Correspondence Applause and complaints on many fronts
HOGAN, BEN & MONGOVEN, ANNE M. & DRUMKE, JACK & EGAN, (REV.) HARVEY & ZWICK, MARK AND LOUISE & HOLDORF, WILLIAM J. & BOGUCKI, (MRS.) GENE & CUSEO, ALLAN & MAZZARELLA, MARIO D. & FROST, RAYMOND & Zahn, Gordon & Jordan, Patrick & Rosenthal, Peggy
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Shaman? Thaumaturge? Perhaps you should advertise for an alchemist instead of a business manager. Best of luck. GERALDINE ETHEN Portland, Oreg. McConnell on...
...Finally, to invest energy in a controversy about the retreat movement seems to me beside the point...
...Bob Dylan, prophet Re: Your Et Cetera item [October 10] on John Paul II's sharing the stage with Bob Dylan in Bologna...
...As the editorial noted, we think she was wrong on the role of women in the church, but that her harsher critics were tone-deaf to the radical religious nature of her mission...
...It certainly is two-faced for Mr...
...See the 1996 book edited by Anne Klejment and Nancy L. Roberts, American Catholic Pacifism (Greenwood Press), on his role in the development of the theology of pacifism at the Catholic Worker, and William Miller's A Harsh and Dreadful Love (Image Books...
...Let me add a comment on Dorothy's own discernment...
...Without the saints the church is only dead stones...
...In the Bowery's grim squalor, she discerned nobility in every beat-up waif...
...Dorothy with a smile...
...At once...
...Yes, "she took what she wanted from the retreat...
...He knew the truth of Bonhoef-fer and of Vatican II: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church...
...peggy rosenthal Rochester, N.Y...
...Most retreatants who heard the Hugo message viva voce embraced it, and characterized the retreat as liberating them from a cozy religiosity...
...October 24, p. 12...
...The article, which seemed to be mainly anecdotal, trivialized Father Hugo, who served as Dorothy's spiritual director, assisted her in organizing the famous retreat, and was the theologian responsible for most of the articles on pacifism published in the Catholic Worker...
...DeLillo & religion Reviewing Don DeLillo's new novel Underworld [November 7], Paul Elie writes: "No one as far as I know has called DeLillo a religious writer...
...Your writer and perhaps more than he or she need to meditate on Saint Paul's words: "...there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit" (1 Cor...
...Bishop (later Cardinal) Wright, who succeeded Dear-(Continued on page 27) To the Editors Shaman...
...That is why I quoted not only those who raised questions about the retreat's wisdom and character, but also mentioned ardent supporters like Sister Peter Claver Fahy {see her beautiful article on the retreat and Father Hugo in the October-November 1997 Catholic Worker...
...If he is interested, he might be able to find my account of that winter in some library: Another Part of the War: The Camp Simon Story (1979...
...To suggest that Hugo wasn't holistic and didn't really influence Dorothy is revisionism of the worst kind...
...She took a hope to purify and refine her interior life and thus become more effective in her ministry to the poorest of the poor...
...REV...
...We made the retreat twice and knew Father Hugo and the so-called "Hugo priests" well...
...JACK DRUMKE Chicago, III...
...In our nation's present fateful hour, the leaders of the church take their place in explicit loyalty at the side of the men of the state, dedicated to their own defense against the common enemy...
...Nothing Sacred" may not be superb television, but it's not bad and it has some very good "Catholic" moments...
...I have lived in the Saint Francis Catholic Worker House here for eleven years, and cannot recall seeing one picture of her smiling, not one...
...For Father Hugo and the others who gave the retreat (and still give it in Pittsburgh and in Michigan), the church exists to make saints to provide a living witness to the eternal...
...My October 24 issue did not arrive until October 28-but it was very much worth the wait...
...I myself bitterly opposed being drafted during World War II, but I an swered my country's call, even though I was drafted before I could finish high school a devastating stig ma never fully erased...
...MARIO D. MAZZARELLA Newport News, Va...
...The editors reply: We used the word "uncomprehending" to convey our sense that in her frequent condemnations of contraception Mother Teresa often equated it with abortion in a way that indicated she did not comprehend either the crucial moral distinctions that separate the question of abortion from that of contraception, or the moral considerations offered in good faith by many couples and theologians who regard contraception as acceptable...
...Hugo's retreat Thanks to Patrick Jordan for his discerning portrait of Dorothy Day [October 24...
...A reliable evaluation of the retreat and its effects could be obtained from Sister Peter Claver Fahy, alive and ministering in Philadelphia, and from thousands of letters and documents in the Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University...
...Her hope was fulfilled...
...I am afraid that in this case, it is the Zwicks who have been revisionistic...
...McConnell on Wendy Frank McConnell's "A Nun's Story," his review of Sister Wendy on PBS [October 24], was just masterly...
...we have not seen the likes of them since...
...Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us a picture of Dorothy Day smiling...
...When Bishop (later Cardinal) Dearden left the diocese in 1959, he held Father Hugo in the highest esteem...
...She wrote, "It was like hearing the gospel for the first time...
...Just kidding...
...Yes, of course she did heroic work for the most wretched of Christ's brothers and sisters, but she was no feminist, opposed contraception (so did Dorothy Day), and should have devoted more time to social reform...
...anne m. mongoven, o.p...
...Though the urban church often concentrated on novenas and bingo, she discovered an authentic Christianity in Father Hugo's retreat calling her to liturgical worship, Scripture reading, and contemplation...
...Father Ray's faith, his doubts, his sexual stirrings are real to anyone trying to serve God, whether as a member of the laity or the clergy...
...Vishnewski has written that Dorothy told him that Father Paci-fique Roy a priest of the retreat movement who lived at the Catholic Worker's Easton farm was one of the three men who had a great influence on her life, the other two being Maurin and Ammon Hennacy...
...Growing up as a Roman Catholic, I found myself not only in awe of the priesthood (I still am) but believing that priests were more than human, almost to the point of idolizing them...
...Now, I just say, "Read this...
...ben hogan, o.carm...
...After Diana's Death)" to the main course, Patrick Jordan's "An Appetite for God: Dorothy Day at 100," you presented a glorious feast, which I thoroughly enjoyed...
...If the retreat has been fruitful for the Zwicks, Father Egan, and their work which it has more power to it and to them...
...You didn't computer-generate the image, did you...
...The rector of the seminary one of us attended was named bishop of Pittsburgh in 1950 with instructions to discipline Father Hugo...
...After Diana's Death)" to the main course, Patrick Jordan's "An Appetite for God: Dorothy Day at 100," you presented a glorious feast, which I thoroughly enjoyed...
...Dorothy with a smile...
...Gordon zahn Milwaukee, Wis...
...Saints & sinners I was delighted to read your positive editorial on ABC's "Nothing Sacred...
...Most retreatants who heard the Hugo message viva voce embraced it, and characterized the retreat as liberating them from a cozy religiosity...
...He adds: "The church had neither condemned the ongoing war as unjust, nor even hinted that Catholics might, much less should, refuse to support it...
...Zahn sat home comfortably protected, I and others served...
...The writer replies: Father Egan and the Zwicks are exemplary Catholic Workers whose testimony is valuable...
...The rector of the seminary one of us attended was named bishop of Pittsburgh in 1950 with instructions to discipline Father Hugo...
...Just kidding...
...October 24, p. 12...
...we have not seen the likes of them since...
...WILLIAM J. HOLDORF Woodridge, III The writer replies: Mr...
...anne m. mongoven, o.p...
...When Bishop (later Cardinal) Dearden left the diocese in 1959, he held Father Hugo in the highest esteem...
...PATRICK JORDAN Zahn's neutrality In his article "The Peasant Who Defied Hitler" [September 12], Gordon Zahn writes: "Although I had regularly sought out evidence of opposition to the [German] war effort [on the part of leaders of the Roman Catholic church in Germany], the harvest was slim...
...it has served to remind me why I am seeking ordination (within the Anglican tradition) after many years of discernment...
...Suddenly I realized that I still had a lot more to learn, and yet I held on to the certitude that "God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him...
...They were profoundly spiritual, full of wisdom, holy and holistic, totally unwooden and unrigid...
...A reliable evaluation of the retreat and its effects could be obtained from Sister Peter Claver Fahy, alive and ministering in Philadelphia, and from thousands of letters and documents in the Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University...
...Such a statement would be laughable...
...Next to Peter Maurin, Hugo was the most important influence in her life...
...As for making a judgment about Father Hugo's "holistic" theology, my tastes may differ from the Zwicks', but readers can make their own judgment by reading the collection of his writings I referred to in the sidebar...
...Let me add a comment on Dorothy's own discernment...
...some of those others gave their life's blood so that Mr...
...She discerned the authenticity of the Hugo retreat and resisted faulty imaginings about it...
...I thank God that as I grew older I realized that priests have strengths and weaknesses, joys and sorrows...
...My first assignment was to a forestry camp in New Hampshire, the one and only Catholic camp, one sponsored and maintained by the Association of Catholic Conscientious Objectors...
...Holdorf's tirade is best answered by referring him to my books dealing with the issues he raises...
...In the light of those conferences, she moved from hyper-activity to heroic holiness...
...I can't believe I ate the whole thing...
...To suggest that Hugo wasn't holistic and didn't really influence Dorothy is revisionism of the worst kind...
...She never had any doubt about his integrity and orthodoxy and would have followed him to the stake had he gone the route of Savanarola...
...Niagara Falls, Ont...
...She wrote, "It was like hearing the gospel for the first time...
...And I do seriously doubt that Dorothy Day would have followed Hugo "to the stake had he gone the route of Savanarola...
...A truly eloquent summation by the most insightful, lively, and well-spoken critic I've encountered...
...Was it because it was Nina Simone who was singing...
...Readers may want to complement Elie's insightful survey of the religious dimension of DeLillo's work with McClure's analysis in the larger context of literature's recent return to religion...
...Since they fight for Christianity and the true faith in God on the part of the German Volk, they are, in their way, giving surest support for the ramparts the Fuehrer has erected against Bolshevism in our Faterland...
...Our editorial on Mother Teresa was not a pietistic exercise but a journalistic reflection and evaluation...
...San Jose, Calif...
...Hugo's retreat Thanks to Patrick Jordan for his discerning portrait of Dorothy Day [October 24...
...Without them the church is not a living reality...
...For too long we have tried to elevate priests to a position above the laity to believe, somehow, that they are in some mysterious way holier than the rest of us...
...Day & Fr...
...Next to Peter Maurin, Hugo was the most important influence in her life...
...Zahn could live to write his silly diatribes against those who protected his "freedom of the press...
...Father Hugo asked no more of Catholics than a Saint Francis, Leon Bloy, Peter Maurin, Pope John Paul II, or the Gospels, and for this was unpopular because the bourgeois spirit is a cancer that runs deep in American culture...
...San Jose, Calif...
...You outdid yourselves...
...That Wright could have ranked Hugo along with Augustine, however, is not convincing to me, at least after reading Hugo's writings...
...The tolerance you display toward her carping critics depreciates her work and diminishes whatever good words you offer on her work and life...
...Pope John Paul was right on when he interpreted "Blowing in the Wind" by using the "Christocentric" principle...
...Others who picked up only secondhand and distorted myths tended to frown...
...Alka-Seltzer, anyone...
...It is this reality that I see in "Nothing Sacred...
...We made the retreat twice and knew Father Hugo and the so-called "Hugo priests" well...
...I thank Vatican II for reminding us that we are all ministers of God through our baptism...
...Since then the poetry and music of Bob Dylan have always been a part of my life of faith...
...MARK AND LOUISE ZWICK Houston, Tex...
...The writer is not a jazz person...
...McConnell on Wendy Frank McConnell's "A Nun's Story," his review of Sister Wendy on PBS [October 24], was just masterly...
...In brief, what should count on the issue of the German Catholic church's response to Hitler, the Nazis, and their war is not so much the lack of open opposition to the war but rather the strength and urgency of the calls for support...
...Her hope was fulfilled...
...The sour note of political correctness in all this is reflected in the bad logic, poor structure, and grammatical errors (you must mean "her all-but-m-comprehensible," not "all-but-uncomprehending" dismissal of contraception) in the piece, one of the poorest I have read in my more than thirty years as a subscriber...
...As to the wartime record of the Catholic church in Germany, my German Catholics and Hitler's Wars (1969) might be helpful...
...Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us a picture of Dorothy Day smiling...
...It was Dorothy's dream to set up a permanent retreat center for priests to make the Lacou-ture retreat, the retreat given by Father Hugo...
...ben hogan, o.carm...
...At once...
...Yes, "she took what she wanted from the retreat...
...This occasion of grace became her second conversion, as valid as the first...
...All during the time Mr...
...RAYMOND FROST Daly City, Calif...
...She never had any doubt about his integrity and orthodoxy and would have followed him to the stake had he gone the route of Savanarola...
...From the editors: We did indeed misspell Billie Holiday's name, much to our chagrin...
...They were profoundly spiritual, full of wisdom, holy and holistic, totally unwooden and unrigid...
...But so is the trustworthiness of those I quoted in my sidebar...
...As for the full story of Father Hugo's relationship to church authorities in Pittsburgh, I again repair to Vishnewski...
...Correction aside, the editorial was excellent...
...Zahn to hint that the leaders of the Catholic church in Germany were wrong in not campaigning openly and officially against the German war effort at the risk of losing their lives, while he himself claimed the status of neutrality by being a "conscientious objector" to the United States' participation in World War II in order to protect his own life a stance that is identical with the form of neutrality implicitly adopted by the Catholic church leaders in Germany...
...Father Egan and the Zwicks are well aware that the "basic retreat" as lifelong Catholic Worker Stanley Vish-newski called it in a lengthy, balanced, sometimes hilarious chapter in his book Wings of the Dawn (Catholic Worker) was the subject of controversy from the start among Catholic Workers...
...From the editorial, "Nothing Scandalous," deliciously and humorously written, to Bernard Bergonzi's tasteful critique "One Month A.D.D...
...allan cuseo Rochester, N.Y...
...I knew Dorothy and "served" at the Catholic Worker House in Manhattan before, during, and after her joyful espousal of the Hugo retreat from 1939 to her death in 1980...
...12:4...
...My October 24 issue did not arrive until October 28-but it was very much worth the wait...
...In the light of those conferences, she moved from hyper-activity to heroic holiness...
...The ACCO was in fact the Catholic Worker, and observed the usual CW standard of gourmet diet and lavish comfort...
...I can't believe I ate the whole thing...
...You didn't computer-generate the image, did you...
...Zahn did not openly and vigorously oppose the American war effort as he seems to have expected of the German church's leaders...
...Well, John McClure has, in a fine essay in the fall issue of Cross Currents discussing DeLillo and other writers searching for religion in a secular world...
...No cheap grace Thank you for Patrick Jordan's good article on Dorothy Day, but it puzzles us how he could write so well on Dorothy and so poorly on Father John Hugo...
...Pace Father Egan, both Tom Sullivan and Nina Polcyn Moore made the retreat...
...I'm sure Dylan was pleased...
...Alka-Seltzer, anyone...
...The writers are members of the Houston Catholic Worker house, Casa Juan Diego...
...This occasion of grace became her second conversion, as valid as the first...
...Day & Fr...
...Though the urban church often concentrated on novenas and bingo, she discovered an authentic Christianity in Father Hugo's retreat calling her to liturgical worship, Scripture reading, and contemplation...
...Their criticisms are well-informed and firsthand...
...See the 1996 book edited by Anne Klejment and Nancy L. Roberts, American Catholic Pacifism (Greenwood Press), on his role in the development of the theology of pacifism at the Catholic Worker, and William Miller's A Harsh and Dreadful Love (Image Books...
...Someone should research it...
...Nor is there any question that Cardinals Dearden and Wright, like Dorothy Day herself, found Father Hugo a faithful and inspiring priest...
...Bishop (later Cardinal) Wright, who succeeded Dear-(Continued on page 27) (Continued from page 4) den, called Hugo a theologian of the rank of Saint Augustine and appointed him chair of the diocesan theological commission...
...REV...
...In the Bowery's grim squalor, she discerned nobility in every beat-up waif...
...She took a hope to purify and refine her interior life and thus become more effective in her ministry to the poorest of the poor...
...Niagara Falls, Ont...
...I have found the program informative and inspiring...
...I have lived in the Saint Francis Catholic Worker House here for eleven years, and cannot recall seeing one picture of her smiling, not one...
...JACK DRUMKE Chicago, III...
...The Catholic League scares me...seems the "fortress mentality" still lives...
...This does not deny Hugo's influence, but places it in perspective...
...The Zwicks' statement that next to Peter Maurin, Father Hugo was the most important influence in Day's life is also problematic...
...Others who picked up only secondhand and distorted myths tended to frown...
...Unkind to Mother Teresa I was truly disturbed by the ungracious notes sounded in your obituary of Mother Teresa...
...In 1965, when I was thirteen years old, filled with the idealism of Catholic faith and American virtue, yet also aware of at least some of their shortcomings, a friend played a Bob Dylan album for me entitled "Bringing It All Back...
...Aspects of Mother Teresa's work, and the ideological uses to which her admittedly heroic example is often put, raised legitimate issues that deserved a response...
...If others found it wanting, that should be recognized and stated...
...He writes: "I do not know all the facts...
...I have been trying to find the words to describe her shows...
...Now, I just say, "Read this...
...Wasn't she busy enough for you...
...gene bogucki Petersburgh, N.Y...
...I have been trying to find the words to describe her shows...
...His organ in "Like a Rolling Stone" makes me think of cathedrals being constructed, his allusions in "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," and "When the Ship Comes In" remind me of the trials and rewards of faith and the great spiritual debt we owe to all the martyrs and especially to the Jewish victims of the death camps...
...She discerned the authenticity of the Hugo retreat and resisted faulty imaginings about it...
...One example of many episcopal statements concerning service in World War II is Archbishop Groeber's (Freiburg) preface to his Handbook for the Religious Questions of the Day (1937): "The church shares responsibility for truth and right, for order and peace...
...You outdid yourselves...
...No cheap grace Thank you for Patrick Jordan's good article on Dorothy Day, but it puzzles us how he could write so well on Dorothy and so poorly on Father John Hugo...
...Nowhere did I write, as the Zwicks imply, that Father Hugo "didn't really influence Dorothy...
...From the editorial, "Nothing Scandalous," deliciously and humorously written, to Bernard Bergonzi's tasteful critique "One Month A.D.D...
...He knew the truth of Bonhoef-fer and of Vatican II: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church...
...HARVEY EGAN Minneapolis, Minn...
...I knew Dorothy and "served" at the Catholic Worker House in Manhattan before, during, and after her joyful espousal of the Hugo retreat from 1939 to her death in 1980...
...All those who noted our error will be comforted to know the penance imposed on us by Father Ray: We have to read even more material from the Catholic League...
...For Hugo there was no cheap grace...
...But the story of the controversy must be locked up in the chancery archives of Pittsburgh...
...Let each of us do his or her part in the body of Christ and not scorn the other members...
...I am sure Mr...
...His later albums include some of the finest devotional/religious poetry in the language, charged with Catholic meaning and consequence, the Virgin Mary present at every turn...
...The article, which seemed to be mainly anecdotal, trivialized Father Hugo, who served as Dorothy's spiritual director, assisted her in organizing the famous retreat, and was the theologian responsible for most of the articles on pacifism published in the Catholic Worker...
...It's William Holy Day...
...mrs...
...I'm sure someone has already told you that the spelling of Billie Holiday's name in your October 24 editorial was wrong...
...She was too shrewd to end up in that predicament, and always remained in the heart of the church...
...Father Hugo asked no more of Catholics than a Saint Francis, Leon Bloy, Peter Maurin, Pope John Paul II, or the Gospels, and for this was unpopular because the bourgeois spirit is a cancer that runs deep in American culture...
...For Hugo there was no cheap grace...
...Instead of spending the war sitting "comfortably at home," I was one of the many assigned to unpaid Civilian Public Service (in fact, we were supposed to pay for our food and keep, which very few of us did or could...
...A truly eloquent summation by the most insightful, lively, and well-spoken critic I've encountered...
...HARVEY EGAN Minneapolis, Minn...
...It was Dorothy's dream to set up a permanent retreat center for priests to make the Lacou-ture retreat, the retreat given by Father Hugo...
...I heard Dorothy speak much more often about her father and Forster Batterham than Hugo...
Vol. 124 • December 1997 • No. 21
