Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Lap dog I loved Frans Jozef van Beeck's story about dogs in church ["God's Best Friend," April 6]. It reminded me of a dog named Buttons, whose master passed away—a good Irish...
...And it raises Catholic universalism to a level of ineffability that virtually guarantees eventual secularization...
...Founding father As Father's Day approaches, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who wrote letters and articles about my father Edward Skillin, who died last August...
...It reminded me of a dog named Buttons, whose master passed away—a good Irish chief of police in New York City (I was the chief's nurse...
...Will the "more universally Catholic" college of the future emerge by way of a least-common-denominator melding of congregational "spiritualities and cultures...
...As representative voices of today's theological educators, these authors have much to teach a willful and controlling hierarchy and a gullible public...
...JOY BANTA Jupiter, Fla...
...Appeals from the many charities he gave to still arrive in the mail every day...
...Alleva writes that stars of the highest order appear in local opera productions or concerts—which is true, but not in a way that is transferable to the spoken theater...
...By bringing the issue out into the open and setting forth the evidence, Morey and Holtschneider have put us all in their debt...
...You can bet that at any anniversary Masses for this man, Buttons will be on my lap...
...Other superstars of the music world might appear in small venues...
...I think most lay people, when we think about the situation, would agree that there is a need for the church to be protected from error...
...His examples are telling, but my own experience differs, especially with Shakespeare...
...He mentions Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli appearing in Pittsburgh...
...The editors reply: Why didn't someone tell us this seventy-seven years ago...
...Buttons is still running around looking for him...
...It is absurd, nevertheless, to postulate an intercourse between the two...
...He attended daily Mass for most of his life, and still found time to pray throughout the day...
...And, if the productions are completely tailored to the sacred monsters who are known as stars, so what...
...Newman saw that because theology was "commensurate with revelation," theology had a power of jurisdiction over what he called the political (governing) and popular (worship) elements in the church's constitution...
...Newman's advice Over the years I have been wary of themed issues such as Commonweal is wont to publish...
...For I can testify that dogs do visit churches in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe (usually with their mistresses or masters) and are at least as well behaved as they are in restaurants...
...Most Commonweal readers are aware of the contributions he made to journalism and the intellectual life of the church...
...He was passionate about golf, but didn't mind using clubs purchased at a garage sale or playing on a public course...
...Many of us are forced to conclude that the CDF, however, in dealing with those it finds wayward, prefers the principle that the end justifies the means...
...But it is common practice in the world of opera for great talents to lend themselves to what Waffle calls "small venues...
...Sound familiar...
...ed waffle Detroit, Mich...
...Up to now, the problem posed by the disappearance of religious from Catholic campuses has either (Continued on page 4) 2 (Continued from page 2) been studiously ignored or frivolously dismissed as part of a gloom-anddoom scenario...
...The term "due process" seems to be alien to the CDF...
...Lost identity Considering that the issue Melanie M. Morey and Dennis H. Holtschneider address ["Keeping the Faith on Campus," April 20] has been with us for a generation, it is remarkable that their article is the first to confront it directly in a general interest Catholic magazine...
...In these cases, though, the artist either has a short-run production completely tailored for her or she simply brings her concert to an audience...
...He was perfectly content to play board games or color with his children and later his grandchildren...
...Artistically it was a disaster, but it was a financial windfall...
...This overlooks the fact that the policy of emphasizing an institution's "Jesuit," "Benedictine," "Ursuline," etc., character was adopted in order to deemphasize its "universally Catholic" character...
...Romeo and Juliet is my favorite play—not my favorite by the Bard, but my absolute favorite work written to be spoken on stage...
...What sticks in one's craw is the way the CDF goes about this business...
...Taken in tandem, Jean Porter's "Misplaced Nostalgia," Paul Crowley's "Finding the Catholic Thing," and the examination of changing governance at Catholic colleges and universities ("Keeping the Faith on Campus") by Melanie M. Morey and Dennis H. Holtschneider construct a vivid mosaic of the frustrating combination of promises and threats to faith's seeking understanding today...
...Last year I witnessed Rip Torn (whose early reputation was that of an actor who ate directors for breakfast) fit himself quite nicely into the Hartford Stage Company's production of Tennessee Williams's Camino Real...
...They are sometimes even better behaved than the humans...
...Though perhaps not consciously intended to have that effect when the practice began (probably in the 1970s), administrators soon realized that "Catholic" was harder to "sell" than, say, "Franciscan...
...Catholicism and liberalism are repugnant to each other...
...There is an awful lot of text dedicated to liberalism and Catholicism [see William Galston's "Contending with Liberalism," April 6...
...It was not true in the 1940s—or the 1840s—and is not true now...
...For left to themselves, those charged with the governance of the church and its institutions adopt "expedience" as their guiding principle, not truth or reasoning...
...richard sizensky Brighton, Mass...
...He never lost his enthusiasm for his work, even when the location of the office changed and he had to spend several hours a day commuting—and he was by that time over ninety...
...Both of these, however, are a long way from great actors in great roles appearing in regional theater in Chicago, Minneapolis, or Seattle...
...These past months, however, have been made easier for me and my family by the many expressions of love and sympathy we've received...
...REV...
...It is increasingly clear that I am not alone in this—distinguished theologians, canon lawyers, clergy, and religious have all been voicing their concerns...
...I believe it was the late Peter Hebblethwaite, who, in commenting on the pre-Vatican II period, wrote that Rome was not giving us leadership, it was giving us surveillance...
...But nothing diffuse or over-broad weakened the education issue of April 20...
...As long as Waffle confines his performances to the privacy of his den, he will surprise himself with an experience that is as enriching for him as it is incommunicable to others (though his immediate family might get a kick out of it...
...The Steel City has a fine opera company and it might be possible to lure someone of that stature there, but only on Domingo's or Bocelli's terms...
...I'm not sure quite as many are aware of the exceptional human being he was...
...Father's Day this year will be difficult for me...
...As to his second point, Waffle queers his own argument and doesn't confront mine by offering the Bocelli disaster as an example...
...I don't know the quality of Waffle's thespian talents, but surely the pleasure of listening to his own interpretation, an interpretation honed by years of loving the play, would be greater than witnessing a lot of half-baked impersonations...
...Because "Catholic" had substantive religious content of an unattractively dogmatic coloration, while the "identity" of the religious community involved was, by comparison, insubstantial, undemanding, and easily sentimentalized...
...Like 99 percent of Catholics, I am neither theologian, canonist, nor clergyman...
...A situation like that occurred last year when Bocelli appeared here in Detroit in Werther, a production that was devised to take into consideration not only Bocelli's blindness but also his not being suited to perform on the operatic stage...
...Lay Catholics have no difficulty understanding, and trying to adhere to, the gospel call to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
...Porter and Crowley demonstrate well why it was that Cardinal Newman called theology as practiced by the Schola Theologorum (not the bishops) "the fundamental and regulating principle of the whole church system...
...Father to five, he had infinite patience...
...Why so...
...I suppose this is necessary for the sake of scholarly integrity...
...At the funeral Mass I kept wishing I'd had the guts to bring him...
...Repugnant, you say...
...Not surprisingly, we have seen many productions of it, some with sublime actors, and others with thespians of significantly lesser skill...
...So, like the boards of trustees that Morey and Holtschneider are studying, members of the hierarchy tinker with tightening governance structures and are diverted "from the real task at hand"— handing on a tradition of faith rather than erecting a religious ideology...
...If Bocelli's incompetence led to a bad operatic performance, then he is simply not an operatic star, though he may be a singing star in concert and on recordings...
...He rarely raised his voice and never lost his temper...
...While growing up, I was in awe of his faith...
...To state it more simply, whoever is a liberal cannot be a Catholic and whoever is a (true and orthodox) Catholic cannot be a liberal...
...Michael Wilson's production had a glamour of its own which meshed with Torn's star power...
...In spoken theater, as in the opera, a great artist, a true star, is someone in command of his medium...
...SUSAN SKILLIN THUVANUTI Bloomfield, N.J...
...Best of all, of course, would be a star in a good production to which the star disciplines his talents...
...Better a glimpse of glory than a ho-hum uniformity...
...My cultural upbringing as an American causes me to react badly to the presence of dogs in churches (and restaurants), but it does happen fairly frequently here, and no one seems to mind...
...PAUL E. DINTER Cortlandt Manor, N.Y...
...4 (Continued on page 30) 4(Continued from page 4) But may I offer a piece of financial advice...
...Waffle finds it "more than worthwhile" listening to actors of meager gifts speak Shakespeare's verse with only the "semblance of proper diction," I can't gainsay him...
...RICHARD ALLEVA...
...Let him stay home even when Romeo and Juliet is the bill of fare, pocket the costs of tickets, parking, gas, etc., unplug the phone, pick up a volume of Shakespeare, and simply read the play out loud...
...The author replies: If Mr...
...But on a more serious note, Richard Sizensky's stark juxtaposition of liberalism and Catholicism mirrors precisely the claims of notorious Catholic-baiters such as Paul Blandshard, who campaigned vigorously against the influence of the church and Catholics generally, as a threat to American democracy...
...However, I question their prediction that most Catholic colleges "will shed the particular spirituality and culture" of their founding communities and adopt instead "a more broadly based Catholic character...
...PHILIP J. SANDSTROM Brussels, Belgium Due process due I am dismayed at the procedures that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) uses in defending us all from doctrinal error and heresy ["Haight on Trial," editorial, May 18...
...Better beasts Regarding "God's Best Friend," Frans Jozef van Beeck's name indicates at least a Flemish or Dutch origin, but perhaps he has become "Americanized...
...He has a beautiful popsinger voice, essentially with one color, little support, and no nuance...
...We have found with Shakespeare that if the artist, however meager his gifts, can hit the mark and say his lines with some semblance of proper diction, emphasis, and volume, it is much more than worthwhile...
...My second point is on the availability of great actors for local repertory theaters...
...The example Morey and Holtschneider cite—a place supposedly marked by warm friendships, high quality liturgical life, diversity of religious communities on campus, and education of the heart— certainly squints in that direction...
...Sacred monsters don't always behave monstrously...
...PHILIP GLEASON Notre Dame, Ind...
...Hitting the high notes In "Planned Obsolescence" (May 4), Richard Alleva writes, "without glamour, masterpieces shrivel" in support of his contention that stars are necessary to carry the classics of the theater...
...bill broderick Arlington, Va...
Vol. 128 • June 2001 • No. 11
