Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Poppycock masquerade Northampton, Mass. To the Editors: Your magazine is stimulating and often essential reading as it tends to validate that being an intellectual and Catholic are...
...However, it is unfortunate that Ms...
...This was, in fact, a major theme of the conference, which received not one mention in Smith's report...
...This particular liturgy did not hold these two dimensions in the best possible balance...
...GRAHAM GREENE Warm St...
...The conference did wrestle with some aspects of this issue openly and honestly...
...No, and Orwell wasn't terrified of the specter of Big Brother and the military-industrial complex either...
...Karen Sue Smith's challenge to Women-Church is that we do this theologically, and with due consideration to the Catholic Christian identity which we still claim as a root...
...To the Editors: Your magazine is stimulating and often essential reading as it tends to validate that being an intellectual and Catholic are not mutually exclusive (only strange bedfellows...
...I left Mass when it ended and went with my companion to breakfast...
...I was a student at Saint David's school in New York at the same time as Mr...
...To the Editors: As a participant in the recent Women-Church conference and a chronicler of the lives of American Catholic women, I appreciated Karen Sue Smith's thoughtful comments ["Claiming Our Power, November 6, 1987...
...Ziegler's life of Lady Diana Cooper, and I cannot remember ever talking to her about Padre Pio...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Buckley, and my memories of the school are at complete variance with his...
...Buckley's story...
...David's New York, N.Y...
...I would agree that activists are sometimes guilty of the faddishness, group-think, and hypocrisy that permeate our culture, but I hardly think these are their dominant traits...
...Yes, certainly I saw the stigmata of dried blood...
...Smith's questions about the abortion debate and Women-Church Catholic/Christian identity will be discussed in local Women-Church groups and on a national level...
...At no time did I receive, observe, or hear about any "beatings...
...I was also moved by the feminist Shabbat service led by a group of Jewish conference participants...
...on the contrary, I remember the school as a warm, nurturing place where I picked up an excellent education and a good grounding in Catholic doctrine...
...Smith's comments on the conference liturgies were based on a single liturgical event, when the conference included at least half a dozen different liturgical celebrations planned by different teams of people...
...Women have been well trained in the love of others and not well schooled in the love of self, and I suspect that the liturgy we are discussing sought to address this gap in our spiritual development...
...There was a mystery to me in the Mass, about which I have spoken to close friends, but it bears no relation to Mr...
...There was nothing disgusting to me in the sight...
...Buckley admits that he was generally unhappy during those years...
...I, too, was uncomfortable with the liturgy she describes in her article...
...Certainly I would not have told this fairy story, to which Mr...
...Alfred 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' Pruf-rock Institute" which perpetually sides with the status quo...
...I hope that Ms...
...To put it succinctly, I felt that it had taken Jesus out of the Eucharist, and I am no more willing to hand over Jesus to the shapers of more traditional Eu-charistic celebrations than I am to hand over the church to a small (albeit overtly powerful) minority of its members...
...In particular, it sought to address matters of cultural, racial, economic, and sexual pluralism within the church and society and within Women-Church with great care...
...Buckley clings, of bleeding stigmata...
...But I did find the opening liturgy (a celebration of in-gathering, calling upon the power of the Spirit) a spiritually powerful and aesthetically satisfying experience...
...When are boundaries (between Christian and non-Christian, Catholic and non-Catholic, "secular" and "religious" . . . ) necessary, and when ought they be blurred or broken down...
...To the Editors: I enjoyed Chris Buckley's article on growing up Catholic [August 14, 1987] especially the coda on Patre Pio...
...Buckley's...
...While we're probably all overly familiar with poppycock masquerading as realism from the pulpit to the Capitol, must we be forced to endure yet another bashing of those who strive to forge a better world...
...JANE REDMONT...
...Sheila Briggs, one of the first speakers, spoke of the need to let the stories, beliefs, and experiences of diverse women stand side by side with all their contradictions, without rushing to resolve these contradictions, without our trying to make false unity through an artificial "lowest common denominator...
...GEORGE SIM JOHNSTON, III Filling in the blanks Cambridge, Mass...
...I, too, worry about the "identity issue" of Women-Church...
...Ziegler's "source" is the same unreliable one as Mr...
...he is perhaps allowing this unhappiness to color his memories of the school...
...Garvey assures us: "I am not counseling quietism...
...many of us have struggled with this issue in other contexts such as interreligious dialogue...
...But John Gar-vey's piece, "Politics Won't Cure Death'' [October 23], comes right out of that growth industry known as the "J...
...Where would we all be if it weren't for those occasional Socrateses ("Give me the hemlock...
...I do take issue with one part of Mr...
...Smith raises an important issue: how much should we stress our similarities at the expense of the particularity which gives us our distinctive, and perhaps deepest, identity...
...On the chanting of "I am holy'' at the Eucharistic celebration: while I believe, with Karen Smith, that in liturgy we acknowledge the presence and holiness of the One who is beyond ourselves, I know that liturgy is also a time to name and honor the sacred in our human lives...
...Nevertheless, it pointed to an undeniable fact: so many women have been taught, by omission or commission, that they are not holy, not part of the reality of Incarnation, not given eyes to see and ears to hear and mouths to proclaim the word of God, that they need to take the step of recognizing and naming themselves as (Continued on page 62) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 34) good and holy as a part of "making things right with God...
...LES NICHOLLS The final word Antibes, France To the Editors: Regarding Christopher Buckley's explanation [November 20, 1987] of his story about Graham Greene [August 14, 1987]: I have not read Mr...
...Buckley's article, however...
...Thoreaus, and S. Brian Wilsons who follow their own drummer while the masses scurry to pay bills and lose themselves in pedestrian pursuits...
...Commitment and idealism may be...
Vol. 115 • January 1988 • No. 2
