Covers, colleges, confession
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Fear of women I have just finished reading the two excellent articles on women in the church in your January 29,1999 issue. Would...
...Then our expression of contrition will be more genuine and lively...
...white...
...BRIAN DOYLE Portland, Oreg...
...Too bad Mr...
...Burtchaell's book One can readily join in the lament expressed in James Burtchaell's book, The Dying of the Light about colleges that start off as Christian institutions and then abandon their Christianity ["Something Lost, Something Gained...
...Finally, a cause—World War II— came along to fit his rhetoric...
...That is why articles about Catholic identity in the colleges are annual lowlights in their alumni magazines...
...But that they mostly stayed in business seems rather miraculous to me, and that they stayed Catholic at all seems to me the most interesting news of all...
...But we all remember what the Lord said to the angel of the Church of Laodicea about the hot, the cold, and the lukewarm...
...I enjoy your magazine, hundreds of issues of which are mine by now...
...that the decline in free labor from priests, nuns, and brothers put financial strain on the schools...
...As one looks at the American church today, the greater evidence of passion and intensity, or real seriousness, seems to be coming from the right side of the theological spectrum...
...Would that the cover had reflected the tone and content of the articles, rather than subverting them...
...Many of us grew up with the expression "going to confession...
...Not that passion and intensity are always good news...
...Republicans...
...While an important part of the sacrament, sin is not the most important...
...It was a lot easier to put a finger on Catholic identity in the college when the school was owned by an order than it is now...
...that they issue a lot of rhetorical guff about "involving the lay community" and "engaging the secular" to cover their tracks is inarguable...
...How to determine truth and how to establish some minimum standards by which true Christians, true Catholics, and true Catholic institutions can be determined...
...Burtchaell and your reviewer, Neil Coughlan, and any university that pretends to be Christian, are dealing with difficult questions...
...I am impressed by the general honesty of the attempt to find what it is that "Catholic" means at a modern "Catholic university" even as I have to grin at the occasional utter goofiness of the effort...
...Catholic universities that accept no such authority, whether of popes, councils, or bishops, should have the honesty to discard all claims to being Catholic and go down the straight secular road...
...Most of the individual's time and energy in preparing to receive the sacrament was centered on sin...
...david gobel Havertown, Pa...
...C is for compunction Sidney Callahan's recent piece on confession ended with the punchline "When penance is revitalized, the people will come" ["Forgive Me, Father," December 18,1998...
...Experience has shown me that the type of cliched and stereotypical categorizing that you display is rarely open to selfdoubt or self-correction...
...Hyde doesn't have a cause to fit his rhetoric...
...male...
...LEAH LEBEC Greenwich, Conn...
...MacArthur used inflated rhetoric throughout his professional career...
...That they became "less Catholic" is arguable...
...My reading of the same facts is that most Catholic schools were staring at bankruptcy without federal loans...
...I found the book fascinating...
...If we seem hard on the Republicans, it is perhaps because they are, after all, in charge...
...that the orders that owned them were themselves facing financial troubles (the Holy Cross congregation simply couldn't afford to own Notre Dame anymore...
...I believe we need to change our description of this sacrament...
...If we could approach the sacrament with consciences already examined at home, we could devote the limited time we have to a person-to-person encounter with Christ in a spirit of compunction...
...What Burtchaell missed Neil Coughlan's review of Burtchaell's book is not only a model in setting the book and author in context, but very honest in response to Burtchaell's substantive, prickly, and combative accomplishment...
...But we reread the editorial and think we pretty much blamed everyone, including President Clinton and the American people, for dereliction of their civic responsibilities...
...Once again a Clinton apologist dismisses his behavior with a wink and a shrug, then proceeds to lay all the nation's woes at the feet of the (evil...
...Otherwise confusion, chaos—we might as well all be Unitarians...
...I thought of analyzing, critiquing, and exposing your fallacious thought, but why bother...
...The editors reply: Without that analysis of our faulty logic, we are hard pressed to offer a defense...
...I don't suppose that our Catholic universities will regress that far, but the false prophets—Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Derrida—are now too often the measure of what's hot and what's not...
...Two other parts—contrition and conversion—are of far greater importance and ought to be given more attention and emphasis...
...I like to read your columnists especially: They express ideas that I don't find elsewhere...
...and that the schools realized they needed to change somehow to get students and money, the twin arteries that supply lifeblood...
...REV...
...The editors reply: Perfect humor drives out fear...
...EDWARD MCCORKELL, O.C.S.O...
...CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Fear of women I have just finished reading the two excellent articles on women in the church in your January 29,1999 issue...
...Having offered heartfelt gratitude to God for his infinite mercy, we can end our celebration with a renewed commitment to the dynamism of conversion (metanoia in the Scriptures...
...ELLEN K. WONDRA Rochester, N.Y...
...We'll keep trying...
...January 15,1999...
...Congrats on your website, this is my first visit...
...john c. cort Nahant, Mass...
...Cancel my subscription immediately...
...Berryville, Va...
...The cover illustration underscores some people's fears of women, which both Professor van Beeck and Sister Rose Hoover go a long way to decreasing...
...I suppose you could talk about petty obscuring in contrast to real serious or solemn obscuring (fogging...
...Can truth really be expected to bubble up, "manifest and impose itself" ["Back to the Future," same issue] without any authority to make a definite, if not infallible, judgment...
...Continued on page 4) 2 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) Faulty logic I am appalled by the distortions of logic embedded in your January 15 editorial, "Distracted Nation...
...JOHN D. RYAN Southwick, Mass...
...Nowhere else I read every issue of your magazine religiously...
...But what the impeachers are doing is real serious, indeed solemn fogging—albeit while acting petty in the process...
...The writer is associate professor of theological studies at Bexley Hall Seminary and an Episcopal member of ARC-USA...
...When that changes, we'll be happy to blame the other guys and gals...
...If Burtchaell is in fact proposing Catholic universities that accept Catholic authority, that on its face doesn't seem such a bad idea...
...If we are hard-pressed for time, it would be better to postpone the performance of the "penance" until later, in order to make a firm resolution to that change of disposition and outlook which is the heart of the "good news...
...More democratic procedures are certainly needed, but in the end judgments must be made...
...Burtchaell has all the facts and reads them in his own way—not discussing the very real fear among Catholic colleges in the '60s and 70s that they would go out of business if they did not change...
...Harvard started as a Congregational seminary, yet when I was there in the early thirties, the philosophy department had so far abandonned Christian philosophy that its history of philosophy course skipped from Artistotle to Descartes, a period of 2,000 years...
...I hope and trust you will do greater justice to the content of Commonweal in the future...
...Washington fog Is "petty fogging" an alternative spelling of "pettifogging" ["Distracted Nation," January 15,1999...
...Congressman Henry Hyde's inflated rhetoric concerning Bill Clinton's testimony in the Jones lawsuit reminds me of a historian's comment about General Douglas MacArthur...
...When we come to the moment of the actual conferring of the sacrament, it will be what it should be—a celebration of God's love and mercy...
...I find that the popular media ignore moral issues...
Vol. 126 • February 1999 • No. 3
