Correspondence
The media & character Green Bay, Wis. To the Editors: I really enjoyed Abigail McCarthy's column on "The Character Issue" [May 8]. As a teacher of history and a student of politics, I have...
...Hence my last line...
...Still unreasonable Lake Tomahawk, Wis...
...when our first concern is for the needs of real children rather than their abstract civil rights...
...if I'm not, apologies are due elsewhere...
...As a teacher of history and a student of politics, I have wondered how FDR, Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, or any of our past presidents would have stood up under the kind of "character" scrutiny that has become routine...
...Laird has in mind...
...The final sentence should read: "It's all there, in the lightsome eye, and in the libretti...
...Clinton be involved with the welfare of children if she gets into government...
...Russell B. Connors, Jr., March 13...
...Correspondence, May 8] were depressing, largely because the debate was conducted within old frames of reference that no longer shape the thinking of most Catholics...
...Through a printing error, we inadvertently dropped the last two words of Rev...
...This requires the kind of emotionally nurturing environment created by a mutually loving relationship between the parents...
...Too many people know that the magisterium was wrong on usury, wrong on anti-Semitism, wrong on religious liberty, wrong in its casual way of assigning eternal damnation as the appropriate consequence for all manner of failings (hell for eating meat on Friday...
...Single Copy, $2...
...For one thing, the focus is always on the negative, perhaps because it takes less work to cover reputed or potential scandal (and thereby to reaffirm the voters' negative impression of politics) than it does to examine the issues that need addressing...
...Thus, rather than violating the "intimate structure" of the act by separating the procreative from the unitive meaning of sexual intercourse, contraception actually can help the couple fulfill both meanings more effectively...
...Many married couples have learned that, given mutual commitment, over time contraception enables them to use the intimacy of sexual intercourse more effectively to help them develop this relationship...
...Illustrations: cover design, p. 4, Emil Antonucci...
...Like many others I find the arguments supporting the "formal teaching that artificial contraception is 'intrinsically evil'" to be deeply unreasonable because they are based on an understanding of the natural law that is incomplete and inaccurate since it totally ignores the psychological and emotional dimensions of our nature and our relationships...
...DENNIS K. MOORE (Continued on page 30) 19 June 1992: 29 The author replies: From these and other letters it's clear that I wasn't clear...
...They shape our actions and our relationships...
...and at additional offices...
...To the Editors: In his letter to the editors [Correspondence, April 24] Roland Laird criticizes Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's column [March 16] on recent tragic events at two schools in New York City, saying that "measures to prevent easy access to firearms by teen-agers" are "the business of legislation and enforcement...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Society's commitment to the child through the family serves in itself to foster parental responsibility, provided of course that we make that commitment real by giving primary attention, concern, and money to the healing of families: by individualized social work, yes, but also by ensuring that families can provide decent housing, nutrition, security, schooling...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...Clinton in particular are somehow to blame because children aren't doing better in our society now than they were earlier...
...To ignore these needs or assign them a secondary status as mere human inventions is as devastating to the human soul as ignoring nutritional needs is to bodily life...
...Copyright © 1992 Commonweal Foundation...
...It sounded like an old grudge job, or, in street language, a "cheap shot...
...To the Editors: All that I learned from Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's column, "Rights 'R Us" [May 8], is that Ms...
...It's not that character shouldn't be examined, but when the media are done with their sound bites I'm not sure that we know anything at all about a candidate's character...
...They are a vital, intrinsic part of our created humanness...
...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS Misusing Eucharist Bergenfield, N.J...
...New York is satuCorrection: We lost the libretti...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $62...
...In a few passages, Vatican II confirmed traditional notions of ecclesiastical authority, but its larger actions set us on a different course...
...When the council accepted the legitimacy of non-Catholic forms of Christianity, accepted the legitimacy of religious freedom as a principle of civil society, repudiated the tradition of anti-Semitism—when these things happened, traditional conceptions of ecclesiastical authority began to crumble...
...So far, no quarrel...
...Anyone who learns this will find the arguments underlying Humanae vitae totally unreasonable and nonbinding...
...At their sometimes considerable best, social agencies can only substitute for families—they are not the real thing...
...And vast numbers who do not know these things know that the magisterium is wrong on contraception...
...In my reading of Hillary Clinton's essay, these priorities were not in evidence...
...But it's fine if she becomes secretary Of State...
...Why burden the consciences of so many good people, many of whom are undoubtedly already clinging-as-they-can to their church...
...Canada, $66...
...JOHN C. MOORE The writer is professor of history at Hofstra University...
...Try again: Because they are dependent, children do indeed have special rights which must be recognized in statutes and courts and other agencies of society that must protect them from abuse, deprivation, acute neglect, or carelessness on the part of those primarily charged with their care...
...foreign, $41...
...The problem rises when enthusiasts for codification and institutionalized protection of children's rights come to rely too heavily on the blunt instruments at their command...
...On the one hand, the critics of Bishop Flavin tiptoe around Humanae vitae, treat papal infallibility as a given, and act as though the right to dissent has nothing to do with the proven capacity of the magisterium to teach error...
...EDWARD F. ROGERS A high-minded failure Chula Vista, Calif...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...Sooner or later Catholic teaching on marriage and sex is going to have to recognize that human emotional needs are not figments of pop pyschology but exist as natural neurochemical physical states in our brains...
...Successful procreation involves rearing children to become caring adults capable of obeying God's law of love...
...Moreover, the judgment of these dissenters is not so remote from the official teachings of the hierarchy...
...for missing Sunday Mass...
...p. 2, Banx, Rothco...
...To the Editors: Unlike "most nuanced dissenters" (Monsignor William B. Smith, Correspondence, May 8), I do argue for the merits of contraception...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $36...
...Steinfels does not like Hillary Clinton...
...Of all places in the U.S., and maybe the world, I cannot imagine what legislative measures Mr...
...JOSEPH F. DELANO Off the soap box Notre Dame, Ind...
...8, 9, 15, 30, Baloo, Rothco...
...The column really didn't go anywhere except, apparently, to complain that children's rights advocates in general and Mrs...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...MICHAEL FLANARY Guns in plenty New Smyrna Beach, Fla...
...Edward J. McKenna's June 5 article, "When Catholics Could Sing...
...To the Editors: The recent exchanges on Bishop Flavin [Robert Hoyt, February 14...
...p. 11, Punch, Rothco...
...Obviously, the ability to use NFP must be dependent on many factors, e.g., the cooperation of one's spouse, temperament, education, etc...
...p. 5, Ray, Rothco...
...Canada, $39...
...p. 19, Andrea Mantegna, 1992, Royal Academy of Arts, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York...
...Second, it cannot be the mind of Christ that the Eucharist, instituted by him as a source from which springs man's most intimate impetus toward the good, should be used as an instrument of coercion...
...cover art, p. 24, Ross, Rothco...
...If there is evidence that Hillary's views on the protection of children have not matured in nineteen years of living—from single, recent law school grad to wife, mother, and public figure—Steinfels doesn't mention it...
...To the Editors: Although I recently met her, at this stage of the campaign I have no axe to grind either to champion or to behead Hillary Clinton...
...Courts cannot parent...
...edness, guidance, and restraint...
...And yet, while the body of the pilgrim church moves fitfully and uncertainly in a new direction, some conservative clergy define themselves as the church, dig in, and set stiff terms for inclusion...
...If a bishop wants to correct members of his flock, why not impose on them a duty to spend added time in prayer and reading the Scriptures...
...Procreation as sharing in God's creation of persons in God's image encompasses more than just conceiving...
...To the Editors: Because I am accustomed to the highmindedness usually in evidence in the writing of Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, I was disappointed by her recent "Editor's Notebook" focusing on an essay by Hillary Clinton...
...But in that case a prayer to God that she be kept away from the nation's children seems to me as "overly dramatic and probably unnecessary" as Steinfels's earlier "flight to the soap box"—and measurably more mean-spirited...
...Without so much as a mention of what Clinton's current position on children's rights may be, Steinfels's critique seems more than a little gratuitous...
...This is so that children can have what families, even imperfect families in an imperfect world, can best supply: constant love, a sense of connect"Okay, I'll take my bath and go to bed, but remember—a family cannot long endure half slave and half free...
...Our apologies to the author and to our readers...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wcoster, Ohio 44691...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...At a time when we should be forging a new conception of authority that could save us, on the one hand, from the authoritarianism of the past and, on the other, from the fragmentation that will increase as traditional clerical use of authority forfeits credibility, it is tragic that we should instead be arguing about whether or not Humanae vitae was infallible...
...It's a little amusing that the media react with surprise when exit polls indicate disenchantment with Bush and Clinton as choices...
...RAYMOND F. ROBERTS, JR...
...THE EDITORS rated with gun control laws...
...Consider, first, the myriad of circumstances in which people in this group find themselves...
...Thus, though children must sometimes be rescued from dysfunctional families, real progress for children will come when our first resort is to try to rescue children in and through their families rather than apart from them...
...And why deprive them of the one thing which we believe in faith can work in their lives to transform them...
...bank...
...2:19 June 1992 Commonweal CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) so be it...
...It's like a reviewer who trashes a movie and then is surprised that no one wants to see it...
...If I'm wrong, I apologize...
...foreign, $72...
...I especially saw no grounds for the column's final dig asking God not to let Mrs...
...REV...
...To the Editors: Depriving people of the Eucharist should not be so cavalierly used as a measure of "discipline" against couples who use contraceptives and doctors who prescribe them or advise their use [Correspondence, May 8...
...If it is, as Steinfels asserts, "clear: She didn't have the answers back in 1973," it is not at all clear from Steinfels's piece—nor even considered—whether there is any basis for the assertion that "she probably doesn't have them now...
...Nonetheless, I found myself annoyed with Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's "Rights 'R Us: Kids, Hillary & the Law...
...ERNEST G. MARQUIS Cheap shot on Hillary Middletown, N.J...
...If, on the other hand, the point of the memoir was simply to say, "I encountered Hillary back when...and was unimpressed," (Continued on page 29) 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...
...If there is easy access to firearms by teen-agers or anyone else in New York, it is not for lack of laws...
...MARILYN KRAMER Terms of exclusion Hempstead, N.Y...
...I may have tried to say too big a thing in too small a space...
...p. 21, Paul Valerry...
...Beyond this, to me it is pure casuistry to propose that a couple who uses Natural Family Planning to avoid conception are somehow more "justified" than another couple who use different methods for the same purpose...
...On the other hand, the bishop's supporters cite Pope 30:19 June 1992 Commonweal John Paul II as though papal pronouncements settle the matter once and for all...
Vol. 119 • June 1992 • No. 12
