Correspondence

...Candaele and Dreier are right that this new energy must now be focused on organizing more workers into unions...

...It is a lens that will sexualize even the "cloaked" ceremonial movement of liturgy: "And movement speaks sex...

...Graduates of the institute became shop floor activists who lobbied members of Congress, holding them accountable to workers' concerns, and organized their co-workers for political action...

...name withheld A 'trinitarian' church With reference to the interview with Father Thomas Reese and the review of his book Inside the Vatican in the issue of December 6,1996, allow me to comment...

...Hormones aren't all Reading John Shekleton's "Homosexuality & the Priesthood" [November 22,1996], I was reminded of a comment that a priest friend of mine offered during a recent dinner: "A lot of guys go into the seminary to sacra-mentalize their isolation...

...More to the point, in no way do my contemporaries liken an ordained celibate to a "Vulcan" being...

...My suspicion is that such misuse of the pulpit is often tied to neglect of the local church's catechetical resources...

...I am quick to acknowledge that liturgy plays deeply upon our fleshly senses and upon our attraction to, and longing for, beauty...

...The writer is president-elect of the International Union of Electronic Workers, AFL-CIO...

...He suggests that leaving the knoll-an act demanding "open eyes and hearts and bodies"-engages the "more harrowing route...

...Second, his narrative focuses on an early fascination with color, movement, and mystery, all of which he interprets as exemplifying his gay sexuality and as marking him especially for the priesthood...

...Copulation doesn't count...

...Naturally, I cannot assume that everyone who asks for this gift receives it...

...The unions of the AFL-CIO, including the International Union of Electronic Workers [IUE], abandoned the strategy of distributing lists of labor-endorsed candidates to our members...

...I can understand that Shekleton found his life as a celibate priest an alien experience...

...Shekleton's story is a case in point...

...Neither Professor Dawkins nor any other learned scientist has yet produced a human eye functioning in a human being...

...Celibacy & surrender Re: "Homosexuality & the Priesthood": I rather admire the courage of churchmen and women who choose to go public with their vocation crises...

...All this activity was inten-(Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) tional, not random...

...thoughtful communal reflection on current dilemmas is a bit more difficult...

...Don't declaim, discuss Peter Feuerherd makes an important point in "Pulpit Politicking" [December 6,1966...

...The December 6 issue offered a delightful proof of that statement in the form of Father Thomas Reese's responses in his interview with Margaret O'Brien Steinfels...

...Having received this freedom as a gift, I choose to offer it back to the giver in the form of celibacy observed as the church defines it...

...Shekleton's narrative makes sense only if one adopts as primary a sexu-alized view of human existence...

...Nothing too disturbing in that, for most servants of God feel themselves to stand a bit apart from society...

...What makes Dawkins's argument so convincing," he says, "is his use of computers to create artificial worlds where chance variations and selections do in fact lead to artifacts that have the compelling look of 'design.'" Dawkins fashions an "eye" on a computer "using only random incremental variations and an algorithmic surrogate for natural selection...

...Rather, it seeks to mirror and draw us nearer to another kingdom...

...It's cost-effective Living on a limited income in retirement, on occasion I question the wisdom of paying the relatively high subscription price for Commonweal...

...On top of that, labor initiated new programs such as the IUE's Legislative and Political Institute, which conducted one- to three-day seminars giving previously disaffected blue-collar workers the skills and confidence that enabled them to reenter the political world...

...Yet, there is a prejudicial narrowness about his presentation that I do find unsettling...

...Undoubtedly, it is a courageous act...

...They may simply mark one as an aesthetically sensitive person-and, in our highly functional and pragmatic culture, that may be enough to inculcate (Continued on page 29) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) a sense of isolation and a longing for more congenial environs...

...It always speaks sex because a body is always a sexed thing...

...The real story is the entirely new approach the labor movement developed to appeal to working families...

...I believe God makes some people gay, without saying why...

...Church structures and procedures must not violate the constitution of the church by making the pope a "bishop of bishops" or exclusive executive...

...Granted, we live in a highly eroticized culture, one keyed-in on "hormonal impulse...

...one thinks of fashion design, photography, choreography, etc...

...But how many priests-homosexual or heterosexual-who remain upon the knoll would characterize their own journey as a "leisured walk," free of thorn bushes, mud holes, and the occasional land mine...

...Had "pulpit partisans" offered parishioners a chance to examine Catholic social teaching as a guide in making up their own minds on public policy choices, they would have honored intelligent discussion and decision making as key elements of catechesis...

...I further believe he calls gay priests (and sisters and brothers in the religious life) to celibacy, which is a distinct call that the Western church links to the priestly and religious vocations...

...I was also charmed by his big cheerful smile...

...The vow of celibacy is thus a special pledge to seek out and surrender to this Spirit-Lover with one's whole heart, soul, mind, and strength...

...he is chief bishop and the "strength and support of the rest of the brethren...

...Admittedly, my "survey" is no more scientific than Shekleton's...

...Do we have a mechanism in the contemporary church for enabling such action...

...It is one thing, however, to respond to the aesthetic sensuality of liturgical word, symbol, and rite...

...Using the pulpit for political party advocacy can and will backfire...

...Only about thirty players have done that in the 120 years of major league play...

...I asked, and I received...

...They are not deputies or aides of the pope but leaders of local churches as he is the leader of the universal church...

...In his projected future work of studying the impact of the computer revolution on the church, Father Reese may develop insights for structuring effective means for the congregational, lay element to witness to, express, and develop its faith...

...CHARLOTTE E. WRIGHT Midland, Tex...

...And what was the product of all this planned activity...

...If a player is earning $1 million dollars a year for hitting .290, why try...

...But I also believe God would not call me without providing the means to respond in the church as it is...

...In On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, John Henry Newman showed how the universal priesthood in the early centuries maintained and defended Christological orthodoxy...

...Shekleton remarks that his contemporaries find it less surprising that he is homosexual than that he was once a celibate priest, for at least "[b]eing gay is still being a searcher for love and intimacy...

...MICHAEL WARREN Jamaica, N.Y...

...A computer, moreover, is a human construction, as are its components- metals, glass, rubber, plastic, boards, letters, numbers, wiring, electrical generators, and conductors...

...And that algorithm- like other algorithms or rules of procedure used in mathematics to solve recurring problems-is a human concept, and some human being must formulate, or choose, an algorithm to use as a stand-in for natural selection...

...Nor is the priesthood so obviously the calling of choice for one so gifted...

...A sensitivity to color (or, I suggest, to music or language) is no sure sign of sexual preference, nor is taking pleasure in graceful movement or being struck by the power of ritual per se an indication of homosexuality...

...it is another to sexualize that ritual action and response...

...And doing so has become the joy of my life...

...Expansion of the major leagues from sixteen to twenty-six or more teams has put players in the majors who, forty years ago, would have spent their playing years in the minors, or taken up real estate sales...

...I believe God calls some gay people to the priesthood...

...I fail to see the necessity in these connections...

...Professor Gould uses "the spread of excellence among batters, pitchers, and fielders" to explain the decline in the number of .400 hitters in major league baseball (and thereby to debunk the idea that human beings exemplify progress in biological development...

...The power of the addiction often exceeds our power to resist, and we may thus build our spirituality around it, accommodating our call to the compulsions we have learned to love, believing them to be a necessary part of our life style...

...I consulted a group of my own contemporaries, asking them the same question: "Which do you find more difficult to comprehend, a gay man or a man who has vowed celibacy as a priest...

...We are part of a culture that glorifies self-fulfillment defined in physical terms such as wealth and possessions, power and control, and favorite sexual activities...

...Professor Gould's contention that bacteria have as much right as human beings to claim primacy, or a greater right, because they are more numerous and enduring, seems like arguing that people of lesser intelligence are intellectually superior, because they are more numerous, to people of greater intelligence...

...Each of the three organizational branches of the church must be firm and active enough to perform its distinct functions...

...however, perhaps fewer than he imagines share the lens he looks through...

...They must not be relegated only to advisory roles...

...I thought this surprising- and annoying-for its shallow view of celibacy as a cessation of longing for love and intimacy...

...still, the result overwelmingly challenges his observation...

...Father Reese demonstrates that the papal dimension is structurally strong but that the episcopal is weak and the congregational almost nonfunctional...

...Of course, it is much easier to declaim from the pulpit than to prepare an evening session of reflection for adults...

...That is a singular view...

...After twenty-one years in the priesthood, I have finally come to be grateful that the church demands this...

...But we have won the first battle by making those that work in America's factories, offices, and shops feel that their voice counts in their government...

...He readily admits that as a gay youth his awareness of being an "outsider" led him to choose the priesthood...

...Further: The recent emphasis in baseball has been on hitting home runs, and a batter swinging for the fences is unlikely to hit safely 40 percent of the time...

...Dawkins, Raymo says, demonstrates that so extraordinary a structure as the human eye can be produced by the accumulation of chance variations...

...An eye by blind chance...

...And if longevity is a criterion of excellence, then Wordsworth, who died at eighty, was a greater poet than Shakespeare, who died at fifty-two...

...Professors Dawkins and Gould are devout apostles of the untestable and therefore unscientific faith that chance is all...

...FRANK C. ARRICALE Queens, N.Y...

...Toward the end of last summer, Cardinal Roger Mahony recommended such discussions for all parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as a way of preparing for the elections...

...edward fire Washington, D.C...

...Even so, the Mass does not seek to imitate or duplicate our cultural milieu...

...Bishops, individually and as the world episcopate, must be seen in their collegial, co-governing role with the pope...

...The most significant aspect of labor's activities, however, was not the amount of money spent (business groups still outspent labor unions by 7 to 1), nor the defeat of nineteen antilabor incumbents...

...I wonder if it isn't in part an attempt to cast a wide net for clues in their search for a clearer priestly (sisterly, brotherly) and sexual identity...

...Praise God...

...michon w. matthiesen Petaluma, Calif...

...In the twentieth century, engineers and mathematicians devised ways of fashioning these elements into machines to apply concepts developed over 2,300 years by, among others, Aristotle, George Boole, and Claude Shannon...

...Perhaps bishops should not be cardinals, lest their line-leadership work be compromised by or subordinated to the staff advisory positions of cardinals...

...It is something I thought was patently impossible for me, and, unaided, it is...

...But sometimes it pays off, as in a recent session of a parish discussion group when my nonoriginal and inelegant reply to a question was: "The Jesuits are the church's brain trust...

...Of course, a rampant Congregationalism could do the same and an excessively autonomous episcopacy could make us isolated cells unable to exercise our catholicity...

...Bill Buford is the New Yorker's fiction editor...

...At a time of declining civic involvement, hundreds of thousands of union CORRECTION II Because of an editing error, Bill Bryson was incorrectly identified as the fiction editor of the New Yorker in our December 6 issue...

...As group reflection on the implications of faith for current issues, cate-chesis invites people to come, examine, reflect, and decide about the kinds of issues so vital on Long Island this past October and November...

...Instead, working families were given the voting records of incumbent members of Congress and their challengers on the minimum wage, health care, education, tax fairness, retirement security, and other issues of direct concern to them...

...Absent strong and vital episcopal and congregational organs, an excessive papalism can turn the Body of Christ into an amoeba or a parameci-um...

...On the chance that this is the case with John Shekleton, I wish to offer my own modest resolution of the tension between homosexuality and the priesthood, though the issue may now be moot for your writer...

...It is a bias to sexualize, without discretion, all of human life and experience...

...But where are the canary feathers...

...But it is Professor Dawkins, an intelligent being, who directs the computer to use the "incremental variations" and the "algorithmic surrogate for natural selection...

...Neither a democracy, an oligarchy, a monarchy, nor a dictatorship, the Catholic church is a communion of trinitarian elements: congregational, episcopal, and papal...

...Not an eye, but a model of an eye...

...Oughts" and "shoulds" are easy to dispense...

...JOHN MAHER Chicago, III...

...While 8 million fewer Americans voted in the 1996 presidential election than in 1992, 2.3 million more members of union households went to the polls...

...Indeed, I believe many of us are truly addicted to some of these...

...I can, however, suggest that it be explicitly and diligently sought...

...Finally, in reference to Shekleton's image of the "sylvan knoll" of priesthood, I cannot help wondering about the accuracy of his depiction...

...members took part for the first time in rallies, conferences, bus tours, precinct walks, leafleting, phone banks, and voter-registration drives...

...The AFL-CIO Working Women's Initiative alone involved more than 35,000 union women in some 300 events...

...Chet Raymo's admiring review of new books by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould ["Critics' Choices," December 6,1996] overlooks a few data, as did the authors, it seems to me...

...Celibacy, as I see it, is for those who are willing to consecrate all their love, their sexuality, and their will to an intimate and accessible God, an all-filling and all-fulfilling Spirit-Lover...

...I can only be grateful that the God who invited me to love and serve him above all has shown himself more powerful than these drives and has gradually given me the freedom not to act on them...

...It is absurd to say that a model produced by intelligent beings demonstrates that a functioning reality superior to the model was produced not by design but by blind chance...