Correspondence
Howe we forgot New Haven, Conn. To the Editors: It's a good Religious Book Issue this year [March 9]; I profited, as always. However, Gertrude Nelson's piece contains what might be called an...
...Most providers, although they know when to acknowledge that "the jig is up," usually define caring precisely as carrying out the wishes of the patient, family, or state...
...Fear-including that of death-is intrinsic to existence, corrupts dignity, and is allayed only by relational caring...
...ELLEN CHRIS FANIZZI Bass notes will prevail Milwaukee, Wis...
...To the Editors: Goodness knows those of us who are starved for renewal in the church are sympathetic to the frustrations of the Call to Action petitioners...
...To the Editors: Though I was one of the 4,505 signers of the Call for Reform ad in the New York Times, it doesn't bother me at all that anyone would not wish to sign...
...For ten years I have belonged to a small faith community which gathers at Manresa-on-Severn for liturgy...
...Thome's article by way of clarification...
...In summarizing the biblical prophets and in citing Jeremiah 31, only the positive notion of the validity of God's covenant with the church through Christ was meant, not any negative understanding of the ongoing validity of God's covenant with the Jewish people, which continues to be affirmed by the church as part of its own "essential" teaching (1985 Vatican "Notes"), as the pope has time and again stated...
...Our "textbook" was the documents of Vatican II...
...Because of an illness which my doctor calls "degenerative and debilitating"-and he ain't kidding-I can't get out much, so I read all the time-Pax Christi Quarterly, Catholic Worker, America, Commonweal, NCR, Cross Currents, and the Newsletter published by the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC...
...CHRISTOPHER F. ROLLERentions as the stuff of life...
...For in the midst of all the praise of "inculruration," together with the "Rome-bashing" that seems so prevalent, there seems to be little serious counter-critique, one which Mr...
...This fear, and our ability to teach, learn, and care, play out in a world of sicker friends and more complex interventions as the stuff of life...
...This limiting of patient autonomy, a central tenet of contemporary medical ethics, begs the question: how can human dignity in each individual be respected if the individual's capacity for self-determination is circumscribed...
...I've been a lay Carmelite for forty years...
...I'm a convert to Roman Catholicism, having been a Georgia-bred Southern Baptist...
...health-care priorities continues with "The Primacy of Caring" [February 23...
...More than anyone else, it is precisely you who have become this saving warning...
...Callahan teaches that we do die...
...In arguing that once the basic need of preventive care and public health are met, society's only duty is to care for, not cure, each individual, he is heading into stiff winds of prevailing norms...
...Though I belong to two of the organizations supporting the Call, I know (Continued on page 332) (Continued from page 306) only five of the other signers...
...I certainly do not expect to see much change in my lifetime, but I'll keep signing...
...eugene j. fisher The writer is director for Catholic-Jewish Relations in the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, NCCB...
...I like to speculate about which of the "old masters" would have signed...
...However, Gertrude Nelson's piece contains what might be called an error...
...For readers who are neither, a canon is like unto a fugue or round...
...Perhaps Catholic periodicals have not published any of Fanny Howe's poems or novels-but Commonweal at least has not ignored her...
...But if Commonweal is going to bring up the subject, I'd expect better criticisms than those you gave ["A Call for Reflection," April 20...
...Karl Rahner, probably...
...I think it is focused on social justice, fairness, reasonableness, and an evolving understanding of Christ's message...
...The drone, it is clear, will not go away of itself...
...If nothing else, the Call to Action has made a significant contribution by calling us to listen to that unfulfilled hope for new participatory models concerning crucial issues...
...As John Kane recently remarked in Cross Currents [Summer, 1989], there seems to be little sense among Catholics of "the extent to which popular liberal ideology has taken hold in some Catholic circles...
...Its intent, as even the Anti-Defamation League, which originally raised the concern, acknowledged some weeks later, was in no way to denigrate Judaism or to call into question what the pope has consistently called God's "irrevocable" covenant with the Jewish people...
...Even for this pedal point we all hope that some boundaries would be set, lest Congregationalism or rule by majority cause a disconcerting cipher in the church...
...The writer is archbishop of Milwaukee, and a musician...
...if not, he'd give good reasons...
...Autonomy is not the measure of human dignity...
...It is the loss of the sense of the holy, as the editors point out, and the lack of a vibrant community of believers in which to nourish the faith, that is at the heart of our present difficulties...
...Speaking of sacred, doesn't it seem strange that because women cannot be priests, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Catholics are denied the Eucharist...
...The thoughtful critique that appeared in Commonweal [April 20] pointed out to me the source of my own reluctance...
...I reviewed her first collection, Eggs, myself-in June 1971...
...MARGARET WIMSATT Reforming the call Watertown, Mass...
...Yet, like the editors, I too have hesitated to sign the document...
...This theme, because it is more about style or method of exercising authority than about content, should not be easily dismissed...
...Callahan's proposed obligation to care can contradict the wishes of the patient him/herself, who may desire any possible intervention to prolong life...
...it can be realized and protected only in community...
...First, the August 2 discourse by the pope was part of a much longer series on Pentecost that began months before and went on weeks after...
...REMBERT G. WEAKLAND, O.S.B...
...I'd bet my family faux pearls that Thomas Meiton would have signed, publicly...
...Teilhard de Chardin would sign, quietly...
...These come from love of the church and one another...
...To the Editors: I feel that I have had this letter in my mind for months now, indeed, perhaps since I began my subscription to Commonweal over a year ago...
...I rather like the ARCC suggestion of women "priestesses," with an entirely different role from men...
...His warnings about the increasing privatization of American culture-among other insights-need to be heard, not only by Americans in general, but by American Catholics in particular...
...The pipes can, of course, be stuffed or taken out so they do not sound, but the problem will continue to return...
...We must take the cry seriously, even if the shrill upper register seems to dominate at this moment over the more muffled but, I sense, more significant ground bass...
...It was assumed these are the things which are causing people to leave the church...
...Your magazine continues to bring, for this reader at least, an antidote of clear thinking to many of the issues that continue to face us American Catholics...
...Jacques Maritain, Mother Teresa, Walker Percy-heavens, no...
...During Lent, I taught a renewal program...
...By signing, I'm saying, "Hear us, good bishops, we're losing confidence in your leadership...
...Actually, I told the class, I see my own contemporaries leaving over quite different issues, issues that have more to do with the faith than with ecclesiastical policy...
...Still, a couple of points may be raised with reference to Dr...
...VINCENT MASI Death & dignity Buffalo, N.Y...
...a bourdon is an organ stop that specializes in low notes...
...The patient's desires dictate, and fear of liability reinforces...
...I'm a seventy-two-year-old mother of nine sons and daughters and grandmother of fifteen...
...For as Pope John Paul II has said in addressing the Jews of Warsaw, in the perspective of the Holocaust, "today, this nation of Israel has become a loud warning voice for all humanity...
...As a health-care manager I see patients and families often unable or unwilling to confront the inexorable death process...
...CHRISTOPHER F. ROLLER...
...A counlercrilique Boston, Mass...
...The inevitable subjects came up during the course: birth control, female acolytes, women's ordination, etc...
...It's the most wonderful feeling of belonging that I've ever had...
...I may decide to sign the petition but, thanks to your fine editorial, will do so with an eye toward seeing that the spiritual roots of reform are not neglected by my fellow visionaries...
...In this sense you continue your particular vocation, showing yourselves to be still the heirs of that election to which God is faithful" (June 14, 1987...
...Your most baffling criticism is that the statement is focused on organizational structures and lacks a sense of the sacred...
...To the Editors: Daniel Callahan's call for a reshaping of U.S...
...my deceased husband was a Franciscan tertiary-we talked of our "mixed marriage...
...Siegel, and which I think many of your own editorials, provide...
...Maybe we'll have married priests, maybe not...
...To the Editors: Commonweal had good reason to criticize the Call to Action manifesto for church reform [editorial, April 20] as a kind of undifferentiated and, by now, repetitive canon grinding away on unresolved hopes of Vatican II...
...In fact, as Eastern Europe begins to enjoy its new political freedom, it will join the church chorus for more flexibility of interpretation...
...Secondly, while there is great beauty in the prayer of reparation ascribed to Pope John XXIII, especially in its last clause which echoes the teaching of the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, most scholars today doubt that the pope actually composed it...
...To the Editors: Emanuel Thorne is indeed acting quite properly in reminding us Catholics of our too often lamentable history in dealing with the Jewish people and of the consequences of our beliefs as these touch upon Judaism [March 9...
...yet I feel a wonderful sacred bond with all 4,505...
...I am sympathetic to Callahan's position, however...
...To give you an idea of what kind of Commonweal reader would respond in this way, herewith a brief profile...
...KATHARINE M. ROCK A valid covenant Washington, D.C...
...For Callahan's "obligation to care" to work, patients and providers must cease to rely on experts to "do" ethics, and start to teach morality themselves...
...and] the extent to which it functions to screen reality and hinder thought...
...As Catholics, we can only be grateful for such reminders, however sharp...
...A strong call Dunkirk, Md...
...But underneath the Call there lies a consistent bourdon that may well become the main theme: participation by the baptized in the decisions that affect their lives and the church they love, and not just an active/passive reception/nonreception of the same...
...It's my sincere gut feeling that John XXIII would get a happy chuckle out of the Call...
...But Fred Siegel's "Blissed Out and Loving It" [February 9] finally moved me to write...
Vol. 117 • May 1990 • No. 10
