Correspondence
CONNELLY, MICHAEL & DUNN, TOM & FLOCK, CHARLES & BYRON, (REV.) J. PAUL & WARD, CHRIS & BAUMSTARK, LYN & MOODEY, RICHARD & MADER, THOMAS F. & HOTTINGER, PAUL A. & IMBELLI, (REV.) ROBERT P.
A great tradition My memories of Commonweal go back to my seminary days in the 1940s, and my delight then in the spirited and courageous writing. Not having seen the magazine in recent years, the...
...It will take time for an understanding of the building to grow-and along with it the art...
...Fabric art cannot be ignored as a timely alternative to statuary...
...You decry the president's lack of an "exit strategy...
...It would be nice to have better bishops, but I don't think that it is crucial to lobby for better bishops...
...Please read carefully Seven years ago, concerned about polarization in the church, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin founded the Common Ground Initiative on the principle of dialogue...
...True, we go to church (some of us), sit side by side, and perhaps even shake hands at the appropriate moment, but I question whether we are together...
...He recognized, however, that genuine dialogue presumed the difficult art of attentive and respectful listening, or, in the case of reading, careful lectio...
...As for the lighting fixtures hanging over the congregation, they are the major interior design mistake...
...tom dunn Laurel, N.Y...
...This, in my judgment, is unfounded...
...The biggest problem we have is not scandalous priests or bumbling and arrogant hierarchy, but simply our interpersonal relationships-or lack of them...
...So, at whatever level we examine church governance, the constitutional order is one of unitary centralism...
...For the record, my uncle was Philip Burnham who played a role in the early days of the Commonweal...
...This outcome would have been more likely had President Bush also provided an "exit strategy" for Iraq, one that made it clear that disarmament, not regime change, was the goal of U.S...
...Limits of thought Your January 31 issue contained two well-written articles on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity...
...Indeed, there was explicit reference to the fact that for an older generation, myself included, "the conciliar experience was profoundly liberating...
...Disarming Iraq in accordance with UN resolutions was a legitimate U.S...
...PAUL A. HOTTINGER Downers Grove, III...
...This is good because there is now time for the designs to evolve slowly...
...In the third paragraph, Father Tom Groenewold writes, "All along the victims could have made the abuse public, but they did not...
...I hope you take your own advice and take more time to examine and evaluate alternatives to the Pentagon's view of reality, a view often based on the limited understanding of "reality," as seen from a spy satellite over Iraq...
...CHRIS WARD Piedmont, Calif...
...mainland if we do not act now...
...History will honor him as one of the true peacemakers...
...In contrast to your assertion that Bush "must show patience and...go the extra mile" is the reality that he has shown nothing but patience-possibly allowing too much time to elapse, which may have put our troops in more danger than if we had acted earlier...
...Even a cursory reading of the review (not to mention a careful one) would make clear that what is at issue is the council's impoverished implementation, at least as many have experienced it...
...You are, with the London Tablet, in the tradition of great Catholic lay publishing...
...In support of this thesis I offer the pastor's column from Saint Catherine of Sienna in Franklin Square (read it at www.siennacenter.org/02-23-3.htm...
...So it comes as no surprise that one of the things she calls upon Catholics to do is "lobby for better bishops...
...Great critical writing-the L.A...
...troops in Iraq...
...Therefore, the insinuation that the review somehow sought "to vilify the council" borders on the slanderous...
...ROBERT P. IMBELLI Newton Centre, Mass...
...Jewish people are certainly distinct: culturally, religiously, linguistically...
...J. PAUL BYRON Chapel Hill, N.C...
...Hatred, fear, and loathing do not come from thought, and thought will never cure them...
...The letter was both long and a bit preachy, but there isn't much in it that I would change...
...and there is but one head of each parish...
...Barry Hillenbrand...
...What sort of "peace" will the world enjoy when that comes to pass...
...Still apart Although much of David O'Brien's "How to Solve the Church Crisis" (February 14) makes sense, what I find distracting are his references to the Catholic community...
...and foreign) to get views alternative to those offered by big-business, profit-driven media...
...President George W. Bush's clear, strong leadership on Iraq is not a "dubious 'doctrine of preemption,'" but a logical policy based on the reality of the post-9/11 world...
...Most compelling...
...Catholics are better described as a collectivity, not a (Continued on page 30) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) community...
...Feeling is present even before the ego is aware of itself, and can be triggered by a variety of causes- thought not being one of them...
...Not having seen the magazine in recent years, the February 28 issue rejoiced me as of old...
...She says that although it is important to organize the laity and clergy, "ours remains an apostolic and hierarchical church, and bishops are key to its proper ordering...
...there is but one head of each diocese...
...Do you really believe that all that is required for a lasting peace is the absence of U.S...
...REV...
...No one was forced in a free country...
...When understanding of a space evolves in this manner, good art can happen and be understood by all...
...By the way, I said something similar in a letter Commonweal published in its March 24,1967, issue...
...Progressing toward the altar one is placed in a reunion setting: "look who's here-there are Joan and Bartholomew and Maximillian," our permanent surrogates in the assembly of old family friends...
...Cathedral ("Our Lady of the Freeways," Jack Miles), the review of The Quiet American ("What's Missing in this Picture...
...The editors reply: Michael Connelly is right...
...Steinfels & the bishops In her reflections on David O'Brien's article, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels ("What Is to Be Done...
...After Vatican II, it appeared that the model of centralized power would be balanced by episcopal collegiality, but that has been squashed...
...The causes of anti-Jewish sentiment rest somehow with uncritical perceptions of others as being "not like us...
...Bush's "doctrine of preemption" is not a path to greater security for the American people, but a recipe for the destruction of the international system and for potentially endless conflict...
...Ending the rationalizing will not in itself change the behavior, but I appreciate your contribution toward understanding...
...March 14) reasserts her argument that the crisis is essentially "ecclesiological...
...REV...
...It brings simple, textural, and personal theological dimension to the stone interior...
...policy...
...The "best hope for peace," namely the best hope for avoiding war, we argued, remained a second UN resolution, which, by making the will of the international community unambiguous, might have compelled Saddam Hussein to hand over his weapons and thereby avert the use of massive force by the United States...
...I suggest you read a history of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to experience a catharsis of that opinion...
...Watching children play, I see the same thing in miniature...
...Feeling, on the other hand, is a powerful force that can quickly envelop whole groups of people...
...I agree that the crisis is an organizational one...
...Blaming the victims In Peter Feuerherd's "Long Island Catholic" (February 28), referring to the Suffolk Country grand jury report, he asks, "Why did it take an outside group...to provide such a...helpful report...
...Do you think Roosevelt had a clear exit strategy in 1944...
...Steinfels puts the bishops at the heart of the crisis...
...Today, this is even more necessary (and demanding) than it was seven years ago...
...I regret that Michael Lee's choleric exegesis scarcely encourages confidence in his reading skills ("Strangest Views," Correspondence, March 14...
...there would have been no UN weapons inspectors in Iraq if it were not for the military threat posed by American troops...
...By my count, there have been more than a dozen UN resolutions over the past dozen years, all of which were essentially ignored by Iraq-until Bush had the courage to move forward with the difficult task of forcing Iraq, and the world, to address the resolutions instead of ignoring them...
...They could have gone public, but they too, at the time, felt the solutions were adequate...
...Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) Perhaps the crisis of episcopal and papal authority in the church is not the problem, but the first stages of a solution to the problem...
...God bless George W. Bush for having the courage to act decisively to protect us all...
...I have, however, one serious caution...
...But a "preemptive" strike against a regime that did not pose an imminent threat to the United States is very dubious indeed...
...RICHARD MOODEY Erie, Pa...
...The United States, whether we (or the world) like it or not, is the best hope for true peace in the world...
...Reminiscent of medieval examples, they are a splendid way of bringing the communion of saints to the twenty-first century in a most economic, artistic way...
...However, I spend an extravagant amount of money to subscribe to magazines and newspapers (U.S...
...Not only do I have no idea how I might do this (I can't find a legislature to lobby), but these better bishops would still be under the thumb of the pope and the curia...
...I was pleased that the side altars are mostly unfinished...
...There is one head of the global church, through which all authority comes...
...How long before Iraq uses the murderous weapons it so clearly has to massacre thousands or hundreds of thousands in the Middle East, Europe, or even the U.S...
...In other words, it's the victims' fault...
...Unfair to Bush I respectfully object to some of the assertions made in the February 28 editorial, "More Time...
...LYN BAUMSTARK Glastonbury, Conn...
...goal, and might eventually have required the use of force...
...MICHAEL CONNELLY Beacon, N.Y...
...What Miles missed I wish Jack Miles had commented on the magnificent tapestries at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels...
...Cathedrals & time I have two comments on the new cathedral in Los Angeles, after having spent two hours there in November...
...Theology comes in later as a rationalization for brutal, bullying behavior...
...Don't believe Powell Your February 28 editorial states that, "On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the UN Security Council with evidence-some dramatic-that Iraq continues to evade the efforts of the UN's weapons inspectors...
...Powell's testimony may be "compelling" if one assumes government officials never err or mislead us...
...THOMAS F. MADER Walnut Creek, Calif...
...Nowhere in my review of Robert Barron's The Strangest Way ("Needed: Mysticism & Method," February 14) was there any assessment of Vatican II as "a capitulation to the evils of modernism...
...There are no assurances in the post-9/11 world-except for one...
...After my seventy-two years as a Catholic, I'm more and more convinced that Catholics are neither a trained flock nor independent, but isolated...
...This is why the same dynamic exists in the Muslim world as in the Christian...
...It is not just teaching authority that is envisioned as flowing down into the whole body of the church through its head, but all authority...
...I live on a modest pension...
...That fact was clearly noted in the editorial, however...
...They look like spiders hanging over the congregation-or should we think of them as the curia watching...
...Both Luke Timothy Johnson ("Christians & Jews: Starting Over") and Donald Senior ("Rome Has Spoken") give the impression that they believe they are addressing the causes of hostility and animosity against Jews, as if these deep passions rest somehow on theological thoughts or ideas...
...On this matter, there is ample room for dialogue, but, in the spirit of Cardinal Bernardin, let it be accompanied by attentive and respectful listening...
...Unfortunately...
...The suggestion that "the best hope for peace seems to be a second UN resolution" is both naive and inaccurate...
...One answer that we must consider is that, at least in the diocese of Rockville Centre (where I grew up), it is easier to blame the victim...
...I have gleaned enough information from these sources to conclude that what you consider "compelling" testimony is at least open to serious questioning-or misleading...
...CHARLES FLOCK Irvington, N.Y...
...But I disagree that the bishops are at the heart of the disordered relationships...
...The fact that they are extremely gifted in music, business, and many other fields makes matters worse for the proud, envious majority...
...Do surely keep up this invaluable contribution...
...Rather, the extension of the doctrine of papal infallibility into the realm of church governance is at the heart of the disorder...
...I should think most thinking goes into survival and making a living-not living itself...
...Thinking is a slow, laborious process and people do as little of it as possible...
Vol. 130 • March 2003 • No. 6
