Correspondence

...Social analysis instead of being seen as a normal element of pastoral work is linked only to social action...

...WILLIAM POMERLEAU Amoral economics...

...but these may indeed run counter to short-term U.S...

...The editorial's criticism of AID and World Bank programs is, I feel, far too sweeping, even though the examples cited may not be inaccurate...

...There has been little comment on these important documents in liberal publications of any persuasion...

...Just as Lowell Weicker and Barry Goldwater belong to the same political party and have joined together for partisan goals, so do Flemings, Walloons and make odd linguistic bed fellows...

...During my studies in Wallonia, I encountered several students and French-language broadcasters who no longer think of themselves as "regional carriers of a world civilization...

...Apart from the theological debates which seem to occupy the Old Left nearly as much as they do the New Right, we owe them a great deal- not the least for keeping alive a vision of that which we might become...

...Tracy refers to as the "myth'' of Flemish community-mindedness is hardly mythical...

...One taught a course titled The Catholic Literary Renaissance and we were introduced to a variety of writers from the liturgical poets to Undset...

...After all, Mr...

...Navasky describes with care and sympathy the ADL's and Forster's response to the agony-inducing choice conjured into being by McCarthyism and the moral failure of political .and business "leadership...

...Those of us who have been decisive about remaining within the Catholic church despite a conviction that we can't accept this narrow view of birth control, have a burdensome task for which we are also responsible, that of guiding our children along paths of right conscience...

...I must confess that I have a hard time understanding how Mr...

...Unfortunately, there is even less likelihood of much action by the incoming administration along the lines the reports recommend - partly because they will suffer .the fate of reports commissioned by or published during a preceding administration and partly because the new power structure in Washington will not be sympathetic to their recommendations...

...Wouldn't it be more fruitful for our hierarchy to emphasize the right motivation in a person's decision to use birth control, one based on unselfishness and love for the existing members of the family and their collective "life...

...O'Neill, who comes out of a tradition that acknowledges the "limitations of man's knowledge and morality," ends up opting for solutions to economic problems that are collectivist in orientation...

...As anyone who is alive knows, reality can impose its own kind of restrictions on one's ability to reach an ideal (if this is an ideal...

...As Europe becomes increasingly united as a political and economic force while adapting to growing cultural re-gionalization, she may teach us a lesson about the meaning of the term "federalism...

...But if he asks for the right to run my life, then thanks, but no thanks...

...I think, for instance, of Arnold Forster of the Anti-Defamation League...

...Most of the time we discuss evangelization, liturgy, education, pastoral ministry, and church governance apart from any consideration of the concrete social and cultural circumstances of the church in the United States...

...However, in the rush for medals and the chance to swap tales with the Veterans of Moral Anguish of the 1950s, one ought to pause to give thought to others who wrestled with their consciences, often with a good deal more at stake than we diarists and scriveners working under the well-endowed auspices of a safely establishment foundation...

...Their situation is influenced far more by trade and foreign private investment policies of the United States and other industrialized countries...

...To the Editors: As a resident of Belgium from 1975-1979 and a former student of both the Katholiek Universiteit te Leuven and the Universite Catholique de Lou-vain , I enjoyed James Tracy's perceptive analysis of Belgian regionalization [Dec...

...It was, again under those circumstances, a gutsy performance, and one Cogley long and warmly remembered...

...Until our church begins to understand that the central teaching of the worth and the dignity of the human person integrates all of Christian life, a specific Catholic political presence which is more than a butt for cartoonists will be an impossibility...

...of History College of the Holy Cross Belgian complexities Springfield, Mass...

...To the Editors: Jim Castelli's quick report on religion and the 1980 election was most helpful [Nov...

...Responsible Catholics would do well to emulate his initiative and begin exploring ways in which contemporary church teaching on the dignity of the human person enlightens discussion of the public issues which most concern the voters, notably economic instability and an inconsistent and undirected foreign policy...

...aid efforts"-is not the only, or even the major, way in which the United States affects ' 'rural majorities in third-world nations...

...There was even a semester on Dante...

...It cost him an appearance before HUAC in which, under the circumstances, he committed himself quite honorably...

...To the Editors: Michael O'Neill's remarks (Correspondence, Nov...

...Nor need one believe that Roman Catholics who voted for Reagan are unconcerned about social justice and world peace...

...By the time I drove Cog-ley over to the Hill, my own nerves were edgy simply for lack of sleep...

...His conclusion that "it was not religion's most noble side that we saw" during this election year is surely justified, as is his caution against hasty interpretation of the results...

...REV...

...AID hat a clear policy directive in support of land reform and related programs...

...He does not recount, because he had no occasion to discover, that Forster was also the study's deep throat, so to speak...

...There to greet him and to escort him into the hearing room was the then-Congressman Eugene McCarthy...

...O'Neill is really concerned about consistently defending human rights, I suggest he study current libertarian literature such as For A New Liberty by Murray Rothbard...

...government policy would encourage action subject to its influence or regulation to impair further the quality of life of the rural poor...

...RICHARD J. EUSON...

...While I would take issue with some aspects of Commonweal's interpretation of the two reports, I feel sure that members of the Commissions and their staffs will be far more able to defend them and to comment on inferences than I am...

...MARTIN M. MCLAUGHLIN Senior Fellow Overseas Development Council Religion & rethinking Worcester, Mass...

...In recent years, there has been a growing trend in all areas of Belgium, but more markedly within the French-speaking regions, towards greater cultural and economic regionalism within each language community...

...so much so that an attempt to recall him before the committee for a second shot was "postponed indefinitely" under the withering heat of outrage from a number among our then most influential citizens...

...EDWARD ENGBERG Those were the days Poway, Cal...

...What this implies but does not say, is that development assistance-what your editorial calls "U.S...

...Much of the history of the Flemish movement in the past one hundred years has been marked by efforts to standardize and unify culture and political ideology...

...The Catholic vote came in conservative, but the nature of that conservatism needs to be carefully analyzed...

...19], I collaborated heavily in the getting up of the facts for, and in the writing of, the Fund for the Republic's report on blacklisting...

...MARY ALICE LOWRANCE Trade & aid Washington, D.C...

...preferably it would encourage action to influence it...

...Far from "occasional zealots for literature in the Walloon dialect," these individuals represent a growing body of opinion that is seeking to rediscover the, uniqueness of each sub-regional community within Wallonia and greater Brussels...

...I think also of''the other McCarthy...

...O'Neill, isn't this one of the "more important freedoms'' which you affirm that I have, or should have-the right to be "free from oppression...

...It would seem to me that in the church's effort to teach morality, it places far too much stress on the letter of the law and very little on the spirit of the law...

...And that lesson may have an enormous impact on a multi-cultural nation such as the United States...

...The road to effective Catholic presence lies not in this or that'political party or movement, but in a political understanding of faith, worship, and community...

...This means that we in the church need to give a high priority to pastoral renewal, development of forms of consultation, and consideration of new strategies of social and political action which incorporate lay experience, expertise, and leadership...

...Michael Harrington's advocacy of economic "democracy" is surely intended to evoke a positive emotional response, as is Mr...

...Second, as to the "amorality" of conservative economics, this also may be in the eye of the beholder...

...I could only surmise how Cogley felt as he was about to go on public trial for a work of expository journalism-for that is, at bottom, what the report on blacklisting was...

...This is only to add a bow, too, to the Arnold Forsters and Phil Klutznicks and Eugene McCarthys of the bedeviled fifties...

...trade and private investment transfer far more resources into (and out of) developing countries than foreign aid does...

...It took me back to some heady days in college, St...

...To begin, the use of "culturally celebrated words" like "free enterprise" and "free market" is not confined to advocates of laissez faire economics...

...We have allowed the language of' 'political theology'' to be captured by groups with little stake in the church, its parishes or its people, ignoring the fact that such a theology has to do primarily with an intelligent pastoral approach to church life and mission...

...To the Editors: I was pleased to see Commonweal giving particular attention to the so far largely ignored reports of the Brandt Commission and the Presidential Commission on World Hunger [Dec...

...Without his help, I don't know that we should ever have been able to break out in the detail we did the hidden, jerry-built system that had been devised for the purgation and "clearance" of blacklisting's victims...

...O'Neill is looking for (as opposed to the value-free or value-less economics of the "Chicago boys") then libertarianism is the place to begin...

...Many young Walloons do not look to Paris for cultural guidance (indeed, many French intellectuals saw the death of their "world civilization" in the Sorbonne riots of May 1968...

...CHARLES DOLLEN A narrow view Honolulu, Hawaii To the Editors: I applaud the compassionate tone that permeates Bernard Cooke's article "Contraception and the Synod" [Nov...

...Witness the recent trend of French-language Belgian radio and television to regionalize its broadcasts and produce several hours of original drama in the various Walloon dialects...

...O'Neill's references to such "culturally celebrated" freedoms as "freedom from hunger, oppression, and injustice...

...RICHARD J. EUSONuld have-the right to be "free from oppression...

...And yet, look where we are...

...He was, as Harrington says, magnificent...

...Of course, if he wants me to run his life, that's his problem...

...You are correct in saying that it is the structure of the international economic system that needs to be changed...

...By doing so, we doom the church's political witness to triviality...

...The church engages the political order in its proclamation of the truths of its tradition and the formation of communities of faith and conscience, as well as in its direct efforts to relieve the needy and empower the powerless...

...The first task of the church as a political institution in a free and pluralistic society is to be fully and completely the church...

...The roots of the de facto marginaliza-tion of progressive Catholic action in the United States lie in the conscious or unconscious acceptance of the contemporary segregation of "religion" from the worlds of work, culture, politics, and society...

...Forster, in turn, told me in detail how the clearance system worked, who the players were, how they worked, and why, in his shrewd judgment, they did what they did...

...What good is a small-scale crop production project in a food-deficit country which is using its land or leasing it to foreign investors to export a cash crop to the markets of the industrialized countries instead of producing food for the people at home...

...Bernard's in Rochester, N.Y., where I was exposed to some exhilarating English professors...

...So, to be sure, was Cogley's...

...If a value-based economic philosophy is what Mr...

...The huge bloc of non-voters, the volatility of significant segments of the electorate, as well as the results themselves, all relate to wider realities of political consciousness and organization, education, information, and poverty...

...I can conceive of no economic philosophy more amoral than one which both sees no moral tension in placing the mind, labor, and body of one man at the disposal of another (as all collectivist economic philosophies do), and then hails this sacrifice of one to another as a great moral good...

...If there was any sense of embarrassment, it was less at wrongs done than at having been jerked around by a Syracuse grocer and a band of list-keepers...

...Of course I generalize, but my point is simply this: Some of what English-speakers see as a purely Flemish vs...

...The Linowitz Commission wanted to ensure that no U.S...

...While Reagan appealed to the concern of many Americans with traditional moral values, no one need conclude that those Americans have been permanently captured by the New Right...

...How thoroughly she captured the essence of a great literary figure...

...Here he will find a broad-based attempt to understand the nature and scope of what can consistently be termed "human rights" and to illuminate the political and economic implications of "rights" conceived in this way...

...Unfortunately, this cannot wait until the day dawns when the intellects are all satisfied and in accord on the subject...

...For one thing, the political profit to be gained from HUAC-type inquisitions was petering out...

...DAVID J. O'BRIEN Dept...

...21) regarding conservative (i.e., free-market) economics seem to be a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black...

...For another the media, especially television, were coming to feel the kind of power-together with a sense of the commodity value of protest-that came to be so mar-velously portrayed in the movie Network...

...Montrose, Calif...

...May I add one more complicating factor to this already complex topic that seems to have been overlooked...

...I was pointed to Forster by Philip M. Klutznick, then a Chicago-area real estate developer of generous and liberal vision, a force in Cook County politics and most recently commerce secretary in the Carter administration-a man, in short, who had little to gain except in the long run, and then not to himself, by giving me his cooperation...

...Prior to the advent of the "new freedoms" celebrated by Mr...

...There is a shortsightedness in the perception that practicing birth control is tantamount to turning away from God...

...O'Neill, we recognized this kind of moral' 'good'' as slavery and didn't try to rationalize it with references to the "prior human rights and needs of individuals and societies...

...O'Neill believes, then I would think he'd be very wary of giving ignorant and immoral people like me the right and the authority to tell him how to use his skills, expend his resources, and think his thoughts...

...On the Dutch-speaking side, what Mr...

...While in general Flemish school children are told to speak standard "Nederlands" while many Walloon teachers are more tolerant of the dialects of Namur and Liege, one wonders whether all in Flanders fully agree with the "Netherlandization" of their diverse culture...

...I wish I could agree with Harrington that the report on blacklisting made "a major contribution to the beginning of the end of the list," but the media response to the report, of which I did a subsequent report for the Fund, suggested that more compelling forces were at work...

...The present conditions of ambiguity in the church tend to spawn the ' 'do it yourself brand of Catholicism and greatly undermines the ability of Rome's authoritative voice to be taken seriously...

...To do so, church leaders will have to work harder at explaining their views on economic justice and military restraint, while at the same time taking with more seriousness and sophistication than they have in the past the issues of abortion, family life, and public decency addressed by the New Right...

...While living in Flanders, I often found it difficult to communicate with educated Flemings over fifty, but had fewer problems employing my "Literary Dutch" on young children...

...Clifton Fadiman has remarked that he never knew a network executive ever to have been genuinely affected by an idea, except as to its marketability...

...Carl Henry has already begun to mobilize evangelical leadership to discuss the political perspectives of conservative Christianity, a process which should make the humane side of conservative theology more visible and call to account the moral majority and its leaders...

...Walloon struggle often involves the evolution of various trends within each language community...

...foreign policy, as in the Philippines and elsewhere-in which case they do not prevail...

...A point I would like to make, however, supports both the underlying thesis of the Linowitz Commission's report and Commonweal's critique of it: that the basic problem of hunger is poverty and that poverty results from inequitable distribution of income (obviously), wealth, and (not so obviously) power...

...thus we force most Catholics to accept notions and programs of prayer, sacraments, ministry, and mission which are simply unconnected with the realities of everyday life...

...If Mr...

...On the night before John Cogley's appearance at the HUAC tribunal, the principal staff members met in a Washington hotel room to rehearse as best we could the questions that would likely be asked about the study...

...Paul Jacobs went on from the blacklist study to do good work, Michael Harrington to give force to his extraordinary-as John Cogley deemed it-compassion...

...I agree that Victor Navasky "has all the main facts right" as I know them and that, indeed, his "moral and political analysis is quite compelling...

...If man's knowledge and morality ar as fallible and weak as Mr...

...The recent election will turn out to be a blessing if (1) it forces liberal Catholics to evaluate more critically the excessive individualism of secular liberalism on a constellation of issues which include ERA, abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action and (2) it persuades church leaders that political responsibility for the church begins beyond the boundaries of elections in the formation of the political culture which expresses itself in election returns and public policies...

...What I found understated in the editorial-but somewhat less so in the reports-was an appreciation of the full spectrum of influences on that system...

...The read to political responsibility leads through and not away from the Catholic people, to the heart of faith and to the roots of community, not to their fringe...

...We were also encouraged to read Commonweal . . . (REV...

...But U.S...

...CorrespondenceVeterans of the fifties Santa Barbara, Calif...

...social action is seen as peripheral to Catholic life or a laudable pursuit for those who are interested...

...To the Editors: I really enjoyed Maura Boland's "Rediscovering Sigrid Un-dset" [Nov...

...Financial problems, family stability, military service, illness or other trauma will often dictate a greater or more immediate need to be served...