Correspondence Johnson, pro & con
AYLWARD, RICHARD A. & POTO, DONALDS & MORAN, SALLY & CAPLICE, RICHARD & MARTIN, P. G. & KIRCHER, RICHARD & FARRELL, JAMES M. & WILLIAMS, RHYS H. & QUINLISK, JON & ODELL, D. W. & CLEARY, WILLIAM & DeBERNARDO, FRANCIS & Johnson, Luke Timothy
CORROSPONDENCE Congregationalists? After more than fifty years of reading Commonweal and being grateful for the many past insights you gave me in the practice of my Catholic faith, I find that you...
...No, the bishops are not malicious...
...At eighteen, I was in the Dominican novitiate...
...She indicates that the president made his decision based on faulty in telligence...
...In the same week that the steering committee called on these bishops to resign, another independent organization of New Hampshire Catholics was formed with the single goal of effecting justice and restoring trust in the Diocese of Manchester by demanding the resignations of these duplicitous bishops...
...what makes the current scandal so painful is precisely the awareness of laity and clergy alike (at least older laity and clergy) that it is a deviation from our ideals, expectations, and normal experience...
...After more than fifty years of reading Commonweal and being grateful for the many past insights you gave me in the practice of my Catholic faith, I find that you now are more a hindrance than a help...
...Too sanguine David Yamane ("The Bishops & Politics," May 23) provides a valuable service in calling attention to the fact that "public influence" is not only about public statements by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB...
...The charge that a male church "exploited" female religious in the past would have been unintelligible to the religious-female and male-who, prior to the victimization ideologies of the present, served the church in ways that were often selfless and sometimes heroic...
...His claim that the current sexual-abuse scandal differs only in its openness from a "theme of clerical sexual duplicity that goes back centuries" is a slander offered with no further justification...
...Grant Gallicho) to be more suitable for a VOTF membership-drive pamphlet...
...Johnson's article rightly identifies homosexuality as a theologi cal area that needs further discussion and examination in our church...
...The statement that Scripture and tradition are contrary to clerical celibacy is oversimplified to the point of falsity...
...There is no scriptural basis for a celibate male priesthood...
...Preparation for first Communion was an experience steeped in an analysis of guilt...
...June 6...
...Johnson raises important issues...
...The fear card proved to be his ace...
...The bishops are not malicious...
...Gay Catholics In his fine essay, Luke Timothy John son recommends that the church un dertake a "serious process of discern ment" about Catholic teaching and practice regarding sexuality, and he says that this process must involve "women and those who are married...
...Caplice finds my survey admirable and even agrees that I raise important issues...
...As I approach eighty, however, my experience of the pre-Vatican II church differs significantly from his interpretation...
...The arguments he proposes here seem to range from highly questionable to outright false...
...Yamane's reasoned, sociological voice is a welcome addition to current analyses...
...The true fault in the Roman Catholic Church, globally, not merely in the United States, lies in the "patently poor logic" of Humanae vitae that Johnson mentions, coupled with authoritarianism and a history of denigration of women...
...All agree, however, on what is necessary for our diocese...
...It is important that this and other issues be discussed as a basis for rational action, but the discussion should not be in terms of caricatures...
...Cornzvall-on-Hudson, N.Y...
...WILLIAM CLEARY Burlington, Vt...
...There is a scriptural basis for a female priesthood...
...McCormack and Christian must resign for the good of the church...
...Some signatures come from diocesan priests, some from Voice of the Faithful members, and some from ordinary Catholics not inclined to activism or controversy...
...Good questions As a first-time subscriber, but a longtime reader, I thank you for "Are the Bishops Listening...
...Yes, God writes straight with crooked lines-the church's sexual-abuse crisis caused a necessary reform...
...Spread the word Luke Timothy Johnson's brilliant article demonstrates that he is an excellent ecclesiologist and a first-rate Scripture scholar...
...But no more...
...JON QUINLISK Wheeling, W.V...
...Instead, I found the treatment ("Are the Bishops Listening...
...And most of that reform must come from the laity-the people of God...
...The bishops are not malicious...
...SALLY MORAN Charleston, S.C...
...RICHARD CAPLICE, S.J...
...If only this article could be put in the hands of every American Catholic-especially those wearing churchly uniforms...
...How the church deals with the current crisis will be critical to the future directions of these developments...
...As John XXIII challenged us: ecclesia semper reformandal RICHARD KIRCHER Beaver Dam, Wis...
...Without justification In her June 20 letter to the editor, Jean Porter made an error I believe many make when they view President George W. Bush's actions leading up to the war in Iraq...
...His moral outrage left me breathless-Johnson is no mere critic...
...As for what counts as "caricature" as opposed to sober assessment, that is a matter of legitimate debate...
...Subsequently, I left, married, and, with my husband and children, became active in the Christian Family Movement...
...As Caplice's own final paragraph suggests, it is possible to agree on the significance (and even urgency) of an issue even if one finds another's statement of it extreme...
...Rather than "two quite different articles," however, I hope that other readers and letter writers will see a real and important connection between my narrative and analysis...
...The author replies: I am pleased that Fr...
...To mention only one, it seems likely that a relaxation of clerical celibacy is in the offing as celibate vocations decline in number...
...LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON Too easy When I saw the cover of your June 6 issue, I was looking forward to penetrating coverage of Voice of the Faithful...
...Catholics of that era suffered through heavy-handed clerical leadership...
...And as William Cavanaugh notes in the same issue ("At Odds with the Pope"), not only did the Bush administration breezily dismiss the antiwar positions of the pope and the USCCB, but many neoconservative Catholic lay people were similarly inclined...
...In the legislative arena, accurate information delivered reliably is the coin of the realm...
...In the piece, Post responded to a question about the New Hampshire VOTF chapter that called for the resignations of Bishops John McCormack and Francis Christian...
...He rightly points out that in the American political system a great deal of the action is at the state level, and that political lobbying is as important as media pronouncements...
...church has different priorities and issues than does Rome, and the continuing fact that the American laity often has a sense of moral independence from church authority...
...As a parent, however, Iign a priest he knew would abuse again...
...Two of the recent "victories" Ya-mane cites, however, involved issues (cloning, abortion) where the Catholic Church had powerful allies from other political and religious camps...
...In the 1940s I was active in Young Christian Students...
...The first is an admirable survey of the evolution of the American Catholic Church since the 1960s...
...FRANCIS DeBERNARDO Mount Rainier, MA...
...Luke Timothy Johnson's call for a Congregational-Unitarian version of the Catholic Church, "Sex, Women, & the Church" (June 20), convinced me how un-Catholic you have become...
...Further, as Yamane notes, while many Americans "hate politicians" they often love their own representative-thus, while "the church" or "the bishops" may be suffering a crisis of moral authority, individual bishops, lobbyists, and Catholics may still have great legitimacy, credibility, and influence...
...Balanced journalism might dictate an accompanying article that looks at possible problems with VOTF, instead of a piece by Paul Lakeland ("Consulting the Laity"), who spoke at a recent VOTF meeting and appeared to be doing brisk sales of his new book at a table near the entrance...
...Luke Timothy Johnson's splendid essay misses one key distinction: Catholic women may oppose abortion but most understandably want the sovereignty to decide about it for themselves...
...At the ripe old age of seven, children, aware of the nuances of evil, concocted "sins" to tell in confession...
...Don't tread on us Thank you for Grant Gallicho's interview with James Post...
...Catholics of the 1930s and 1940s lived in a Latin-dominated, sin-focused, fear-motivated environment...
...RICHARD A. AYLWARD Norwood, Mass...
...Who decides...
...The windows were opened to love, tolerance, forgiveness-in short, the message of Scripture...
...DONALD SPOTO Studio City, Calif...
...How about an in-person (instead of e-mail) interview with VOTF's president that asks tougher questions about anticlericalism within VOTF, what specifically the group advocates by "structural change" within the church, and whether the church should defend itself in court against the legal sharks that sometimes swim with abuse victims...
...New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership has since accumulated the signatures of more than a thousand New Hampshire Catholics on its declaration calling for these bishops to resign (www.nhcatholics.org...
...He asks, "What was a bishop to do...
...Macguire says, and I agree, "no bishop would assign a priest he knew would abuse again...
...Reading this piece was like reading a treatise on the combination of a theology of baptism and confirmation...
...Just as many liberal American Catholics selectively hear Rome on issues of birth control and abortion, so do conservative American Catholics often tune out the messages on war, the economy, and capital punishment...
...See no evil Regarding the church's sexual-abuse scandal, the Reverend Connell J. Macguire (Correspondence, June 20) makes an almost reasonable case for understanding the bishops' behavior-professionals advised a cure had been effected, Rome disallowed pensioning off, and so on...
...Except for a few employees of the chancery, there is widespread recognition, among clergy and laity alike, that our diocese is suffering under a leadership that lacks credibility and moral direction, and is guided more by legal strategy and public relations concerns than by the gospel...
...The church needs reform in more areas than sexuality...
...Past, present & future I agree with Luke Timothy Johnson's assertion that "God is speaking to the church through present circumstances...
...In this regard, religious lobbyists often excel and this potentially mitigates the effects of the sexual-abuse scandal on the church's influence...
...This inclusion is necessary, but not complete...
...D. w. ODELL Altamont, N.Y...
...His fierce love for Christ's church and its unrealized possibilities, like that of his colleagues Garry Wills and Hans Kung, shines through every paragraph...
...JAMES M. FARRELL Somersworth, N.H...
...p. G. MARTIN Arlington, Va...
...Heaven forbid that a bishop consult lay parents by asking them their opinion on returning a cured priest to teach their children religion...
...Yet it points again to another organizational and institutional reality-the extent to which the U.S...
...In the second, Johnson proposes structural changes, including the abandonment of clerical celibacy and the ordination of women...
...While working as a foreign missionary priest, I sometimes sent you contributions, convinced that your magazine was what the Catholic Church needed from the Catholic laity...
...Any discernment process must also include lesbian and gay people, celibate and partnered, for a full renewal of sexual teaching...
...Most of us embraced Vatican II...
...I believe the more realistic view is that after he promulgated the "Bush Doctrine on National Security," in his mind he needed no justification...
...Grant Gallicho did a superb job of interviewing VOTF president James Post...
...Their innocence, however, has been lethal...
...RHYS H. WILLIAMS Cincinnati, Ohio have no respect for any person who, by his silence, usurps my duties and rights as a parent to have information bearing directly on the spiritual and physical welfare of my children...
...Rather than bear the "rigorous sexual code" as a "badge of honor," it was more like carrying the white flag of surrender...
...It is with a profound sense of sadness that I view the closing of parishes and the loss of the Eucharist to so many...
...I agree with Yamane that the current crisis is not the end of public influence for the church...
...In the 1950s I was active in Young Christian Workers...
...Please cancel my subscription...
...As a result, he vacillated on justifica tions and didn't seem too interested in anything except gaining public sup port...
...As a parent, however, I...
...Incisive, honest, true to experience, this is a most welcome contribution...
...Johnson's caricature Luke Timothy Johnson's essay seems a combination of two quite different articles...
Vol. 130 • July 2003 • No. 13
