Correspondence
Correspondence Mary Gordon, thanks Austin, Tex. To the Editors: Regarding Mary Gordon's piece in your January 15 issue ("Coming to Terms With Mary"), allow me to respond: Thank you, thank you,...
...Copyright© 1981 Commonweal Publishing Co...
...Illustrations: Page 135, Renault, Sacramento Bee...
...The War Measures Act was invoked in Canada on less provocation...
...Brazil's trade unions have never threatened the status quo to the extent that Solidarity did, but they were not tolerated...
...15], provides an excellent example of an attempt to understand Poland on its own terms, rather than through the distorted mirror of cold war rhetoric...
...What is desperately needed from the American bishops is a definitive and unequivocal pastoral letter regarding what Catholics may and may not do with respect to participation in the fratricidal preparations which are now the official policy of the American government...
...To the Editors: Notwithstanding the very appreciative and complimentary letter of Most Rev...
...It is no longer possible to straddle the issue in that manner...
...The chief responsibility lies not with Solidarity's increasingly impossible demands - excesses to be expected in any frustrated popular movement - but in the failure of the Polish Communists to respond to the historical opportunity to show us a way out of the East-West impasse...
...A strong, concerted response of some kind by the Western democracies was certainly called for, but why not first go to the UN Security Council as the tribunal of world opinion...
...On the other hand, the USSR should know that there are limits to what the Western democracies will tolerate as acceptable in these situations...
...For the U.S., moreover, simply to initiate punitive action on its own is to perpetuate the kind of international lawlessness that is so dangerous in the nuclear age...
...CATHERINE B. HEIMSATH Muddled conviction Kalamazoo, Mich...
...Perhaps the failure in writing style comes from your effort to balance the teachings of the church against so-called national security considerations...
...The result appears as muddled conviction...
...CHARLES E. KINZIE Sanctions & limits Margate, N.J...
...The only alternative, at this point, is universal incineration in the name of national security...
...Moreover, even under natural law the state does not have the right of self-defense when the means chosen for that defense are suicidally genocidal...
...No Catholic may embrace that alternative...
...Cold war rhetoric is, I think, an impediment to understanding...
...This is already more than was allowed to CUT in Chile or the COB in Bolivia...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Such consolidation is precisely what is not needed because it would simply present the "peace option" as one option among others for Catholics...
...The head of Canada's Postal Union was jailed for a year for affirming the right to strike in the face of legislation enacted after the strike was called...
...Carroll T. Dozier, Bishop of Memphis, regarding your editorial of Dec...
...15] are among the most intelligent I have seen...
...Trudeau's reaction...
...p. 137, Cork, Netherlands...
...There has been some talk of late concerning the possibility of the American Catholic church becoming a "peace church...
...While Moscow has certainly pushed (Continued on page 159) Correspondence (Continued from page 130) for a crackdown and may be implicated, Jaruzelski's action is in fact understandable on Polish terms...
...18, it seems to me that another correspondent, John Rieger, was much closer to the point of what is really at stake when he wrote: "For the first time since 1937, I have read an editorial in Commonweal which is of weak construction and is poorly written - 'The Bishops as Peacemakers' [Dec...
...Such a prospect is suggested at the end of your editorial where you write of "consolidating this unprecedented movement in the American church...
...Few Western governments would have taken as much, and this perhaps explains the honesty of Mr...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...p. 138, Tom Brina, Rothco...
...As I write, transit workers in Montreal have been legislated back to work...
...It could just be that Solidarity was allowed to get as far as did (with still historically unmeasured results) largely because of the Polish government's desire to keep favor with the West, its banks, and its markets...
...Denis Mac-Shane's article [Jan...
...Brazil, with a $22 billion foreign debt that consumes over thirty percent of export earnings in debt service, could not live with a solidarity movement...
...Weakening the Polish economy and thus punishing its people, driving them further into dependence on the USSR, hardly seems wise...
...Your easy embrace of the Reagan administration's sanctions is another matter, however...
...You might have said something about the significance of the Jaruzelski coup - against the Party as well as Solidarity - as a portent for other faltering one-party Communist states (China, the USSR itself...
...You are correct in where you place the blame for this tragedy...
...To the Editors: Regarding Mary Gordon's piece in your January 15 issue ("Coming to Terms With Mary"), allow me to respond: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mary Gordon...
...A combination of setting such limits while rewarding moves toward greater liberality would appear to be the policy to be followed...
...And while the repression has been brutal, I have heard no allegations of the kind of torture meted out to dissidents by the CIA-trained SAVAK in the late Shah's Iran, or by military regimes in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala or El Salvador...
...48106...
...My own priorities would give precedence to lower food prices over interest payments to banks, but few governments would agree...
...But, as you suggest, in the end the result of a failed martial law regime is still likely to be the very Soviet intervention the coup sought to forestall...
...As the American Catholic bishops move toward a definitive pastoral letter regarding the responsibility of Catholics for peace, it is becoming increasingly clear that all national security considerations must give way to the imperative of the Gospel...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi...
...p. 141, Liberation News Service...
...I do not believe that any Western government would tolerate the imminent threat of a general strike in support of demands for a thoroughgoing social revolution, including, for example, the right of workers to hire and fire management...
...There are no national security considerations in the Gospel because there are no national security considerations in the Kingdom of God...
...Did you lack conviction...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...JORDAN BISHOP Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Review Index...
...To the Editors: Your comments on the Polish situation [Jan...
...JOSEPH L. WALSH Understanding Jaruzelski Cape Breton, Nova Scotia To the Editors: Solidarity is apparently to remain in existence despite Jaruzel-ski's military takeover...
...Clearly, the prudent limits on intervention in another superpower's sphere of influence need to be much more carefully delineated than your editorial does, particularly when the issue is so difficult as the devolution of the fundamental structures of that form of socialism imposed on all of Eastern Europe by bayonet after World War II...
Vol. 109 • March 1982 • No. 5
