Correspondence
Correspondence I Frank emulation New York, N.Y. To the Editors: At fifty-five years old, when I grow up, I want to be Frank Sheed ["What Frank & Maisie Did In America," November 1] as long as...
...Multinationals, Union Carbide included, reviewed their overseas investments and attempted to respond...
...The Tentmakers St...
...Secondly, the local Indian shareholders and the government of India would brook no encroachment on the independence of a public company such as Union Carbide India Limited...
...Aging Religious" Our Responsibility Workshop: June 22-27, 1986...
...Carroll Stuhlmueller, CP...
...I think that hypocrisy is at the root of the ills of our citizenry...
...Copyright 9 1986 Commonweal Foundation...
...Further investigations (although hamREVIEWERS DAVID J. O'BRIEN teaches history at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts...
...Benedict T. Viviano, OP...
...According to one former senior official, "The line of communication was loud and clear...
...To the Editors: Cheers to Frank McConnell for "Shelf Indulgence" (November 29...
...The style is elegant, precise essay, very French...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 66) The result...
...But they are not ties that control day-to-day operations...
...Glixon decries the fact that the Bhopal plant was constructed in a densely populated area...
...I said that Carbide used methyl isocyanate, the killer chemical responsible for the casualities, because that was cheaper...
...Thomas), Rome, offers unique specialized program in Ecumenical Studies (graduate level...
...Again not so...
...Geoghan's misreading here is particularly dubious...
...We believe more strongly than ever, that a deliberate act is the only plausible explanation of how water would enter that system in the volume required to trigger the chemical reaction that occurred...
...Chaplaincy Position Chaplaincy at Canterbury School starting September 1986...
...Glixon asserts...
...The reality was -- and is -- that parent companies, such as Union Carbide Corporation, scrupulously observe the indepehdence of foreign affiliates, such as UCIL, for several good reasons...
...Inquiries and resum(Is should be sent to: Rodedck Clarke, Headmaster, Canterbury School, New Milford, CT 06776...
...How good...
...Until that culture is changed (which would also require radical legislation), one would be foolish indeed to engage in public mea culpas...
...THE EDITORS Classified Marituin Notebooks, Jacques Madtain, 312 pages, $13.89 post...
...In the wake of Bhopal, Carbide spent a good deal of effort and money to shore up Bhopal's twin plant at Institute, West Virginia...
...Salary and perquisites are generous and include grants for summer study...
...There's a place for them, surely, but not to the total exclusion of genuine literary work...
...American lawyers were in the air to Bhopal to sign up potential clients, literally within hours of the incident...
...Let's face an unpleasant fact: ours is a litigious and adversarial society...
...Parties prefer to reach direct agreements on settlements, which is perfectly consistent with the paternalism of Japanese culture (as an aside, one wonders whether Mr...
...Suits claiming billions of dollars were filed within days...
...Over a period of years, a relatively remote area burgeoned into a large, slum-like neighborhood -- a development which Union Carbide India was powerless to prevent...
...Offering quality theological and ministerial education since 1857, Saint John's University continues this tradition in its 1986 summer graduate program, June 23 -August !" Courses and workshops include: Carl Peter: Christian Anthropology Margaret O'Gara: Ecumenism: Christian Theologies in Dialog Godfrey Diekmann, OSB: Patristic Theology Emmanuel Cutrone: Rites of Reconciliation Rites of Christian Marriage Thomas J. Talley: The Liturgical Year Gail Ramshaw-Schmidt: The Language of the Liturgy Shawn Madigan, CSJ: American Spiritualities Michael O'ConneU and Michael Cowai~: Introduction to Pastoral Hermaneutics (July 7-18) Alvin Rueter: Making Good Preaching Better (June 23-June 27) Evelyn Woodward, RSJ: Theology of Pastoral Ministry Doris Murphy: Models for Parish Catechesis: Adults and Families (July 7-18) Christiane Brusselmans and Staff: Rites of Christian Initiation of Children (June 15- 20) Scripture and History Study in Jerusalem Financial Aid Available For complete summer catalog contact: Assistant Dean for Students School of Theology Room 103 Saint John's University Collegeville, MN 56321 (612) 363- 2102 14 February 1986:93finished pesticides...
...LORETTA LOMBARDO Hypocrisy at the root Carlsbad, Calif...
...who have never even heard of her and who have no idea how significant she has been to American Catholicism...
...Box 58, Ptne Grove, PA 17963...
...The answer lies in the American culture concerning the role of litigation and legal liability, which we seek to distinguish...
...Commonweal: 66Bali fire-walks, to New Guinea, and Sri Lanka...
...FRANK C. ARRICALE Victim of mm'keting Brooklyn, N.Y...
...Or call (717) 675-3862...
...Lingis, professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, though obviously familiar with Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, is his own master, I am tempted to say a ludic "little tailor" killing giants who have spoken on this topic -- Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, and L6viStrauss -- like so many flies...
...I did not say the pesticide was manufactured in India "because it was cheaper to make it there...
...Write: Prof...
...71,80, B as...
...Magi Books, Inc...
...Geoghan defends Carbide against points I did not make and evades those I did...
...I did not say the Bhopal plant "was constructed" in a densely populated area, but that the area is densely populated now...
...My central point still stands...
...Warren Anderson, by the way, has repeatedly said publicly that we want to settle Bhopal claims as soon as possible...
...Or call (717) 675-3862...
...Union Carbide Corporation now owns 50.9 percent of the stock of Union Carbide India Limited and is represented by five of the elevenmember board of directors...
...Write for our brochure to The Tentmakers, P.O...
...they were and are...
...DANIEL MORRISSEY i$ an associate professor at the University of Tulsa School of Law...
...This is a crucial point, yet one that Mr...
...First, the local employees are usually highly qualified to operate the company in the same way as any other public company is operated...
...Within twenty-four hours of the occurrence, Mr...
...To the Editors: Niel Glixon's inclusion of Union Carbide and the Bhopal tragedy in an article focusing on corporate crime ["Un-coUared crime," November 29] is a disservice both to the people of Union Carbide and to the dialogue on Bhopal...
...Our settlement efforts over the last twelve months have not been successful -- but we're still trying...
...on the contrary, it was more costly to manufacture in India, as Warren Anderson noted at our March 20, 1985 press conference...
...These officers were quite pointed: "They added that the parent company also had the right to intervene in day-to-day affairs if it concluded that safety might be affected...
...pered by the refusal of the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation .to permit 'interviews of Union Carbide India Limited personnel on duty at the plant on the night of the incident) have confirmed that possibility...
...But this is a traveling tailor who also reweaves, as he goes, a coat of many colors., D.T...
...If that were where true Christianity is to be found, her life would Christianity is to be found, her life would have been wasted and insignificant...
...Biblical Institute 21st Biblical Institute, Trinity College, Burlington, VT 05401, June 15-20, 1986...
...Glixon is factually wrong on several counts...
...29, 1985...
...Facing that, Carbide officers stonewalled...
...The Times reported January BECOME A 1986 COMMONWEAL ASSOCIATE Patron Member $200 or more Charter Member $100 Sustaining Member $50 Commonweal Associates, 232 Madison Ave...
...Ninth Annual Workshop for those working in programs for the aging in religious cornMisedcordia, Dallas, PA 18612...
...To the Editors: At fifty-five years old, when I grow up, I want to be Frank Sheed ["What Frank & Maisie Did In America," November 1] as long as my son turns out as well as Wilfrid and my daughters imitate Maisie...
...As a free-lance writer and long-time victim of editorial ~,him, I've reached the conclusion that the most disadvantaged class in the world is the serious writer...
...In fact, these dwellings were legitimized by the local government, which granted leaseholds to the squatters...
...When I said that Carbide officers refused to discuss responsibility with reporters, it was in the context of a paragraph about New York Times's investigators...
...India was a case in point...
...The following quote from the (now, alas, defunct) Saturday Review illustrates my point: As the chains [booksellers] . . . gain more control over the retail end of publishing, the shelf space reserved for that other kind of book -- serious literature, poetry, and works of scholarship -- gets smaller...
...It has been a good corporate citizen, as have its affiliated companies in foreign countries...
...Strange to say, this is where the truest Christianity and the most intense sanctity is to be found...
...Although, as this is written, we have been informed that the Indian Red Cross and American Red Cross have finally worked out an accord permitting the Indian organization to accept a $5 million contribution made by Union Carbide at the suggestion of the judge in the U.S...
...If not, Union Carbide's responsibility was to deal with the situation as it evolved, not as it was when the plant was built...
...Given the facts recited above, one is hard pressed to turn 50.9 percent ownership of stock -- and a minority position on the board of directors -- into "complete authority to control technical operat i o n s . . . " in the Bhopal plant of Union Carbide India Limited...
...The plant was actually constructed in a remote area...
...p. 79, Vie Cantone, Rothco...
...We take no vows, own nothing in common, attend daily Mass and weekly private confession, and share in regular pedods of prayer, study, work, and recreation, and live in our own individual campers wherever our work takes us...
...10016 Memberships in the Associates are tax-deductible 3, that "corporate documents, many of which are stamped 'confidential,' suggest that headquarters was very much involved in the [Bhopal] plant...
...federal litigation...
...He was arrested and, except for a $1 million contribution to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund (which was not accepted until about two months later), virtually all other offers of aid (all of an ex g~'atia nature) have been rebuffed...
...Anderson was en route to India to offer his condolences in person and to offer the financial and other resources of Union Carbide Corporation in the relief effort...
...Illustrations: Cover, Rosemary Webbr Journal of Commerce (LNS...
...Paul...
...At the end of December '85, Mr...
...Noel Keller, RSM, Institute on Sacred Scripture, College Misedcordia, Dallas, PA 18612...
...The statement reflects a complete lack of understanding of some fundamental international business principles...
...Geoghan's elaborate description of Union Carbide's corporate structure only bears this out...
...JOSEPH E. GEOGHAN Deputy General Counsel Union Carbide Corporation The author roplies: Mr...
...Vatican II American Catholics should recall that aggiornamento didn't just, happen...
...Continued on page 93) Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical "Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...As the Deputy General Counsel of Union Carbide, I have been extensively involved with the Bhopal aftermath since' the occurrence and, as a loyal subscriber for a number of years to Commonweal, hopefully have established my credentials to comment...
...Timothy McCarthy...
...Is Mr...
...Anderson stated at a press conference that the parent corporation fully accepts moral responsibility for the incident (Washington Post, December 11...
...Last March, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment...
...paid, is a new companion to Ra/ssa's Journal, 400 pages, also $13.89...
...Geoghan maintains that Carbide has been "a good corporate citizen...
...Sheed and Ward along with Dorothy Day, Bishop Sheil, Father John Monaghan, and a host of others helped to bring all of us into the new day...
...12208...
...The remaining 49.1 percent of stock is owned by some 27,000 Indian stockholders, including financial institutions which are owned in turn by the government of India...
...The content about everyday news items, seemingly unconnected, had all been filed away in the recesses of my mind under various categories: EPA, FDA, FBI, our inJustice Department, Bhopal, E.F...
...However, as anyone familiar with India knows, it isn't long before squatters begin to erect shanty towns around such a facility, frequently starting by using the walls or fence of the plant as the rear wall for a makeshift home...
...office" (by which I assume he means Union Carbide Corporation) "has complete authority to control technical operations in its overseas plants...
...Correspondingly, the pressure grows on editors to begin passing up manuscripts they know won't fit the formula...
...Geoghan says Union Carbide now believes sabotage is responsible for Bhopal...
...As an end point on the responsibility issue, Union Carbide initially reported in March 1985 that its investigation suggested a deliberate act was possible...
...69, 82, 83, Valerry...
...At Bhopal, 2,000 people died and 200,000 suffered in an avoidable accident...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zecb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, Ohio 44691...
...they are insensitive...
...A little history is in order...
...For another answer, let us look, for a moment, at the Institute incident...
...These authors are opportunists, not writers...
...Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ...
...This includes UCIL's chairman of the board and managing director -- both of whom are Indian nationals...
...NIEL GLIXON Radical for our time Sandstone, Minn...
...Write: Sister Miriam Ward...
...On January 28, 1985, after seven weeks of digging, the Times reported that Carbide "declined to make Warren M. Anderson, its chairman, [or] its director of health, safety, and environmental affairs or any of its scientific experts available to respond directly to the questions . . . . " It is one thing to announce, "I accept responsibility...
...Mary's College, Moraga, CA 94575, June 16-20...
...For brochure contact Sr...
...Distinguished Faculty...
...This statement has been repeated many times over...
...Why the qualification of "moral" responsibility, rather than full or total responsibility, one may fairly ask...
...Hutton...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...Yet the following August, a chemical leak there sent 135 people to the hospital, and the company admitted that all the failures were within the company's control...
...To the Editors: I was particularly moved by "Un-collared Crime," [November 29], written by Niel Glixon...
...A decade ago, multinationals were being soundly criticized for failing to accommodate the aspirations of host countries, which included permitting local share ownership, staffing to the extent possible with local nationals and supplying raw materials on a local basis (thereby conserving foreign exchange and promoting local employmen0...
...This has been a painful year for both management and employees, but they have been and remain proud of their association with Carbide -which is why articles such as Mr...
...Dorothy Day will never be the model or patron saint of the typical middle-class American parish...
...Geoghan fails to address...
...Glixon's merit more than a passing and casual refutation...
...Dorothy Day lived on the margins of American life and she lived with "marginal people...
...We are now recruiting a 24-man unit to begin religious visitation of homes in rural Pennsylvania in June 1988, when its palest-director will become available full-time...
...If something causes our own discomfort, only then will we become concerned and involved...
...PAUL KABAT, O.M.I...
...The extent of the carnage in Jonestown, Guyana, for example, hadn't even been established before at least two book-length treatments of the subject were published...
...We are Catholic lay men, at least 25 years old, without family responsibilities while members...
...Our people are inured to one another...
...I am well aware that the area was isolated when the plant was built...
...Details given strongly support this statement...
...Union Carbide Corporation employs nearly 50,000 people in the United States...
...Albany, N.Y...
...Geoghan suggesting that the 900,000 people who settled in Bhopal were invisible...
...Glixon cites approvingly the example of the chairman of Japan Air Lines who resigned immediately after the August crash of a JAL 747 in which 520 people were killed...
...For brochure contact: Thomas ~ Hoeckman, OP, Largo Angelicum 1, O'Neill, Institute of Gerontology, College 00184 Roma, Italy...
...Anderson told a Congressional subcommittee that there was "no evidence whatsoever that sabotage was behind the incident at Bhopal...
...Ecumenical Studies The Angelicum (Pontifical University St...
...Faculty: Donald Senior, Carolyn Osiek, Roland Murphy, Bruce Metzger, Reginald Fuller, Joseph Cunneen...
...Union Carbide India Limited began to manufacture methyl isocyanate, a compound known as _MIC, in India because, unless it promised to do so the government of India threatelted to cease issuing import licenses for the A Summer Tradition...
...Consequently, MIC was manufactured in India not because it was cheaper to make there, as Mr...
...What is both interesting and ironic is that there are millions of Catholics in the U.S.A...
...Canterbury School (Grades 9-12, founded 1915), directed by Roman Catholic laymen and women, seeks a Roman Catholic pdest to serve as Chaplain to 300 students...
...An understanding of adolescence and an enthusiastic interest in ministering to this age group are essential...
...If this is so, then Carbide failed once again to take adequate responsibility -- in action, as opposed to rhetoric...
...Pheme Perkins: The Social and Moral World of St...
...It was not I who asserted that Carbide has technical control, but "previous company officers," cited in the New York Times...
...Each supports himseff and his apostolic works by door-to-door sales of religious articles and other matedais he produces...
...For the sake of argument, let us concede this possibility...
...Write: Br...
...Union Carbide Corporation has been involved with Union Carbide India Limited for over fifty years and those ties are long ant] deep...
...In spite of my limited contacts with Dorothy Day, I still do not hesitate to say that from my point of view she was "the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism" ["Dorothy Day: Still a Radical," Nov...
...I don't know if the Catholic Worker movement can be bottled into a prescribed system or if it can be described in some sort of "manifesto," but I do know that it has been the most authentic form of Christianity I have found in my life and I am more than willing to give my vote to declaring Dorothy Day a saint, as well as a valid and radical Christian for our time...
...Equal Opportunity Employer...
...DENNIS P. McCANN is the author (with Charles Strain) of Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Theology...
...p. 78, LNS...
...It does not change the fact that Union Carbide continued to operate a plant where disasters of the Bhopal magnitude were possible, however caused...
...I cannot say the same for any other aspect of my Catholic institutional life, including my affiliation with the Oblate Fathers and Brothers since I was fourteen years old in 1946...
...Glixon would be equally quick to embrace other aspects of that paternalism, particularly its subordination of self to group interests and to tradition...
...He states that "Union Carbide's top officers in the U.S., including Warren Anderson, refused to even discuss [the issue of responsibility for the Bhopal disaster] with r e p o r t e r s . . . " On December 10, 1984, Mr...
...and the philosophical method which Coleridge envisioned as the systematic use of imagination, a penetration into image, figure, and event -- which in this case defamiliarizes the familiar by exploring the limits of boundless eros in cultures which do not figure things the way we do...
...In the U.S., our citizens are not quite as reserved about litigation as the Japanese...
...Paul's Trade suggested our name, "The Tentmakers...
...14 February 1986:95...
...Finally, Mr...
...Many countries enacted legislation or applied more subtle, but nevertheless effective, pressure to achieve these objectives...
...It's proof that iconoclasm can be a delight -- and deconstruction beautiful...
...Theology Workshop 22nd Theology Workshop, St...
...St(wen Davies, Ph.D...
...I was made to realize that they all did have a common thread...
...Glixon also asserts that the "U.S...
...It Commonweal: 94is quite another to permit reporters to pinpoint the nature of that responsibility...
...But the nature of the modem corporation is such that responsibility to do so is shockingly diffused...
...This is not to say the ties weren't close...
...p. 72, Feggo...
...My residing here in prison is a logical and authentic continuation of the effect the Catholic Worker movement has had in my life...
...Teaching, counseling and directing the religious program of the campus are key responsibilities...
...LEON M. MOSNER The wake of llhopai Danbury, Conn...
...Geoghan's assertions here looked even more questionable when the Indian claims went to a New York court, and Carbide finally released certain private documents...
...Sacred Scripture 19th Annual Institute on Sacred Scripture August 3-8, 1986...
...The JAL chairman is apparently still making the rounds to apologize personally to the victims' relatives...
...Incidentally, it seems strange that Mr...
...Geoghan would say that in March 1985 Carbide suspected sabotage since, on March 26, Mr...
...I say serious as contrasted to those hacks who simply ride the crest of the current craze, whose output is so well considered it often seems to appear in print before the fact...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-330...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...To prevent it, at least one person had to take the initiative...
...Paul Kabat was one of four participants in a Plowshares disarmament action who entered a missile site near Kansas City, damaged a silo lid, and offered a Eucharist in November 1984...
...Remi munities...
...33 Buckingham Dr...
...Carbide once made Sevin, the pesticide in question, without MIC, but later added it...
...Union Carbide India Limited employs over 9,000 people, not one of whom is an American...
...This gesture is part and parcel of the Japanese tradition, which includes avoidance of litigation (in Japan at least) over the loss of loved ones...
Vol. 113 • February 1986 • No. 3
