Correspondence
Correspondence Marius, Mario, More Cambridge, Mass. To the Editors: I am sorry that Mario Cuomo has changed his mind about my biography of Thomas More. When the book first appeared last fall,...
...RICHARD MARIUS Mario Cuomo replies: Albany, N.Y...
...Nor was I criticizing the accuracy of Marius's facts or the historical validity of his conclusions...
...The biographer's first obligation is to that text, no matter what it reveals...
...As I write this letter, a weak sun is setting behind the Albany Mall, the marble buildings being swallowed by voracious nightfall...
...This is something one is inclined to go down fighting against, and I think that unless the Democrats, and their presidential candidate, can bring themselves to draw the line at public funding, there will continue to be big trouble with the pro-life vote...
...But the first requirement of the biographer is to read the evidence rather than to content himself with floating on carmine clouds of good intentions...
...Our need, however, is for principled political leadership which will recognize and face the public, social, and private horror of one and one-half million abortions a year, sanctioned by an imposed law of abortion on demand...
...Fisher takes issue with me for allegedly saying that Alinsky's contribution to the social change movements of the past thirty years ' 'is equal to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.'' What I actually wrote on page 267 of my book was the following: "Along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Alinsky deserves credit also for freeing American churches from suburban captivity and ghetto sanctuaries and bringing church people into the city streets and village roads where people were struggling with the problems and possibilities of everyday life...
...This is not an acceptable compromise...
...But my More can be seriously attacked only by someone who has spent as much time with More's complete text as I have...
...Several reviewers have angrily declared that I don't like More...
...Alinsky & King Rochester, N.Y...
...DANIEL A. DEGNAN, S.J...
...Any biography as large as mine has errors, and I am ruthlessly weeding them out in preparation for the paperback edition...
...I'm not in a position to pass judgment on either...
...While reasonable pro-lifers might agree with the proposition that a legal ban on abortion is impractical because unenforceable, we balk at the notion that our tax money is going to be used to perform an operation that we regard as homicide...
...I don't want to hear that Horatio was a secret shareholder in the bridge company, or that Lincoln was chronically constipated, or that Babe Ruth never pointed to the fence in center field...
...P. DAVID FINKS...
...That's not Marius's problem...
...Enough readers have liked the book to send it through five printings in the United States and two in Great Britain and the Commonwealth...
...Obviously a biography must interpret the evidence...
...I could not have spent half my life with him had that not been so...
...I am sorry Mario Cuomo is not one of them...
...Any other ideas...
...I know all about "the dusky human twilight where things are not as clear as we wish they were...
...For More that evidence resides in thousands of pages of his own writings, some of it pretty unpleasant stuff, and I have read every word of it — most of it several times...
...I never said that he was biased, or unscholarly, or didn't like More...
...This is a highly unattractive idea that will presently appeal to neither side, but it is something to think about as we become more and more desperate to remove this major roadblock to the election of progressive political candidates...
...To the Editors: Good piece by David Carlin on Mario Cuomo and abortion ["Mario Slips Through," July 12...
...Publicly funded (Continued on page 447) Commonweal: 418 Correspondence (Continued from, page 418) abortions make all taxpayers accessories before the fact...
...To the Editors: In his review of my book, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky [May 31], Robert Fisher misread what I wrote about Alinsky and Martin Luther King, Jr., and then chided me for what he said I said...
...Human beings have a right to their character...
...Cuomo & Carlin Nahant, Mass...
...Just as IRS forms have a space for voluntary contributions to presidential campaigns, so they might have a space for voluntary contributions to provide abortions for poor women...
...The problem is a public one, by your own definition of family...
...But More was also a human being, doggedly involved in human struggle and making his way through the dusky human twilight where things are not as clear as we wish they were...
...Cuomo is without question the best hope currently visible for getting the country back on track toward some kind of sanity and basic human decency in 1988...
...it's mine...
...JOHN c. CORT Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...But I still hope to vote for him in the 1988 presidential election, for he is one of my heroes, too...
...Yes, the interview was informal and wide-ranging, and Governor Cuomo's earlier Notre Dame speech was a first and noteworthy attempt by a Catholic politician to chart a course on this difficult issue, but so far Governor Cuomo's stance has largely defended the absence of response to abortion by Catholic politicians...
...To the Editors: I'm afraid Richard Marius has misread my comment about his biography of Thomas More...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...
...I read his book and found it to be an impressively detailed and researched piece of scholarship...
...Truth always lies in the text, patiently waiting to be discovered...
...that is why no biography is definitive...
...Nevertheless, the governor's comments on abortion reminded me of a boxer: good defense, nice jab (at the bishops, not at the pro-choice people...
...A problem: how do Carlin, and Cuomo, deal with the question of publicly funded abortions...
...Making this easier is a worthy project...
...When the book first appeared last fall, the governor sent me a lovely hand-written note congratulating me...
...What, Governor, should New York State, and the nation, do about it...
...MARIO M. CUOMO Governor of New York Cuomo & abortion Jersey City, N.J...
...I share with the governor a tremendous admiration for More...
...But I like him so much that I want him to appear in history as he was in life...
...But still, despite all the greys of dusk, and all the complexities, and all the fair and necessary conclusions of the biographer, I'm a sucker for the moments of pure sunlight: A prisoner on a scaffold, joking with the sheriff, forgiving his executioners, dying the "king's good servant but God's first...
...Now I see ["An Interview with Mario Cuomo," May 31] that in speaking of More he doesn't like "what Marius did to him...
...My problem is far simpler: I like my heroes undiluted...
...So far no hostile review has even hinted that anyone else has done so...
...To the Editors: There is so much to admire in Mario M. Cuomo's interview [May 31] that it may seem churlish to criticize...
Vol. 112 • August 1985 • No. 14
