Correspondence
BEIL, REV. ALFONS & RIGGS, CHRISTOPHER M. & WIETA, DONALD & EGAN, REV. HARVEY F. & DAVIS, CHARLES N. & COHEN, MELVIN N. & LEIN, JIM & Franck, Frederick
CORRESPONDENCE Our friend Anne Warwick, N.Y. To the Editors: Deeply shocked by Anne Robertson's death I have to express my feelings of personal loss. Whatever contact I had with Commonweal went...
...So, in response to her question, "...Remember the consistent life ethic (of the Catholic church...
...No one gains from the dispute...
...Thomas Aquinas, certainly, is not an expert concerning the biology of today...
...To the Editors: A few comments on your August 11 abortion editorial and the remarks following it...
...And as Annie Lally Milhaven warns us, if abortion is simply outlawed, some women will kill themselves trying to abort...
...As our pope visited Poland in the dark days of this decade to raise their spirits, let us open our hearts and our cupboards on a sustained basis to help the Poles to "do it...
...Zahn has long been the guru of the Catholic peace movement and related programs for justice...
...REV...
...Since then a number of countries have promised stepped-up supplies of food (most probably from farm surpluses...
...To the Editors: After reading "Inflating the Oath" [September 8] by canonist Rev...
...HARVEY F. EGAN Parishes for Poland Silver Spring, Md...
...I shook my head again and muttered, "No...
...Not at all...
...and other Western countries adopt Polish parishes and, through the church's good offices, engage in a massive and sustained campaign to collect food and clothing for, say, two to five years...
...This aid could be sent for distribution to Polish parishes to vary the people's diets, to cut down on food lines, to enable their farmers to sell food abroad to earn hard currency, and, above all, to demonstrate our solidarity...
...To the Editors: Your editorial [September 22] on the Polish situation struck a resonant cord: "Nor...have the Poles been able to channel the(ir) remarkable energies...
...Zahn is wiser and gutsier than ever...
...James A. Coriden, I shook my head in disbelief...
...Pockets of cruelty continue...
...DONALD WIETA Gay rights guru Minneapolis, Minn...
...To the Editors: Before the dispute ["A Sign of Contradiction," and "Poland's Precipice," September 22] goes any further, the leaders of the Jewish and Catholic communities should sit down and discuss the argument over the Carmelite convent in Poland and settle the issue amicably...
...I like Mary C. Segers's reminder of the 1974 Vatican declaration "that we must work to eliminate the root cause of abortion" and Sidney Callahan's call for "support for childbirth, childbearing, and family needs...
...CHRISTOPHER M. RIGGShe humanity of the unborn baby...
...Laws or restrictions don't change hearts or minds or even, in many cases, behavior...
...Christ's words don't exhort us to legal action but to love, caring, support, forgiveness, tolerance...
...It is working to improve the lives of needy women and-consistent with its stand-the lives of the unborn...
...ALFONS BEIL Ethic of convenience Winfield, Kans...
...The issue of abortion isn't complex to those who have a consistent life ethic...
...I/I 18/2...
...I am sure that an answer can be found that will solve the problem...
...REV...
...FREDERICK FRANCK No oath for Jesus Cocoa, Fla...
...To the Editors: Antiquated canonical distinctions are repeated to denigrate and damage sensitive persons...
...He declares: "...anima praeexistit in ebryone, a principio quidem nutritiva, postmodum autem sensitiva, et tandem intellectiva" (S.Th...
...I respond: That is what the church's prolife stand is about...
...Why can't our parishes in the U.S...
...Once an ovum is fertilized, you have life, separate, but attached to the mother...
...Any other issue in connection with the pregnancy does not detract from the humanity of the unborn baby...
...August 11...
...He wouldn't do anything like that...
...She and other feminists conveniently forget that once a woman becomes pregnant, the issue of abortion directly involves not only the mother, but her unborn baby...
...I pictured Jesus standing before a lineup of twelve men...
...But perhaps remarks in his Summa theologiae are worth considering and can show a way out of the antinomy on abortion [August 11 issue...
...this may relieve starvation but, with the difficulties the Poles have had with their bureaucracy heretofore, there is no assurance the new government can efficiently distribute the food or that it will contain the kind of food that will be varied and attractive enough to lift the spirits of a demoralized population to enable it to meet the sacrifices required to bring the other elements of the economy into needed modernization...
...CHRISTOPHER M. RIGGS...
...I would hope that eventually we can stop spending precious human energy in the courts and legislatures and instead spend it on compassion, understanding, and dialogue...
...In his hands was a large book...
...Until women with unwanted pregnancies are relatively free from fear, desperation, shame, guilt-until these women are accepted as they are-abortion will be sought out by many, one way or another...
...just so seven times...
...She is also missed very much in our world...
...To the Editors: Mary C. Segers asks the reader to remember the consistent life ethic in her comments on "Abortion: What Does 'Webster' Mean...
...Looking very stern, unlike the caring, gentle one I had come to love, the Lord intoned, "Do you, Peter, solemnly swear...
...Therefore, from the beginning is the embryo a person...
...She must be very sorely missed on Dutch Street...
...We must leave the past behind us and move on to a new beginning...
...JIM LEIN Translating Thomas Heidelberg, W. Germany To the Editors: St...
...Glory to Gordon Zahn for a classic statement ["The Human Rights of Homosexuals," September 8] in defense of basic rights for homosexuals and a courageous protest against the efforts of the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts to prevent non-discriminatory legislation...
...We cannot say that at a certain stage of development the life becomes "human," so we must assume that it is human from the moment of conception...
...The issue of "ensoulment" of an unborn baby is beyond our capability to comprehend...
...CHARLES N. DAVIS Poles & Jews together Baltimore, Md...
...Behind (Continued on page 574) (Continued from page 546) the disagreement are pent up feelings between the groups...
...Then my mind wandered way back in time to a distant place...
...Whatever contact I had with Commonweal went through Anne, of whom Claude, my wife, and I were as fond as if she had been an intimate friend, even if she only brought friends to Pacem in Terris a few times...
...into economic efforts that will feed and sustain a hungry and demoralized population...
...That means: The embryo has firstly the life of a plant, then of an animal, finally of a person...
...That new life inside or outside of its mother has as much right to be protected as its mother does...
...He now becomes an articulate and polite champion for gay persons who, in Massachusetts, may be theologically cornered and piously enslaved by a handful of clerics...
...The first man in line placed his left hand upon the book and raised his right hand...
...MELVIN N.COHEN Why women abort Minot, N. Dak...
...After forty years of prophetic messages on social issues, Dr...
Vol. 116 • October 1989 • No. 18
