Correspondence
Correspondence Laughing bells Washington, D.C. To the Editors: How nice that you are carrying Robert Bell's funny stories. People will ask you what they have to do with liberation theology, with...
...The largest of the three seminaries has been given permission for a new enlargement...
...several priests I talked with who are teaching at seminaries in Russia estimate there are about ten million more people active in the church today than there were ten years ago, and far more younger people than in the recent past...
...Yakunin, on the other hand, is notable for his "utter consistency and integrity, his fearlessness, his rejection of compromise, and his quiet determination always to speak the truth" though he is betrayed by bishops and brethren...
...To the Editors: Life is too short to read, with equal attention and care, every editorial, article, book review, and letter in any one issue of even the best of our periodicals, Catholic or secular...
...This kind of reporting fits too comfortably into the cold war...
...The review by Frederick Franck [September 7, 1984] of the diary of Etty Hillesum impressed me deeply...
...Unfortunately very little of this is reported in the West, even in the religious press...
...The evidence of religious life in the Soviet Union is not confined to the churches alone...
...longer wiped out with bonfires but with stereotypes...
...Yakunin...
...Broun identifies in Fr...
...Yakunin with the condescension that Janice Broun speaks of them...
...The February 8 issue of Commonweal was the rare exception in this regard...
...One finds remarkable passages in novels being issued in huge (Continued on page 191) Correspondence (Continued from page 162) editions by state publishing houses...
...The answer is : nothing — and that is precisely why they deserve a place in your magazine...
...People will ask you what they have to do with liberation theology, with the crisis of the third world, with staying faithful in dark times...
...That leaves the true Catholics in Poland...
...subservient . . . (and) compromised," unable or unwilling to defend the church's persecuted membership...
...January 11] may not be hyperbolic at all...
...If only for lack of time, one has to be content to skim off the cream and let it go at that...
...But perhaps the most telling statistic is that 60 percent of the funerals are religious...
...MICHAEL FERBER The pope & Palestine Providence, R.I...
...Rome" these days seems to mean Ratzinger, whom Newsweek calls the Inquisitor...
...Yes, they approach their difficulties and vocation in a quite different way from Fr...
...Seldom does one find so much first-rate material in one issue of a magazine...
...This seemed to me a particularly two-dimensional piece: the good guys versus the bad, the good mainly in captivity in the gulag, and the numerous bad guys, government bastards whose spiritual condition can be guessed by the drawing of the guard that accompanied the article...
...So let's at least have a few laughs, over something blessedly irrelevant, as we struggle along...
...With relentless and rigorous detail Peters turns the myth upside-down, proving all parts of it to be even a reversal of the truth and an injustice to Israelis...
...I wonder if the virtues Ms...
...I can tell you they do not speak of Fr...
...MSGR...
...About 15 percent of the civil marriages are followed by religious weddings...
...Forgive me if I express much less enthusiasm for the article by Janice Broun about Fr...
...Yakunin...
...GEORGE G. fflGGINS...
...EDWARD H. FLANNERY Religion in Russia Allemaar, Holland To the Editors: The mails recently brought several back issues of Commonweal...
...It was good to see them...
...REV...
...Things are grim...
...are hardly any better, those in Latin America are no-good liberationists, and those in Africa and Asia are ruled out for who-knows-what...
...Daniel's Monastery in Moscow, long ago confiscated, has now been returned and will shortly be ready for occupation, once the major restoration work is done...
...There has been steady growth in the church...
...I have no doubt he is a very brave man...
...We've got at least four more years of nuclear arms race, aid to right-wing dictatorships, double-dipping out of the pockets of the poor, and smiling from the president...
...In her exhaustive study of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict in From Time Immemorial (Harper & Row, 1984), a 600-page work (with 1800 annotations) written over a seven-year period, she cites the pope as the "definitive example of a perception that pervades the world today" and opines that "the pope is testimony to the effectiveness of the distortions with which Arab propaganda machinery has obscured all existing evidence pertaining to the conflict" (p...
...The rest of her book proceeds to put definitively to rest the ubiquitous myth that an alien people (Jews) forced an indigenous people (Arabs) from their homeland where they had lived from time immemorial, leaving them to fester in poverty on its borders...
...To the Editors: Your editorial "Is Rome Anti-Catholic...
...Perhaps they should follow his example, perhaps they find their conscience indicating a different path...
...To the Editors: It is with a sense of discomfort that I find it opportune, for the sake of the integrity and advancement of Jewish-Christian understanding, which Eugene Fisher serves so effectively, to enter a demurrer to his fine piece on "The Pope and Israel" [January 11...
...These are facts anyone can see...
...Well, things have improved a little...
...But I regret that he is cast in this article as the one brave and right-thinking person in his church, and that others are so easily condemned whose faith and devotion are also extremely deep...
...One observer who cannot see these "facts" is Joan Peters, longstanding expert on the Middle East, who takes issue with the Pope...
...Notice how, in his recent interview, Ratzinger has disposed of Catholics: Those in Western Europe are of no account whatever, those in Canada and the U.S...
...There are about 7500 parishes now functioning — still far too few, but more are opening each year...
...I don't want to suggest that I am not disturbed about what has happened, and is still happening, to Fr...
...It'll take all our strength just to slow down one or two fancy missiles...
...JIM FOREST Vatican stereo West Glacier, Mont...
...Gleb Yakunin in the same issue, "Un-quenched Spirit...
...About half the children in Moscow are baptized (including many who are the children of Communist party members...
...Yakunin are as rare as she suggests...
...One would not sense from Janice Broun's report the many positive results of the quiet way the Russian Orthodox church has been following...
...JACK HOLTERMAN First-rate cream Washington, D.C...
...I recently met several priests in Russia who deeply impressed me as persons of integrity, intelligence, compassion, dedication, generosity, and holiness...
...Victims of the Inquisition are no...
...It was worth the price of a year's subscription...
...According to Janice Broun the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox church is "compliant...
...The book is required reading for anyone who has anything to say about the Arab-Israeli conflict, not excluding papal consultants on the Middle East...
...In his Otranto homily of 1980 Pope John Paul, following his sympathetic expression of concern for Jewish suffering, stated that when Jews created the state of Israel in 1948 ". . . at the same time a sad condition was created for the Palestinian people who were excluded from their homeland...
...221...
Vol. 112 • March 1985 • No. 6
