Correspondence
Correspondence AIDS & emotions New York. N.Y. To the Editors: "Our Fragile Brothers" | July 12| was a beautiful articulation of powerful emotions that 1 too have been privileged to feel. As a...
...unless we confront our own mortality and weakness, and accept and give the compassion God shows for all his children...
...I treasure deeply the picture DuBois gives us of Crummell's end...
...GEORGE R. KISH AIDS & journalism Wsst Cornwall, Conn...
...Father Nieckarz ["Our Fragile Brothers," July 12] leans heavily on church people...
...He smiled and said, "The gate is rusty on the hinges...
...And as great as their physical pain and emotional and spiritual sufferings are, they are not the only ones suffering...
...Though we are less willing then our ancestors to speak of God's judgment on sin, still a sense of the anger of Yahweh must mix with insights from sources more palatable to the liberated if we are to retain a critical perspective on the tragedy of youthful suffering and death...
...Let me raise a few quibbles: If I subscribe to Garvey's vision, do I lose a Jesus I have long treasured, the one who says, "Well done my good and faithful servant," the one who turns to the thief on his right and says, "This day you will be with me in paradise...
...We do not know what living or dying really means...
...And if the AIDS epidemic escapes the groups now most at risk, gay liberation, and the extreme sexual promiscuity that some of its representatives have celebrated, it will prove to be a threat to the life and health of every man and woman in America...
...To the Editors: The straw man, fearful homophobic, isn't keeping us from an AIDS cure...
...and below that the inscription is, ' 'If we die with Christ, we shall live with him, and if we are faithful to the end, we shall reign with him...
...I mean this literally...
...To the Editors: Father Nieckarz's article on AIDS ["Our Fragile Brothers," July 12J illustrates one of the most depressing features of the contemporary theological scene: when the constraints of imposed orthodoxy are set aside, the result is not the courageous and independent thought some might hope for, but the worst sort of sentimentality and special pleading — the sort of thought academics call "touchy-feely...
...it has become the most recent challenge to the people of God...
...Does Garvey's conception of the afterlife mean that when I turn to my memorial card and feel the certainty it engenders — that some day Lawrence D., Sr...
...I wonder if in that dim world beyond, as he came gliding in, there rose on some wan throne a King — a dark and pierced Jew, who knows the writhings of the earthly damned, saying, as he laid those heart-wrung talents down, "Well done...
...Let me suggest that imagining, another word for believing, is exactly the point...
...GORDON C. ZAHN 6 September 1985:479...
...Parents, partners, wives, children, friends, who could be you or me or our next door neighbor, are in pain...
...the pain of shame, embarrassment, anxiety, guilt, loss, anger...
...Our relationship to consciousness, moment to moment, is far from clear...
...Ultimately this may come down to the old debate between those who find the use of images in spirituality helpful and those who find it a problem...
...Would that we had a cure for alcoholism too, or the common cold...
...The bishops" have the obligation to provide that' 'genuine voice for peace and justice in the world," but so do we...
...We must rise above our fears, our prejudices, our sexual pride, and see the person of Jesus sweating, stumbling, scratched, "a worm and not a man" as he wends his way to Calvary...
...His reflections are accurate, honest, filled with sorrow, and/rightly so...
...Father Nieckarz's very personal and compassionate writing of his own experiences will, I hope, lead more in the church to face the challenge that he attributes to AIDS: "It challenges our prejudices, our narrow dogmatism, our inadequate sexual morality...
...I turn it over and find much delight in words attributed to Thomas More,' 'Pray for me as I will for thee, that we may merrily meet in heaven...
...It is an absolute necessity if we are Commonweal: 478 to be truly involved in the work Garvey says is our duty, the' 'hope-filled work of trying to receive everything that we have been given...
...I like the answer a religion teacher gave a child who asked if he would be able to be with a beloved pet in heaven...
...The November/December 1982 issue of Church & Society, a publication of the Program Agency of the United Presbyterian Church, is devoted entirely to "Homophobia: The Overlooked Sin...
...But I fear what he is giving us is, in fact, a pinched and parched path from which to confront the mystery that is death and the afterlife...
...they are dying of AIDS...
...Does the kind of thinking Garvey gives us — thinking that tells us "It is impossible to know what the cancellations involved in death and sufferings mean in any but the most tentative and awkward ways," and that warns us that imagining the afterlife in specific terms is an irreverence — mean that I will be denied the possibility of some future W.E.B...
...I certainly did not intend to say that we will be separated from the joy of union with those we love, but I would say that we have no idea what that might be like...
...How many of them are able to find the open arms of the father and the tenderness of the mother in us who are the church...
...To the Editors: I have just read your latest issue, including Jim Nieckarz's article on AIDS ["Our Fragile Brothers," July 12], and your reviews of the two current plays on the same subject...
...The church's "conspiracy of silence" and its "antiquated moral theology" regarding homosexuality (and I might add about certain aspects of heterosexuality) is probably the greatest, but most overlooked, sin within the church...
...I have also been opened up to a new awareness of God, who is nowhere more present than in those who suffer and are rejected...
...LAWRENCE D. HOGAN, JR...
...My pictures of what being a grown-up would be like when I was four are comically unlike what it has actually been...
...PHILIP E. DEVINE AIDS & a cure Millbrae, Calif...
...Gregory of Nyssa is right in his belief that our development is never-ending) that is itself not a good enough metaphor, nor is the metaphor of the acom to the oak...
...If that is what your eternal happiness requires," the teacher said, "you'll have it...
...I pray also each day that the extremely sinful prejudices against \yomen and gays will come to an end within our church...
...To the Editors: I was pleased to see the letters [ May 3] from Francis Meehan and Anthony DiStephano in response to my March 8 article "On Not Writing a Dead Letter...
...Fanwood, N.J...
...To the Editors: Father Jim Nieckarz's article [ "Our Fragile Brothers,'' July 12] was a most moving experience for me...
...The author replies: 1 think the main disagreement here is not over whether what we can expect is wonderful or not...
...AIDS is not disappearing...
...I find the latter tradition (it exists in East and West, in Orthodox spirituality and that of the medieval English mystics) more helpful than the former...
...What a shame that so many are coming to realize this sin as they see their brothers die from AIDS...
...That night at star-rise a wind came moaning out of the west to bio w the gate ajar, and then the soul I loved fled like a flame across the Seas, and in its seat sat Death...
...And they spent most of their time trying to get the presenting bishops (Matthiesen and Gumbleton) to say something "newsworthy" in criticism of their anti-Ferraro colleagues...
...JOHN GARVEY No more fall guys Boston, Mass...
...Some bishops, most notably Archbishops O'Connor and Law, may have done so, but they were outnumbered, I am confident, by others who reminded their flocks of the obligation to consider a far wider range of issues than abortion and who gave special emphasis to the evils of nuclear war and the arms race...
...and Lawrence D., Jr...
...it moves one to tears and cheers: He sat one morning gazing toward the sea...
...To the Editors: We of the St...
...I wonder where he is today...
...I am sorry Mr...
...I hope Mr...
...The fault lay with the media who, understandably enough, found more mileage in sensationalizing the "Ferraro flap...
...There is another reason though...
...but the male homosexual community that nurtures and transmits AIDS...
...An example is worth citing: When Pax Christi issued its carefully documented assessment of the extent to which the Reagan administration had ignored and reversed the pastoral recommendations, only three reporters bothered to attend the press conference...
...I don't at all think that imagining is another word for believing...
...the resemblances are lots of fun, but not at all impressive...
...It is not that all-purpose scapegoat, ''society...
...PHYLLIS L. townley AIDS & suffering New York...
...Both were fine pieces of writing and, for me, examples of Catholic journalism at its most sensitive and compassionate...
...It would be too easy to make the bishops the "fall guys" for the failure we fear...
...The problem was that press and TV reports paid little attention to the balancing statements issued by the U.S.C.C...
...As it was, the news conference (as well as the assessment statement, needless to say) was ignored — by Commonweal too, I am sorry to say...
...JOHN THACKER AIDS & sin Atlanta, Ga...
...while round about the morning stars sat singing...
...He told us she had been given from God and had now gone back home, a home where someday we would join her...
...If I had come to depend on those early pictures, if I had been fierce about them, 1 would have been terribly disillusioned...
...We — the people of God — who participate in meetings and marches for peace and social justice throughout various parts of the world are rushing past a segment of society present among us who are a rejected, persecuted, and ostracized people — many of whom are currently suffering from a fatal, incurable, virtually untreatable modern-day "leprosy...
...this is suffering...
...BROTHER AELRED SETON A parched path...
...Thanks to Jim Nieckarz for his courageous, provocative article...
...In the process...
...I have found my personal vulnerability exposed, and my false securities and values threatened...
...Most dioceses (to some extent, all) have fallen short of the hopes raised by the pastoral...
...I might never have noticed how much better the reality is than anything I could have imagined...
...My suggestion — and it is only that — is that as rich as our imagining might be, it is thin and parched compared to a reality we have yet to grow into, and our imagination is not what will get us from here to there...
...Our current relationship to what we will be is something like the relationship of the conceptus to the fully developed human, and (if St...
...Finally, I think that what John's epistle says should be taken literally...
...are going to be one again — that what I am doing is nothing more than an irreverent piece of imagining...
...To the Editors: I have a card in my wallet that I pull out from time to time...
...DuBois writing about loved ones in the way he eulogized the great black freedom fighter, Alexander Crummell...
...As I myself am infected with the AIDS virus, I pray at Mass each morning that God will spare me from developing any (Continued on page 478) Commonweal: 450 (Continued from page 450) of the killer AIDS opportunist diseases...
...If I follow Garvey do I have to forego the beautiful, sustaining, moving experience of listening to my friend, Tom Brown, give us from the pulpit at the memorial Mass for his twelve-year-old Molly a moment that will always be with me...
...Vincent's Hospital Hospice Program are compressing our joy in and affirmation of Father Jim Nieckarz's stirring and challenging reflections ("Our Fragile Brothers," July 12) in the heartfelt words, "Thank you, Jim...
...I highly recommend this issue to your readers and hope that someday Til find a similar type issue published by Commonweal...
...It reads, "In Memory Of Lawrence D. Hogan, Sr., bom August 23,1901, died June 29, 1978...
...I am grateful to you for your insight and thoughtfulness in publishing them...
...SISTER PATRICE MURPHY AIDS & perspective St...
...1 am troubled by John Garvey's recent musings on death and the afterlife [' "The Last Solitude," May 17...
...Our hints of what future joy might be like are only hints, and if we depend too much on fleshing them out with our own pictures we run the real danger of believing in our pictures, rather than hoping, as we often do, without knowing exactly what our hope means...
...I suspect John Garvey would say no to these quibbles of mine...
...Both have been aired to the point where it is hard to avoid nostalgia for the days when there was such a thing as the love that dared not speak its name...
...We need to be reminded that AIDS can victimize us all...
...As a chaplain aide at Bellevue Hospital, I assist in the ministry to AIDS patients...
...and, on another occasion, by twenty-three Pax Christi bishops...
...Cloud, Minn...
...Too many have done nothing at all, it seems, to implement its teachings and objectives...
...There has been no conspiracy of silence about either homosexuality or AIDS...
...If both seem to feel I was too "gentle" in my criticism of the bishops' neglect of their peace pastoral, that may be an occupational hazard for pacifists (of my era at least...
...DiStephano raises all the right questions, but maybe he is looking for the answers in the wrong places...
...Even so, it is too simple to charge "the bishops" (as DiStephano does) with falling into the single-issue trap in the last election...
...our vision is partial...
...We do not know what we shall be, but we will see Him as He is...
...Hogan finds this approach "thin and parched...
...Hogan understands that what I intended to say, and what he may in fact have misunderstood (probably through my own clumsiness and not his lack of understanding) is that we cannot imagine what is in store for us...
...And if, as seems to be the case with the peace pastoral, their voice is too weak and their message unclear, the rest of us must make up for it as best we can, hoping that sooner or later they will suit their actions to the exciting promise of their pastoral's words...
...Father Nieckarz's article has given me renewed hope that possibly some of my prayers are being answered...
...Had they done so, there would have been headlines...
...This is precisely the charge atheists have made against belief for years: we offer ourselves consoling pictures which keep the dark away...
Vol. 112 • September 1985 • No. 15
