Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Alleva hit the right note Tracy, Calif. To the Editors: My wife Marie and I were beginning to think we were the only ones who did not appreciate Jane Campion's The Piano. Most...
...GIA G. PASCARELLI Thanks, but no thanks New York, N.Y...
...Most critics were simply agog over it, and nearly everyone has continued to jump on the bandwagon...
...Thank you for that...
...Eating and breathing that ghetto's pervasive Catholicism, many of us deluded ourselves with existentialist anonymity...
...But might there not be a connection between the doctrinal positions of Catholicism and its very ability to resist the times...
...and (c) selfcritical humor—her quip in the same column about "our remaining readers...
...If your editors are laity- who-happento-be-Catholic-but-our-magazine-doesn'thave-to-say-so, then why proudly display your awards from the Catholic Press Association each year...
...Please include name, address, and phone number, should I need to contact you for clarification...
...Jane Campion is indeed a most talented director, as shown by Angel at My Table...
...Catholic beliefs, Catholic values are the yardstick by which they measure the events of the day...
...No phone calls, please...
...This being the female-driven renaissance that it is, complete with wars, scientific progress, artistic bounty (e.g., cinema), and clergy scandals, Catholic humanists are faced with a challenge paralleling that facing contemporaries of More and Erasmus: the unity of the church...
...Continued on page 25) 2. CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) Is 'Commonweal' Catholic...
...concerns of people everywhere and to do so within the abiding framework of the Christian tradition...
...It has no mandate from the church...
...Thank heavens for the honest and courageous appraisal given by your critic Richard Alleva [January 14...
...But now, past whom do you need to wink and nod...
...If so, the Catholicism of Commonweal stands in the most sophisticated, and silliest, tradition of disaggregated, individualist, existentialist peekaboo...
...he never felt a need to give a wink or a nod to get by...
...Your recent moves have invited more back to the fences...
...Nor does she seem particularly exercised that Christians still differ radically about such central doctrines as the definition of sin, prayer to the saints, and justification...
...But] there is another sense in which The Commonweal cannot even be called a religious magazine...
...I recently spoke to Anne Carr about the church's punitive response when she allowed her name to appear on an open letter that urged conversation on abortion and other topics...
...No matter how many acclaim the film's alleged greatness, your critic was not afraid to suggest that perhaps the emperor (Keitel...
...And what does it say about the Catholic church's ability to converse with its own people, many of whom do not even have the benefit of a high school understanding of theology, if that fact precludes their right to be included in the debate...
...For example, she holds that Saint Paul would not be greatly bothered by a Christendom divided into Presbyterians, Catholics, Pentecostals, etc...
...Andrew galligan Abortion: we need to talk Chicago, 111...
...b) independence—e.g., the editor's "Notebook" taking issue with Anna Quindlen on the bishops and Catholics for a Free Choice [January 14...
...had no clothes...
...and (Msgr...
...He's scolding the tortoise...
...The editors reply: By chance, while pondering a response to (Mr...
...that you continue to print in clergy signatures...
...Should we regard their deepest, heartfelt opinions as being half-cooked because they were not fostered on the college level...
...Even in The Piano the cinematography and the symbolism were very well done, and the theme of feminine liberation was quite telling and up-to-date...
...Fleming Rutledge's "thank you note" to the Roman Catholic church for having the courage to resist the drift of our times by refusing to accommodate to every passing whim of the culture [January 14...
...Commonweal once dwelt within the Catholic ghetto, and the ghetto maintained its Catholic identity...
...Now, please consider this further suggestion, also for clarity: Commonweal is either Catholic, or it isn't...
...EDWARD T. OAKES, S.J...
...The lack of an editorial banner of the magazine's association with Catholicism is a useless vanity, similar to the e.e.cummingsly (Rev...
...Is Commonweal's (Catholicism) some pragmatic holographic fig-leaf, brilliant and there when you need it and switched off when impolitic...
...Only after expressing a certain casual insouciance about these central matters does the author go on to praise Roman Catholicism for its stance contra mundum...
...But for the latter to work, we neighbors have to stand around the fences and chat more often—especially about Christ and what we are called to do in his name...
...ALBERT SCHORSCH III The writer is director of the Reynold Hillenbrand Institute at Niles College Seminary...
...To the Editors: In Margaret O'Brien Steinfels' s critique of Anna Quindlen and of Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice ["Drawing Lines," January 14], we are faced with some of the most problematic attitudes of Catholic official thought on the abortion debate in this country...
...I will admit to not knowing much about Catholics for a Free Choice and where their consciences lie in the matter of calling themselves "Catholic," but I would say that the bigger problem lies in the church's refusal to engage its own people on the topic of abortion...
...It may be that few Catholics know the history of Catholic teaching on abortion, but given the opportunity by the church to be part of a conversation about it they "Can he phone you back...
...Chicago, 111...
...It cannot commit the authority of the church...
...But to keep this center, it must publicly and corporately commit to Catholicism in every sense of the word...
...Is Commonweal Catholic or not...
...Amen...
...To the Editors: I was much moved, nay, edified by the Rev...
...Our unity can be 25 maintained substantially by clarity and precision, by lots of good neighbors mending lots of good fences...
...To the Editors: Commonweal is much too important for American Catholicism, now revving into schism's second gear, not to represent the full breadth of our opinions...
...The Commonweal represents the efforts of a group of lay journalists to weigh and evaluate the...
...While there is a problem when Catholics not versed in canon law or the Catholic theological tradition claim that abortion is acceptable, does that mean that those of us who know better should condescend to them...
...This—no more and no less...
...Its editors and most of its contributors are Catholics...
...Thank you...
...Here's what he wrote...
...might learn something, and perhaps that conversation would put an end to the one wherein most average "faithful, but dissenting Catholics" are "talking with their feet...
...To the Editors: For a book I am writing, I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has a story to tell about a remarkable response following prayer to Saint Anthony or Saint Jude...
...At one time it might have been necessary, with bishops being vain and glorious and mightier, for a lay Catholic magazine to wink and nod to get along...
...It is primarily concerned with the temporal order...
...Commonweal has reasserted its own importance for Catholicism, and is reclaiming the intellectual center it once held...
...Both for the sake of Catholicism and for CommonweaVs own sake, the magazine's address must read neither the NCR nor NYT nor Nation nor Crisis anteroom, or anything else but Commonweal...
...I cannot help but wonder, however, whether her praise for the Roman church undermines her central thesis: that the central divisions in Christianity, both denominational and doctrinal, are relatively insignificant...
...Cogley was not good at schmuanee, or at existentialist peekaboo...
...Now, with the Catholic ghetto in diaspora amidst pluralism, public professions of faith are necessary to maintain identity...
...Send your story to: Mitch Finley, P.O...
...To be sure, there is a sense in which The Commonweal can be called a Catholic magazine...
...Box 7128, Spokane, Wash., 99207-0128...
...Does this mean that Commonweal is (Catholic) too...
...The editors may individually say so, but it won't be true until Commonweal says so, every issue...
...But the dramatic development, depth, and understanding just were not there...
...Unity can be maintained tenuously through misty equivocation and confusion disguised as nuance, which is, in reality, shmuance...
...Would not the proposal to weaken the distinctively Catholic doctrines for the sake of unity ultimately lead to the danger that the Roman Catholic church too would fall prey to the same accusation that Pastor Rutledge levels against mainline Protestantism: that it "has made so many accommodations to contemporary culture as to be almost indistinguishable from it sometimes...
...That is why editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels merits several brave for a noticeable move toward (a) catholicity—e.g., the inclusion of Janet Smith's essay in the forum on Veritatis splendor [October 22, 1993...
...MITCH HNLEY 26...
...Schorsch's letter, we ran across a passage in a John Cogley column published in the issue of December 14,1951...
...Author's query Spokane, Wash...
Vol. 121 • February 1994 • No. 3
