Correspondence
What Maggie knew Thank you for the wonderful article by Dr. Margaret Heagarty ["Beginning Doctors," October 23]. It is a joy to recognize the unflagging commitment and integrity she...
...We who work in the field today owe him more than we can express...
...Heagarty it is as warm and comforting as...as an old green sweater...
...He wrote: "When the universe was about a billion years old, there just happened [italics mine] to be a little more matter here than there," which eventuated in what we have now...
...It is not possible to dispense with the basic faith statements Christianity makes about the nature of deity and still call what's left "Christianity," though it seems to be accepted as an option by Polkinghorne and others...
...I personally am grateful...
...EUGENE J. FISHER Washington, D.C...
...My maternal grandparents had thirteen children...
...Though Polkinghorne's contribution to the dialogue between religion and science is immense, and fashionable, I'm glad to see that someone besides me is made slightly uneasy by his theology...
...Where, as the saying goes, would I be without them...
...Dedication" can be a chilly word, but applied to Dr...
...Besides that, in this latest book, according to McMullin, Polkinghorne sees God as a "temporal Being" who "does not yet know the unformed future...
...Are we discussing children, or are we talking about money...
...When I first met Father Flannery in 1973, I experienced a measure of awe, not only at his accomplishments but at the deep sense of spiritual "centeredness" one sensed in him...
...I can see they might be embarrassed by our questioning of their habits, though not to the point of wishing us dead...
...Really...
...At the beginning of the century, Irish, Jewish, Italian, and Spanish families tended to be large...
...Silverton, Oreg...
...The tragedy of AIDS is fast becoming that access to care and drugs will determine who survives this plague...
...I read Ernan McMullin's October 9 review of John Polkinghorne's book, Belief in the Age of Science, with interest...
...ANNE HAENN BEDESSEM Boonsboro, Md...
...It's all an accident...
...The best way to remember him is by working to continue the process of reconciliation...
...SALLY CAMPBELL Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y...
...It's relevant as well that the media thrive on any controversy they can find or stir up...
...The quotations from Cardinal Newman and others pleading for "space and time" for theologians to develop their thought are very impressive...
...I do not see how these ideas of chance and improvisation are compatible with traditional Christianity's statements that God is not only infinite and eternal, but (as McMullin puts it) "everywhere and at all moments active, each moment equally present to his knowledge and power...
...The generosity, humor, and style of this "redfaced, white-haired old lady" revealed the young Maggie of the old green sweater who shared insights and opinions with me and her other friends at Seton Hill College...
...Did he think to ask that patriarch which of his children he found unworthy...
...Too fertile...
...But a core tenet of Catholic social teaching stresses what we have in common, a basic human dignity, that cannot be honored by a health-care nonsystem that leaves 40 million of us uninsured...
...Until there is such a plan, we can anticipate more ribbons and more articles claiming exceptional status because this or that disease is unique...
...PHILIP J. SANDSTROM Brussels, Belgium (Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 November20,1998 (Continued from page 2) A "temporal" God...
...GABRIEL AUSTIN New York, N.Y...
...In any case, congratulations to McMullin for speaking out...
...Where would any of us be without our fertile ancestors...
...By the way, if it consoles Polkinghorne, these attributes of deity--omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence--are also believed in all Eastern spiritual systems...
...and is "constantly improvising...
...Thus the opportunity for dispassionate weighing of arguments is rarer than in the nineteenth and earlier centuries...
...A vocation to reconcile It was with sadness that I learned of the passing of Father Edward H. Flannery, my predecessor as director for Catholic-Jewish relations for the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs from 1967 to 1976...
...When Father Flannery began his vocation the Catholic church and the Jewish people had been largely estranged for many centuries...
...In the absence of any "private place" for serious innovative theological discussion, all kinds of unripe fruits are exposed in some very strange venues without safeguards, regardless of the individual theologian's wishes...
...Has anyone done a statistical survey correlating the size of families and the level of income...
...Did he determine the opinion of the matriarch...
...Vatican II's declaration, Nostra aetate, could not have been implemented as well as it has been without his guidance in those early, crucial years...
...Commonweal 4 November20,1998...
...It does seem improper in us to be ashamed of them...
...Truly, there was a touch of greatness about him...
...In that context it seems to me only common sense for the apppropriate pastoral authority to exercise its reponsibility to guard whole and firm the faith of the church, for which it is responsible before God...
...His book, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of AntiSemitism, written at the time of the Second Vatican Council, has been continuously in print ever since...
...But in our day and age, "space and time" have been so foreshortened by the media that there is hardly any "time" between the whispering of a daring theological "hypothesis" in a classroom or at a gathering of theologians or in a highly specialized academic journal and its gaining public "space" in the local tabloid or on television, radio, or the Internet...
...The core i s s u e is access Robert M. Byrn's advocacy piece, "A Calculus of Need: Funding AIDS Research and Care" [October 9] dismisses too easily a more just solution to funding for this disease...
...This might seem plodding and boring to some, but it is a necessary work and might even lead to prayer in God's presence...
...In a past Commonweal article [August 16, 1996], Polkinghorne postulated that "chance" played--and still plays, I suppose--a great part in how the universe came to be the way it is...
...While the vast majority of those of us who favor a national health plan do not do so by "creating resentment," we may be guilty of a degree of envy...
...Father John Karsten writes [Correspondence, October 23] of overhearing the reaction of a father of thirteen on learning about natural family planning: "Why didn't they tell me this twenty years ago...
...Is it possible that as the comfort level increases, the fertility rate decreases...
...No privacy for speculation It seems to me that the letters in recent issues [September 11 and 25] commenting on Ad tuendam fidem and Apostolos suos miss a salient point: this century's changes in the speed and impact of the communications media...
...We covet the political will of any country that guarantees that people with AIDS, and all citizens, have needed health c a r e . MICHAEL GRADY, M.D...
...It is a joy to recognize the unflagging commitment and integrity she continues giving to her vocation...
...He used to say that here in America we have a unique opportunity to move forward the process of healing since we enjoy the world's largest Jewish community alongside a healthy Catholic community...
...Considering the general and increasing ignorance of the sources (liturgy, the Fathers, the Scriptures), and of the meaning and content of the faith, a theologian today might better serve the church in explaining better what is already agreed on by the ecumenical councils and is found in the "three pillar-sources" than by always seeking novelties, encouraging controversy, and courting publicity...
...How theologians can still preserve a freedom to hypothecate is a serious conundrum that cannot be solved by railing against the pastoral authority for doing its duty...
...He was one of the pioneers of Catholic-Jewish dialogue...
...A national health plan would guarantee that all people with AIDS would benefit from additional research, not just those with insurance...
...REV...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 20
