Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Elusive common ground Cardinal Bernardin's challenge to find some Catholic common ground [editorial, September 13] is a great idea. I am not as hopeful about its...
...I talked to serious conservative Catholics ranging in age from sixteen to eighty-four, and found them eager to talk to me, partly because no one else had asked them how they felt about contemporary Catholicism...
...I simply want to say that it is going to take more work than anyone can imagine who has not already tried it...
...Sidney's switch Just finished Sidney Callahan's bailout from the Democratic party over the matter of partial-birth abortion and her tacit abandonment of all the critical issues Democrats have espoused for the past half-century ["Dear Mr...
...Yes, friends, as I tried to make clear, I am casting my vote mainly to protest Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion bill and secondarily in distrust of Clinton's moral character...
...Sidney Callahan ["Dear Mr...
...However, I cannot vote for Dole...
...Traditionalists and progressives have widely disparate ideas about the nature of the church, the authority of the pope, the theology of the Mass, and the truth behind Humanae vitae, clerical celibacy, an all-male priesthood, and the future of religious life...
...Conventional doubts about "work-fare" are that the tasks given to people will be just "make-work" and that mothers will not be able to care for their children...
...Apart from that option (not available in every polling place), what is someone for whom voting is an important function of citizenship to do...
...WILLIAM HONNEN Saint Augustine, Fla...
...Rosewood's "children" included many hydrocephalics, ranging over all three of the crude classifications then popular: "idiot" (no intellectual capacity...
...Acknowledging bestowal of an honorary degree awarded by the University of Adelaide, he delivered its Centenary Oration on the contribution of higher education to Western culture...
...Historically, the church's social teachings have emphasized the value and dignity of human labor and the right of every person to have a gainful, purposeful, and respected role in society...
...I, too, do not wish to waste my vote, or time, or money...
...john w. doyle, s.j...
...Cardinal Bernardin's statement, therefore, is fully in line with something we have been working on the past few years...
...Based on her switcheroo, I vote for farce...
...home-schooling venues and conventions...
...Providing safe and adequate day care will enable mothers of small children to complete their education and learn valuable job skills...
...For me, it follows that the national discussion should not be about term limits for welfare, or about who is deserving and undeserving, but must rather focus on finding ways to place welfare clients in situations where they can make positive contributions...
...The potential saving in law enforcement and prison costs could well pay for the programs twice over...
...Put people to work With respect to Thomas Massaro's "A Welfare Primer" [June 14]: Whenever I listen to any coffee shop discussion about welfare, the common wisdom says, simply, put these people to work...
...Callahan's (and her husband Daniel's) views on matters from birth (control) to death (euthanasia) stimulating and provocative, I find her elephantine lurch to the right sad and irresolute...
...We were sufficiently encouraged during this work to expand our project to a mapping exercise designed to look closely at American Catholicism from within its right, left, and center territories...
...I would love to think we could find some common ground and am willing to continue working in that direction...
...I began my work on conservative Catholics in 1991, hoping that understanding would lead directly to constructive dialogue...
...The Republican views on issues such as social justice, the environment, and the economy contravene everything I believe in...
...As one who has found Ms...
...The issue has special relevance for me because of my wartime experience as a conscientious objector assigned to service at an institution for what were then classified as "mental defectives...
...Never have I read an article, in Commonweal or any other publication, that put into words so exactly what I've been mulling over...
...the children may well benefit from developmental learning opportunities...
...and "moron" (short of normal but able to do much of the work that kept the institution going...
...DEACON) MIKE EVANS Anderson, Calif...
...annual gatherings of conservative nuns (opposed to the Leadership Conference of Religious Women...
...In the same issue, Victor Ferkiss solves the problem for himself with a vote for Ralph Nader...
...A shot in the arm that reminds me of one administered by the Duke of Edinburgh twenty years ago in Adelaide, South Australia...
...Every community needs its parks maintained, graffiti removed, public buildings improved, trails built, records indexed, sorted, filed...
...And what about his running mate's flip-flop on immigration and affirmative action...
...unit, put our assignment in a spiritual context I have never forgotten and which, I think, has a direct bearing on the elective abortion issue-and, in particular, to the hidden pre-emptive euthanasia implication that I suspect may be present...
...But I will send money for the Commonweal Associates...
...Unlike Ms...
...Gordon zahn Boston, Mass...
...Scott and I are not always in agreement on this point, and I want to make clear that my dampened enthusiasm is completely my own...
...While I too consider President Clinton's posture on partial-birth abortions very equivocal, it will hardly dispose me to leap into the Dole camp...
...Kew, Victoria, Australia The writer is dean of studies at John Fisher College, University of Tasmania...
...I am not as hopeful about its outcome as I might have been several years ago...
...This was true of even the unfortunates whose entire lives would be spent rocking back and forth in the lowest-level cottage...
...Besides these tangible benefits, such work teaches basic skills and work habits that will equip the recipients for private employment and will assure the community that good and needed work is being done in return for their tax dollars...
...That isn't necessarily a hostile sentiment...
...Let it begin at an early age...
...The first of these bespeaks a failure of imagination...
...A year-long research trip took me to newly established Catholic colleges...
...Then, how about the column's mean digs about Bill and Hillary's White-House-Lite moral scruples, and its cheap shot at It Takes a Village...
...I want to vote, but...
...Still, the core of the disagreement we wrestle with is whether it is ever right to cast a vote on a single issue with more symbolic than practical import...
...Yes, a feminist like me can have a cordial conversation with an antifeminist like Helen Hull Hitchcock, but only because we know how to behave in public...
...imbecile" (possessing at least a semblance of intelligence...
...I am making the judgment that occasionally it is correct to let a single issue determine your vote-when it seems necessary to protest a symbolic action that crosses a morally bright line...
...Again, it was his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban that did it for me as it did for her...
...Ferkiss, I will consider a vote for Ralph Nader, or another independent candidate (not Ross Perot...
...Perhaps in her haste to run with the pachyderms she should have deferred penning her apologia until after the Republican convention...
...I can't believe that this neoconservative president is going to do any better than the Republicans on welfare, capital punishment, gay rights, and military interventions...
...My experience leads me to believe that finding common ground is probably not possible for those living in different mental universes...
...Magnificent...
...Every major U.S...
...Like her, I find that "my multiple disillusionments with Bill Clinton have boiled over...
...If we assume that a hydrocephalic fetus carried to term is likely to emerge a hydrocephalic child lacking normal intellectual capacity, the recommendation and decision are elevated to a form of preemptive euthanasia and become a broader challenge to morality than the question of abortion alone...
...The author replies: My thanks to all my friends, family, and newly acquired enemies who have offered me evangelical correction on my decision to vote for Dole and advised me to retract forthwith...
...mary jo weaver Bloomington, Ind...
...Abortion as euthanasia With respect to the debate over the president's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban, the real moral issue centers on elective late-term abortion, and here we encounter a factor that is not much talked about but which I suspect is a major factor in the decision of attending doctors to recommend the hideous procedure...
...KATHLEEN JANSON Southbury, Conn...
...groups of lay people more drawn to "the chaplet of divine mercy" (a devotion inspired by private revelations to Sister Faustina in the 1930s) than to the vernacular Mass...
...However faithful we are to Catholicism, we pray and think differently...
...By the way, I wrote my column before the signing of the shameful welfare bill, before Dick Morris, and before missiles were deployed and troops mobilized in the Gulf...
...In a time when many young people-especially those from ethnic minorities living in decaying neighborhoods- have few options, the creation of rewarding job opportunities can help lead to responsible and productive citizenship...
...I'm willing to be convinced by those who truly believe the unborn are human beings who need protection...
...Drawing the contrast between our alternative service and the military service we had rejected, she noted that, since so many of our charges would never reach the level of "reason," they were incapable of sin and, she went on, we were actually serving future saints...
...June 14] has just hit my desk...
...Like Mr...
...That's not the Sidney Callahan we've grown to love and admire for her wrestling with matters of conscience and policy...
...Galvanized by that year, I worked with R. Scott Appleby (Notre Dame) to come up with a common-ground project of our own...
...Talk about compromising one's principles...
...Does Callahan really buy into Dole's version of supply-side economics...
...We can go to Mass together, for example, but the language of worship would divide us, enraging one or the other depending on whether it was inclusive or traditional...
...The impression one had of the hydrocephalics, however, was that they were content and even happy...
...Can we actually find common ground...
...We designed and edited what eventually became Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America (Indiana University Press, 1995...
...Clinton," August 16] describes me when she describes herself...
...Continued on page 30) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) Dorothy Day, making a "morale" visit to our Catholic CO...
...Or, as I should put it most generally, the chief function of school and university is that of enabling students to master their own language...
...Should they win, I can see only disaster for our country...
...She sounds suddenly like a one-issue right-to-lifer...
...Callahan concludes her reverie by asking how this "end-of-the millennium melodrama" will play itself out, as "comedy, tragedy, or farce...
...Sidney callahan Words to think by Richard Liddy's "Can Lonergan Replace Aquinas...
...So maybe I'm wrong...
...If we count all the costs associated with current entitlement programs, the added cost of providing dignified work opportunities would be very small and would have a potential for long-term savings...
...And I will support candidates for other offices either directly (Continued on page 4) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) or via such groups as the League of Conservation Voters...
...How not to waste a vote How many other "unreconstructed Humphrey-McGovern, 'pinko,' 'socialist,' 'big government,' 'bleeding heart,' 'peacenik' Democrats" have snapped [Sidney Callahan, August 16] or are on "the verge of remission" from a lifetime of voting Democratic [Victor Ferkiss, same issue...
...THOMAS J. MCGOVERN Milwaukee, Wis...
...city still benefits from projects carried out by WPA workers in the 1930s...
...In my case, what did it was the president's action on welfare reform (along with the votes of both Wisconsin senators...
...I have not seen a better brief statement of the traditional function of the university and of the direction that Australian universities should be taking: Their first emphasis, he proposed, should be given to the development of a precise and sophisticated language in which we can formulate and discuss abstruse matters of profound importance-theology and philosophy among them...
...Clinton," August 16...
...Callahan, I will not vote for Bob Dole...
...The writer is professor of religious studies, Indiana University...
Vol. 123 • September 1996 • No. 16
