Correspondence Dumping on Dole, debating Mary Douglas, reviewing the reviewers
A 'No' on Dole I have always had the greatest respect for Sidney Callahan and she is certainly free to vote for whomever she prefers ["Dear Mr. Clinton/' August 16]. I do not, however, find her...
...When Woody Allen argued in all sincerity that "the heart has its reasons," thereby refusing to see any interesting ethical dilemma in bedding the seventeen-year-old adopted daughter of his longtime romantic partner, he deepened our moral numbness...
...james j. uebbing A genre mistake...
...It is painful to read this characterization of a work so canny and so deftly written...
...Fortunately, most of the people who have taken time to write me about the "Newtape File" appreciated the humor and the strangeness of the morally inverted universe of which Newtape is an avatar...
...Carroll, I am quite sure, would expect no such allowance...
...Callahan objects to...
...The writer is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross...
...DON WYCLIFF It wasn't a myth James Uebbing provided Commonweal with an unbelievably bad review [July 12] of James Carroll's memoir, An American Requiem...
...2) The president's stand on certain abortion procedures can be nullified by state legislation or by a Supreme Court decision, whereas his defeat will almost certainly result in infringements of workers' rights...
...For the simple fact is that we seem to be in close accord...
...Last night I read the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, and their Call to Political Responsibility...
...Whatever our choice, we confront the problem of choosing which church teaching we will sacrifice...
...Readers who've come this far should simply turn to the piece itself and reach their own judgments...
...Clinton for re-election is wrong because the president has taken a morally wrong stand on abortion...
...Pick your issues I came away from reading John T. Joyce's article ["I Can't Back Clinton," July 12] with the impression that it expresses the dilemma of many Catholics...
...Maybe next time...
...But it's worse than he thought, for there probably are people out there who agree with James Uebbing that the only thing over the hill is more of the same...
...PATRICK CONNOR Bordentown, N.J...
...The review stresses those arguments in the book which support Wy cliffs larger point: Catholic parishes are an embarrassingly antidemocratic and racist relic of the past...
...This proved fertile ground...
...Or do we proceed by making the best possible choices that our own consciences dictate...
...To say this, of course, is not to claim that Lewis himself was given to vitriol, but it's instructive that upon completing the book Lewis acknowledged how happy he was to escape the perspective of Screwtape...
...Their choices, made in both cases at considerable personal sacrifice, arose from what used to be called civic virtue: care, grounded in justice and love, for the good, especially the moral good, of one's community...
...Nor would I have thought that the Letters' being canny, deftly written, and clever precluded their being vitriolic as well...
...Oh, no, it's far more interesting than that...
...Uebbing hasn't a clue about such things...
...Supporting Mr...
...The writer is Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago...
...I hope John Joyce votes, and votes his conscience, in November...
...And he knows now that his powerful father, on the other side of so many barriers neither created, also hoped, with at least comparable nobility, and also knew disappointment...
...Clinton's defeat are likely to occasion many more abortions than would occur if he is re-elected...
...In the book's third-to-last paragraph, the author does offer some support for Wycliff's argument: "Discrimination against even African-American Catholics painfully displayed the fragility of the line between community and fortress...
...From such convictions come bad reviews and, unfortunately, many other bad things...
...The Letters are, if I may say so, diabolically clever...
...I saw that abortion, along with birth control, is one of many issues the bishops address...
...But mostly I am disturbed that the messianic nuptial image of Christ as bridegroom and the church as bride, understood in a grossly physical way, has kept your writer from reaching the logical conclusions of her many other insights about women...
...Too flippant I was shocked by Commonweal's flippant descripton of the magnificent celebration of the Tridentine Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral as "mostly malum, but great outfits" [editorial, June 14...
...It was an exciting experience, and I must congratulate not only the author but Commonweal for having the wisdom to publish her article...
...Perhaps the piece also serves to dramatize our "moral obtuseness," "moral flatness," and "inversion of the moral universe," but exploration of these rich questions would have required analysis far lengthier than the editors allotted...
...He tells us that James Carroll lacks "imagination," that his writing becomes "depressing," because he once thought that something better might lie "just over the crest of the hill...
...ANNE DRUMMEY O'CALLAGHAN Norwalk, Conn...
...A case in point: the letters praising the courage of Archbishop Quinn for speaking out on needed reforms-not to mention the writer who praised the pope's courage (your headline was "A heroic pope...
...Lewis go unanswered [review, June 14...
...He gives clear priority to the former...
...steve rosswurm Chicago, III The reviewer replies: Imagine the surprise of a traditionalist like me at being accused of issuing a "modernist salvo against parishes...
...Callahan that President Clinton has been disappointing in many ways...
...It follows from these and other arguments that even one who regards abortion as an absolute evil can in good conscience support Mr...
...Joyce tries to resolve the dilemma by asking what is more important to the cause of human rights worldwide, protecting the lives of unborn infants or protecting workers' rights...
...Thus when he refers to Sartre as "our ally" and to Woody Allen as "our Old Nickian ally," and when he embraces Madonna as "our Devilkin" and a "prime candidate for demonification," declaring that "she has gone beyond even my instructions," what other conclusion can be reached, within the universe Professor Elshtain has created, than that the three are in some sense (metaphorical or otherwise) agents for the work of the Devil...
...Do you really consider the banal liturgies to which most of our parishes subject us today a bonum...
...I allowed in my review that Carroll's story was sad, and I quite agree that his narration was tinged with irony, doubt, and regret...
...It was, after all, an account of how he lost faith in himself, his father, his country, and his church over impulses and ideas that seem to have lost much of their edge in the intervening years...
...As for Woody Allen et al.: Newtape is an underling in Hell whose mission is to corrupt humanity...
...I was, first of all, given the assignment of trying to do a "Screwtape" turn with contemporary American society as the launching point...
...Just ask the many women who already work at lower levels in the church, or the lay men and women who worked on the papal birth control commission...
...he never suggested "that the White House can give us justice and that the Vatican can give us God...
...A bad idea Mary Douglas's "A Modest Proposal" is no more than a desperate stab at integrating women and "a feminine voice" into the hierarchical structure of the church...
...But after watching the Republican Congress over the past two years, I hope he wins and I hope he keeps that veto pen handy...
...I doubt it...
...russ pate Dallas, Tex...
...That is quite possible-other than the piece itself I have no way of knowing what she had in mind, so I confined my brief comment to what I regarded as its outstanding feature...
...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Nashville, Tenn...
...So is Dole...
...Without ordination and the respect accorded to deacons, priests, and bishops who make up the hierarchy, women might as well tilt at windmills...
...If that is what Mr...
...And he may well agree that such wars are less likely to occur if Clinton is re-elected than if he is defeated...
...So much for word choice...
...McCabe's literalness evidently prevents him from seeing how satire works...
...Parochial complexity Readers who content themselves with Don Wycliff's review [July 12] of John McGreevy's Parish Boundaries rather than reading the book itself will have only a partial idea of what the author is up to...
...in calling for a reevalu-ation of the papacy [Correspondence, August 16...
...Continued on page 43) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) What I hoped to communicate was what I think McGreevy did: that the old ethnic parish was a mixed blessing-a powerfully effective instrument of community, cohesion, and development, but also, more often than not, an incubator of racist, xenophobic, un-Christian attitudes and behaviors...
...I forget why I went after Sartre, but given his general bloodymindedness on such matters as gulags and the edifying spectacle of shedding blood in any cause he deemed revolutionarily correct, he seems a pretty good candidate for the moral flatness school...
...But not supporting the president is also wrong because it would endanger the rights of workers...
...How about "ad-(Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) mirable" or "praiseworthy...
...For today's Catholics, comparable achievements in a more inclusive context would seem a worthy goal...
...Joe Carroll and his son James walked different paths, the one inspired by J. Edgar Hoover and World War II, the other by John XXIII and John F. Kennedy...
...Two questions: Must we as Catholics disregard and therefore nullify all the positions on issues other than abortion taken by parties and candidates...
...Carroll is not justifying himself over against his father...
...They are not meant to be literalized and certainly not to be used to limit women's access to the sacred...
...Clinton for re-election...
...It struck me upon first reading, and does so still, as an occasionally clever and amusing screed that too frequently scores rhetorical points off our culture's easiest targets...
...Perhaps she means the intervention in Haiti, which helped oust a brutal (and hitherto U.S.-supported) military dictatorship...
...and his recollections of youthful experiences are tinged less with righteousness than with irony, doubt, and regret...
...j. peter nixon Washington, D.C...
...Like men, they have differing views on authority and how best to exercise it...
...So how to describe the action of Archbishop Quinn...
...It ought to have been...
...Clinton's judicial appointees, however, seem to take the principle of habeas corpus review seriously, while I suspect that Dole's "conservative" judges (his term, not mine) would gleefully deny appeals before the ink on them had dried...
...Liberation," he tells us, "is usually conceived of as liberation from the past, but the past will always persist and organized attempts to overthrow it fail at a very high price...
...They are not thereby to be exempted from historical scrutiny, however, when they sit down and write of historical events, and it is foolish to imply otherwise...
...Which candidates, which party ought we choose...
...Of course it's hard to estimate how many lives these interventions saved, but it's a fair bet that it's more than a partial-birth abortion ban would save...
...Uebbing knows this is silly...
...Does anyone really doubt that Allen is merely rationalizing his own moral turpitude, or that Madonna is anything other than a savvy promoter of her own product...
...So much for the sixties, for the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the renewal of Catholicism, those "pacifist, ecumenist, and modernist enthusiasms" which supposedly led James Carroll to his "tragic" failure, his "delusion or self-deception...
...roger n. hancock Portland, Maine Adjectival inflation Currently, I think, there is a devaluation of the word "courage" in Catholic discussions of intra-church affairs...
...Rather, it is simply to acknowledge that life is complex, and seldom more so than when dealing with matters of race and religion...
...And in turn, this weaving of geography, education, and church produced a more resilient social fabric...
...McGreevy's book is worthy of that struggle...
...Images of God and of the church stretch our minds and hearts...
...BEATRICE VON ROEMER New York, N.Y...
...He writes as he does because, he says, Carroll is a "good specimen" of a "type" from the sixties, people who got caught up in "the myth of liberation...
...I would offer the following by way of rebuttal: (1) The economic hardships resulting from Mr...
...To acknowledge the negative aspects is not in any way to deny the positive...
...To call the debate morally frivolous would be to pay it high praise...
...A women's commission indeed...
...But I did not-repeat, did not-"suggest that Woody Allen, Madonna, and Jean Paul Sartre are agents of Satan...
...No doubt, too, that many are as capable as Carroll of irony and regret in their more recollected moments...
...Pick your priorities It seems, from John T. Joyce's piece, that he's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't...
...this was the love that did them in...
...david j. o'brien Worcester, Mass...
...Let us pray that the church authorities take heed, but, even more important, that women themselves take the steps necessary to insure that the modest proposal is implemented with haste...
...I won't say it solves "the problem of women in the church," but for all reasonable people the proposal does make sense (besides being told with wit...
...The review, yet another modernist salvo against parishes, can only encourage those policy currents within the church that want to destroy them...
...An example of true courage could be found in the letter by Margaret Sheridan [August 16], describing the decision she and her husband made to go ahead with the birth of their baby, knowing it was doomed to die...
...MARY GORMAN GYARFAS Durand, III...
...I agree with Ms...
...Wycliff's review is dismaying for those of us trying to help sustain our parishes as among the last foundations of inclusive community and cohesion left in urban America...
...How do we take part in political activities in good conscience...
...I do not, however, find her arguments convincing...
...While it might have been useful to have a broader debate about the morality of late-term abortions, what we got instead was an exercise in "procedural fetishism" similar to arguments about whether electrocution or the gas chamber is the more cruel form of execution...
...Yes, Clinton is pro-death penalty...
...My point was that moral obtuseness, promoting a kind of numbness about moral questions, feeds a flatness of being and an inversion of the moral universe of the sort that fuels giddiness in the nether world...
...It is perhaps a sign of age when one rarely encounters a new idea, but that is what happened to me when I discovered Mary Douglas's "A Modest Proposal" [June 14...
...The reviewer replies: I am sorry that David O'Brien found such disappointment in my misreading of An American Requiem that he felt compelled to construct a misreading of his own...
...McGreevy has much more complex (and interesting) things to say about the history of Catholic parishes and race than Wycliff's review suggests...
...Douglas seems to feel that women priests would subvert hierarchical structures and safeguards...
...And James Carroll can tell their story so well because he loved his father and because he knows now that both of them tried, as best they could, to act responsibly...
...Too bad Professor McCabe wasn't one of them...
...caustic 7 This seems to me an apt term to describe the combination of bilious malice and blistering critique that characterizes Screwtape's letters...
...Courage is Oscar Romero ordering the Salvadoran troops to lay down their arms, or the lone Chinese student standing in front of an advancing tank in Tiananmen Square...
...Viewed from this angle Catholics sustained faith while structuring a genuine community life...
...Not all women who desire priesthood also desire a discipleship of equals...
...Carroll explains-convincingly, I think-how time, and love, have purged his memory of anger...
...Imbedded in the reviewer's cynical remarks is the conviction that, in most important things, no one is responsible...
...Rosswurm drew from my review, either I wrote it poorly or he read it poorly...
...Or perhaps she means the intervention in Bosnia, which helped end a genocidal war that had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives...
...Carroll did believe that, so he quite properly ends his memoir in sadness...
...The bill left other kinds of late-term procedures unregulated and evidence from the pve-Roe era suggests that a ban would never be seriously enforced...
...The reviewer replies: I am surprised that what was literally a parenthetical remark should have generated such a lengthy response from Professor Elshtain (whose work I have had the pleasure of reading and reviewing), but perhaps the following may clear up some confusion: First, my American Heritage defines vitriolic as "bitterly scathing...
...In the end, Carroll's memoir is about the love of country that father and son shared...
...He knows as well as Uebbing that things did not turn out as he had hoped, but he is not in the least ashamed of those hopes, nor should he be...
...A fresh thought...
...3) Joyce would probably agree that there are other absolute evils besides abortion-for example, unjust wars...
...He spanks me as well but that is rather less important than his description of that masterwork of Christian apologetics, The Screwtape Letters, as "vitriolic...
...With respect to the veto of the partial-birth abortion bill, it is unlikely that this legislation would have saved even one unborn child...
...david mccabe...
...David McCabe writes interestingly on matters philosophical and I have appreciated his book reviews in the recent past...
...I find myself confused as to which of Clinton's "military interventions" Ms...
...This may account, as well, for his misreading of my "Newtape File" in the Seedbeds of Virtue collection edited by Mary Ann Glendon and David Blankenhorn...
...No doubt there were many who felt as Carroll (and, I assume, O'Brien) did in those days...
...For one thing, the reviewer simply misreads the book...
...I wonder if McCabe is sufficiently attuned to the claims of various genres...
...Uebbing, admittedly not of that generation, is wiser...
...They help us to appreciate on a level beyond reason...
...But I cannot let his astonishing swipe at C.S...
...Overall, Professor Elshtain appears to believe that I have failed to understand what she had in mind with her piece...
...In fact, of course, what Uebbing calls the myth of liberation was nothing more than a sense of personal responsibility...
...When Madonna equates "express yourself" as licensing untrammeled freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want to, at least in front of the camera, that, too, habituates her legions of fans to a flat, morally empty notion of human possibility...
...But that generalization is radically modified in the next two paragraphs...
Vol. 123 • September 1996 • No. 15
