Correspondence
Helpful history I am no great fan of Andrew Greeley, but I believe his article on the revolutionary character of Vatican II ["The Revolutionary Event of Vatican II," September 11] served an...
...Why do I love thee...
...sometimes she boldly tells everyone exactly what they ought to be doing, sometimes she gives the impression of groping in the darkness...
...of these, many justify their conduct by simply denying that the church has any authority whatever over matters sexual...
...MARTINA PARANDA Edison, N.J...
...For many years I had thought that my parish was unique, that our experience would provide enough grist for several doctoral theses in sociology...
...For decades, the theological reasoning behind that stance has been available to the clergy from authoritative sources--for example, in the responses to Humanae vitae by the hierarchies of France and other nations...
...We say we understand the other's position, but do we ever change our minds...
...EDWARD F. HAYES Orlando, Fla...
...I find this disconcerting...
...It would seem that the situation is the reverse of what it was thirty years ago...
...In those years the Latino minority was growing...
...Report from Venezuela Steve Ellner BLASPHEMY ON STAGE...
...Sometimes she appears to be very confident of herself and of the value of her message, sometimes she seems rather to be a bit confused and unsure of herself...
...If I may believe the media, the average Sunday homily is now better prepared than was the case thirty years ago, but too often it is still theologically superficial...
...It all depends which audience he has in mind...
...I knew and in a way shared the suffering my husband had to undergo, but it was truly a Mass of healing for us as well as for Joe...
...The only hold the original community has is the school and the CCD, both of which are taught in English but serve a majority of the Latino pupils...
...We need to know that the church is not doomed always to follow the apparent direction of the moment...
...I believe the blame belongs more properly to the clergy...
...No argument In her column for the issue of September 25, Sidney Callahan confronts the warrior generals and writes: "All right, I understand the arguments of my fellow Christians who defend just wars...
...couples were to accept children lovingly from God...
...A drop makes a hole in the rock by falling on it not forcefully but often" (Ovid...
...WILLIAM F. BELL Lenox, Mass...
...But if, by some stroke of the archbishop's pen, an Anglo parish were created, I wouldn't change...
...It was shortly after this that Joe said to me, "I think I'm ready to die...
...I _9 Peter Feuerherd Catholic cable talk-show host remembers his I I fifteen minutes of fame...
...When asked why I subscribe to Commonweal, I don't have to count the ways...
...their parents seem to prefer that their children become integrated...
...We need more sense of history so that we will be less superficial...
...Please pray for our parish...
...Healing tears The article by Donald Moore, "With Tears that Heal" [September 11], had special meaning for me, as the wife of the terminally ill patient for whom Mass was offered in our home...
...We were unable to provide a bridge...
...Except in the further reaches of libertarian advocacy," you say, "there is a consensus about the president's sexual misdeeds...
...BEGINNING DOCTORS Margaret C. Heagarty SCREEN 2 5 A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries 6 One True Thing Richard Alleva 7 8 9 MEDIA Haven't I seen you on TV...
...We finally instituted formal classes for children but the parents are highly involved in preparing their children for the sacraments...
...Moral liberals, having scant sympathy with such metaphysical notions, think in terms of a breach of social conventions...
...JOHN C. KERSTEN, S.V.D...
...William Davidson, M I ' - - passed away on Friday, October 2. Father Davidson is the reason I have been a Commonweal subscriber...
...And it is not necessarily in her 'best' moments, when she is most confident and clear, that she is most true to herself...
...Father Davidson experimented...
...In the late '60s I actively participated in the organization of the parish council...
...I need only point to such succulence as this line from James Duffy in his September 11 review of Will This Do?, the Auberon Waugh autobiography: "His American publisher will not make profits comparable to those rolling in for the McBlarney Brothers' reminiscences...
...I think we were the first to have women Eucharistic ministers, the first to have communal penance services...
...In the ensuing years our Latino brethren have taken ownership of the parish and it is flourishing...
...DAVID R. CARLIN Newport, R.I...
...MARY HALPIN Rochester Hills, Mich...
...It seems that we are only one of many...
...For them, adulterous sex with an intern at the White House belongs in the same moral genus with bad table manners...
...Paul Baumann Appraising Terrence McNally' s Corpus Christi...
...We find ourselves on the fringe of a vibrant parish community: ready, willing, and able, but uninvited to the banquet...
...All along we have had female "Father's Helpers" on the altar during Mass...
...Am I odd...
...He died on the golf course---the tenth green--right where he would have wished (he loved golf...
...Italics added...
...I think that today I am a Catholic adult...
...The great majority of married Catholics use artificial means of birth control...
...President Clinton himself in keeping with his goal of being all things to all men--condemns his conduct as sinful on some days and inappropriate on others...
...Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 October23, 1998 October 23, 1998 / Volume CXXV, Number 18 Correspondence The fall-out from Vatican II...
...That protest has devolved into the attitude expressed by those who say, "Those Vatican celibates should stay out of our bedrooms...
...I differ with Father Greeley when he writes that the church documents themselves "contributed substantially to the weakening" of church authority...
...Moral traditionalists (old-fashioned Christians and others of that ilk) condemn his conduct as "sinful" or "immoral...
...If not for Father Davidson, I would still be a Catholic child...
...Instead of "just wars," for example, substitute "pacifism," or "abortion," or "women's right to ordination," or "homosexual love," or "impeaching the president...
...But in the end, none of these arguments convinces me...
...ANDREW GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...Guilty of what...
...Every Sunday priests have fifteen minutes to tell the faithful not only that the church's authority rests on Christ's command: "Go and teach all nations...whoever hears you hears me," but also that where noninfallible teaching is concerned, they must prayerfully and responsibly educate their own consciences and consider their own circumstances...
...E d i t o r i a l s License to kill A moral sentiment COLUMNISTS Mistaken identity John Garvey Nero redivivus E.J...
...After we each present our side, we seem only to agree to disagree...
...The Dominican Simon Tugwell has written: "The church has known many different moods in the course of her history...
...This difference in judgmental adjectives reflects a serious difference in moral theory...
...Owning one's parish I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read Father Kevin Codd's description of a typical American parish undergoing an influx of immigrants ["Bring Back the Ethnic Parish," September 11...
...Each of us appears to be so completely certain of our own position...
...405, New York, NY 10115 _9 (212) 662-4200 _9 http://www.commonwealmagazine.org (Continued from page 2) Death of a pastor One of the donors listed in your "Next Generation" ad in the issue of September 11--identified there as "Rev...
...Traditionalists think in terms of a breach of an unwritten law--a law perhaps made by God, but at all events not made by human beings...
...The writer is the author of Bible Catechism (Catholic Book Publishing Corporation, Totawa, N.J...
...Helpful history I am no great fan of Andrew Greeley, but I believe his article on the revolutionary character of Vatican II ["The Revolutionary Event of Vatican II," September 11] served an extremely useful purpose...
...Call me 'Mother' John Horgan A woman 'ordained' in Ireland...
...Pulpit failures I must sadly agree with Father Greeley's article that church documents of the past half-century, especially Humanae vitae, in combination with misunderstanding of the primacy of conscience, have shattered the church's authority structure...
...In conversations with fellow Catholics, both liberal and conservative, about the path the church is taking, I am struck by how often ideology trumps history, and how often the ideology is thin stuff, a blend of timebound religious perceptions and the chatter you hear on television...
...My wife and I were trained as cross-cultural missionaries, speak Spanish, spent several years in South America in the mid-'60s, and hoped to apply all this in our own land...
...My hope is that the publication of the article will be of help to others trying to help a loved one prepare for that final journey...
...Commonweal 4 October23,1998...
...It was not to be...
...When Pius XI modified this teaching by permitting the use of natural family planning, I can remember hearing a father of thirteen say: "Why didn't they tell me this twenty years ago...
...I promoted the idea of having representatives of our then smaller Latino community take part, which they did with enthusiasm-so much so that the council became bilingual...
...JAMES T. DETFE Weehawken, N.J...
...I replied, "He raised me...
...But it's still my parish...
...A consensus of disapproval, yes, but no consensus on the grounds for disapproval...
...He insisted that parents were the educators of their children, and his religious education classes were for parents to teach their children...
...Dionne, Jr...
...It jogged our memories of history, and that is something we Catholics need...
...Those who follow this path may well be doing the right thing for the right reasons...
...Priests should have helped maintain respect for the magisterium by preaching clearly and frequently on the interplay between church authority and the role of conscience and can still do so today...
...SHORT TAKES D r . Seuss condemned David Toolan Has the Vatican gone mad again, in the case of the mystic de Mello...
...Bay Saint Louis, Miss...
...I truly enjoy the liturgies (the chaos of Palm Sunday, the somberness of Good Friday, and the exuberance of Easter...
...now, the Anglo minority is shrinking...
...It is not...
...One parishioner said to me yesterday, "Mary, he raised our kids...
...Once it was taught that all forms of family planning were sinful...
...He felt our love and experienced great relief, knowing that now he and all of us could face the burden of his coming death...
...I hear in the Gospels the invitation to change our minds, but in so many areas that seems to be only a remote possibility at best...
...13 15 BOOKS Acheson by James Chace James Finn Friends o f God and Prophets by Elizabeth A. Johnson Robert P. Imbelli Hopkins Re-Constructed by Justus George Lawler Edward T. Wheeler Religion booknotes Lawrence S. Cunningham POETRY Margaret Anne Higgins THE LAST WORD Banned in Denmark Dorothy Mills 1 8 2 0 2 2 2 4 2 6 2 8 2 7 31 Commonweal _9 475 Riverside Drive, Rm...
...May I quibble with one sentence in your September 11 editorial ["The President...
...Moral liberals (the kind of people who like to talk in terms of "social constructions") condemn it as "improper" or "inappropriate...
...most of them are in Spanish and overflowing...
...Of the documents cited by your author, I will comment on those dealing with birth control...
...more on Monicagate...
...It seems to me that in any debate that I have with any person of good will concerning any moral issue, I could substitute almost any word or words for those above in italics...
...He was the founding pastor of Saint Anastasia Church in Troy, Michigan, created by the late Cardinal John Dearden as an experimental parish...
Vol. 125 • October 1998 • No. 18
