

...here are the simplistic criticisms of the church as irretrievably implicated in imperialism, capitalism and war...

...Finally, as to the well-raised issues concerning confidentiality, informed consent, village reaction, and the ethics of social science "invasion" in a small, fiercely private community like "Ballybran," I can only reply that I was open and direct in presenting myself as an anthropologist, writer and researcher...

...Remembering the resistance CLUMSY GRACE The American Catholic Left, 1961-1975 Charles A o Meconfs Smamry, SS.9S, 224 pp...

...When they were younger and had not yet learned the need for realism, or "hardanalysis," or patience, there was then a "holy time...