Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE ________To the Editors Pupil & teacher As Frank McConnell's former principal at Saint Xavier High School, Louisville, may I add one more fact about Frank? In a letter to me...
...We seemed to have a single soul animating two bodies...
...A great part of the church's history, the life of half her champions, have been devoted to nothing else...
...From then on we were all in all to each other, sharing the same roof, the same table, the same sentiments, our eyes fixed on the same goal, as our mutual affection grew warmer and warmer...
...Doctors & money In his review of Atlantic Crossings [February 12] by Daniel T. Rodgers, John T. McGreevy writes, "members of the Clinton administration, as Rodgers points out, never even bothered to make the public argument that Americans could learn how to organize health policy from foreign models...
...REV...
...Don't ever tell my students I said that, by the way...
...GEORGE P. CARLIN New York, N.Y...
...How said he I recently completed reading the editorial on "How Say You" [February 26], which was a commentary on the ClintonLewinsky affair...
...Divine sanction As I neared the end of Gilbert Meilander's perceptive review of Andrew Sullivan's Love Undetectable [March 12], my mind kept returning to what is, to me, one of the most beautiful recorded friendships: that of Saints Basil and Gregory Nazianzen...
...Deconstructing Evelyn Re: Evelyn Waugh's 1964 letter to the editor, reprinted in "From the Archives," Commonweal, March 12...
...Family "One of Ours: Bill Clinton and AfricanAmericans," by Don Wydiff [February 26] is a beautiful piece of writing...
...Some "Catholic" organizations give very little to their stated purpose...
...If somebody had only taped his zipper shut years ago, the whole country could have been spared this drudgery...
...Sullivan undetected Gilbert Meilander's review of Andrew Sullivan's Love Undetectable was a disappointment...
...As you've guessed, the quotation is taken from volume 1 of the standard breviary, the Divine Office...
...JEREMIAH REILLY Craftsbury Common, Vt...
...Personal contact gave the teacher an understanding of the gay Catholic's pain, faith, and triumph...
...What difference if these persons be of the same sex...
...mttch hnley Spokane, Wash...
...They just didn't know Harry and Louise were coming...
...But the problem is the tension between Sullivan's strong belief in God and the difficult demands of personal chastity...
...BRO...
...I don't think I had to tell Frank's students, for they, like myself and his friends, knew the driving force that sustained him, despite his attempts to sustain a rakehell image...
...Taped shut Was the placement of Bill Clinton's face on your impeachment number [February 26] purposely set to get the address block to look like a great piece of white tape across his mouth...
...Bernard h. trimble Silver Spring, Md...
...Dew from heaven I read with interest and delight Peggy Rosenthal's review of Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen [March 12] because many years ago I was a guest preacher at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California...
...As Richard Feynman said of quantum mechanics, those who have an easy answer have not understood the problem...
...The Wise Giving Guide, 19 Union Square West, New York, NY 10003 ($35 a year) rates the major organizations by nine categories and is a great help...
...I wonder what public opinion polls would have shown if the questions regarding Clinton yea or nay had been asked when people left church...
...That experience, as Sullivan describes it, is as real as any to be found in the writings of the mystics and the cries for understanding which are the Protestant experience...
...francis dcbernardo Mount Rainier, Md...
...edmon l. rowell, jr...
...Wise giving "The Art of Giving" [February 26] was an informative and useful article, certainly appropriate to Lent...
...This is an exceptional situation...
...I need to sustain my image as a rake at the gates of Hell...
...CONCHITA RYAN COLLINS Tucson, Ariz...
...Was that an oversight on the part of the Clinton administration or a delibe^te omission...
...The vital core of Sullivan's book is his experience of God...
...The writer is executive director of New Ways Ministry...
...But he sees also in our polity that that institution has been shaded...
...HAROLD A. BERLINER Nevada City, Calif...
...As I recall, at that time the parish was decidedly up-scale conservative Episcopalian...
...After completing the article, I went back to the cover to make sure I was reading Commonweal and not that bastion of liberalism, The Nation...
...As time went on we admitted our affection to each other and acknowledged that philosophy was the common object of our ambition...
...In a letter to me several months before his death, he revealed a part of himself which he hid behind the "wit, brilliance, insight, and frankness" which Father Hogan noted [Correspondence, March 12...
...The writer is senior editor, Mercer University Press...
...Forsooth...
...Many charities spend far more, up to 94 percent on this...
...However, in considering gifts to larger organizations it is a good idea to know how much of the donation goes to the program, and how much is spent in fund raising and administrative costs...
...michael r. becker Philadelphia, Pa...
...Perhaps the Holy Spirit was trying to get in...
...You may have got by with this is 1964—in the willy-nilly 1960s—but it is time to recant...
...Our church will only be richer because of such efforts...
...Macon, Ga...
...His struggle to confront how others taunted this student, his acknowledgement of his initial failure to do so, and his honest dialogue with the young gay man provides a model for the personal and institutional reconciliation that many Catholics have initiated...
...The court in Hawaii found that, given the practices of birth prevention and the ease of divorce, the legal aspect of marriage in our polity has been re(Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 April 9,1999 (Continued from page 2) duced to the temporary co-habitation of two persons...
...Wydiff s observations constitute a wonderful meditation not only on AfricanAmerican experience but on the meaning and importance of family relationships— about which most Catholic parishes have barely a due...
...Ask and you shall receive In regard to your special focus on charity, I think of the Jewish proverb (paraphrased as best I can): "If ten men all ask you for alms, give to all ten...
...rev...
...Gay teen-agers Bravo to Anthony Andreassi for such a frank examination of his dealings with an openly gay student in an all-male Catholic high school ["Better Late Than...," February 26...
...A great part" is a singular subject...
...With that reality as his base, Sullivan attempts to understand the attraction between friends which gets all mixed up in the sexual impulse...
...The life of half her champions" is parenthetical not copulative...
...This is the value to us of Sullivan's writings...
...And, while those who claim that all things are in all things are not readily to be believed, we, at least, had to believe that we were in and with each other...
...The Clinton administration was well aware of the power of the insurance industry and its lobby...
...WILLIAM J. HALLISSEY Vineland, N.J...
...the verb should be singular also...
...At any rate, judging by Gallagher's description of the life of the church's current community, he/she succeeded...
...THOMAS MORE, C.F.X...
...Louisville, Ky...
...Frank wrote, "I'm a damn good teacher and love what I do because if s my way of serving the Lord...
...But then again, those polled might have been considered to show a moral bias...
...As long as Congress is in thrall to the insurance industry, we'll never have a single-payer health plan...
...When in doubt, a person should ask for last year's financial report, balance sheet, and operating statement...
...Catholic Relief Services uses less than 10 percent for administration and fund raising...
...In his theorizing about gay marriage, he performs the fine exercise of examining the nature of marriage itself...
...That is the gist of Sullivan's question...
...As I knelt at a prayer desk in the sanctuary, a steady drip of water fell on my head...
...You do not know who needs the charity the most...
...gabriel Austin New York, N.Y...
...Looking about him, he sees that the impulse finds its flowering in marriage...
...Clean up Congress and the way campaigns are financed, and maybe this country can have the kind of health care all the doctors I know wish we had, even though it would mean less income for themselves...
...It was raining hard, and, as I soon discovered, the church roof had a hole in it...
Vol. 126 • April 1999 • No. 7
