Correspondence
Debts abounding Hampton Bays, N.Y. To the Editors: A passage in the article by Charles K. Wilber ["How We Lost Our Shirts," June 19, page 14) refers to the "heavy borrowing.... necessary to...
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...C.HRARDCOULOMBE From the editors: Whether or not it's morally legitimate, the penultimate question is unanswerable, since newborns don't have discernible opinions, even about their own survival...
...WALTER KELLEHER, MM...
...REV...
...This points to the wisdom of the American bishops' apparent "zero-tolerance" discussion policy, namely that abortion is a truly unspeakable crime and that even to debate the issue is to recognize abortion as a morally tolerable or negotiable resort...
...I do have difficulties, serious ones, with the interpretations the sponsoring groups put on the Gallup findings in the press release they issued...
...p. 30, Jill Krementz...
...p. 26, David Heald...
...foreign, $41...
...I am interested in exploring cultural differences and differing viewpoints...
...DENNIS M. DOYLE The writer teaches in the department of religious studies at the University of Dayton...
...The true bottom line in the abortion debate is the woman's ability to choose how she lives her life, whom she loves and cares for, what work she does and when, whether she will have the same starting position as a man or a similar one...
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...To the Editors: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's excellent review of Roger Rosenblatt' s Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind [June 19] gave form and substance to my previously undiagnosed irritation with the oleaginous essayist Roger Rosenblatt...
...The news release further hyperbolizes the laity-hierarchy split by portraying the bishops as if they all agree to a monolithic and repressive position on every churchrelated issue...
...p. 5, Punch, Rothco...
...If so, we agree, and we're inclined to use the occasion of her letter to explain why...
...Where in the church's teaching is it said that a doubtful conscience can be acted upon without moral guilt...
...So do members of Congress, presidents, cabinet members, justices of the Supreme Court, inhabitants of death row, and prochoice lobbyists...
...This approach ignores the evidence of diversity among the bishops themselves (evidence clearly on display on the Notre Dame campus at the very moment the Gallup data were published...
...Though he was fluent in Japanese, he always spoke English at news conferences with the Japanese media, presumably to give him more time to probe the nuances during the translations— which he could also monitor...
...Educate yourself about the "economic and social life" of women in the community you call home by listening to the women, sondra sprinkling A matter of perspective Fairfield, Conn...
...Nancy Haegel's "Eureka Moments: The Prayers of an Engineer" was another fine contribution to an outstanding series...
...Until you have walked a mile in my high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes, do not presume to speak for me or my sisters...
...Canada, $66...
...Having been a missioner in Japan most of the time between 1956 and 1984, and as a student of all things Japanese, I share his conclusion that the Japanese "have not yet acquired....a belief in a common destiny with the rest of the world...
...That does not make me a subjectivist, for I have distinct beliefs about what is right and wrong...
...Until the Japanese accept that all human beings are children of the same Creator, they are their own worst Commonweal enemies at home and abroad...
...The press release went out of its way to stress only the amount of disagreement The result of these maneuvers is to portray the laity in this country as a bloc solidly lined up against the hierarchy...
...Toward the end of his column Carlin may have hinted at some important points about the difficulty of raising a family under current social conditions...
...Oleaginous' essayist Los Angeles, Calif...
...ambassador...
...it appears to be a responsibly done study...
...I might be wearing a Cultural Survival T shirt, discussing the need to use condoms against HIV infection, talking about gay rights with my mother, twice divorced...
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...Catholic bishops' meeting at Notre Dame briefly mentioned in Jim Bowman's report [July 17]—what Bowman calls a "parallel" meeting of groups concerned with current church issues...
...So also with abortion...
...CHARLES K. WILBER Targets of straw Urbana, 111...
...Moreover, even on these issues, as Andrew Greeley has pointed out (New York Times, June 19), the survey does not justify speaking of a "massive revolution," since it provides no indication of how important the issues are to the respondents...
...Too bad the rest of us don't have his advantages...
...Since men don't have to make the choice of having their bodies be their own, or be possessed by a man or a baby, and simply make their love, work, and spiritual choices based on circumstance, opportunity, and God's will, how is it that men can presume to judge when, how, and if a pregnancy may be terminated...
...CATHOLICS AGREE WITH POPE ON RACISM," Or "CATHOLICS LAG BEHIND ON ECONOMIC justice...
...Carlin's easy categorizations have a rigid and dogmatic character...
...NEALE J.BAXTER...
...Nothing in the Constitution, or its "penumbra," speaks to that question...
...In this case, in my view, the presentation distorts the survey results in an effort to prove what the data themselves do not support: that the American Catholic lay people and American Catholic bishops "are increasingly at odds with each other on virtually every church issue...
...But the discussion of social issues in the release is almost like a footnote at the end...
...MARIE WINN The editors reply: We think our correspondent overreaches when she echoes the slogan, "You can't legislate morality" (used so often by opponents of civil rights legislation) to rebut our critique of the Casey decision...
...With others, we believe that the human fetus deserves the protection of civil society...
...Public opinion polls and election results make clear that considerable numbers of people in many regions of the country oppose abortion on demand and support state laws imposing certain conditions...
...Abigail McCarthy's and David Carlin's columns were as insightful as ever, Pamela Gross's "Bowline" rich, Edward McKenna's papal profile interesting, and Lawrence Cunningham's reviews once again of the sort that make me wish I had access to a library that purchases some of the books he notes...
...That argument is open to rebuttal, but it's hardly "totalitarian...
...What guarantees are prolifers prepared to make to survivors...
...For reasons explained in the article, a side effect of this foreign indebtedness is to increase the U.S...
...The passage in my article cited by Mr...
...Laws regulating abortion—e.g., the Pennsylvania statute's provision promoting informed consent—are in another category...
...On each of these issues the policy and practice of the bishops taken as a whole is in fact more complex than the survey sponsors allow...
...p. 38, Ross, Rothco...
...To the Editors: Bravo...
...To the Editors: I found your editorial on the Supreme Court's ruling upholding Roe v. Wade ["Liberty for Some," July 17] as disheartening as you found the ruling itself...
...This is a selective reading of the survey data, achieved in part by focusing all but exclusively on questions of sex, gender, and authority (women priests, married priests, birth control, abortion, etc...
...That strikes me as a typically male perspective...
...we hope for the day when the gravity of ending life in the womb, for whatever reason, will once more be generally understood...
...After all, the population problem is also a "tortuous moral problem," perhaps the most tortuous one of all (unless you don't consider the threat of human extinction a matter of morality...
...The counterargument, of course, is that the Court need not and ought not respond to the will of majorities where constitutionally guaranteed basic rights are in question...
...In their aggressive posture it is hard to discern the Christian spirit that might provide a real link with the masses of lay Catholics...
...These signals would be enough...
...That's what kept me in Japan almost thirty years...
...She is right, for example, that we would oppose a law seeking to diminish population pressures by punishing couples for having too many children...
...Absent clear constitutional guidance, then, this tortuous moral issue should be addressed by legislatures, not courts, since legislatures, however messily, better reCommonweal fleet the people's wishes, simply because their members are elected...
...The language barrier New Orleans, La...
...Catholics agree with the bishops that abortion is never a morally responsible choice...
...Tens of millions of Americans differ from the assumption embodied in Roe that the question can be ignored...
...If the sponsors had a different agenda, they could as easily have used other data in the survey to proclaim: "u.s...
...But Ms...
...p. 4, Matt, Rothco...
...p. 18, Chariot...
...Canada, $39...
...You argue that this "tortuous moral problem" should be resolved through the legislative process, that is, through laws passed by individual states...
...In reality legislatures in free societies regularly enact into law and endow with coercive force the generally shared moral convictions of their peoples...
...p. 37, Baloo, Rothco...
...What is the "moral legitimacy" of this question...
...2: 14 August 1992 Commonweal CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) law, and could not be enforced without causing social evils more serious than those rising out of Prohibition...
...in many circumstances (26 percent...
...in doing so, perhaps to demonstrate beyond question that he is no relativist, he declines to acknowledge the real complexity of the issues he raises...
...I find the heading that says Anna Commonweal Quindlen is "still a Catholic" simply a contradiction...
...trade deficit...
...And yet I doubt you would defend the idea of dealing with this problem legislatively by, say, making laws prohibiting families from having more than two children...
...It may be relevant, however, that practically all oldborns who testify before Congress seem to favor living, with or without guaranCommonweal tees—at least for themselves...
...What some of us pastors do say is: The individual conscience is supreme, provided every effort is made to make it an informed conscience...
...He is the author of a. forthcoming book...
...The release further manipulates the survey by lumping together groups of respondents who may think very differently from each other...
...That argument, in our view, simply begs the question of whether the abortion decision involves the rights of only one living human being, or more than one...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN (X)103330...
...To the Editors: Your editorial argues that it "defies common sense, moral logic, and the example of other countries" to contend that access to abortion is a prerequisite for women's equality...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...In this country (I don't know about others) the community in which an unmarried woman, or a woman in a bad marriage, or in a family without resources becomes pregnant is not, as a rule, supportive of her and her life or the life of the child to come...
...7, 13, 16, 29, 33, Antonucci...
...The headline on the release, for example, proclaims a "quiet but massive revolution IN CATHOLIC OPINION ON CHURCH issues...
...necessary to finance the ballooning federal deficit...some [estimate] that payments on interest alone may reach over $50 billion a year...
...News and World Report (page 25):" 1993 amount budgeted for interest on the debt: $315 billion...
...And by implication it attributes positions held by some bishops to the hierarchy as a whole...
...Everyone knows there are hot unresolved issues in the church that have some groups pitted against others...
...Spend some time with a poor family with a pregnant thirteen-year-old, or a battered wife who is pregnant with her fifth child...
...This community resents and fights paying child support, refuses to place education as a priority, wastes its adolescents in consuming and crime, and still places barriers to participation by women in a great number of areas, including government, education, corporate, and religious leadership...
...Nothing in the Court's decisions pretends to resolve it...
...We are told, for example, that only 13 percent of U.S...
...Using the same technique on the legality of abortion, one can show either that only 13 percent of the laity agree with the bishops that abortion should never be legal, or that nearly 70 percent agree with the bishops in opposing abortion on demand...
...most people would agree that it's useful to know the numbers, so that the sponsors performed a valuable service by commissioning the survey...
...One additional point about Rosenblatt's analysis: Implicitly it further establishes abortion as an issue about which people of good will but opposing viewpoints can commiserate and must, the inference is, eventually just agree to disagree...
...The use of such tactics by Catholics Speak Out and the other groups will hurt rather than help their cause...
...llustrations: Cover, pp...
...I would have been more informed and challenged had he pursued this theme...
...To the Editors: Re the editorial "Saving Lives" |June 19]: As hard as I try to understand both positions on abortion, I don't fully grasp the consequences of the prolife view...
...This community tolerates unequal pay for equal work, sexual harassment on the job, denial of due process in the courts with respect to rape and sex discrimination...
...Carlin, it seems to me, reduces many diverse movements and millions of people into six neat paragraphs...
...The release does take note of the survey's finding that Pope John Paul II is extremely popular—84 percent of respondents agreed that he is "doing a good job in leading the church"—but then explains it away: it's only a matter of the pope's personal style...
...But in any potential dialogue it is unhelpful to begin by making grossly inaccurate generalizations about the opposing positions...
...Copyright © 1992 Commonweal Foundation...
...If the sponsors were to slice the statistical pie in another way, they could just as easily (and as manipulatively) have emphasized that 85 percent of lay Catholics agree with the bishops that abortion can be a morally irresponsible choice...
...Moreover, I have no problem with the survey itself...
...With respect to abortion, the key is that it contemplates the ending of possible human life, which inevitably introduces an element of doubt...
...Even on gender and authority issues, where the percentages of lay people holding opinions at variance with Vatican views are admittedly significant, and growing, the picture is not a simple one...
...Certainly not to Commonweal] You sold out to the sensational culture with this piece, which is worthy of a supermarket tabloid...
...Winn may have intended to argue only that not all moral norms should be enacted into law...
...But if one takes the data as a whole into account, they reveal a complex spectrum of opinions among lay Catholics on controversial issues, with some at either extreme but with most people somewhere in the middle...
...Until that day, a law criminalizing abortion, even if it could be enacted, would be widely disobeyed, would generate contempt for all (Continued on page 36) Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide lo Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...Permit but discourage" translates: "It's unpleasant, but not heinous"—not unlike the analogy of another reviewer who mocked: "No, Hodgkins, you may still lynch blacks, but you must do it with a proper anguish...
...Of the many reasons to oppose such legislation, one is both relevant and sufficient: it would not command anything like a supporting consensus...
...witness laws that punish segregation and discrimination, not to mention inside trading, usury, libel, murder, theft, and drunken driving...
...Playing with numbers Dayton, Ohio To the Editors: I want to call attention to an aspect, or a sidelight, of the U.S...
...But our government has never been entitled to solve moral problems through legislation—that is one of the fundamental principles of our nation that conspicuously distinguishes us from totalitarian states...
...I have some sympathy for many of the goals of these groups, which together constitute a Catholic reform movement, and I know that the people involved are for the most part loyal and dedicated Catholics who are often justifiably frustrated with the status quo...
...To be interested in other people's beliefs is not to be immoral or amoral, or concerned only with individual freedom, or "rigorously neutral" with respect to the role of religion and morality in the public realm...
...WILLIAM KALIN Countless goodies Alexandria, Va...
...Compare with this passage in the June 22 issue of U.S...
...If a newborn were able to testify before Congress as do those whose special interests you describe, what price would they put on life...
...The release does not acknowledge the mediating and often progressive role that the bishops have played in relations between the Vatican and the U.S...
...To the Editors: I suppose that if I were to meet David R. Carlin, Jr., on the street, he would quickly label me one of "the proponents of Yuppie liberalism" [column, July 17...
...During my early years in Japan, the late Edwin O. Reischauer was U.S...
...church...
...Many of these people believe, with considerable support even from some prochoice scholars of the law, that the Supreme Court has acted legislatively rather than judicially in preempting the power of state legislatures to regulate abortion...
...One expects a certain amount of spin control in such announcements...
...Abortion & reality Woodstock, N.Y...
...I know of no pastors who say this...
...Quindlen speaks, for example, of "pastors who say individual conscience is not important...
...foreign, $72...
...The total interest on the national debt is estimated at $315 billion...
...The Church Emerging from Vatican II (Twentv-Third Publications...
...Robert J. Carraro's article on the Japanese language ["Ambiguity & Hierarchy: Why Americans Don't Get It," June 5] was well done...
...This is done by collating three other groups of respondents: those who replied that abortion can be a responsible moral choice rarely (41 percent...
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...bank...
...What happens to unwanted human life after birth...
...I know...
...that the effect of the Roe decision and others has been to settle the question of fetal status by imposing on the country the moral judgment of the Court's majority...
...The Commonweal of the past, when it had a soul, was a delight...
...A chief feature of that gathering was the release of data gathered by the Gallup Organization in a national survey of Catholics sponsored by Catholics Speak Out, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, the Women's Ordination Conference, Call to Action, corpus, Dignity/USA, FutureChurch, and New Ways Ministry...
...that, by so acting, the Court, insulated as it is from the will of the people by lifetime appointments, has acted tyrannically...
...john power The author replies: Both...
...Who is right...
...and in all circumstances (15 percent...
...This is our life...
...The impression is given that "the bishops" favor employment discrimination against homosexuals, believe they themselves should make decisions on sexual issues without consulting lay people, teach that Catholics must never vote for candidates who support legalized abortion...
...Special two-year rate: U.S...
...Quindlen's obvious bias against the hierarchy makes this impossible in her case...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...KEVIN CAROLLO Law & morality New York, N.Y...
...p. 14, Jane Osgerby...
...instead, he opted for a diatribe against a series of stereotypes, warning us, in all too familiar ways, of secret conspiracies and dangerous intellectual elites preying on the minds of the unknowing populace...
...Power was concerned with the interest, estimated at $50 billion yearly, on that portion of the federal debt that is owed to foreigners...
...Maybe its editor, like its moral position, needs to be Changed...
...To the Editors: Thank you for the issue of June 5.1 can hardly enumerate all the good things in it...
...It leads me to ask where a liberal Catholic can turn for a good magazine...
...JOHN PAUL ARNERICH Change the editor Barquisimeto, Venezuela To the Editors: Mail service is bad here, so that I have only now seen your issue of February 14, with its feature article on Anna Quindlen...
...Like the whole Rodney King event, the more we "dialogue" the savagery, the less savage it becomes...
Vol. 119 • August 1992 • No. 14
