Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Sinful vow? Shelbume, Vt. To the Editors: The real paradox for me in Paul Dinter's stunning commentary on priestly celibacy [October 12] is how the vow can do so much to harm and...
...To the Editors: I am always illuminated by Paul Dinter's reflections, and the latest on priesthood and celibacy are no exception...
...This conveys the idea of a circle, which includes some and excludes others...
...Our church is bursting at the seams...
...what we have no place for is a bachelor priest...
...To the Editors: The real paradox for me in Paul Dinter's stunning commentary on priestly celibacy [October 12] is how the vow can do so much to harm and inhibit and endanger priests, and not be seen as sinful...
...To the Editors: Like other church musicians, I enjoyed Archbishop Rembert Weakland's letter to Commonweal [May 18] for its use of musical terms...
...The writer is Theodore M. Hesburgh professor in arts and letters and chair of the department of theology, University of Notre Dame...
...carroll c. estes...
...The choir is small, but oh, the music raises the heart...
...If it is, then all such vows are invalid...
...our people a community of love in action...
...To stress the paradoxical-indeed, koan-like-dimension of the words of Jesus about "eunuchs who have made themselves so for the kingdom of heaven" is a refreshing "deconstruction" of the unilateral exaltation of the celibate state which has characterized so much of the official church tradition...
...e.g., humidity...
...Our parish council will be particularly heartened, and most of all our sui generis Franciscan pastor...
...Most Catholics, it seems, equate Catholicism with "universality"-from the Latin unus versus, or "one turn...
...To the Editors: Commonweal, you have outdone yourselves...
...Regenerated Winston-Salem, N.C...
...Celibacy without community of some sort is indeed an impossibility, and that is the cul de sac which the juridical linking of celibacy with priesthood in the Roman Catholic communion must face...
...Otherwise, they would indeed be seeking a refuge, and theirs would be no sacrifice at all...
...Let us thank Paul Dinter once again for putting things so sharply and provocatively...
...You don't see Cadillacs and Mercedes crowding the parking lot, but we have just finished building a Habitat for Humanity...
...WILLIAM CLEARY Celibacy & community Notre Dame, Ind...
...DANIEL LAMOUREUX The writer is organist and director of music ministries at Stonehill College...
...REV...
...Religious communities do indeed make it possible for us, their members, to become much more than we ever could by ourselves, but the communities could never themselves be healthy if we were not also generative members...
...That may well be part of the story, and a part which deserves explicit attention, but the other side is also needed to complete the dialectic: the insistence of novice masters (speaking now from the perspective of communities of brothers and priests) that the aspirants had no business being there if they did not desire a spouse and a family...
...Each issue seems better than the last, but with your issue of September 14 ("Regenerating Catholicism") you have published a hard act (even for you) to follow...
...DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C...
...My primary prayer is that my husband and I may continue to attend daily Mass at Our Lady of Mercy until we are called home...
...Indeed, Dinter takes his reflections in a direction reminiscent of Native American traditions, which saw in flawed children a sign of destiny, and set them apart as instruments of ritual healing...
...A cipher can be barely audible or excruciatingly distracting...
...A Catholic all my life (seventy-six-plus years), I never knew, until a couple of years ago, how rich the liturgy could be...
...As my Anglican archdeacon friend once reminded us: "In our church we have two possibilities: a married or a celibate priesthood...
...the church is catholica, "permeating everything...
...Shea got it right Pompano Beach, Fla...
...You've now defined most of those, but in the issue of August 10 you confessed ignorance on the special musical meaning of "cipher...
...To the Editors: The article by John Shea titled "Here Comes Everybody" [September 14] was wonderful...
...John Shea's article conveys more of what Catholicism is all about...
...Archbishop Weakland may be thinking of the latter condition when he warns that "Congregationalism or rule by majority [could] cause a disconcerting cipher in the Church...
...As Dinter puts it, celibacy "allows men and women, in some ways handicapped by their inability or lack of desire to achieve a successful and permanent emotional and sexual union with an opposite sex partner, to escape lonely isolation and pathological self-involvement...
...MICHAEL HICKEY Deciphering Weakland North Easton, Mass...
...A cipher is the sounding of an organ pipe when a key is not depressed, a condition that could stem from faulty mechanics or weather damage...
...Situated in an older and less affluent area, we dream big and worship with enthusiasm...
Vol. 117 • November 1990 • No. 19
