Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Frank's touch The news of Frank McConnell's sudden death shocked me [February 12]. I'll miss his frequent visits via Commonweal, his enthusiasm, his love...
...There is a place for burning zeal in the religious life, but there is also a place for patient examination of issues that do not yield to oratory...
...Involving the community" and "engaging the secular" are not always "rhetorical guff...
...The worlds he touched will miss his light...
...Commonweal 4 March 12,1999...
...Niagara Falls, Ont...
...His reviews and articles always cracked, snackled, and popped...
...It is suddenly dimmer here...
...Cort refers to "the false prophets—Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Derrida," all of whom (except Sartre) I teach at an assertively Dominican college...
...But maintaining such a university requires a measure of adroitness that the theological right, with all its "passion and intensity," is likely to discount...
...Those we must master In Commonweal's discussion of Catholic universities, John Cort's letter raises issues that require a response [February 12...
...Such a view represents an ironic triumph for the biggest false prophet of all, Nietzsche, who claimed that issues of truth were, always and inevitably, questions of power...
...So does the Holy Father, at least if I read Fides et ratio correctly...
...I met him once at Notre Dame...
...Saint Thomas Aquinas plundered the pagan Aristotle for concepts and arguments...
...Philosophy thus turns into theology, theology into politics, and politics into the use of centralized ecclesiastical power...
...ben hogan, o. carm...
...I'll miss his frequent visits via Commonweal, his enthusiasm, his love for life, learning, art...
...In short, a Catholic universtiy is not, as George Bernard Shaw thought, a contradiction in terms...
...He spoke as he wrote, with wit, insight, brilliance, and frankness...
...I read these writers, not as prophets (true or false), but as philosophers whose arguments we must master before we accept or reject them (it is not a question of "what's hot...
...PHILIP E. DEVINE Providence, R.I...
...Likewise, if we want a Catholic economics, as I do, it is not sufficient to try to institute it and impose it by political means: someone has to wrestle with the Dismal Science in its own terms...
...But the idea persists among "conservative" Catholics that we must resolve questions of philosophical truth on extraphilosophical grounds...
...Thus, unless Cort has studied the private language argument, and has intelligible reasons for regarding it as unsound, he has no grounds for objecting to my teaching...
...I don't believe a person could meet Frank—in person or in print—and not feel lucky to be alive...
...rev...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 5
