Correspondence
Correspondence Papal outrage? New York, N.Y. To the Editors: Abigail McCarthy writes, December 17, "The pope met (it would seem unwisely) with Arafat." In spite of the many attempts to quibble...
...Anyhow, here are my suggestions: (1) Any person who "runs" for the office or announces his availability prior to a national party convention should be automatically disqualified...
...Anne Brennan's admirable comparison by contrast of the Christian biblicists and scientific humanists could easily be extended to include this Catholic party...
...This is a situation that has to disturb anyone who cares for the security and future of Israel, as Rabbi Benjamin obviously does...
...Brennan...
...james cgara Third fundamentalism Tampa, Fla...
...I enjoy being challenged...
...It should not be tolerated in the field of journalism...
...JOHN BRANIGAN Party authority Columbus, Ohio To the Editors: Your lead editorial for December 17, "Getting Out the Vote," contains some splendid thoughts, with which I agree...
...EDWARD H. LAYUN Offensive analogy Davenport, Iowa To the Editors: As a long-time supporter of Commonweal and an admirer of its unstinting dedication to an open and honest exchange of ideas, I was especially pained and dismayed to read "Not Exactly A Pilgrimage," Editor James O'Gara's article on the Middle East [Dec...
...What a relief it would be to be spared the views of "reporters" at Iowa caucuses or from the January snows of New Hampshire...
...We'd not have to confront a travesty such as the joint TV appearance of several ambitious fellows all hoping for a primary victory somewhere...
...It's quite likely, too, that we'd not see relative amateurs running against the very government they are seeking to head...
...He justly took a moral stand against such enormous destruction in the name of selfish and unbridled national interest...
...Brennan correctly states the nature of the would-it is the as yet unhealed break between mythos and logos, between our belief and critical reflection...
...He did not...
...It is among the thousands of the unwilling in Israel who oppose the Begin policy of annexation that hope for the immediate future rests...
...It is hard to believe that Mr...
...5) During the ensuing eight weeks of campaigning free TV time should be afforded to all nominees...
...4) Delegates to those conventions should be active politicians, serving by reason of their positions as members of both houses of Congress, governors of the states, mayors of cities, say over 200,000, and chairmen of state and national committees...
...If, as Dr...
...They won't like my notions on the subject of presidential selection either, and I don't really expect them to be accepted, but without something approaching them, I fear the 24-hour-Sunday idea won't really do much good...
...After all, we have failed notably to make ourselves clear to any of the three, whereas they have at least had the grace to make themselves perfectly clear to us...
...The analogy is an insult to my people...
...In the Middle East, especially, an evaluation based on a tourist's view of the current scene is far from adequate...
...What the TV networks may think is of no consequence...
...This may indicate a return to the much maligned "smoke-filled room," but the tedious, drawn-out "democratization" approach has not produced candidates of demonstrably superior caliber than the old method...
...But my suspicion is that the authoritarians - biblical, ecclesiastical, scientific - are correct: the pit will not close and the beast of unbelief is a permanent companion of the historically conscious religious person, for systematic doubt is a characteristic of contemporary intelligence...
...One need not dwell on its historical implications and associations...
...22] arrived I happened to be reading again the letter of St...
...Rabbi Benjamin, I fear, will be numbered among them...
...Throughout the article there is no reference to past history, to events that led to specific actions...
...RABBI) ROBERT M. BENJAMIN The author replies: I am sorry if my metaphor about the Romans in Jesus's time and the present situation in the Holy Land offended Rabbi Benjamin...
...The fear is that there is no end...
...3) Candidates should be selected at national party conventions to be held right after Labor Day in the election year...
...Once the immediate truth and value of one's beliefs are put under critical and systematic inquiry, once the Bible and the pope are questioned seriously, where is there an end...
...O'Gara does not understand the circumstances under which present-day Jordan came into being or that he is not familiar with the Palestine National Covenant...
...There are those who set themselves to ignore this slaughter, or to excuse it, or even to justify it...
...I certainly do not think that Israel must forget about history, about the past, about the Holocaust, as Rabbi Benjamin suggests...
...The Israelis are presently occupying and threatening to annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians I talked to whose territory is being occupied are no less resentful than the Jews must have been in the time of Jesus...
...The letter exhibits a third variety of fundamentalism, one peculiar to the modern bureaucratic church, the fundamentalism of office and office-holder, an ecclesiastical positivism that matches its biblical and scientific counterparts in myopia but which, for half a century in Roman Catholicism, was far more effective in political terms and, it seems to me, far more vicious...
...they will lose as their fathers in the faith lost, ignominiously and decisively, at Dayton in 1925...
...But they, along with their counterparts, will remain...
...In the field of biblical interpretation the article would stand as a prime example of eisegesis...
...Good grief...
...They are a thoroughly modern phenomenon, possible only in a culture of the sort sketched by Dr...
...I do not appreciate being insulted...
...I have great disdain for offensive remarks, innuendos, and false accusations...
...Of course the TV folks won't like it, and, I suspect, neither will the "print media...
...As I said in my article, today "the Jews are the Romans, some willingly and some unwillingly...
...As I tried to make clear in my article, that is going to require compromise by all parties concerned - compromise that will inevitably leave many on each side unhappy...
...Our findings can hardly be dismissed as "a tourist's view...
...As that saint of humanism, Walter Lippmann, put the issue in the persona of a fundamentalist...
...The creationists' effort is an anachronism...
...This is an approach where an idea, a belief, a thought, or position is stated first and then the text is "used" as supporting evidence...
...We may disagree with their integration of the schizophrenic modern consciousness, but we cannot disagree with them on the issue, on its seriousness, and on the need for integration...
...The pope met Arafat immediately after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the killing of immense numbers of people, to show his abhorrence of this wanton destruction, and the waging of unlimited war not only against the PLO, but a mostly unarmed civilian population...
...As I reported, I and the other journalists with whom I traveled to the Middle East had extended interviews with all kinds of political and religious leaders there, from Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan, representatives of the PLO, and spokesmen for the Begin administration as well as the opposition Labor party, to President Mubarak of Egypt, to name just a few...
...Brennan points out, a return to "the mythological security of the tribe" is unsavory and even impossible, what kind of advance is possible...
...To the Editors: When the issue containing the essays on fundamentalism [Oct...
...After all, even Commonweal, in December 1982, discusses the 1984 election in "Life After Teddy...
...The biblical, the ecclesiastical, and the secularist fundamentalists know that historical consciousness opens a pit before the religious person...
...Pius X condemning modernism and the modernists (Pas-cendi Dominici Gregis, 1907...
...Perhaps tribelessness is itself an advance...
...All that Israel must do is forget the past, forget history, forget the experiences of the Jewish people in medieval Europe, in Nazi Germany, murder at Lod, the slaughter at the Olympic Games, the attack at Maalot and the world will live in peace...
...When one refuses the answers offered by Falwell, Pius X, and Lippmann, the question will in some sense leave one tribeless...
...To state that in present-day Israel' 'the Jews are the Romans" is obscene...
...Or, perhaps we can hope for a second naivete when we can live with the Christian story and Catholic community again in good intellectual conscience...
...Should we not admit that the three possess a significant insight into the plight of modern consciousness, with its deep wounds...
...Such an approach is not accepted as a legitimate means of interpreting the Bible...
...I welcome controversy...
...You are then, in the historic meaning of the word, an unbeliever...
...the questions outstrip our ability to answer them...
...Elizabeth Drew's two-part article in the New Yorker has a good deal to say on this point...
...with Palestinians in general raise some interesting questions about his knowledge of the area...
...WILLIAM M. SHEA Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Religious Studies University of South Florida...
...Political analogies are seldom completely accurate...
...They are not an anachronism...
...In spite of the many attempts to quibble about its meaning, and to dilute its import the meeting had strong political and moral implications...
...it certainly disturbs me, and it also disturbs many Jews in Israel...
...I am afraid, however, that this one cuts too close to the bone for comfort...
...I feel that our country has suffered by the decline in party authority and responsibility, and that, because of that gap, money given to individuals has far too much to say about who is chosen and how he behaves in office...
...Then again, he may have a real formula for peace...
...Once you subject (the Bible) to the test of human reason you have denied the essence of its authority...
...Their very existence might even, on occasion (not too many, I trust, since such ponderings are so exhausting) prompt us to wonder about the theoretic adequacy and the wisdom of our own solutions...
...Yet his opinion of King Hussein and Crown Prince Hassan, his negative view of Begin Cabinet member Jousef Bourg and his equation of the P.L.O...
...They are the ones who know one another's competence, and that of non-delegates, and have some notion of their electability...
...But the central, problem in the Middle East is two-edged: somehow the security of Israel must be assured and at the same time the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own must be satisfied...
...He was undoubtedly outraged, as was most of mankind, by this carnage, done with American equipment and monies...
...To affirm that "the Palestinians on the West Bank fill the role of the Jews in Jesus's time" is outrageous...
...You have made the finite understanding the judge of the infinite...
...2) There should be no primary elections - anywhere...
Vol. 110 • February 1983 • No. 3
