Correspondence On single-issue voting, the Common Ground and tradition. . .
HAAS, JOHN H. & DOWNING, MARTHA & STOFFT, REV. KENNETH G. & JOYCE, WILLIAM J. & GLEASON, RICHARD & BRINGS, ALLEN & Talbot, William & O'Brien, Dennis
Give Dems a chance Sidney Callahan admits that she might be wrong in her decision to vote for Bob Dole this November, and that she's willing to hear from others on the matter [correspondence,...
...Kleutgen treats Aquinas as presenting a finished system whose indebtedness to earlier writers is no more than an accidental feature of it...
...By 1992 a long-gestating conviction that I was politically trapped, being used by forces that in general stood for everything I opposed, led me to throw my (ambivalent) vote back to the Democrats...
...But as a student in Catholic grammar and high schools in the diocese of Brooklyn, I never once saw a Bible in a classroom...
...Aquinas was presented as....one more system confronting the questions of Cartesian and post-Cartesian epistemology [that is, rationalistic/scientific notions of philosophy...
...Callahan's, I will vote for them, primarily to support the Bonior-Casey wing of the party...
...If both members of a couple know who they are, individually, and what kind of journey they are contemplating when they consider marriage, they will be better able to judge their own readiness...
...it may even be a moral imperative...
...DENNIS O'BRIEN Middlebury, Vt...
...Four years on, whatever hopes for substantive action I once entertained had evaporated, replaced by a grim sense of duty in the absence of alternatives...
...I was particularly enlightened by the news that whereas 59 percent of pre-Vatican II Catholics considered their religion the most important or among the most important parts of their lives, exactly half that many of postconciliar Catholics hold their religion in such high esteem...
...This particular "folk," for one, doesn't go to church to find something he deliberately left at home...
...Is it asking too much to concentrate on the predominant issue of a campaign over transitory issues...
...Pray that Americans will choose life...
...Ready to wed An area neglected by Marian E. Crowe in her discussion of annulment [September 13] is that of "readiness...
...Any subscriber not wishing to receive such announcements may ask to be excluded from the list whenever it is rented...
...Although he may indeed have taken his own advice to "ask the folks," maybe now he should submit some of his recommendations to "the folks...
...I'm willing to take up that challenge...
...One becomes a musician by initiation into the craft through working and reworking Bach, Mozart, et al...
...Tradition is essential to church and magisterium but because it is tradition it is "essentially incomplete...
...Hoyt, who was NCR's editor at the time, that I was right, judging by the abuse heaped on the paper for printing the piece...
...In my experience, a person who seeks an annulment may well have come to understand the difference between infatuation and love, between answering a call from God and running away from home, or seeking economic or emotional security, and may therefore believe in good faith that his or her marriage covenant was void, not alive in God's grace...
...Music is essentially traditional and, as traditional, essentially open...
...The Democratic party is all we have to resist a further catastrophic lurch to the right in this nation...
...After all, what harm can it do...
...Thomas is subtly transformed into a philosopher more keenly scientific and more rational than Descartes, Kant, and whomever else one hoped to refute from the modern array of savants and thinkers...
...Bethel Park, Pa...
...Only at age fifty did I decide to compensate for this educational shortfall...
...Whatever friendly relationship he and I may enjoy at any other time, on this occasion I don't want him to be confused with one of my drinking buddies...
...more respect in the future, precisely because the prolife vote hasn't entirely fled to the GOP...
...RICHARD GLEASON Boulder, Colo...
...ALLEN BRINGS Wilton, Conn...
...It's too bad about his position on the Jewish death camps, but he has the best interests of the country at heart...
...I agree that single-issue voting, particularly if the issue in question involves fundamental questions of justice (such as not deliberately depriving innocent human beings of their lives), is absolutely legitimate...
...The writer teaches in the department of history at the University of Notre Dame...
...MARTHA DOWNING Yellowstone, Wyo...
...A vote for Dole is not a vote for a prolife candidate or a prolife party...
...Like so many others then and now, the abortion issue simply tipped the scales of my conscience...
...It is a complex, sometimes "contradictory" tradition (Abelard scandalized his twelfth-century contemporaries even more than Richard McBrien has in our day, by pointing out the Sic et Non of the church fathers...
...But if Thomas really worked in a craft tradition, his method "required that his own work should be essentially incomplete...
...But when Mr...
...Despite an ambivalence similar to Ms...
...I cannot support the Republican party of the 1990s, . whose soul is so clearly evident in that unhappy gubernatorial triumvirate, Weld of Massachusetts, Whitman of New Jersey, and Wilson of California...
...And as for "greeters" at the door, do they belong to the same union as "mourners" at the graveside...
...For they are our brothers, sisters, neighbors, children...
...But the Catholic traditionalist who hopes to take comfort in Maclntyre's Saint Thomas should be forewarned: "Tradition" turns out to be anything but the definitive solution to present controversy...
...Give Dems a chance Sidney Callahan admits that she might be wrong in her decision to vote for Bob Dole this November, and that she's willing to hear from others on the matter [correspondence, September 27...
...For one thing, it tells the Republicans it's safe to keep the prolife presence marginal and ineffective...
...Music exists as a craft tradition and as such is essentially tied to a tradition of artifacts and performance...
...Old-time monastic orders and congregations would be expected to retain their charism of celibacy...
...Moral and theological discourse do not share the "logic" of the natural sciences...
...Callahan about the current president, I'll do it again this year...
...Steinfels reports James D. Davidson's assertion that post-Vats know relatively little about their faith he gives the impression that their preconciliar predecessors were more knowledgeable about the Scriptures...
...Kleutgen failed to appreciate how late Scholasticism had more or less abandoned the essential role of historical tradition in the craft of philosophy...
...As a presider over the momentous events about to take place, he should avoid any eye contact with me that would distract either of us from full participation in these events...
...Old-time ignorance Thank you for Peter Steinfels's excellent article ["The Pollsters Look at U.S...
...Lord Gifford, speaking from the powerful intellectual milieu of the Scottish Enlightenment, decreed that the lecturers should "treat their subject [theology] as a strictly natural science, just as astronomy or chemistry is...
...Conversion, not conversation, is the key to church unity...
...Aquinas's method cannot but be no more than the best answer reached so far...
...While I had misgivings about Ronald Reagan in 1980, I voted first and explored them later...
...she composes from the past and creates something not yet heard...
...There is always the contemporary task, so mightily undertaken by Saint Thomas, of working in and from the tradition to define "the state of the art...
...I did it three times, voting Republican in 1980,1984, and 1988, ignoring certain of my religious beliefs, my working-class origins, countercultural sensibilities, and a visceral dislike of the GOP acquired during the Vietnam era...
...In my view the option could be worked out among diocesan priests and the various groups that fall between the diocesan and religious vocations...
...A craft conception of philosophy is essentially traditional...
...Tradition must be in dialogue because of its essential incompleteness...
...And, even though I now feel just about the same as Ms...
...If Hitler had good economic policies, would we be free to vote for him...
...They are guided into an opportunity to be more aware, more free, more ready to embark on a life-journey of mutual fidelity...
...That's a harder call, but suffice it to say, yes...
...Can I vote for the Democrats...
...To make such a request, please send the mailing label from a recent issue of Commonweal to: List Rental Coordinator, Commonweal, 15 Dutch Street, Room 502, New York, NY 10038...
...My conscience won't allow me to play that game any longer because, as I see it, such a vote actually hurts the prolife cause...
...And I hope that someday, perhaps, we can have an authentic political debate over abortion because there will be a strong prolife vote in the party that should, by rights, be the home of that cause...
...Dialogue & tradition Cardinal Bernardin's Common Ground project seems to have shocked some Catholic traditionalists [editorial, September 13...
...Callahan on this issue...
...I'm aware that this position is problematic, that I may have landed on the flip side of the earlier dilemmas...
...Our parish offers a series of seven sessions for couples who are thinking of entering into marriage...
...Catholics," September 13...
...Time to 'fess up: I'm the culprit...
...how dare we let them be put to death...
...All requests to rent the Commonweal mailing list are screened...
...Maclntyre concludes that the rationalistic Enlightenment project set forth by Adam Gifford simply fails to understand moral and theological discourse...
...Tradition" is indeed the key to understanding church and magisterium, but one needs to be clear about the logic of tradition...
...That's why I respect the decision of Ms...
...I am moved to comment on the problematics of tradition because of my recent rereading of Alisdair Maclntyre's Gifford lectures: Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990...
...I will vote in the hope that their voices will get List Rental Policy From time to time Commonweal rents its mailing lists to organizations offering products or services that may be of interest to subscribers...
...But for a kindly heretic neighbor, who gave me a copy of the Rheims-Douay Bible, I might never have seen one...
...Now tell the folks To support some of the conclusions he reaches in his September 13 article "Rx for Ailing Parishes," Father Thomas Sweetser makes a leap of faith that deserves an Olympic gold medal...
...To vote Republican now is to put one's imprimatur on a morally hollow strategy that consists of calculated lip service to the prolife cause, nothing more...
...I'm assured by Mr...
...What need of dialogue if there is the traditional teaching of the magisteri-um...
...Isn't the sanctity of life of every living human being immeasurably more important than something like supply-side economics...
...Maclntyre constructs a view of Aquinas which makes him the prime exemplar of the craft tradition of philosophy, but Maclntyre's Thomas is not what emerged in the aftermath of Aeterni patris...
...This discrepancy between "rational" scientific assumptions and moral discourse has become an accepted modern dogma-and so much the worse for morals and theology...
...that appeared in the June 9,1965 issue of National Catholic Reporter, written by a mysterious "Sacerdos Occidentalis...
...As a counter to the Enlightenment (Encyclopedic) project-and the ge- nealogy of morals that regards "morality" as only the Nietzschean "will to power"-Maclntyre poses the method of "tradition," whose prime and virtually unique exemplar according to Maclntyre is Thomas Aquinas...
...Trappist and their miniature monks engaging in contemplation while making fruit cakes...
...william j. joyce, c.s.sp...
...correspondence, September 27, October 11...
...After thirty years I still think we have to take another look at celibacy, and that the topic needs to be addressed at a high level of scholarship and spirituality, in a forum with some decision-making powers...
...Dole repeatedly telegraphed during the primary (and reinforced through his convention) that he has no intention of upsetting their camp...
...If the lives of the tiny and helpless don't matter, we've already lost our freedom...
...I look forward to hearing more from Ms...
...Music is not closed, it is always only at "the state of the art...
...I will do it for a number of reasons, and because of my prolife convictions, not in spite of them...
...I would highly recommend a similar course of action to anyone seriously interested in the basic tenets of our faith...
...One younger Catholic is quoted: "As far as the Bible goes, I couldn't tell you what's in the Old and New Testaments...
...Saint Thomas has, of course, been officially front and center for Catholic thought since he was proclaimed the preeminent Catholic philosopher by Leo XIII in Aeterni patris (1879...
...Income from list rentals helps Commonweal meet rising postage and printing expenses...
...The issue that matters In response to the letters in the correspondence section for September 27: Yes, one does hate to be a one-issue voter, but really...
...Of course my generation has a fund of terms: mortal and venial sin, holy days of obligation, confession, and the stations of the cross...
...it is a vote for a party that knows how to manipulate voters whose moral sensibilities have backed them into a corner...
...No doubt the craft of music is quite different from the craft of philosophy (or theology) but the notion of working from a tradition is vastly important in understanding the role of tradition, dialogue, and dogma within the life of the church...
...My subsequent twenty years of scriptural research have been rewarding indeed...
...1988 saw me again voting Republican (I know, I know-mea culpa, O.K...
...and Mrs...
...The GOP tent isn't only big enough to include them, they own it...
...No one would expect the Gifford lecturers to agree and "advance" theology or moral philosophy because on those subjects there is no acceptable-that is, rational /scientific method...
...It's remarkable that more of us didn't become curious enough to compensate for this lack-a lack, by the way, that I detect even in Catholic commentators on religious matters, some of them in your excellent magazine...
...JOHN H. HAAS Notre Dame, Ind...
...Maclntyre sees Thomas as working within a "craft" conception of philosophy...
...Maclntyre notes: "The single most important influence upon the drafting of Aeterni patris was [the German theologian Joseph] Kleutgen...
...Continued on page 28) (Continued from page 4) Weigh the question William Honnen takes Sidney Cal-lahan [correspondence, September 27] to task for her "abandonment of all the critical issues" and for becoming a "one-issue right-to-lifer...
...There is no music except through Bach, Mozart, et sea...
...I fear that the critics of the Ber-nardin committee, in their zeal to protect tradition, misunderstand the logic of tradition...
...That should be the guiding spirit of the Catholic Common Ground Project...
...Perhaps more annulments are being granted because too little attention is given to marriage preparation...
...Nor does he expect the celebrant to behavtf like a neighbor waving as he passes by the front porch...
...Though I gave NCR my name and address (it was in Charleston, South Carolina), I must have thought that writing about celibacy in the climate of the mid-'60s was risky enough to justify use of a pseudonym...
...So I will vote for Bill Clinton as the flawed, frustrating, and far-from-satisfactory leader of that party...
...But, for all that tradition is essential in the craft of music, the modern composer does not reiterate the past...
...KENNETH G. STOFFT Roanoke, Va...
...The Democratic party needs more not fewer prolife voters for that perception to change...
...It's hard for me to imagine Mr...
...If the Holy Bible had been on the Index of the Holy Office it could not have been less accessible to Catholics...
...Nevertheless, I still believe that in the long run it harms the pro-life cause to have it perceived nationally as part of the GOP's utterly cynical "family values" platform...
...Callahan and others who agree with her...
...There is a tradition of Christian practice, prayer, and philosophy...
...this time choking back bile...
...Shedding a pseudonym In a recent column ["O'Connor on Quinn," September 13], Robert Hoyt refers to an article titled "Should the Council Look at Celibacy...
...WILLIAM TALBOT New York, N.Y...
Vol. 123 • October 1996 • No. 18
