Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Spring fever? Brooklyn, N.Y. To the Editors: It may have been the weather—I read the whole May 6 issue walking to work in Brooklyn on a glorious spring day—but I think this...
...ANDYGALLIGAN The author replies: My thanks to all who are willing to enter the discussion and reason together instead of simply calling names and dismissing arguments over "perversion...
...REV...
...Callahan to address her considerable intelligence and refined feminine sensibilities to a subject of such limited scope and dubious importance...
...ANNE PILSBURY Thanks from 'Madeleine' Address withheld To the Editors: I am grateful to the people who read my article ["Giving Up the Gift: One Woman's Abortion Decision," February 25] and felt moved to respond with letters, either to Commonweal or to me personally...
...Who today defends the divine right of kings on the basis of scriptural symbols of kingship and the kingdom...
...Maybe we could get a Witness for Peace person to stay with us...
...Jesus seemed to fulfill the law by reinterpreting what was essential in Sabbath rules and traditional "taken for granted" ideas of ritual purity and cleanliness—particularly about the body...
...But even if we could find a scientific answer to what makes one a homosexual, the question would remain as to what constitutes a Christian marriage...
...She pursues truth only, and can't be labeled "conservative" or "liberal," and that is why she catches heck from all sides...
...Well, I for one applaud her: Sidney for Pope...
...Before we arrived the three Chiapas bishops had met with the coleto leadership asking them to end their contrived protests and overt threats against the Mexican nuns...
...We have two doctors from Doctors without Frontiers for one month...
...While Rev...
...Well, I am willing to learn, to change, and even to recant if shown how I am getting things wrong...
...We are therefore brought back to the nature and significance of homosexual genital activity...
...Yes, procreative and unitive dimensions are both crucial aspects of marriage and sexuality...
...But their empathy on this issue and their eagerness to forgive may still be well-kept secrets...
...But—in contrast to the recent ruling by the supreme court of the state of Hawaii, which legitimated such unions on the basis of the equal protection clause of the state's constitution (whose authors never dreamed that their words would be used to justify homosexual marriage)—Ms...
...I am glad to have been found wrong...
...The hospital had treated wounded Zapatistas and released them before the armed forces occupied the city...
...My congratulations...
...The open discusson we pray for would surely (Continued on page 28) 2. CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) include the unitive, erotic aspect of marriage as well as the procreative...
...Joann Lamb works with women's groups sponsored by the International Grail Movement...
...It was gratifying to hear from a number of priests...
...The only way I could heal was to bring others with me to that awful place where I had been...
...Tradition, Scripture, and common sense honor the idea that marriage as an institution includes the procreative aspect, and it is in this context that the sexual act takes place...
...Isn' t it true that each of us has both masculine and feminine characteristics...
...Frowin Brownfield may think the discussion of homosexuality is a waste of time and energy, it is a discussion that's unavoidable today...
...david light From the editors: Without taking sides on the merits of "Why I Changed My Mind," We welcome this opportunity to get the matter of Sidney Callahan's gender out of the closet...
...The tension was pervasive, not only because of the tanks and soldiers, with their automatic weapons and chests decorated with grenades, but because of the presence in numbers of coletos—nonindigenous members of the ruling class who have grown up dominating the region through their wealth, arms, and control of local governments...
...No doubt her positive views on gay marriage will attract the ire of many staunch traditionalists, especially those who feel they possess metaphysical blueprints for sexual activity...
...Today, in a different cultural climate, we can at least differentiate out-and-out vice from the possibility of committed gay and lesbian relationships rooted in love...
...Why spend precious time and energy on a thesis so totally devoid of any merit vis-a-vis natural law, Christian morality (Bishop Spong to the contrary notwithstanding), and the very nature of things...
...the man-woman relationship is the paradigm offered us...
...And whether he will or will not enter the discussion, the question 28: 3 June 1994 of the morality of homosexuality will eventually penetrate southwest Missouri and more fundamental Protestant churches...
...I' ve spent much of the day wondering what might compel Ms...
...SIDNEY CALLAHAN More front Chiapas Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico To the Editors: I would like to commend you for publishing the early and incisive reports on events and conditions in the Mexican state of Chiapas by Alberto Huerta, S.J...
...On the basis of a recent nine-day visit to the region, our second in fifteen months, we can confirm the importance of the role played by Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia in his encouragement of leadership development among the poor of Chiapas, the poorest of many poor states in Mexico...
...JIM and JOANN LAMB Jim Lamb teaches comparative sociology in the Institute Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores in Cuernavaca...
...This is exactly the issue...
...Callahan's position on homosexuals...
...John Clancy accuses me of sounding like the Vatican, but I don't agree that either the Vatican or I have excluded one aspect of sexuality...
...To the Editors: I can see from his fulsome endorsement of gay marriage ["Why I Changed My Mind," April 22] that Sidney Callahan is a very nice man...
...The Vatican's refusal to consult with married laity continues to have profound consequences in the church and in a world that yearns for an integrated view of human sexuality...
...Callahan does offer reasons for her stand...
...in doing so, she has taken a position that is ironically close to the Vatican's in that both tend to exclude one aspect of marriage...
...Try as they may, Christians simply can't measure up to the standard set by Ozzie and Harriet and by their heirs, the politically correct...
...I cannot, however, accept Ms...
...Our mission was to visit San Carlos Hospital in Altamirano, which serves a scattering of some 647 villages and 15,000 people...
...Because a society's most important function is to pass on its life, heritage, and values to the future, it should protect and promote only heterosexual marriage and family...
...Their spokeswoman replied, "Tell everyone you can...
...We asked how we could help...
...Would that Sidney Callahan shared this immeasurable blessing...
...And that, I believe, is ultimately what Jesus' life means: that we never have to face life's torments all alone...
...the five doctors had already fled...
...JOHN CLANCY Selling Sidney straight Houston, Tex...
...I agree with Peter Riga that society's task is to "pass on its life, heritage, and values to the future" but disagree that to do this properly, "the most homosexual unions should get from society is tolerance and the right to be left alone...
...To the Editors: I empathize with Sidney Callahan's impatience with the present position of the Vatican on birth control...
...29 Become a Commonweal Associate We wish also to report our experience in Altamirano, a city of 10,000, one of four captured by the Zapatistas, who presented their case there publicly, without destruction or looting, before retreating to their mountain villages...
...It is true that Saint Paul's condemnation of the practice was directed at the vice with which homosexuality was culturally involved in the ancient world, and that he never addressed the moral question posed by the existence of loving, stable homosexual unions...
...More than thirty years ago Walker Percy pointed out that Ozzie and Harriet are nicer than Christians {The Moviegoer...
...MADELEINE GRAY" The truth about Sidney East Orleans, Mass...
...The army observes constantly through binoculars...
...30...
...To the Editors: Down here in southwest Missouri the all-pervading presence of our brothers and sisters of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God helps us Roman Catholics maintain a semblance of sanity when it comes to such topics as homosexual marriage...
...Whether homosexuality is "natural" or even genetically induced is not dispositive of the moral question...
...Few Chiapas communities now have armed soldiers within...
...The coletos and the army want the eight nun-nurses gone...
...it was taken for granted that it was a deviation from the norm...
...frowin brownheld Imitating Rome on sex Wyandotte, Mich...
...Erotic homosexual behavior cannot relate to physical creation in the same way, even if children are adopted...
...We asked the nuns what they fear most...
...And we also change our understanding of the "deep human symbolism" found in certain scriptural models...
...As for whether it is true that homosexuality is not freely chosen, all I can say is that at this point most experts do agree that this is true in most cases...
...That married couples often engage in sexual acts when conception is impossible underlines the need to look positively at this aspect of marriage...
...But that still does not take account of the deep human symbolism found in the scriptural model for sexual relationships...
...Paradigms and symbolism change, not so much by repudiation and denial, but by extension, by refinement, by discerning underlying and more essential truths in a model or symbol which has been heretofore interpreted in a too absolute or limited way...
...She is not a nice man...
...If we abandon the procreative aspect in order to affirm the richness of erotic love, don't we slip into the either-or mentality of the Vatican, and build another roadblock on our way to a fuller understanding of human sexuality and the nature of the family...
...To the Editors: Sidney Callahan's approval of gay marriage surprised me...
...I was truly surprised by the compassion of so many readers...
...Sidney Callahan has got rid of most of his Christian baggage, but until he sheds the few remaining rags and tags, he won't be thoroughly nice...
...Before the publication of this essay, I felt there was no place for someone like me to be heard within the church—that I somehow fell between the cracks...
...Then a truck from the Vincentian motherhouse in Mexico City was ransacked of its food and medical supplies...
...we now recognize that paradigms in moral theology change and develop just as they do in science...
...For the forty-four persons housed within the compound, including young women being trained as nurses' aides, shortages have become a problem...
...To the Editors: Your columnist Sidney Callahan was right on target re gay marriage...
...First, I am not aware that "almost everyone on all sides agrees that homosexuality is not freely chosen but a given condition...
...Thank you, readers, for showing me that the spirit of Christ is very much alive in the members of the church...
...Callahan has moved radically away from the procreative aspect in endorsing homosexual marriage...
...I hope they will help the "Madeleines" in their areas to find them...
...It is important as well that, unlike other bishops, Samuel Ruiz refused to condemn the Zapatistas...
...Can we even call it tolerance when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches that homosexual acts "confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent" and that to abandon homosexual activity is a "conversion from evil...
...To the Editors: It may have been the weather—I read the whole May 6 issue walking to work in Brooklyn on a glorious spring day—but I think this issue of Commonweal was one of the best I have ever seen from any magazine...
...So maybe the experts are wrong and we will find out differently, but it seems most unlikely...
...I'm aware that compassion can befuddle logic, but morality has nothing to do with emotion...
...for many of them indios constitute a kind of expendable animal species...
...Let me address her arguments...
...A waste of energy Springfield, Mo...
...As John Paul II argued so cogently in Veritatis splendor, the morality of a human act is determined by both the intent of the actors and the nature of the act...
...I have written a book (In Good Conscience: Reason and Emotion in Moral Decision Making, HarperSanFrancisco) defending the role of emotion in moral discernment so can say no more here, except that morality has everything to do with emotion...
...PETER J. RIGA Right on target Tracy, Calif...
...Lawless Roads Still: The 'Red' Bishop of Chiapas," December 17, 1993...
...The most homosexual unions should get from society is tolerance and the right to be left alone...
...But is he really as nice as he could be...
...They reply: "What happened in Ocosingo...
...The final meaning of heterosexuality, and the reason for holding it superior to homosexuality, is that it is open to life, to family, to the future—and this symbolism holds true even for marriages that are sterile or whose parties are beyond their procreative years—but not for gay or lesbian unions...
...only then could it lose its power...
...The question is whether the procreative impulse can be psychologically and socially present when physical reproduction is impossible...
...not so in Altamirano, which is close to the Zapatistas' forest sanctuary...
...Clancy's query about everyone having both male and female characteristics does seem correct when it comes to gender identity, but gender identity (or the individual sense of maleness or femaleness) should not be confused with the sexual orientation of one's erotic and sexual desire...
...Neither is the existence of loving, faithful, and committed homosexual relationships...
...This letter is one of the ways we are responding to their request...
...There is little mention of homosexuality, except negatively, in Scripture...
...The next night the town-appointed watchman was beaten...
...My main problem with his letter is that he claims "morality has nothing to do with emotion," thereby ruling out not only an essential characteristic of all human thinking, but denying Christian love and joy as well...
...But more convincing arguments must be forthcoming...
...If not, then infertile, sterile, postmenopausal marriages, or indeed the marriages of those who are injured and incapable of genital intercourse, must be considered unacceptable...
...In Chiapas, Long Shadows," May 4...
...Rather, he told the catechists and deacons they had to choose: If your conscience tells you to join the armed rising, he said, cease to be official church representatives...
...In that city the army entered the hospital and murdered patients and their visiting families...
...I also think she has been right in her views on feminism, birth control, abortion, women priests, and militantly anti-Catholic gays...
...Finally, Peter J. Riga, who is a formidable opponent, brings us to the crux of the question with his talk of what is "paradigmatic" in Scripture and tradition...
...Such activity is clearly not paradigmatic in Scripture or tradition...
Vol. 121 • June 1994 • No. 11
