Correspondence Of conflicts & courtesy
SHONIS, ANTHONY J. & PRENDERGAST, WILLIAM B. & JR., WALLINGTON M. SIMPSON & WRIGHT, CHARLOTTE E. & D'Antonio, William V.
CORRESPONDENCE
To the Editors
Illinois's Catholic solon
Gregory R. Beabout's article "Catholic Wins" [October 11] says that no Catholic has ever served in the Senate from Illinois in the past. In...
...From the opening preface to the concluding pages of the final chapter, we make clear that we perceive the Catholic church in the United States to be caught up in a struggle that is at its roots grounded in the question of the nature and locus of authority...
...Sheed & Ward...
...It gets even more complicated if we distinguish between the typical rural parish in the North, usually surrounded by churches of mainline Protestant denominations, and its counterpart in the South, in the midst of evangelical churches...
...There is a question, though, whether this community consciousness extends past their immediate boundaries...
...When a family gets burned out, their fellow parishioners are wonderful, but welcoming the Mexican migrant is another story...
...Yes, change is tough I read with great interest and not a little disappointment Peter Steinfels's essay [September 13] on our book [Laity, American and Catholic, William D'Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, and Ruth A. Wallace...
...It is not surprising to find that John Noonan is listed among those persong who have agreed to work with Cardinal Bernardin to seek "Common Ground...
...WILLIAM B. PRENDERGAST McLean, Va...
...after all, their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents belonged to the same church...
...Finally, I note that Ms...
...It also belies Ralph Reed's contention that religious conservatives in America aren't like fundamentalist movements in the Middle East...
...Reed should be given a chance to repent...
...Callahan described the twenty-four persons so far identified as members of the Common Ground project as "irreproachable mainstream Catholics...
...WALLINGTON M. SIMPSON, JR...
...I was particularly disappointed with Steinfels's assertion that we are "the kind of moderate reformists who believe that a social organism like the church can pass relatively easily from one state to another with no real threat to its substance or essential character...
...Most writers, for instance, assume that forming community is a problem...
...The problem is that they often expect things to remain the same, and make little distinction between the liturgical changes of Vatican II and whether to install central air conditioning in the church...
...Continued on page 29) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) A rural perspective Whatever Thomas Sweetser writes about parish life is worth reading...
...In his "Rx for Ailing Parishes" [September 13], however, he writes, as do most Catholic commentators, from an urban perspective, so that his prescription doesn't quite fit parish life in rural America...
...At least some of the Catholics in our study—in particular those we have identified as most committed to the church (they go to Mass every week, say they would never leave the church, say the church is one of the most important influences on their lives)—are also "irreproachable mainstream Catholics," who seek a more democratic church, with significant lay participation...
...I believe our Laity book has helped make clear what those conflicts are—just as Charles Curran's essay "Two Traditions" [Commonweal, October 11] makes clear why they may be so difficult to resolve...
...I sincerely hope that blind, hate-filled, unreasoning bickering will not force me to reconsider...
...After the Civil War, in which he served as a Union general, this peripatetic statesman was sent to the Senate by Minnesota and later by Missouri...
...Ollie & the Coalition In your issue of September 27, neither Frank McConnell, discussing the PBS series on the Religious Right, nor R. Scott Appleby, in his review of Active Faith by Ralph Reed, makes any mention of the Christian Coalition's support for the Iran-contra criminal Oliver North in his 1994 candidacy for the United States Senate...
...charlotte e. wright Midland, Tex...
...Again, rural people have a strong sense of ownership in their parish...
...It is precisely because we understood how difficult it has been to bring about change that we closed the book with John Noonan's carefully nuanced reminder (in his essay, "Development in Moral Doctrine," Theological Studies, 1993) about both the resistance to and the reality of change in the church throughout its history...
...Someone should ask Ralph Reed to his smiling face about his organization's support for a rogue officer who sold American arms to a pariah state authoritatively described as supportive of terrorism...
...Not necessarily so in the rural setting, where parishioners see each other all week—at the feed mill, at the home of a neighbor who is also their hairdresser, at the local Dairy Queen...
...That single act of sacrilege makes a mockery of the motto "people of faith first, Americans second, and Democrats or Republicans third...
...only if he does will he deserve a place at the table...
...Keep it civil As one who has spent more than half a long lifetime as a Catholic (coming out of a large, very vocal anti-Catholic Protestant group), I applaud with loud whoopees and shrill whistles the position expressed in the "In Good Faith" editorial of September 13 Discussions of legitimate differences will not remove me from this church that I love, including both its historical and current warts...
...Montebello, N.Y...
...Ever since North lost, the Christian Coalition has acted as if the whole thing never happened, and the news media have done likewise...
...CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Illinois's Catholic solon Gregory R. Beabout's article "Catholic Wins" [October 11] says that no Catholic has ever served in the Senate from Illinois in the past...
...In fact, in the 1850s Illinois was represented in the Senate by Irish-born Catholic James Shields...
...And while I for one envision a much more democratic church as reflecting more closely the teachings of Jesus than does the present hierarchic church, I am not naive enough to think such radical change can be easily brought about...
...Discussing that project in the following issue [September 27], columnist Sidney Callahan writes of the recognition that "[i]ntrachurch conflicts of conscience over difficult issues can no longer be quelled by some church authority unilaterally issuing a directive...
...ANTHONY J. SHONIS Owensboro, Ky.NTHONY J. SHONIS Owensboro, Ky...
...WILLIAM V. D'ANTONIO Washington, D.C...
Vol. 123 • November 1996 • No. 19
