Roxanna Slade
Marget, Madeline
A SENSE OF PLACE Madeline Marget ~ eynolds Price's work is best appreciated in its cumulative effect, but the novel Roxanna Slade, his thirtieth book, is as good a place to start as...
...405, N.Y., N.Y...
...It seems your ex-subscriber was interested only in justice rather than mercy for the imprisoned pedophile...
...Theology degrees...
...Is it conceivable that the church took any less care with its own writings...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...Years later, she suffers a long depression so severe that she comes close to killing her young daughter to save her from loneliness...
...Celebration CELEBRATING CROSS CURRENTS Barat House at Manhattanville College will celebrate the retiring editors of Cross Currents and the retiring founder Joseph Cunneen on Sunday, October 4, Reid Hall, Manhattanville Campus, 2900 Purchase Street, Purchase, NY 10577...
...Hardly a paradigm of honest search for historical accuracy...
...Commonweal 4 6 September 11, 1998...
...JAMES A. BUFORD, JR...
...The author replies: These two letters reflect the polarization of the debate over Pius XII...
...Recall that National Socialism enjoyed a gift for retaliation...
...She's sure of God's presence, and though sometimes she finds him unintelligible, she never finds him intimidating...
...Nor does he note the German Foreign Office's disgruntled observation about the substantive and phraseological similarities of church protests on behalf of Jews in four different countries...
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...That is not correct...
...She criticizes him: "As far as I can see, in fact, God's maleness is His most difficult problem...
...In support of his position he argues that section 703 (j) of the Civil Rights Act specifically forbids quotas...
...Commissioned by Pius XI, the LaFarge text was seen by Cardinal Tisserant on the pope's desk on the night before he died...
...In both Roxanna Slade and Clear Pictures, as in most of Price's work, the setting is rural, small-town North Carolina...
...If I had the pleasure of pastoring a modern parish, I would subscribe to Commonweal for each of my families...
...There does seem to have been a cover-up as to the draft encyclical's existence (though there is no evidentiary documentation of Pius XII's personal involvement...
...The natural world is as critical to Price's work as any person or event...
...From the editors: If we had episcopal powers, you'd get a parish...
...In my twelve years in Catholic schools, I don't recall ever hearing the word "union...
...MSGR...
...Documentary evidence is currently in short supply supporting a direct connection between Pius and these rescue efforts...
...For all the flaws of Father LaFarge's draft as viewed from today's perspective on the Jewish question, it clearly repudiated the whole theory of racial superiority underlying such laws, and not only in Europe but also in America, where Jim Crow--our vernacular for apartheid--was in full force...
...Every member of the Catholic League could benefit from the editorial, "Tests of Faith," in the same issue, and from the sustenance given in the articles by Fathers McCormick, Coriden, and Imbelli...
...We learn all this well enough so that when, only paragraphs later, Larkin drowns in a swimming race, the event induces heart-pounding sadness...
...For readers interested in the transmutation of fact into fiction--as well as those who just want to read an excellent b o o k - - Scribner's has recently reissued Clear Pictures, Price's memoir about his family and his early life...
...racial injustice and the evil of slavery are present to a high degree in this book...
...JOHN T. PAWLIKOWSKI Guilty of mockery Your mocking response to the letter from Jean-Michael Akey [Correspondence, August 14] merits a sincere apology to Mr...
...Ministry Program DESIRE LAY MINISTRY...
...In Steelworkers v. Weber (1979), the Court specifically upheld a company employment plan which "reserved for black employees 50 percent of the openings in...inplant training programs...
...But he did not...
...While that may not be a moral jewel in his crown, it does indicate some positive attitude toward saving the Jews...
...Putting to one side whatever publicist "hype" Pawlikowski complains of, we can be grateful to Passelecq and Suchecky for publishing the full text of the draft encylical for the first time, and for assessing the document contextually...
...The Vatican stoutly denied its existence for decades, until a copy surfaced among LaFarge's papers after he died in 1968...
...Commonweal 4 | September 11, 1998 Some years ago I read a newspaper article that quoted a scriptwriter known for the verisimilitude of his invented women...
...Roxanna is a complex but not confused character...
...Priesthood...
...Marshall's letter to the Atlantic Monthly [April 13, 1927] held that papal teaching would require Smith to attempt the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in the United States...
...It may reveal something about aspects of Vatican politics of the time, and that is why I wrote that the document should be studied...
...the plan must have a time limit and must not "unnecessarily trammel" the rights of white employees...
...He's introduced race relations: In the early twentieth century, "Mules had Sundays off but very few blacks did...
...He could have stopped their work if he had wished...
...Accordingly, the employer "set[s] a goal equal to availability" of black accountants...
...He makes credible a relationship between Roxanna and a young man--Larkin Slade--that, though it lasts only a few hours, includes sexual passion, the intention of fulfilling it on the spot, and the promise of a life-long commitment...
...Plans adopted under Executive Order 11246 (the approach I recommended) do, however, contain goals...
...Wild as the woods looked on every side, there was a clean walk...through the great dark alleyway of old cedars...to the foot of some sway-backed steps that might have been salvaged from Adam's first hut on the far side of Eden...
...I agree with Professor Gaffney that Father Graham handled the "hidden encyclical" matter poorly...
...When Weber was decided, almost twenty years ago, quotas were the exception in Title VII compliance procedures...
...It hires one black accountant this year and three more in subsequent years until "underutilization" of black accountants "will no longer exist" and the employer determines that affirmative hiring is no longer "necessary...
...He seems to have far less patience than the universe He made requires of a loving handler which He claims to be...
...Hence, Pius was not beyond reason when, fearing German occupation of London in 1940, he (unsuccessfully) asked Britain to destroy documentation of papal assistance to German conspirators against Hitler...
...When Pius XI commissioned the document in 1937, he was fully aware that it was a critical moment in Italian history...
...Nowadays one simply accepts pontifical statements and creeping infallibility or risks excommunication...
...Emaih para@cybernex.net www: http://www2.cybernex.net/-para/public/ sor Pawlikowski does allow, however, that "it is difficult to imagine (even under wartime conditions) that papal nuncios such as Angelo Roncalli...and Angelo Rotta...acted without some indication of Pius's approval...
...A SENSE OF PLACE Madeline Marget ~ eynolds Price's work is best appreciated in its cumulative effect, but the novel Roxanna Slade, his thirtieth book, is as good a place to start as to continue...
...see, for example, Stotts (1984) and Wygant (1986...
...Leer, my article argues that "section 703 (j) of the Civil Rights Act specifically forbids quotas...
...The article quoted the relevant language from the Act to show that it did not require quotas...
...ALL TYPES...
...Hitler had insisted on sending Gestapo agents to Commonweal 4 4 September 11, 1998 Rome to help the Fascists write and implement racial purity statutes akin to the Nuremberg laws...
...LASSIFIE| AI Smith on religious liberty In his review [July 17] of John T. Noonan's splendid book, The Lustre of Our Country, John McGreevy does not note the absence of an incident that would have greatly enriched Noonan's account of the "free exercise of religion" in our country's recent past...
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...Caution was in order...
...As always, the physical world is interwoven in the story of these human relationships, a world that often, even when domesticated, contains references to life beyond it...
...The Weber case cited by Mr...
...My colleague Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr., believes I have left Plus off the hook with respect to the "hidden encyclical...
...Your quotation from Jesus was apt...
...The draft encyclical, Pawlikowski assures us, "was probably not issued because of the pope's general policy of not confronting the Nazis...
...Come away to the beautiful and contemplative surroundings of Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, to rest, pray and experience renewal...
...Jefferson was right, without vigilance we get what we deserve...
...In this dour world of anathemas, how delightful to enjoy a hearty chuckle...
...Is that why he adds that the theme of the book "certainly remains an important area for further research...
...The author replies: According to Mr...
...Doyle certainly adds a couple of positive details that we need to consider...
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...Akey and to all your readers, along with an explanation of how such a response came to be approved for publication in Commonweal...
...Clearly, Catholic educators and leaders have instilled the message of service to the poor, but should be giving at least equal emphasis to the rights of workers...
...instead he has destroyed a straw target of his own design, thereby confirming another point made in the piece: Of current political questions, affirmative action is the least rationally argued...
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...She learns that Palmer, Larkin's older brother and the man she has marr i e d - - ' m y gentle silent mysterious husband"--has for years been unfaithful to her, an especially "tangled truth" because the woman is black...
...But Pawlikowski does not tell us that Graham dissembled badly over the draft encyclical on racism and anti-Semitism written by his fellow Jesuit, John LaFarge...
...The Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the plan--and set forth certain restrictions...
...KEVIN A. DOYLE South Nyack, N.Y...
...Here, in the compact story of a long life, are what Price has elsewhere called "the unseen piers on which the world rides," the themes, settings, and beliefs that sustain his writing: Love of family and place, exaltation of sexual passion, and an absolute faith in God...
...A "quota," according to Webster, is "a [certain] proportional part or share...
...What is it about some of us Catholics that makes us want to take our ball and go home when someone disagrees with us...
...Father Duffy, a former editor of the prestigious New York Review, published at New York's Dunwoodie Seminary, was the principal author of Smith's reply...
...The actual world is worth all your strength," says Roxanna, the novel's narrator...
...EDWARD MCGLYNN GAFFNEY, JR...
...CHARLES F. DEARING Louisville, Ky...
...All his writing is founded on, and intertwined with, the events, people, and development of his own life...
...Though Doyle acknowledges that there can be legitimate criticism of Pius, he gives no examples of such criticism...
...FRANK E. HOWARD Washington, D.C...
...This is the significant controversy in 1927 between Charles C. Marshall, a Protestant lawyer with a claim to competency in canon law, and Alfred E. Smith, who became the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1928...
...After the war Roncalli emphasized that all his efforts were at the pope's behest...
...A wide variety of thoughtfully selected titles, including: FREE AND FAITHFUL: MY LIFE -- H~ring ALL SAINTS -- EIIsberg GOSPEL LIGHT -- Shea FRIENDS OF GOD AND PROPHETS --Johnson Prompt, careful attention to your phone and gift orders...
...The Court reasoned that had Congress intended to preclude quotas, section 703 (j) would have provided that "[n]othing in this title shall be interpreted to require or permit...preferential treatment...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...I agree as well that it is good that we finally have the text...
...E . ] I ;E :11 ~ll.dl ' J f . ] l ~ _9 ,]1 ~11 : E-E :! (Continued from page 4) principal teaching of Vatican II, seems to be history...
...Retreats have been a source of renewal for believers long before they became au courant...
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...Assume, writes Mr...
...without it, we are left with little or no check on papal monarchy...
...Unfortunately for Mr...
...The professor gives no mention to Father Aldo Brunacci, a hero of the Assisi Underground whose execution only the Vatican prevented...
...The Roanoke River, "one of the wonders on anybody's map," makes Roxanna think of the gods, "Greek and Roman...nothing else but their hard chancy power seemed fit to explain the life of that deep surge of water as it poured past the wide bend northeast of Lark's home...
...This illustrates another point made in the article: When employers adopt plans that go beyond what the law requires, the plans can be challenged in court...
...These similarities make it appear "as if all of [these church leaders] were receiving the same instructions from the Vatican...
...Roxanna is sure that the people she's loved have loved her back...
...Reynolds Price's artistry goes way beyond this perhaps disingenuous remark, but his outlook and opinions, recognizable from his other writing, are clearly present in Roxanna...
...It would have been more accurate (but less useful for his purpose) had he looked up the term "goal," defined by the same source as "the end to which all effort is directed...
...JOHN J. QUINN Yonkers, N.Y...
...in addition, the Bard of Avon tells us that "in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation...
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...However, black accountants constitute 10 percent of the employment pool from which the employer draws...
...Fax: 212-535-4052...
...Instead, Pawlikowski treats dismissively the efforts of George Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky in The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI to find and publish this document...
...Buford affords us of employment "goals" is a classic example of a quota...
...The very example Mr...
...My view, as set forth in the article, is that by and large it has served to equalize opportunity for women and minorities without unjustly harming others...
...Later decisions established additional procedural safeguards against reverse discrimination...
...But one cannot simply dismiss the "hype" about the book, for which the authors must assume some responsibility, because the way the book was promoted served to nourCommonweal ~5 September 11, 1998 ish the prevailing image of the "silence" of Pius XII...
...But that conclusion begs the very question Pawlikowski would have us consider in a nonpolemical way: "Whether he [Pius XII] should have been more public in criticizing the Nazis, whether he should have acted earlier, whether he should have spoken out simply to maintain the church's moral integrity, whatever the practical consequences...
...Valparaiso, Ind...
...60626...
...Nonetheless, Roxanna Slade is herself, a real creation with her own distinctive story...
...Less than twenty-five pages into the book, Price has told us about her family, "Muddie and Father and Leela of course," her younger brother Fern and her older brother, "long gone, living in Shelby with a dreadful wife and an unloved daughter with a neck as long as any wet week," and the family into which she will marry, including the daunting "Miss Olivia" who will be her mother-in-law...
...A quota is a quota James Buford's defense of affirmative action in your issue of June 19 attempts to answer the main complaints against such a policy, chief of which is that it imposes racial and gender quotas on hiring...
...Catholic Historian, Spring 1997...
...Buford posits as an example a company goal to satisfy a 10 percent quota...
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...10115...
...Its appropriateness may be debatable...
...Lear cites Webster's definition of a quota ("a proportional part or share") and says that usage of the term suggests a requirement, such as a sales quota...
...On the negative side, I would only note that several leaders of the Assisi Underground expressed public displeasure with Pius XII...
...And the Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione was later only prudent in asking diplomats to the Holy See to destroy files once Nazi occupation of Vatican City seemed likely...
...This, he contends, is untrue...
...She joins a long line of characters, actual as well as fictional, who convey Price's most compelling quality: The presence and companionship of a person of generous understanding and warm intelligence...
...12 word minimum...
...it is questionable whether the present Supreme Court would permit them at all...
...Leer involved a company with a history of employment practices that had reCommonweal 4 ' 2 September 11, 1998 stricted promotion opportunities for minority employees and was therefore vulnerable to a class-action lawsuit, in which a trial court might well have ordered a very stringent affirmative-action plan such as the one imposed on the Alabama State Troopers in the Paradise case, cited in my article...
...EDWARD ALCOTT San Antonio, Tex...
...Buford, that an employer has fifty accountants on its payroll of whom two, or 4 percent, are black...
...To deprive oneself deliberately of the enrichment of your publication is a form of self-imposed spiritual starvation...
...That said, I still believe (along with a leading Jewish historian of the era, Professor Michael Marrus of the University of Toronto) that the Passelecq/Suchecky volume tells little new about Pius XII...
...Leer has chosen to avoid that issue...
...I believe the best way to help lift people out of poverty is to support their efforts to organize for a united voice in the workplace in the struggle for better wages, benefits, and working conditions...
...Kevin Doyle contends that I am still too harsh on the pope...
...In Weber, the company voluntarily adopted a plan to reserve 50 percent of the slots in a training program for minority employees to improve their promotion potential...
...Further, within a year of war's outbreak, the Vatican knew of--and futilely protested--Axis rifling of even its diplomatic correspondence...
...Her voice is vital and humorous...
...And looking back from the present to the 1940s, Roxanna sees her younger self as something near to a slave, because she's a woman...
...Larkin's death is far from the end of sorrow and grief in Roxanna's life...
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...Madeline Marget, the author of Life's Blood, is working on a novel...
...This letter anticipated by twenty years John Courtney Murray's treatment of this question, which he began in the late 1940s...
...But working at a soup kitchen, or spending a spnng break building a house for a homeless family does not get at the root causes of poverty...
...Incidentally, "goat" and "quota" are not listed as synonyms for each other...
...Advance payment required...
...Since the statute did not bar quotas--it merely specified that they are not "required"--they are permitted...
...Smith's reply, generally accepted as satisfactory, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in May 1927...
...Guilty of enrichment I was pained to note the letter from a reader canceling his subscription [Correspondence, August 14...
...The ~ story is told by Father Thomas Shelley in his article, "What the Hell is an Encyclical?' Governor Alfred E. Smith, Charles C. Marshall, Esq., and Father Francis P. DuffS' [U.S...
...Still, shouldn't Christ's church enjoy the presumption of innocence that we would accord any other religious institution...
...Given what we know, any insistence on documentary demonstration of the Vatican's blessing on and fostering of church rescue efforts defies both common sense and that presumption...
...DANIEL J. LEER Orinda, Calif...
...Buford's argument, the Supreme Court did not so read section 703 (j...
...As Pawlikowski notes, the editor of the Vatican documents thus far released, Robert Graham, S.J., acknowledged the selectivity of his project...
...At the time, Commonweal remarked that Smith's letter was "destined to be the most widely read apology ever published in the United States...
...Residential program...
...Finally, it is not just "difficult" but impossible to imagine Roncalli and Rotta as political actors independent of Pius...
...MATER DEI INSTITUTE at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99202-1849...
...The Supreme Court has in fact modified and even overturned a number of voluntary affirmative-action plans...
...Spend time alone or request spiritual direction...
...Doyle ignores this and other negative assessments by Catholics of the period...
...It is true, though to my mind not particularly relevant, that the Supreme Court has permitted quotas in certain narrowly defined situations...
...His work is notable in its sincerity and in its offer of friendship, gifts that aren't usually classified as literary, but, in his case at least, ought to be...
...His people belong in the land they inhabit...
...She's knowledgeable and wise, so that most of the time her experience and opinions reflect the larger world...
...Rotta likewise reported that Pius ordered him to persist in his humanitarian efforts in Hungary even at mortal risk...
...No writer or publication, Catholic or not, lay or religious, should promote a blind acquittal of Pius XII or his wartime church...
...And those cartoons...
...Despite all this, and more, the tone of the novel is invigorating rather than melancholy...
...A shirt "was precisely the color of the sky, a celestial blue...
...Even in the First Council of Jerusalem, when Peter and Paul "went at it," there was loyal opposition within the church...
...Affirmative action, carried out in accordance with laws and regulations, is, as I wrote, a "mildly proactive approach to equal employment...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
...When asked how he did it, he said, "I write down what I think, and then put 'she said' after it...
...The Hidden Encyclical' John Pawlikowski is surely right in urging the avoidance of "simplistic condemnations or defenses of Pope Pius XII and his response to the Holocaust," and in calling for further research about what the pope said (or failed to say) and about what he did (or omitted doing) to rescue Jews...
...JILL A. CASHEN Chicago, IlL RATES: $1.10 per word...
...Those laws ultimately led Italian Jews to the death camps...
...Organize, organize Reading the article on young adult Catholics in your issue of July 17, I was struck by the huge number of respondents who are strongly committed to service for the poor yet do not embrace the church's social teaching about workers' right to organize into unions...
...Manuscripts Wanted MANUSCRIPTS WANTED...
...It is the landscape that sustains the real as well as the fictional people in his books...
...Too tough on Pius XII After calling for more intellectual nuance and integrity in the assessment of Pius XII, John Pawlikowski writes ["Pius XII and the Jews," July 17]: "We must also deal more thoroughly with the question of Pius's possible tacit support of efforts by Catholic groups and individuals, such as the Assisi Underground, papal nuncios, and women religious, to rescue Jews...
...Without mentioning these facts, Father Pawlikowski states that the book "does not tell us much that is new...
...Interested persons should phone (914) 694-3425 or email rdowd@mville.edu...
...Granted, hands-on service to those in need is important...
...As I see it, Mr...
...It had disappeared by the following morning...
...Or the information and enjoyment available in the book review section...
...A helpful source of information on Catholic social teachings and of relevant worship materials is the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, 1607 W. Howard Street, Suite 218, Chicago, Ill...
...One cannot jump from a few positive comments on Pius's stewardship to a total defense...
...Roxanna believes that although "very few human beings of any sex or background are called to anything grander than dinner," her life, which she inaccurately describes as uneventful, has had purpose, especially in the sexual bond between her and her husband, "a kind of separate life that we lived in the dark with no other watchers...
...More basically, reflecting the failure of retrospective imagination which riddles the whole Pius controversy, Pawlikowski doesn't ask just what needless paper trail would be generated by unarmed rescuers covertly thwarting history's most ruthless killing machine...
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Vol. 125 • September 1998 • No. 15
