Correspondence
Correspondence Living alternatives Chicago, III. To the Editors: It was remarkable to me, as I read the thoughtful statements you collected under the title of "What is shaping my own theology" in...
...rehearsing the drill of wetting down walls and curtains...
...With the encirclement and total containment of Russia completion, at most five years away, what choice have they but to try a breakout...
...To the Editors: It was remarkable to me, as I read the thoughtful statements you collected under the title of "What is shaping my own theology" in your January 30, 1981 issue, that none of the selected theologians considered the question of the non-Christian religions to have a formative influence on their theological reflection...
...It is coming and no man can stay it...
...His death was the end of, or signaled the end of, a part of my own life...
...I was in college in the sixties, when Lennon's music was part of my life...
...If this is true-and part of me would hope it is not-it is of definite and urgent importance in regard to all the questions raised in the statements...
...As for John F. Kennedy's death, as a psychologist I would be willing to bet that you will find very few people who were over twenty-one when Kennedy was assassinated who don't remember exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news (how about it-do you find yourself remembering, even as you read this...
...CLAUDIA FLETCHER...
...Not unexpectedly, a conservative economist finds these freedoms "new...
...I suspect it is this which I mourn: the end of a part of my own life which I don't want to let go of...
...doing what we can: Buying broad-brimmed hats to shade our eyes from the flash...
...Alas, most of us cannot run away...
...The irony of a conservative economist referring to "collectivist economic philosophies" as if these were the enemy is by now familiar, as is the irony of Milton Friedman celebrating the free-market virtues of Japan, Inc...
...REV...
...You want things to go on as they have, but they don't...
...no more hope but that it will come...
...My criticism of conservative economics remains: it is an ideology masquerading as a science, pretending to demonstrate the infallible truth of monetarism or Laffer curves by invocation rather than historical evidence, while concealing its true nature as a decoy for corporate capitalism...
...This, I hope, is something our theologians should consider very carefully and seriously, whatever their specific disciplines might be...
...To the Editors: Had I the chance, I would say to Thomas Powers (I would call him Tom, for at this feast of fools should we not all be on a first name basis) I would say, Tom, the time to pack up and go the New Zealand, if you can, is now...
...To put it directly and perhaps too simply, I would suggest that Christian theology, as reflected in these statements, is directed toward a constant reappropria-tion of its own tradition and toward the problems of a modern world that has to a large extent emerged from that same Western tradition...
...they are certainly new to conservative economics...
...To the Editors: Would that freedom from hunger, oppression, and injustice were culturally celebrated ["Correspondence," Richard J. Euson, Feb...
...Underneath all the foolishness, stupidity, and wallowing which Garvey talks a-bout, people react - we react - when our idea of how the world is, is shattered for a moment by an event which proclaims: "No, things aren't the way you think at all...
...We remember because of the break which occurred, for a moment, in the continuity of our own lives...
...Rather, the fact that eleven eminent theologians can be quite active and thoughtful thinkers in today's world without referring to the fact of these vast non-Christian religious traditions should encourage us to ponder whether it tells us something about the nature of Christian theology...
...By contrast, Catholic social teaching has evolved as a critique of all economic philosophies which do not put in first place the primordial concerns of human rights, including the "new" freedoms...
...ROBERT J. MARTIN Goodbye, Tom New York, N.Y...
...The present American political economy is eminently collectivist - the Pentagon/United Tech./Wall St...
...CLAUDIA FLETCHERst of us out...
...and so do the moves in this computerized guessing game accelerate to Doomsday...
...As the above reflection might suggest, I have lived and worked in India, and am at present working on a doctorate in Hindu theology...
...In so far as democratic socialism, as articulated by people like Michael Harrington and practiced to a greater or lesser degree in Scandinavia, Britain, Austria, puts the emphasis on these concerns and seeks to promote them through policies of subsidiarity and pluralism, including when necessary the public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, it is a more acceptable philosophy than corporate capitalism for those of us brought up in the Catholic social tradition...
...Conversely, Christian theology is perhaps radically unable to deal with what is foreign to its own sources: living, growing alternatives on the question of finding God and talking about God, alternatives with long histories, profound intellectual heritages, and powerful popular roots...
...I know very little about John Lennon's personal life, yet I found myself numbed by the news of his death, and for reasons I think quite legitimate and not at all strange...
...FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J...
...For if Christian theology can make statements that are by nature necessarily partial and historically limited by what our Christian past has in fact been, our confidence must be somewhat chastened and our certitude even more shaken than it has ever been: living in a world in which human experience, religious experience, reaches beyond Christian experience in a fundamental, necessary way, changes the very nature of what we are about...
...So, goodbye Tom, and may the winds that blow whither they list, not bring to your snuggery in New Zealand some nasty whiff of the poison that by then will have taken the rest of us out...
...By training I am both a psychologist and composer...
...MICHAEL L. O'NEILL Worlds shattered Lafayette, Ind...
...I say it is remarkable, and that the absence should be noted and pondered, but I do not say that it is regrettable, or that you should have chosen a theologian representative of interest in these religions, etc...
...we must stay and wait for it...
...To the Editors: John Garvey missed something very real and genuine ["Mourning the Famous," Feb...
...axis - and promises to get more so under corporate Reaganomics...
...Ideology as science South Daytona, Fla...
...what choice have we but to anticipate that attempt and forestall it...
...P.S...
...racing into the cellar with our tins of food and chamber-pots, to crouch behind tilted tables and barricades of mattresses, waiting for the radiation to go away, in a thousand years or so...
Vol. 108 • April 1981 • No. 8
