Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Almost all is forgiven Buy Shore. N.Y. To the Editors: Here is the renewal check I swore I'd never send. Frank McConnell has tried me nearly beyond endurance, and there have...
...To the Editors: Bravo to David R. Carlin, Jr., and his column, "Where Have All the Liberals Gone...
...But you have published several of my letters, repudiated Anna Quindlen...
...To speak of "homosexuality" without any qualifications as "deviant behavior," "a moral disorder...
...I believe that the article's author will find many priests who will hear her story with compassion and welcome her with God's forgiving love...
...To the Editors: Father Robert Drinan's article "Can We Ban Land Mines...
...I've always known being Catholic could be this much fun (although probably not all the time...
...The world has begun to wake up to this horror, and the question now is what are governments going to do to stop it...
...permeated with prejudice against homosexuals...
...Justice Blackmun is the perfect example of ajudge who makes law by imposing his own philosophy upon us all...
...Apart from the overriding claims of truth, it is only in this way that we can save people like "Madelein Gray" from the pain they have suffered...
...I think I understand also why many who make the same decision are disturbed for years...
...Japan To the Editors: The article "Giving Up the Gift" | February 251 was one of the most tragic stories I have ever read...
...Communication is all very well, but surely two-way is better than one-way' In some very limited circumstances, perhaps TV can turn the unspeakable into the bearable: also, as Hannah Arendl might have said, into the banal...
...The liberal prochoice movement learned that you could attack at will, thereby unleashing anti-Catholicism: Catholic liberals were struck dumb...
...Although this ten-years-on convert with no interest whatever in sports had to work hard to figure out all the allusions...
...Finally, many Catholics have heard the church's teaching against the background furnished by a society...
...Secondly, many moral theologians have disagreed wilh Humanae vitae and their view certainly constitutes a "probable opinion...
...BARBARA GhRACI The church on gays New York...
...One aspect filled me with intense sadness and anger...
...My first went to Sam Jones twenty-four years ago when he retired from the Celtics...
...The vast majority of victims arc innocent civilians who arc cither killed outright or maimed for life...
...I was a naive Catholic wife and mother who took a public stand against abortion, and it was this experience that taught me about dirty politics in and out of my church...
...According to Catholic theology, we may follow a probable opinion unless doing so would seriously harm another person...
...I personally do not believe it is a guilt trip inflicted by the Catholic church, but has its source in the bond between a mother and her child...
...Frank McConnell has tried me nearly beyond endurance, and there have been other times when I wondered if we need another "liberal" Catholic voice when the pendulum has swung so tar in that direction...
...Perhaps it's not too much to hope that some day you'll pull the plug on McConnell...
...Surprised by Joy was published in 1955, so the book was not "written before he had met Joy," and hence was not quite so "prophetically titled" as Ms...
...ci.rai.dine i.thf.n Gilgamesh it's not Prince Edward Island, Canada To the Editors: I am sure we must all be grateful to Frank McConnell for pointing out ("The McConnell Quakes...
...This anti-democratic, anti-liberal tactic continues to this day because we, as Catholics, just don't get it...
...But they also have an obligation to know accurately and completely "the traditional teaching of their religion" as it evolves, and to express it in a balanced and responsible manner...
...As nicely done as Sam Jones's bank shot...
...PATRICK 1FAHY The writer is United States Senator from Vermont...
...I'm back for more...
...When I asked him why he didn't say this publicly, he just smiled sadly...
...yet it is patently untrue to say that intercourse under these circumstances is "open to conception...
...Equally important was the innocent yet incredibly damaging silence of battered and threatened institutional professionals...
...JOHN KF.NDAI.L Silence can betray Fukushima Shi...
...THOMAS F. MAHER Lewis's Joy Collegeville, Minn...
...and "a kind of slavery" is to promote an environment prejudicial to homosexual people...
...But they must dissent from any approach which reduces gay and lesbian people to their physical lovemaking, and they should condemn expressions of church teaching whose language and tone betray more irrational fear than authentic pastoral care...
...The reason "Madelein Gray" was forced into her dilemma, she wrote, was a failure in using the "natural" method of birth control...
...Last fall, however, 1 began watching "NYPD Blue" on Frank McConnell's recommendation, and am completely capti valed...
...in those years I found that the majority of other priests did not agree with the teaching of Humanae vitae...
...To the Editors: This is only my second fan letter...
...O temporal O mores...
...Wilson's 1990 biography of Lewis, Joy Gresham first met Lewis in 1952...
...McConnell would not welcome more disasters to underline the peculiar value of the tube at such moments...
...In those days using the label "rightwing prolife Catholic" was an acceptable form of discrimination...
...But rarely into the intelligible, the really ¦quintcssentially human act...
...The difference is not that he opposes the death penalty, but that he is a selective killer...
...The characters are highly complex, and they ring true to me...
...In 1991 the United States bishops, echoing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the (Continued on page 2H) 2 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) object of violent malice in speech or in actions...
...But I laughed and laughed again when I read "Numero Uno" [editorial, January 14], your comment on Victoriae splendor...
...Meanwhile...
...Portland...
...January 28...
...February 25] does a superb job of describing the terrible carnage these indiscriminate weapons cause...
...Last September, my amendment for a moratorium on exports of anti-personnel land mines from the United States passed the Senate unanimously, but it will take far more than that...
...I am a seventy-three-year-old retired priest living in a rectory with our sixty-eight-yearold pastor and our forty-one-year-old associate...
...PETER j. RIGA A three-pointer Brooklyn, N.Y...
...And how much did McConnell get to talk with Kent Shockncck...
...McConnell calls "the endless sniggering over Michael Jackson or Tonya Harding orthe Bobbins...
...Human as we all are, I can understand her coming to the decision she made...
...Still, his valuable insight does seem to lead him into some pretty murky territory- all that business about being jarred into the third person, and then, through the beneficent workings of televised sounds and pictures from L.A...
...Wash...
...As a result they have given to the church's teaching a nuance which is prejudicial to homosexual persons...
...I would be the last to discount the comfort which he and presumably many others derived from learning via TV that their relatives had survived unscathed (presumably still others got a strong premonition that theirs had not), and I'm sure that Mr...
...They do...
...Further, there have been persons in the church who have contributed to the general prejudice against homosexuals by the derogatory language and tone they use in referring to gays and lesbians...
...Well, almost...
...To the Editors: It is supremely ironic that a Supreme Court Justice who for years has helped condemn millions of innocent human beings to death by lethal injection in abortion—basing himself on a right in the Constitution which nowhere and never mentions it textually or historically— now cannot find it in his heart to impose death by lethal injection in a Constitution which contains that permission textually, historically, and culturally...
...McConnell would count himself as a pundit, but surely Postman is neither more nor less self-appointed than McConnell: they both have something to say about media, and both find sponsors interested enough in what they say to afford them space in print...
...The Catholic bishops of the state of Washington have acknowledged that "|T|he manner in which Catholic teaching has been concretely conveyed has contributed to the prejudice against gays and lesbians...
...In that context, what is the analogue of the tube on January 17...
...Prejudice and the violence (physical and psychological) that stems from it arc equally "moral evils" and ought to be denounced as such...
...I'm afraid it will take something more substantial than the lucubrations to which your critic's quake experience gave rise to inspire in anyone this side of Camille Paglia more admiration for the medium which regularly deals in what Mr...
...Another bishop told his priests that they were not to preach on the encyclical's prohibition of artificial birth control...
...perhaps we need to examine more closely what we arc saying, the way we arc saying it, and its effects on both social reality and individual lives...
...a woman afflicted with Crohn's disease who finds she is pregnant faces a most difficult situation...
...TV coverage of the quake is like Gilgamesh or Doonesbury or Mary Worth...
...An important part of the success of the pro-abortion movement was the technique learned in that Washington state battle, the deliberate political seduction, and attendant corruption, of some of the so-called liberal Catholics who then became a prochoice vanguard in the trenches...
...March 25...
...The issues too are complicated, just as in life...
...robfrt Ni'GF.NT 'NYPD Blue': Yes...
...Kaufman suggests, though the civil (1956) and sacramental (1957) marriages took place after the appearance of the book...
...Lewis was Clive Staples (not Stapleton...
...To the Editors: David Carlin asks whether Catholics "have a right to believe that homosexual conduct is immoral and to express their belief publicly...
...Thirdly, the church's teaching that every 28 act of sexual intercourse must be open to conception is everywhere contradicted...
...PATRICK G HENRY Blackmun on trial Houston, Tex...
...Despite my sympathy, 1 was disturbed by the passage in the article in which a counselor is quoted as not knowing any priest in the community who would listen with compassion, and by the paragraph asserting that the church is not open to counseling and reconciliation...
...Catholics need not label themselves "dissidents" nor condemn the church's view on samesex lovemaking...
...to be put back into the center of one's life in the first person...
...JOHN FRAZIER Not a guilt trip Chicago, 111...
...he opposes the death penalty for the criminal who murdered his victim without mercy, without conscience, and without compassion...
...The camera work is unparalleled on television...
...Living on the other side of the country, I look forward each week to the growths and setbacks of those extremely human cops and their charges in the Big City...
...I. too, lived through the McCarthy era but in 1973 I also lived through the first political battle in my state overabortion-on-demand...
...This does not square with my experience...
...To the Editors: 1 read Madelein Gray's article with much sympathy...
...Where liberals went Bellevuc...
...They have never had to deal with the immense human suffering and economic damage land mines cause...
...To the Editors: In reponse to the letters criticizing "NYPD Blue": I am a devotee of public television and make only rare excursions to the commercial channels...
...in lhe language of the trade...
...And then there are our cave-dwelling ancestors socializing by taking something in hand and drawing pictures on the walls, some presumably watching and making suggestions between bites of tapir meat...
...JAMES R. KELI.Y From the editors: You should see our jump shot...
...I didn't think I'd ever write another...
...I must add that despite my criticism of priests and bishops for their lack of courage, I have seldom seen them lacking in kindness and understanding...
...REV...
...But he too never expressed his belief in public...
...the politically correct liberals know it and use it with impunity...
...But two corrections are needed: First, C.S...
...In that struggle, a lot of Catholic liberals went into studied neglect...
...The confessional scenes almost make me nostalgic for that street-smart yet spiritually sensitive priest sitting on the other side of the confessional screen...
...Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs...
...To the Editors: Bel Kaufman's personal memoir of Joy Gresham |March 25) is a most welcome treat...
...How long will the church continue to propagate this "natural" method as the only licit means of limiting births0 I was an active priest for sixteen years...
...The program shows real people dealing with real problems as they rise in the justice system...
...Where have the liberals gone...
...Others wielded clubs that whacked my knees and put knots in my head...
...However tiresome the subject has become, it is important that all people, including priests, theologians, and bishops, speak the truth as they see it, and that journals like Commonweal continue to be forums for debate on this issue...
...he doesn't give a second thought to permitting the death of innocent human beings who have done nothing except to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...
...i.inda a morrow The Pentagon says 'No' Washington...
...Yet-and this is the reason for my anger—lew of these priests had the courage to tell the people in public what they believed...
...I can tell wit when I see it...
...Incidentally, as to the column's reference to "self-appointed media pundits like Neil Postman," I don't know where Mr...
...and, most important, delighted me beyond telling with "Numero Uno" |cditorial...
...the talented anchorman...
...The church does not forbid intercourse after menopause, during pregnancy, or during the "safe" period...
...I have urged the Clinton administration to seek a global ban on the production and use of land mines, but the Pentagon opposes it...
...This was pure joy...
...A bishop— not the bishop of the diocese where I worked in Japan—told me that the teaching is impossible for anyone...
...Father Drinan reminds us that, like chemical and biological weapons, land mines need not be a fact of life if we muster the political will to outlaw them...
...The tendency of some Catholic teachers to speak about homosexual orientation and activity as if these were the supreme evils or as if they constituted a dangerous attack on marital values illustrates the point...
...Other militaries have also refused to give up these weapons...
...And in no other series, on either public or commercial television, have I seen the role of religion in providing moral underpinnings defined as well as in "NYPD Blue...
...c'mon...
...More than once I have attended the Project Rachel seminars provided to help priests of the Chicago archdiocese deal sensitively and skillfully with the trauma of abortion...
...all of us could and would help a Madelein Gray to be healed, and so would many other priests of my acquaintance...
...Second, according to A.N...
...To escape the charge of bigotry...
...February 111 the redeeming social value of TV in relation to his family's experience of the Los Angeles earthquakes...
...If the church, its leaders, and its doctrine are consistently and unjustly characterized by some as "homophobic," perhaps we need to do more than defend our right to speak out...
Vol. 121 • April 1994 • No. 8
