Correspondence
Fear of flying eased Allison Park, Pa. To the Editors: Sitting in a USAir 737 at Pittsburgh the day after the air disaster, white-knuckled and without my essential paperback, I turned to...
...Woodward's remarks left me cautiously hopeful that we can arrive at a kind of collaboration that will enrich our church (Continued on page 27) 2. CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) and further its mission...
...Nature does not show itself as a properly balanced order intended by God...
...While one understands Honner's appreciation for the tradition, his hope for the future, and his Jesuitical defense of the pope, it is apparent that he sees the situation through too narrow a prism...
...These studies, to my mind, help resolve the paradox that Americans are at once very secular and very religious when compared with people of other nations...
...They were created good, without the ability to suffer or die...
...From all this they concluded that about 19 percent of adult Americans, including 4 percent of Catholics, registered as "committed" to their faith...
...Their physics is teleological, and neither materialist nor determinist...
...These two articles have barely scratched the surface...
...Living the faith outside our churches, mosques, and synagogues doesn't call for a pious demeanor but for making decisions and taking actions in the secular world that 29 are consistent with our values...
...In the past 200 years scientific knowledge about the history of life on the planet, about the genetic information code, the nature of life and consciousness, and now the operations of the mind, has produced a highly reliable framework that challenges traditional views about the soul...
...It's not simple to make a case for holding that the fetus is fully a person, so that killing it is murder, while also denying that the fetus has a right to have its life defended by killing its attacker...
...Woodward's balanced view is worth pondering...
...On the strength of that principle, Mr...
...This traditional set of beliefs has to be faced directly in the light of new knowledge...
...Warmed up, and being an academic, I read Dennis O'Brien's letter the way a thirsty person takes in water...
...I have found my interests broadened...
...The analogy fails on another score: the killer can't know beforehand that the end he or she desires, the saving of a fetus's life, will be achieved...
...Woodward perpetuates the myth that the only real journalism is to be found in secular newspapers and magazines...
...He actually put down the Times and listened to the whole thing...
...To the Editors: Chet Raymo and John Honner, S.J., agree that there is a conflict between science and religion in the church, but Raymo finds a serious problem, while Honner sees a rosier picture, with increased dialogue between theology and science, and a current pope who is calling for the sciences to invigorate the theological enterprise...
...At Mt...
...Honner tells us that the existence of the teaching magisterium "is irrefutable evidence for the possibility of change in the teaching of the church...
...it is the form of the body...
...Professor Barnes asks, "Is Honner prepared to accept the idea that what we call soul is a product of the evolution of matter...
...Many thanks...
...JAMES T. DETTE He's hooked Hartford, Conn...
...Although by no means definitive, nor, for that matter...
...MARY J. FERRIER The author replies: In this constrained space 1 can make only a brief reply to the several concerns raised by these correspondents...
...Anne Storz brought me back so vividly to those days and those feelings...
...Repohl sees a possible contradiction in the position of those who hold that killing an abortionist is wrong while also holding that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception, endowed with all the rights of any person, including the right to selfdefense and the right to aid from another...
...Orthodoxy was not a factor...
...The human person is material processes complexified into life processes through the the evolution of the genetic code, then life processes complexified further into processes of the brain which we call mind...
...L.J...
...Would you consider pursuing this subject further...
...Here are some thoughts on the matter...
...Thanks but Birmingham, Ala...
...Honner's article reflects a more balanced understanding of both worldviews...
...What does Catholic theology now offer in the place of this...
...I know many editors of these papers take their work seriously, but Catholic newspapers in my judgment simply do not—perhaps, cannot—do really firstrate journalism, especially reporting...
...To the Editors: Kenneth Woodward complains that "most official Catholic journalism is fourth-rate and there simply is no reason for all these mediocre diocesan newspapers to exist, despite quality efforts here and there...
...they offered woefully inadequate insight into this catch-all genre of musical forms...
...Catechism vs...
...To the Editors: Kenneth L. Woodward's piece on the laity was wonderful...
...I'm glad this essay spurred me to write...
...Is it possible that politics in America is dead because there are no longer any words to express the issues a genuinely represented community might concern itself with...
...Certainly we can hope scientists should strive for this, but the scientific method can provide no more than excellent evaluations of which fact-claims about reality are probably true...
...Original Sin, providence and miracles, the nature of the person, eternal life—all of these need serious rethinking...
...One lay initiative that reflects his thinking is the Business Executives for Economic Justice, a project of the National Center...
...A sprightly letter to the editors, Patricia Leiper's "Don't Be Wimpish," next caught my eye...
...Moreover, because of their sin the very nature of nature was changed...
...John Green at the Ray C. Bliss Institute at the University of Akron in Ohio...
...Instead of blaming the victims of their transgressions for their guilt feelings, analysands would be better served if reconciliation and forgiveness were the means for arriving at peace...
...The origin of the human race is explained by a literal presentation of the Adam and Eve myth...
...It may have been the emperor, not the hypothetical female streaker, marching "bare-ass naked down the street...
...He critiques films in a way that invites the reader into reflection, not only on the movies being reviewed but on the framework of values and cultural underpinnings out of which he reviews them, so that I enjoy reading his review of a film even when I have no intention of seeing it...
...Secondly, the officer has good reason to know that he or she has control of the outcome that is directly intended, saving the victim...
...Is Honner prepared to accept the idea that what we call soul is a product of the evolution of matter, as Raymo asserts...
...To the Editors: It was a pleasure to read Kenneth Woodward's insightful article, "Ushering in the Age of the Laity," as I began my association with the National Center for the Laity...
...At some point, I think we have to consider seriously whether we are any longer a democratic country...
...Even articles on topics of no special interest to me are rewarding because of the quality of the writing...
...KENNETH L. WOODWARD 30...
...A distinction made by Gregory Bateson has often been a useful guide: The explanations of the world of planets and billiard balls are of a different class from those that apply to the world of "information," by which Bateson means the world of living organisms...
...That death is what the killer wants to happen...
...they have progressed much closer to the Newtonian equivalent, when no one could legitimately doubt any longer that the earth goes around the sun...
...REV...
...Still on the taxiway—"Sorry, folks, we're taking a little extra time with maintenance...
...JERRY D. KORSMEYER The writer is a retired physicist formerly with the Westinghouse naval reactors program...
...Finally, let me add my "ditto" to the letters praising Richard Alleva's talents...
...In sum, thank you...
...GERALD J.WILLIAMS Is voting for real...
...Raymo cites attacks on science for its objective thinking and rational methods as though science were supposed to be more than itself and try also to be wise and moral and sensitive...
...Unfortunately, with the state of the sacrament these days, I wonder if anyone will ever again be "buoyed by the lightness of [their] cleansed souls," as was Ms...
...To learn how nonreligious Americans are, they asked respondents how often they pray and attend church, whether they consider religion important in their lives, believe in a life after death, and take the Scriptures seriously...
...Repohl's frustration is understandable...
...I was forever timing myself and worrying and constantly at confession on Saturday just to be on the safe side...
...science McMurray, Pa...
...Seattle, Wash...
...I have found that the diocesan press is often more objective, precise, insightful than the "major" secular publications that are attached to promoting a particular agenda (abortion comes to mind) and are addicted to locking onto every sensational story (O.J.Simpson comes to mind) and beating it to death from every angle...
...It is an evolving process that has killed off 95 percent of all species ever in existence...
...Each such soul seems to require a rather miraculous act of creation whenever sex, moral or immoral, free or forced, leads to conception...
...And indeed, we find that the Catechism guards all that medieval stuff that Chet Raymo was taught as a child— including the departed suffering in Purgatory for lack of indulgences—with very little of the hopeful advances made by biblical, ecumenical, and catechetical scholars and systematic theologians that John Honner has been reading...
...Perhaps because I edit a diocesan newspaper and know how much work, professionalism, and dedication go into the process...
...In Galileo's time there still were valid reasons to be suspicious of the Copernican universe—to argue, as the Jesuits did then, that Copcrnicus's views were legitimate speculation but not necessarily the truth...
...Oh my God," I said to my husband, "this person must have gone to my high school," and I started reading aloud...
...Personally, I found myself sympathetic with the parade watchers...
...The author replies: My numbers on the percentage of committed Catholics arc drawn from a series of studies by a team of political scientists whose work I featured in a Newsweek article [November 29, 1993...
...It produces life forms through imperfect genetic codes subject to decay...
...Teilhard speculated: Rahner carefully opened doors for theology to tiptoe into the present...
...Readers interested in the studies should contact Dr...
...Though the soul has "a natural inclination to be united to the body," it is also true that "the human soul retains its proper existence when separated from the body" (Summa Theolof>iae, I, 76, 1, ad 6...
...In contrast, someone who kills an abortionist is doing something more than just stopping an attack with the foreseen but regrettable result that the abortionist will die...
...To the Editors: The charming memoir by Anne Crawford Storz ["Pilgrims at the Automat," September 9] was a welcome relief from the yuppie-chic, nun-bashing of the baby-boom generation about the havoc a Catholic education has wreaked on their psyches...
...MURTAGH The realm of the laity Chicago, 111...
...Scientists have reason to ignore the wisdom and moral judgment of religious people who do not address science's conclusions directly...
...Both will happen more quickly if we get the details of the negotiations right...
...They lack the resources, the professional freedom, and the editorial space...
...He asks: Is there one rule for the born and another for the unborn...
...The word "evolution" does not appear in the Catechism...
...I found myself rethinking expectations I didn't even realize I had about lay-clergy relationships...
...paperwork"—I became completely absorbed in Kenneth Woodward's "Ushering in the Age of the Laity...
...Eliminating any guilt feelings seems to be the goal of a lot of psychotherapy today...
...kevin M. doyle News: Minors beat majors Saint Cloud, Minn...
...Many of us who grew up in the forties and fifties were in awe of priests and religious, crediting them with special connections to the Almighty...
...We do not yet know enough about the brain and mind to make final judgments on a numbcrof things...
...The conclusions of science often do threaten comforting beliefs...
...Perhaps because no one has come up with a better means of delivering adequate and accurate news of the local, national, and international church to a large number of people on a continuous basis...
...But the fuller challenge remains...
...Here is one example of the antiscience stance taken by the Catechism...
...It's not probable that women bent on abortion will change their minds because a particular abortionist has been murdered...
...Why am 1 so tired of reading disparaging remarks about diocesan newspapers— particularly when those remarks appear in other Catholic publications...
...I found Dennis Doyle's review of "spiritual" best-sellers to be insightful and a fair overview of this phenomenon ["Traffic Jam on the Spiritual Highway," September 9], He appeared to have no axe to grind and presented a helpful context for judging the works treated...
...True, the principle of self-defense holds that, as a last resort, anyone can use deadly force against an unjust aggressor in defense of his/her own life or that of another...
...To desire someone's death as a direct means even to a good end is morally wrong...
...orthodox, Bateson's inquiries into "the sacred" in his posthumously published work...
...To the Editors: Roger Repohl [Correspondence, September 23] asks why someone who adheres to the traditional justification 28 for killing an unjust aggressor would not be justified in taking the life of an abortionist...
...But I wonder if that distaste might be rooted in something else: a sense among the people for the difference between technically representative and truly representative government...
...To the Editors: Father Thomas Landy is right to be concerned about the distaste for political campaigning shown by the townspeople during the Fourth of July parade ["Politics on Parade," September 9...
...It gives me the opportunity to say just how much I enjoy reading Commonweal from beginning to end...
...O.S.B...
...Some Catholic thinkers have tried to take all this into account...
...The "situation" analogous to the baseball strike is the issuance of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church...
...JOSEPH G BACHAND Know your science Dayton, Ohio To the Editors: The response to Chet Raymo by John Honner, S.J., ("Science vs...
...Could you give him a couple of more inches of space to explain the researcher's standards for Catholic commitment...
...To the extent any of these questions can be answered "Yes," campaigners for office are as out of place at a Fourth of July parade as professional wrestlers at the Olympics...
...Today the importance of the clergy and their responsibilities is too often denigrated...
...v]isible creation has become alien and hostile to man, and creation is now subject to 'its bondage to decay'" (section 400...
...Another 30 percent of adult Americans were wholly or fundamentally secular in outlook, and the remainder were either nominally or moderately religious...
...For example, Roger Penrose in Shadows of the Mind (Oxford, 1994) and Frank J. Tipler in The Physics of Immortality (New York, 1994) argue with varying degrees of finesse for backwards and forwards entanglements across time and space which are noncomputational and which have the same kind of holistic character as does spirit in a nondualist spirit/ matter account of reality...
...Today new understandings of life, genetics, and brain processes are no longer in the plausible-but-tentative Copernican stage...
...Thanks, Commonweal, for flying with me...
...My first letter, therefore, gets to be one of praise...
...Honner says the church docs not teach a matter-spirit dualism: the soul is not a separate substance...
...This minimizes the full traditional understanding, as in Aquinas, that the soul is nonetheless a subsistent, incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal principle of intellection which informs a corruptible body...
...Is it possible that the parade watchers can esteem the ideals of the Declaration of Independence without believing for a moment that the mere act of casting a ballot constitutes representative government in any meaningful sense...
...Angels Fear (Macmillan, 1987), are illuminating and offer one way of attempting to resolve the conflict betweeen science and religion...
...Those scoring highest on these questions were then asked another set of questions keyed to the differences between the commitments expected of mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, and Roman Catholics...
...The church can change and baseball will return...
...JOAN HUBER BERARD1NELLI The one-minute monitor Bedford, N.Y...
...Religion I & II," September 23] was balanced, intelligent, informed, and yet also an example of the problem to which Raymo tried to alert us...
...JIM VAHI.E The writer is executive director of the National Center for the Laity...
...MARK J. NIELSEN Woodward wins Stockholm, S.Dak...
...Even though the officer knows the assailant may die, that outcome is not necessarily part of what he or she wants...
...Religious 27 people who want to teach scientists about morality and wisdom will have to show they have a good grasp of science's truthclaims about the world...
...Finally there was Liz Leibold McCloskey's "Complexities of Community," which would work well in an argumentation segment of my writing classes...
...This is serious business indeed, and calls for action on the part of all Catholics to urge the bishops of English-speaking lands to develop their own catechisms—which the Catechism encourages them to do— and to do it right, by using the resources of our experts in all theological disciplines...
...For example, we hold a police officer (or anyone else) morally blameless if he or she kills someone engaged in a murderous attack, whether on the officer or another...
...My husband was well into the New York Times and I settled in to savor the last pages of Commonweal along with the morning coffee...
...More, please South Portland, Maine To the Editors: In your two-part discussion on the historical and present conflict between science and religion, the article by Chet Raymo was somewhat of a disappointment, in that the sophistication of his arguments from the scientific point of view were pitted against a gradeschool understanding of contemporary theology and philosophy—a classic example of the "straw man" form of argument...
...Perhaps because I know that the diocesan papers that are more often mediocre than magnificent suffer from a lack of financial resources more than from a lack of purpose...
...Ursula in the Bronx we had a oneminute rule...
...MICHAEL BARNES The writer is a professor in the department of religious studies at the University of Dayton...
...To the Editors: Kenneth Woodward's recent article [ September 9 ] was one of the finest ever published in Commonweal] (REV...
...Crawford...
...As things currently stand, this is like telling us that the existence of the baseball players' union and a management organization is proof of the possibility of baseball...
...Kenneth Woodward's article in the same issue provided a fresh perspective on church roles...
...As a professional psychologist, I struggle daily with the interface between the scientific understanding of human behavior and that which cannot be adequately explained or understood within that paradigm...
...My remarks concerning diocesan newspapers are based on my reading of them, including several years of being a judge for the Catholic Press Association, a relationship I briefly renewed a year ago as the principal speaker at the CPA annual convention...
...If we "entertained" a bad thought beyond a minute it became a mortal sin...
...No contemporary physicist believes that the only components of physical reality are material particles moving causally and deterministically like tiny billiard ball* in absolute space and time...
...But current knowledge is extensive enough to make the traditional notion of animating principles called souls, as well as an incorporeal "intellective principle," highly implausible...
...To the Editors: Sitting in a USAir 737 at Pittsburgh the day after the air disaster, white-knuckled and without my essential paperback, I turned to Commonweal for September 9. Anne Crawford Storz's "Pilgrims at the Automat" read as well as any mystery...
...Perhaps because I read a large number of diocesan newspapers and find many of them to be interesting, informative, and provocative, so that 1 begin to wonder if the critics are really familiar with what they are criticizing...
...To the Editors: After subscribing a little over a year, 1 have grown to the point of reading Commonweal from cover to cover...
...JOHN HONNER, S.J No excuse for killing Basking Ridge, N.J...
...Raymo is closer to the mark...
...It has equal place for humans and for various lethal viruses...
...He referred, however, to research showing the number of minimally committed Catholics to be "a mere 10 million...
...To the Editors: I took the September 9 issue with me on vacation in Cape Cod and brought it to the breakfast table this morning...
...The writer is editor of the Saint Cloud Visitor...
...Raymo is correct in his response...
...Raymo's bluntness is closer to what is needed than Honner's finesse...
...What a wonderful essay...
...In the apostolic constitution Depositumfidei that serves as preface to that document, Pope John Paul II begins by telling us that "guarding the deposit of faith is the mission which the Lord entrusted to his church" (emphasis his...
...It was a complaint about your media columnist's comments on New Age music...
...Except for NC News Service material, the product just isn't up to professional standards...
...Korsmeyer might note in paragraph 283 of the new Catechism a grudging nod toward evolution and the contribution of science...
...BETTY O'CONNOR WALD Cleansed souls Wehawken, N.J...
...As long as the metaphysical term "matter" is used uncritically in that question, my answer is "No...
...But I believe the case can be made...
...He has a doctorate in theology from Duquesne University...
...I tore out "Traffic Jam on the Spiritual Highway" for future reference, finished the Correspondence section, and turned to read "The Last Word...
...And I think Father Landy may have missed much of what was happening there...
...Natural law morality...
...My first would-be letter to you had to be abandoned for lack of time to rewrite...
...Distinctions can be made...
...In a case like the one involving a police officer, the thrust of the defensive action is simply to stop an imminent attack, and there is no deliberate intention to take the aggressor's life...
...Here are ways of imagining "soul," as Christians have traditionally done, without reducing ourselves to dualism, deism, or behaviorism...
...They sinned and brought about death and suffering...
...I like the way it adds white to the church's historical identification with blue-collar concerns, its practicality in dealing with difficult issues, its interfaith orientation, and its exclusively lay character...
...SISTER NANCY BAUER...
...Honner finesses the issue, however, rather than acknowledging it fully...
Vol. 121 • October 1994 • No. 18
