Correspondence
Correspondence Garland for Garvey Rochester, N.Y. To the Editors: About a year and a half ago, browsing in the library, I came across John Garvey's column comparing Secular Humanism and the Moral...
...Frank McConnell [June 4] fits right in...
...Had you called us prior to writing the May 21 editorial, we would have gladly provided complete documentation...
...JOHN DESMOND The author replies: The man who conjured up that motley, ill-assorted collection of names ranging indiscriminately from distinguished or wonderfully promising to indifferent or worse doesn't know what a truly serious novelist is and wouldn't know a "general idea" if it appeared before him in a shower of gold...
...And surely that trifling taunt about "immigrants" doesn't warrant reply-a loutish insult, witles...
...The new law guarantees a parent's right to strike a child...
...The author also fails to recognize that the number of disenfranchised refugees almost equals the number of votes cast...
...Let a thousand flowers bloom, as one of the seriously religious writers of this century has said...
...Some examples of their words and actions: 1. Censorship...
...I[t is so important that we remove offensive materials from our classrooms and libraries immediately...
...I think not...
...are frequently perceived by others in ways that do little justice either to reality or to Catholic ideals, this is no small thing...
...While Maloff skillfully recreates the flavor of Bellow's book, some of his assertions strain credulity, to put it mildly...
...There are by now many more reasons why I'm glad to have your magazine come regularly in the mail, but the wisdom of Mr...
...Dixon explains "the parents own the children" and "if you haven't left any marks, you probably haven't whipped your children...
...Are the reviewers in secular periodicals little more than dunces pandering to popular tastes...
...We are not fighting fire with "fire...
...2. Weakening child abuse laws...
...Last year, Greg Dixon, the National Secretary of the Moral Majority, successfully lobbied to roll back Indiana's child abuse protections...
...One crusty old agnostic friend of mine put it succinctly after reading Thy Brother's Wife: "Maybe you Catholics aren't so out of touch with what matters to the rest of the world as I thought...
...Jerry Falwell in Houston, Texas, on February 27,1982, stated: "I am against giving homosexuals bona fide minority status or even recognizing their right to decide who is going to rule in the political processes...
...The Moral Majority is already working with several organizations to remove these harmful sex education materials from classrooms...
...Others may refer to them as the New Christian Right, the New Right, the Radical Religious Right, or ultrafundamentalists...
...Granted Greeley's novels will never rank with Tolstoy, or even Flannery O'Connor...
...or Eudora Welty...
...To the Editors: It seems to be very trendy among Catholic commentators to look down one's nose and be either condescending or nasty about Andrew Greeley's novels...
...their own words and their own actions...
...Finley for arousing his rancor, and observing that he is perfectly entitled to like Andrew Greeley's novels, if he wants to...
...The report of the sub-committee calls attention to the very real atmosphere of terror as a factor influencing the vote...
...And need I point out that though a critical or any other remark may be "baffling" and may be a "piety," it can't very well be both...
...malice...
...Does Maloff really believe that Bellow is "our only serious novelist of general ideas" (my italics...
...And as for this Maloffism: "No novelist is more worldly than Bellow, and none more otherworldly"-please translate...
...In a nation where Catholics - and...
...4. Denying homosexuals the right to vote...
...or Mary Gordon...
...The books are silly-even if they do soften the soul of the occasional "crusty old agnostic"-and have, as far as I can see, less to do with the "Divine Mystery" than the latest well-written detective thriller...
...PEGGY ROSENTHAL Greeley's novels Spokane, Wash...
...Are the secular reviewers so perverse, so stupid, so unsophisticated that they cannot recognize literary trash when they read it...
...SAUL MALOFF...
...DANIEL J. GEAGAN Just the facts Washington, D.C...
...The essay abounds with such baffling critical pieties, leading one to observe: Maloff, your thirties are showing...
...and that a large portion of the population living in the quarter to a third of the country under FDR/FMLN control did indeed vote with their feet...
...But that may be only the opinion of a middle-aged, less than crusty agnostic...
...The author obviously has little or no conception of the importance of identity cards in Latin American countries...
...To the Editors: About a year and a half ago, browsing in the library, I came across John Garvey's column comparing Secular Humanism and the Moral Majority and was so impressed that I immediately subscribed to Commonweal in order to keep in touch with what else Mr...
...The Religious Roundtable, on whose board sit Jerry Falwell, James Robison and Charles Stanley (all featured in our ad), called Social Security "probably the most tragic and criminal plunder ever perpetrated against the American people by liberal government," and opposes Social Security since to do otherwise is not "biblically-consistent...
...I want to thank Commonweal for making his always .valuable and sometimes even painfully penetrating comments regularly available...
...MITCH FINLEY Parish Services Office The author replies: I fear there is little I can say in reply, except to apologize to Mr...
...or Elie Wiesel...
...Whatever they are called, the question is whether the groups and their leaders, who claim they work closely together and head a movement, should be held accountable for...
...Are reviewers in Catholic periodicals - including Frank McConnell - so discriminating, so intelligent, so much more highly qualified to evaluate Greeley's novels, that they are to be trusted in favor of their secular counterparts...
...People For's aim is to remind the public of America's constitutional tradition of religious diversity and political pluralism and to expose excesses and attacks that threaten that tradition...
...A footling crack, that snickering one about my "thirties," mere pettifoggery...
...Has he read Walker Percy or Styron...
...The "many reviewers" from the secular press who like Greeley's work, whom Finley invokes, do not actually exist...
...To the Editors: Whatever the merits of Saul Bellow's new novel, The Dean's December, they were not particularly well served by Saul Maloff's review in the May 21 issue...
...that the number of documented murders in the three years prior to the elections equals a quarter to a third of the number of votes...
...We hope that someday there will no need to educate the American people about the threats to our constitutional rights and freedoms posed by the moral majoritarians or any other movements...
...we are fighting it with the facts...
...As for my "worldly-otherworldly" remark, why, the entire essay can be read as a gloss upon it...
...It is just that Greeley's novels really are, you know, bad...
...Continued on page 446) Correspondence (Continued from page 418) The editorial also objects to our use of "moral majoritarians" to describe, among others, Jerry Falwell arid Moral Majority, James Robison and the Religious Roundtable, Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum...
...Many reviewers in secular periodicals think otherwise...
...I myself have an irrational fondness for Velveeta Cheese and for Disco music, and I would resent anyone trying to dissuade me from those addictions...
...maybe immigrants don't count...
...To the Editors: Your editorial of May 21 disparagingly suggests that People For The American Way was "fighting fire with fire" in our recent print ad campaign...
...But he is able to write good stories that say something truthful to ordinary people about the human nature of the church...
...FRANK McCONNELL Salvadoran terror Dundas, Ontario To the Editors: The recent editorial on the Salvadoran elections [June 4, "Salvadoran Ballots - and Bullets"] was disappointing for its naivete...
...He tells stories about the ways in which the Divine Mystery is experienced by ordinary Catholics outside of churchy situations, in the world most of us inhabit every day...
...Testimony to the Canadian Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Latin America and the Caribbean indicates that the voter turnout was about SO percent of those eligible...
...THE EDITORS Bellow & Maloff Walla Walla, Wash...
...He is able to say that there is hope, and that God enables ordinary people to act with courage, faith and love, even in the midst of human sinfulness...
...ANTHONY T. PODESTA Executive Director People for the American Way For more on this, see editorial, page420...
...Jerry Falwell, in a national mailing dated January 1, 1981, exhorted readers to "examine your public schools' libraries and textbooks for immoral, anti-family and anti-American content...
...We believe that our print ads will hasten that day...
...Bellow deserves better...
...Space limits our ability to document every point in our print ads, but such information is freely available to you or anyone else who requests it...
...or Robert Penn Warren...
...3. Eliminating Social Security...
...But hark-why this disquieting feeling that even though Desmond grants I "skillfully recreated" a sense of the novel, he himself hasn't read it...
...For El Salvador one need only point to published photographs of security checks and to the frequent references in accounts of arrests by security forces where persons were apprehended while they were lacking such documentation...
...We believe they should...
...especially priests, bishops, etc...
...Garvey would have to say...
...Garvey's latest column on "Loving God for Nothing" [June 4] confirms my sense that here is a thinker especially worth reading...
Vol. 109 • August 1982 • No. 14
