Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Carlin stood me up Reston, Va. To the Editors: I don't make a habit of reading magazine articles while standing up. But today, as I was leaving the house to shop, I noticed...
...Yes, the contraceptive mentality can be abused to selfish and superficial ends...
...To the Editors: In his essay, "Ushering in the Age of the Laity" [Septcmber9], Kenneth L. Woodward contends that "most official Catholic journalism is fourth rate and there is simply no reason for all these mediocre diocesan newspapers to exist...
...We need to go beyond the open letter addressed to Pope John Paul II by Catholics Speak Out, which forthrightly declares, based on the lived experience of millions of Catholics, that the Vatican's opposition to contraception is wrong...
...I am a healthy and vigorous sixty-five-year-old...
...However, I feel compelled to have one last word about this subject, which sometimes seems to overshadow all the other sins and moral issues of the day...
...Congratulations to Carlin for an excellent analysis, and to Commonweal for printing it...
...The sexual rigidities still confound me...
...mark e. rondeau Needed: More, not less talk about sexuality Flushing, N.Y...
...I must concur with the contemporary poet that "Our wholeness depends too/on what we've forgotten...
...To be unwilling to embrace that future is to fail to be totally present...
...If there is a way out of this economic horror story, I haven't heard it yet...
...This possibility surely is worth contemplating...
...The church's authority for doing just that is clear in Matthew 16:19: "And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven...
...yet how seldom do most urban and suburban folk pause and really contemplate such "things that thrive under darkness/stirrings that draw toward light...
...It is, I suggest, the reason for so many broken marriages among these couples...
...I just couldn't put it down...
...I believe most "right-to-lifers" are well intentioned...
...Four years ago I met a widower at a party given by mutual friends...
...CARROLL C. ESTES 45...
...In my case, it was natural and produced afamily, but there was no planning involved, at least no successful planning...
...To the Editors: In his letter, "Misled by the Spirit...
...Many Americans are worse off even if there are more jobs...
...Well, in some cases feeding the hungry is simple—as simple as providing people with work...
...Today I find the much-maligned "contraceptive morality" a more considered, a more moral setting in which to decide to have a child, or indeed to celebrate love...
...Richlands, Va...
...topics as ministry to Haitian immigrants in central Florida, the retirement of a much-loved priest, the impact of the Challenger disaster one year after the fact on parochial school children and others who saw it happen, the response of the church to substance abuse, programs to aid families caring around the clock for disabled loved ones, a public school lunch program in southern Vermont...
...Is this only for now, as long as we are both healthy...
...TONY DiSTEFANO Obeying the Spirit Winston-Salem, N.C...
...Alexandria, Va...
...Some of us recognized a similar hunger in ourselves, even knowing the disasters and near-disasters that so many in the next generation were experiencing...
...He shies away from the word "love...
...Now let us attempt to define commitment, love, union, so that the focus of our attention is no longer solely on reproduction but on the beauty and goodness of sexual intimacy...
...To the Editors: I was cheered by David Carlin's deeply pessimistic article because I finally heard some truth-telling...
...At some point, I think we have to consider seriously whether we are any longer a democratic country...
...Continued on page 42) 2 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) As for Carlin's analysis, it has a lot in common with the inside-the-Beltway mentality that he criticizes...
...eight pregnancies in twelve years does limit energy and time to devote to lovemaking per se...
...Young reporters with the syndrome don't see real news in anything less than catching the mayor with his hand in the till...
...But I need to speak of last things, and of promises to share them...
...Early in his essay, Woodward writes in a light tone, "Have you ever noticed that the usher at every Mass is always the same person...
...appointment of a new minister by the town's largest congregation is definitely not news...
...Technology—so robots can absorb more jobs...
...With the spotted owl safe and the forests and mills closed, we certainly can't make our boards out of wood any more, or, for that matter, pay for our own meals...
...And I think Father Landy may have missed much of what was happening there...
...As happened with so many other women whose biological cycles were less than regular, we produced eight new lives in twelve years...
...they shared an interest in boating...
...STEVE BLOMBERG Last word on abortion...
...Does the average, unspectacular believer, priest, volunteer, or unchurched person have any input into what adorns this national public square...
...MARY T. bergan Workers unrecognized Libertyville, 111...
...We have a great relationship...
...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...
...But today, as I was leaving the house to shop, I noticed the article by David Carlin ["The Withering of the Working Class"] in your issue of October 7, and immediately starting reading...
...JOHN P. NELI.IGAN The big story syndrome North Adams, Mass...
...Big media types see yet another "Pope Is Out of Touch with American Catholics" story as real journalism...
...To the Editors: David Carlin's article made many salient points...
...Either Woodward has not read many diocesan papers, or he suffers from a condition I have observed both in big media types and in hotshot young reporters: "big story syndrome...
...then, perhaps, for persons who view the fetus this way, the fetus has become their idol...
...At least some of President Bill Clinton's troubles could be tied to this failure to set the economy right...
...To the Editors: Who got it right...
...In fact, the injunction to prevent the broadcast of the film was obtained by defense counsel who were representing individuals facing criminal charges whose most fundamental rights were at stake...
...An example is the concerted political and media campaign to blame the most vulnerable among us for many of society's problems, illustrated by the onesided attack on "welfare" for the poor while ignoring (concealing...
...Many of the town's hungry are being fed through my church's soup kitchen, but it's my opinion that the parish serves the most expensive meal in town, because it costs each customer nothing less than his or her human dignity to eat there...
...But by God, this used to be timber country...
...If too few men respond to the call, and competent, dedicated women are willing to serve, how can the church continue to deny the salvific message to millions of people because of patriarchal myopia...
...The working class in this country needs recognition and leadership...
...Stories unfavorable to the church are not ignored...
...There was a time when Carlin had the "vision thing" and put issues—not only one—in terms of social justice...
...It is possible that I will be the first to die, but given our age differences it's more likely that he will encounter death first...
...only his wife of forty years deserves his love...
...We never had time to perfect our sexual compatibility...
...Maybe it's pleasing to our souls to serve at the soup kitchen...
...To the Editors: Sadly for me and for many other "Catholics," as well as other non-Catholic Christians and other religious and spiritual people of good will, the hierarchy of the Catholic church and the editors of Commonweal continue to be obsessed with abortion...
...After his wife died, I think he did return to Mass—"for her," he would say...
...What is the nature of our relationship, the sexual nature of two older adults, he in his late seventies...
...After eight years writing for Catholic papers and writing for and editing small secular weeklies, I'm even more convinced that all journalism is local...
...Unfortunately, I did not see much evidence of vision in his column...
...Which is it...
...We share a bed and give each other tenderness and pleasure...
...No, it's not always the same guy...
...Encountering the siren song of individual freedom of the sixties and seventies, many of them, having felt cheated by the constraints of their upbringing, opted for freedom from those earlier choices...
...But there is continuity...
...The five diocesan papers I am familiar with—all good to excellent—frequently feature stories like these, as well as intelligent commentary from a Catholic perspective...
...using no "artificial" protection, we abandoned ourselves to conjugal pleasure when we weren't too tired, not so much as an expression of affection but as a relief from tension, a marital duty, a 42 way to keep peace...
...I want to be there to talk it through and to care for him...
...But lying and fairy tales aren't going to help...
...Sylvan exploration should mildly startle both grown-ups and children with the complexity and ultimate incomprehensibility of living things...
...Her loss ten years ago was devastating to him...
...It's currently fashionable to extol ecology as a formal science...
...He finds my preoccupation with religion interesting but somewhat obsessive...
...Our children were exhibiting a thirst for freedom which included travel, experimenting with drugs and sex, defying authority and protesting the war, seeking out new rituals and relationships, hungry for community...
...Woodward is wrong when he contends that "the national media is our public square...
...throughout these years I have been questioning how, as a Catholic woman and a feminist, I can resolve for myself these issues of love and sex, relationship, the quest for community, a need for celebration, an occasional Eucharist, a groping desire to live the Beatitudes more deeply...
...It's many different men and women—each, no doubt, with a story to tell—a story you're likely to find only in the diocesan newspaper...
...Both the Ontario Court (General Division) and the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed that the right to a fair trial takes precedence over the broadcast, for profit, of a film...
...Most of these stories would not be covered in the secular press...
...He was as involved as she in cooking and household chores...
...EDMOND C. SMITH 'Boys' not censored Ottawa, Ontario To the Editors: In response to a letter by Barbara Blaine [Correspondence, September 9] with respect to Richard Alleva's review of The Boys of Saint Vincent, I wish to advise you and your readers that no efforts were made by church leaders to keep the film from being broadcast...
...So, even at our ages, the crucial ingredients in the relationship are the openness, the promise "till death," and, yes, the unitive value of our physical beingtogether...
...It is instructive for me to ponder their relationship...
...Seattle, Wash...
...In the past I have written as a free-lance correspondent for the Florida Catholic, the Vermont Catholic Tribune, and the Trenton, N.J., Monitor on such (insignificant...
...We lived, I suppose, by an "anticontraceptive" mentality...
...ROBERT A. SENSER The writer served as a labor attache with the United States Foreign Service...
...They had good jobs and, having lived through the Depression, were skilled at saving money...
...We share meals and hobbies, sailing and traveling, projects and quarrels...
...No doubt some of what I want to say will raise eyebrows, but my purpose is rather to raise questions— questions that, I think, others share but which are not much discussed in public in a Catholic context...
...To the extent any of these questions can be answered "Yes," campaigners for office arc as out of place at a Fourth of July parade as professional wrestlers at the 44 Olympics...
...Nought may endure but Mutability," sang Shelley long ago ["Mutability," stanza 4...
...There is a man in my life now...
...By Vatican standards they do not exist or are merely tolerated...
...Without in any sense affirming sex without rules, I believe the current popular acceptance of premarital sex for committed or all-but-committed partners makes possible a more natural and realistic setting in which to explore and express their growing love, to plan for the future, and to experience their relationship as it evolves into a union of hopes and desires which they will solemnize in marriage...
...Later I reread it, sitting down, just to make sure my first impressions were right, and they were...
...He will not speak of death except to state that he will be buried with her...
...But do I have a right to be there...
...Still standing, I read all four pages to the end...
...A public square for whom...
...Education—for jobs that don't exist...
...Correspondence, October 71, Bernard Beronio asks: "If the ordination of women is not clearly shown by either Scripture or apostolic tradition, then what other authority does the church have for adopting it...
...Not so, as Mr...
...Covering the local parade is not news...
...Today, as profoundly rich as I feel for having given birth to all these fascinating adults, I would no longer describe myself in those terms...
...Or is it in fact an either/ or proposition...
...I was one of the lawyers who helped in the negotiations which brought about this model reconciliation agreement set up to help victims by avoiding the revictimization of litigation...
...Even after marriage, bound as we were by the strictures of Humanae vitae, we were still haunted by its misreading of marital union, with consequent problems of frigidity and premature ejaculation...
...This lyrical celebration of the holy and the mysterious in nature was hauntingly beautiful in mood and astutely executed...
...Paul Murray has written at length ['The Power of Humanae vitae," July 15] about the satisfaction of natural family planning...
...Carlin assumes that Clinton got the economy straightened out...
...I would go further...
...1 hope Carlin continues writing about the evils resulting from the power of class bias...
...It's like nailing boards on our houses in heaven...
...To the Editors: In the opening line of "Complexities of Community" [September 91, columnist Liz Leibold McCloskey writes: "The biblical mandate to feed the hungry sounds so simple...
...His married life had differed greatly from mine in that he and his wife, out of deference to a medical problem of hers, elected not to have 43 children...
...We arc noted as victims of the spotted owl and as the home town of the late rock star Kurt Cobain...
...But the anticontraceptive mentality has its downside as well...
...I want to advance a radical notion: The much-loved-priest-retires story (in the Catholic or secular press) probably matters more to more people, and is more likely to be clipped and saved...
...WILLIAM DAUENHAUER Is voting for real...
...Shouldn't we be discussing what lies ahead...
...The church has nothing helpful to say about these irregular unions which by virtue of age, gender, infertility, or illness are not capable of procreation...
...Is it possible that politics in America is dead because there are no longer any words to express ^he issues a genuinely represented community might concern itself with...
...the many more costly programs by which governments at all levels shower the rich with bountiful welfare (taxpayer subsidized benefits, monetary and nonmonetary, not earned by work...
...A 1950 product of a Catholic women's college, I lived by its rules...
...Despite all the rhetoric about freedom of speech and of the press in the United States, certain subjects are taboo, and one of them is the deleterious effects of the class structure on American society...
...Others have so argued in these pages...
...But as we began to spend more and more time together, our occasional visits to Mass have usually been to the community I choose, where the homilies are thoughtful and a sense of sacred space and time is created by the setting, the reverence, and the music...
...All over the world, in every church where I've ever attended Mass, it's always the same guy...
...But we do not commit, and, for me, something is lacking...
...It is the last great mystery of our lives...
...For me the search continues...
...Like the Washington pundits, Carlin places issues in the context of what wins/loses...
...To the Editors: Though Commonweal has published much significant material on aspects of sexual morality, it occurs to me that some quite personal reflections on my early married years, and about the maturation process that occurred once I distanced myself from Humanae vitae, will present a perspective not seen in your pages to date...
...Commonweal's editorial in the issue of September 23 asserts that the economy leaves much to be desired...
...HELEN FITZGERALD Deep-down things Wickliffe, Ohio To the Editors: The season was right for the presentation of the free-verse piece, "Out of the Dark" by Dixie Partridge [October 7...
...Although he had been brought up as a Catholic, indeed an altar boy, he never looked back as he abandoned his practice of going to weekly Mass, along with those restrictions on birth control that would have threatened his wife's health...
...To present myself at the altar for Communion...
...JOHN P. FLOENER Who's stupid now...
...Although he would deny that he loves me, he enjoys me, honors me, has fun with me, and I think cares for me deeply...
...We live together more than half the time in one of our two houses...
...Not for me any nostalgic reminiscing about the twenty-sixth anniversary of the encyclical, even though for the first twenty years of my marriage I could have been its poster child...
...Their life was each other...
...The church has not only the authority but the obligation to ordain sufficient numbers of priests to fulfill its mandate to "Go forth and preach the good news to all the world" (Matthew 28:19...
...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...
...our major political parties are providing neither...
...Pessimism beats lying Broad Brook, Conn...
...Carlin tells us...
...By contrast, we were denied any sexual pleasure prior to marriage...
...When we could, we at least had our human dignity...
...Now retired, he writes on human rights and related issues for a number of publications, including Commonweal...
...Too often, I'm afraid, the one serving the soup is there to justify his or her own goodness, and treats the one receiving the soup as an object of charity instead of as a brother or sister in Christ...
...Although Sidney Callahan has opened up the discussion with her remarks about same-sex marriage ["Why I Changed My Mind," April 22], much more talk and writing should be devoted to the potential of sexual intimacy for achieving the "two in one flesh" ideal of Genesis, without the exclusive and tendentious focus on reproduction...
...Indeed, during the relevant period, church leaders of the Archdiocese of Toronto, the Archdiocese of Ottawa, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ottawa were helping to set up a reconciliation model agreement which could potentially provide the victims of abuse with, among other things, in excess of $27 million in assistance...
...It is important for your readers to know that not only were church leaders not involved in trying to keep The Boys of Saint Vincent from being broadcast but that they were actually working, and continue to work, to help actual victims of abuse...
...Do they get any recognition in it...
...Tip O'Neill had it right when he said, "All politics is local...
...There was a time when I would identify myself at a meeting as "the mother of eight...
...The self-righteousness of the couple who use their burgeoning family as evidence of their devotion to God and each other, though they have never negotiated a relationship of mutuality and shared goals, is shallow...
...The only solution I can envision is that Carlin's "C-ls" will finally realize that "C2s" who do not earn a living wage, do not buy cars, and a shrinking market producing a shrinking dividend will result in a mass conversion of "C-ls" into decent human beings...
...I offer a hypothesis: If an "idol" is something that is blindly or obsessively adored...
...It's specific and immediate, and reaches them where they live...
...My parish serves a daily meal to the hungry in our small, rural, chronically depressed community...
...Personally, I found myself sympathetic with the parade watchers...
...something that preoccupies much of one's time, attention, and energy, is a major focus of one's consciousness, and that something is not God...
...Maybe Clinton has failed to create a more just economy while also antagonizing people on all sides of various cultural issues...
...It may have been the emperor, not the hypothetical female streaker, marching "bare-ass naked down the street...
...Our president describes most Americans as "middle class...
...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 9J...
...mark j. nielshn Jobs for the hungry Aberdeen, Wash...
...On the other hand, David Carlin in his column says the president's troubles stem from failing to see that "it's the culture, stupid...
...Though we were college graduates and chronologically adults, we remained children...
...The definition of self to which I have devoted the past twenty-some years, ever since the partner of my younger, more certain married years departed for his own freedom, is constantly evolving...
Vol. 121 • November 1994 • No. 19
