Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE The Gulf tangle Charlestown, Mass. To the Editors: I commend you for your issue of February 22. Mary Lou Kownacki's call for the peace movement to put more weight on what some...
...Henceforth, the history of the region would be made by the countries occupying it...
...the result is an embarrassing review...
...To the Editors: In his long and ultra-critical review of Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing, Archbishop Rembert Weakland inserts a puzzling parenthesis: "(When Professor Day implies that the following phrase of mine, 'that our song is our common twentieth-century response to God's word here and now,' is totally lacking in any sense of the transcendent in liturgy but favors a 'horizontalism,' his criticism strikes me as simply ideological dishonesty and not worthy of reply...
...Copyright .9 1991 Commonweal Foundation...
...and reconcili- ation, another monthly or semi-yearly event, all to pieces...
...72r six times...
...Beginning salary to $28,000...
...Hanoi was portrayed as a Moscow-Beijing puppet and Ho as an easy- to-hate tyrant...
...To the Editors: Archbishop Weakland's surprising and virulent attack on Thomas Day's book Why Catholics Can't Sing avoids focusing on the problem...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...Moreover, the questions I asked at the end of the review were intend- ed to continue, not choke off, the discus- sion...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Contact: M. Ebner, Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, 426 East 119th Street, New York, NY 10035...
...Having read his review, may I respect- fully offer the archbishop a bit of folk wis- dom that one often hears from teenagers today: Dear Archbishop Weakland--Lighten up...
...Responsibilities: editing/business manage- ment of magazine...
...The reactions to my book have taken two general forms, roughly parallel to the reviews in Commonweal: (1) "Well, it has flaws but firecrackers can be useful" and (2) "We are not amused," with a subtext to the effect that one must destroy the cred- ibility of any presumptuous messenger who dares to bring bad news...
...E3 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 178) do as well as their Methodist, Episcopalian, or Lutheran brothers and sisters...
...No proof is necessary...
...In his comments, Day calls particular attention to the words "communal sensi- tivity" as the archbishop's characterization of the liturgical experience...
...Doubleday Anchor...
...Obviously the problem is not just the lack of professional leadership...
...Illustrations: Cover design, pp...
...Steinfels's review alerts the reader to the faults in my book but he also sees exactly what I was trying to do: "If Day's firecracker makes a lot of us jump, good...
...Postwar, anti- military-intervention America was said to be suffering from the Vietnam Syndrome, and had become a "pitiful, helpless giant" paralyzed by an all-powerful Soviet bloc...
...The crux of the matter is indeed the relationship between the experience of the sacred and that of being a part of the assembly...
...Then there is Bryan Hehir's troubling article, balanced and articulate as always, but in this reader's opinion, missing (or at least not recognizing) the crucial point...
...But to omit that part of his own sentence that most clearly grounds Day's critique smacks of...well, ideological dishonesty...
...If this is so, and I believe it is, then future generations of American young men and women will have to go to war every ten or fifteen years or so--even in the New World Order...
...And per- haps, too, Day's tract for the times may be just what is needed to jar things up...
...Even so, The Vietnam Wars is a graphic recapitulation of how and why the United States became embroiled in a war with so vague and unattainable ends at a price far greater than the public was ultimately willing to pay...
...And for what...
...and at additional offices...
...Send resum6 to Fran Levin, FOR, Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960...
...Catholics deserve more than they are being offered...
...Besides, the person leading all this action is one of our vegy own, not some educated, brain-washed out- sider sent by somebody called "Bishop...
...Quality is most important...
...foreign, $37...
...folk' ele- ments into the liturgy of the past...
...might define as its national security in any given circumstances...
...GEORGE WEIGEL The reviewer replies: There is so much in the letters by Leigh Jordahl, David Gallagher, and Randolph Nichols that I agree with...
...CORRESPONDENCE The Gulf tangle Charlestown, Mass...
...cover photo by Joanna Pinneo, RNS...
...Why is it that a large congregation should have to sit through a spoken Sunday Mass with nothing to sing except some kitschy camp songs or some subjective "contemporary" canticles that cannot be mastered even by worshipers who sing per- fectly decently when they happen to attend some ecumenical service in a Protestant church...
...Many of us are, however, defensive...
...Our tradition involves more than hymnody...
...A careful exegesis leads to the conclu- sion that the critique's author has never thought carefully about the difference between "sacred" and "secular" music...
...It is all well and good to cover all the plusses and minuses as he does, but if there is any sense at all to the elaborations and calculations of the just-war conditions, they should lead to a final conclusion confirm- ing that whatever war to which they are being applied is just or, if not, unworthy of Christian support or participation...
...The musical expression of our Christian faith ridicules us and our belief...
...Single Copy, $2...
...Professor Young reveals little that is new, relying too much on secondary sources and tending to omit or slight many works that differ from her views, such as Peter Braestrup's provocative book on the Tet offensive...
...America's youth---on the bat- tlefield and as dissenters at home--had contributed to the debacle...
...Why is it that students in a course in American religions, required to attend several churches over a semester, are repeatedly struck when they attend a Mass and then half an hour later go to some Lutheran church with maybe only a hun- dred unsophisticated worshipers and hear a moderately decent prelude and postlude, participate in a sung liturgy (almost iden- tical to the Ordinary of the Mass), and join in singing several genuine hymns that may include, depending on the occasion, such classics as "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name," "Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past," or even Thomas Aquinas's "Thee We Adore, O Hidden Savior Thee," set to a plain-song melody...
...While our moral stances can never be evaluated by opinion polls, he feels music should be ruled by popular demand...
...January 25...
...What angers the archbishop is that Day harpoons him with a direct hit...
...193, 197, Emil Antonucci...
...That last sen- tence should have been read to Archbishop Weakland before he dismissed my book solemnly and definitively, cover to cover...
...Our fear right now is that we will throw out the baby with the bath, if, in our discontent, the liturgical principles of the liturgical renewal are not held sacred...
...Already in the sixties I fought, although unsuccess- fully, for a common service book/hym- nal for the church in the United States...
...oversee bookstore...
...REV...
...If you put them side by side and compare them, they are quite fascinating in what they (unintention- ally) reveal, and much more fascinating than what I originally wrote...
...But I see now ] should have taken up that theme, since, as Randolph Nichols mentions, it touches on the basic assumptions of the Day book...
...Indeed, a good case can be made, as William Pfaffhas argued, that the Persian Gulf war is in part an effort to show that the defeat in Southeast Asia "didn't count...
...GORDON ZAHN The writer is national, director of the Center on Conscience and War...
...My shorthand was too short...
...204: Commonweal Rembert Weakland [January 25...
...To the Editors: John A. Coleman missed an important point about the Protestantization of Latin America in his essay on the topic, "Will Latin America Become Protestant...
...Does this square with his views of professionalism in church music...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...the media had lost the war...
...Classified payable with order...
...LEIGH D. JORDAHL Puzzling misquote New York, N.Y...
...Yet Archbishop Weakland's comments ["Off Key and Off the Mark," January 25] are unfortunate and will, I'm afraid, serve as a soporific...
...Director~Editor Wanted Publications Director/Fellowship Magazine Editor for Fellowship of Reconciliation, 75- year-old interfaith pacifist organization...
...Father Imbelli is correct in taking me to task for not quoting the full text of my own quote, at least as cited by Professor Day...
...Nor does it follow that as long as one sings it doesn't matter what it is...
...Nurses Wanted You know the problems--become part of the solution...
...Canada, $34...
...Listening to the music that surrounds us in our churches today provokes many of us...
...189, 20, Paul Vallery...
...At the minimum, they need a good, truly catholic hymn book organized along the lines of the church year (the Collegeville Hymnal from St...
...Small Methodist or Presbyterian churches, albeit with no sung liturgy, do just as well on the hymns as the Lutherans...
...GERALD O'COLLINS, S.J., is dean of the the- ology faculty at The Gregorian University in Rome...
...p. 182, Clive Collins, Rothco...
...They can put the organ back into full use, abolish song leaders, and trust the real liturgical professionals rather than local planning committees who are too apt to project only their own ideas of taste rather than the his- toric traditions of the long Christian past...
...To the Editors: In his comments on Thomas Day's book, Archbishop Weakland speaks of the "constant intrusion of...
...ROBERT P. IMBELLI Too angry to listen...
...Full- or part-time...
...As her book went to press Iraq invaded Kuwait...
...The full sentence quoted by Day from an article by Archbishop Weakland, as transcribed on page 92 of Why Catholics Can't Sing, reads thus: "If, on the other hand, the liturgical expe- rience is to be primarily the communal sen- sitivity that I am one with my brother next to me and that our song is our common twentieth-century response to God's word here and now and coming to us in our twen- tieth-century situation, it [music] will be something quite different...
...On the other hand, I am not ready to 206: Commonweal abolish the cantor...
...Perhaps it is time to take that up again...
...Archbishop of Milwaukee Why Catholics can't win Mankato, Minn...
...Here I might refer to Pope Paul's beautiful insights in Eucharisticum mysterium (1967) on the different modes of Christ's presence in liturgical celebrations, i.e., in the assembly of the faithful, in the word, in the person of the minister, and, above all, in the Eucharistic elements...
...Without suggesting any parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, she offers a "new, harsher and unwanted conclusion"--"that war continues to be a primary instrument of American foreign policy and the call to arms a first response to international disputes...
...And in an age when we stress ecumenical things, why not borrow from the wealth of Protestant hymnology, which precisely meant to make worship a communal activ- ity...
...Whether the full sentence merits the interpretation Day gives it can certainly be discussed...
...He also laments that those who should be "unflinchingly diagnosing" the weak singing in church, the atrocious music, and other things I mention in the book "are occupied, like the worst kind of conser- vatives, in dismissing criticism and pro- tecting their psychological stake in post- Vatican II developments...
...My Benedictine background would be betrayed if I were to say otherwise...
...But when the human toll began to mount, LBJ himself became a vic- tim, as Gabriel Kolko has written, "not sim- ply of his own political errors but also of the failure of an entire class in pursuing the war and the hegemonic goals of American foreign policy...
...Application due April 30...
...Nor for that matter did Watergate, Teheran, the Iran-contra scandal, and Beirut...
...Why are we in ~e Middle East...
...for- eign, $67...
...First, that is a reply, of sorts...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $57...
...Yet it is precisely some of the perceived professionals (e.g., the compilers of the unhappy Glory and Praise) who produced some of the stuff Day correctly identifies as part of the prob- lem...
...Mary Lou Kownacki's call for the peace movement to put more weight on what some might dismiss as appeals to "sentimentality" deserves con- sideration...
...76r three times...
...John's Abbey is a splendid beginning source), an easy but good musical setting of the Ordin ,afy, and helpful notes on the service...
...In any case, congratulations for printing two very different reviews...
...Canada, $61...
...Weakland might be surprised to discover that if given the chance Catholics just might (Continued on page 204) 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...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $32...
...Registered nurses needed, work with inner-city families as part of team with other professionals...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...He should have pointed out that the Pentecostal church, for one, needs no priests, no sacra-ments...
...Racial/reli- gious minorities, women encouraged...
...When the war ended so ignominiously in 1975, pundits and ideologues were forced to explain why a small, semirural nation had been able to defeat the world's greatest military power...
...He seems to reverse that process and, at least by implication, puts the burden of proof upon those who would challenge its justice, requiring them to establish beyond doubt that the conditions are not being met...
...Second, the archbishop quotes selectively...
...In Phnom Penh, as in Hanoi and Beijing, there were bitter rivalries older than the entire history of the United States...
...Pointing out deficits in the book, the review provides a listing of generally mediocre contemporary church composers...
...I am certainly willing to take George Weigel's advice and "lighten up" the dis- cussion...
...REMBERT G. WEAKLAND, O.S.B...
...Please save us from this bleak music...
...Our ears tell it all...
...full benefits...
...The archbishop constantly asks Day for proof of this or that statement...
...Spanish helpful...
...212-289-6484...
...Soon their postwar rationalizations emerged: the military wasn't allowed to go all-out...
...Mr...
...ForFather Gallagher to jump to the con- clusion that I am advocating rule by popular demand because I want a more profound examination of the causes for the nonsing- ing attitudes of our people is far from the truth...
...Her personal reaction to reading All Quiet on the Western Front had an even more significant counterpart in that the orig- inal film version was often cited by World War II conscientious objectors (including Lew Ayres, its star) as a major factor in leading them to take that stand...
...The archbishop wants yet more statistical studies...
...Nor does she express much sym- pathy for the Vietnamese boat people and their extraordinary efforts to escape post- war Vietnam...
...But I must admit that I find there is more at stake here than protecting "a psychological stake in post-Vatican II developments...
...This beats the Eucharist which shows up once a month...
...178: Commonweal vention...
...I wanted to avoid in a review a lengthy discussion on the liturgical experience and its com- munal nature...
...All this community needs is a songfest (to open the right hemisphere of the brain), some glossolalia (a mantra), and plenty of prayer, and bingo !--here comes a "baptism of the Spirit" and another "mys- tical experience...
...she asks in her preface...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 Dutch St., NYC 10038...
...Kownacki's proposal was balanced nicely by the humorous touch of George Weigel's description of what a "genuine" peace movement would be...
...REVIEWERS DAVID TOOLAN, S.J., is an associate editor of America magazine and director of the Catholic Book Club...
...Peloquin writes music that is extraordinarily simple and then adds "wrong" notes to make it sound "modern...
...p. 197, based on photo provided by Morehouse Publishing...
...JOE THOMAS CLASSIFIED RATES: 80r a word, one time...
...Bush's ass-kicking venture, I might follow George Weigel's example and do a paper on how the nation's military establishment should be organized and operate...
...The small churches I refer to have no song leaders, no professional musicians, no committees to plan each service, and the churches are just as lacking in acoustical design as the Catholic churches...
...psalms with their refrains are also a part of our repertoire...
...The distinct role music plays with regard to each one of these modes of presence and especially with regard to that of the assembly, as such, cannot be cavalierly dismissed, as, I am sure, both Father Imbelli and Randolph Nichols would agree...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Give song a chance Decorah, Iowa To the Editors: Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing is a rambling, opin- ionated book...
...His recom- mendations seem to require a more intense commitment to a tradition that has lost much of its relevance by making it possible for Catholics to support any war that comes along--provided, of course, that commit- ment is suitably tempered with prudence and due reverence for whatever the U.S...
...Waltham, Mass...
...baptism, which no one remembers...
...p. 185, K. Powell...
...There is no question that Thomas Day is angry...
...MURRAY POLNER wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran (Holt, Rinehart & Winston) and edited When Can I Come Home...
...bank...
...direct publishing pro- gram: initiate book projects, card/gift cat- alog...
...p. 187, H. Bosch...
...In the process, that presumption against the use of force upon which "the logic of the just-war case" supposedly rests becomes irrelevant, is negated, or disappears alto- gether...
...Professor Young judi- ciously concludes that the American defeat "released new configurations of power in Southeast Asia, not readily acceptable to control from the outside...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M148106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, Ohio 4469 I. Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010- 3330...
...Of course, parishes should make use of professionally trained musicians...
...THOMAS DAY Out of the mouths of teens Washington, D.C...
...If I were not taken up with answering a flood of calls from people seriously concerned about Mr...
...Topping the list is a great favorite, Alexander Peloquin...
Vol. 118 • March 1991 • No. 6
