Correspondence
DiSTEFANO, ANTHONY & GALLO, NADINE & BASTIEN, C. THOMAS & BRENNAN, TERRY & O'Brien, David
CORROSPONDENCE Gray areas Your March 14 editorial, "Catholics & Politics," is fraught with ambivalence. On one hand, you seem to endorse Bishop William Weigand's reproving California Governor Gray...
...Why does the church limit its admonitions to a single issue, abortion...
...For Catholics who are striving to make the City of Man look more like the City of God, it would be helpful if the bishops showed signs that they take the church's social justice as seri ously as they do the church's teachin on abortion...
...I met Gene McCarthy in 1986 at a Democratic Party function...
...Science does answer questions like that...
...Why aren't public officials excoriated for supporting capital punishment, punitive measures against immigrants, larger nuclear arsenals, even unjust wars...
...Thomas Mader (Cor respondence, March 28) has it right: when we "shake hands at the appro priate moment," we have to take seri ously the idea that we are in this church together...
...Humbly, I have had the briefest connection to science (zoology, botany, geology as an undergraduate), and continue to be awed by any scientific finding, Nobel Prize-winning or otherwise...
...Callahan writes, "The Constitution...
...That is the $64,000 question...
...And he performed exceptional public service with his 1968 presidential campaign...
...Science & faith With the help of science, says John Haught ("The Unfinished Universe," March 14), we can now read the universe quite competently, but we are seldom changed in the process...
...Of course nonbishops have no official way to "lobby for better bishops...
...Let us create a new category of health-care workers along the lines of the nurse practitioner, who is better able to educate and deal with everyday health concerns, freeing the limited supply of physicians for the most serious problems...
...I disagree with this oversimplification...
...Our labor-intensive o medical delivery system will give way to an emphasis on health self-awareness, education, and most critically, genetic therapeutics...
...Conversely, why aren't some public officials criticized for opposing health insurance for the 42 million Americans who have none, or for opposing a fair minimum wage or programs that reduce child poverty and hunger throughout the world...
...A manifesto of mobilized moderates would affirm the public mission of the church (so important at a time of national and international crisis) assess current governance structures in light of that mission, and make proposals for reforms that would strengthen pastoral life and renew Catholic insti tutions for the sake of that shared mis sion...
...The hummingbird, for example, is a particularly savage little beast, although its appearance is quite beautiful and must be held in high esteem by the creator...
...If not, we should find ways to con vene Catholics who think such re forms are important and make the case to the rest...
...DiStefano is wrong, however, about the relative weight the bishops give to abortion policy...
...Higgins & Malthus No one is going to quibble about Tom Higgins's credentials to hold forth on matters concerning health insurance...
...His Malthusean predictions of doom, however, are overdone...
...we develop Salk and Sabin vaccines...
...No scientist would claim to read the universe or a small part of it "competently," but might, if pushed, agree to a small amount of expertise in a small area of knowledge...
...On the ground at home, if we have good pastoral councils, we should work through them for reform...
...Nonsense...
...On one hand, you seem to endorse Bishop William Weigand's reproving California Governor Gray Davis for Davis's prochoice position on abortion...
...That is untrue...
...c. THOMAS BASTIEN Denver, Colo...
...The statement is true...
...One could more readily accept the church's admonitions if they were applied more consistently in the political arena...
...but why do hurricanes happen...
...ANTHONY DISTEFANI Alexandria, Vt The editors reply: Anthony DiStefano is right: the edito rial judged Weigand's criticism of Davis's support for abortion-on-de-mand a legitimate exercise of the episcopal office while at the same time we defended the right of Catholic politicians to make a variety of prudential judgments about the legal status of abortion...
...Permission to speak...
...On the other hand, you seem to offer strong arguments in support of Davis...
...March 14) is surely right that good bishops are essential...
...is more often the democratic fact of pluralism...
...He also criticizes Senators Joseph Lieberman, John Warner, and Tom Daschle, and Representative Dennis Hastert for exercising their rights as citizens and legislators to speak out on an extremely important public issue before congressional debate on the matter took place...
...Give us polio...
...charges the Senate, by virtue of the advice-and-consent clause of Article II, Section 2, with special responsibilities on matters of foreign policy...
...Why are some Catholic ethical principles nonnegotiable, while others are negotiable...
...We have unraveled the gene...
...It was Davis' explanations for his prudential judgment that we found wanting...
...Catholic integrity is in our hands...
...Let us reason together to raise the retirement age, and thus raise the age for Medicare eligibility...
...In the area of foreign policy, that is all Section 2 gives the Senate...
...His "State of Emergency" (February 14) is intelligent and on the mark...
...Last, government, as if we needed to be reminded, cannot provide everything we need...
...You go on to say that sometimes there must be a difference between what morality requires and what the law forbids...
...DAVID O'BRIEN Worcester, Mass...
...Callahan's implication is that the section grants the Senate something more...
...If the bishops are free to criticize such officials, then why don't they...
...God is great...
...As the population ages, the grays will have to reinvent their lives and fill their days with good times and hard work...
...The uncertainty of my faith is not rooted in the unfinished nature of the universe, as Haught suggests, but in the contradictions apparent in the compost heap we live and thrive on...
...Theology never does...
...The grace that makes us Body of Christ comes through the choices all of us, from pope to people, make each day...
...TERRY BRENNAN Address withheld Church crisis redux In her response to my "How to Solve the Church Crisis" (February 14), Margaret O'Brien Steinfels ("What Is to Be Done...
...What the Vatican characterizes as 'moral incoherence...
...Second, we know that much illness is born of stress and loneliness...
...It is sim ply inaccurate to say the bishops limi their admonitions or praise to a single issue...
...NADINE GALLO Hadley, Mass...
...we develop penicillin...
...They not only had the right, they had the duty...
...Theologians are concerned not with the particular, the way science is, but with the general...
...You write, "Democracy is about living with disagreement, not eliminating it...
...They must bring about needed reforms, and find better leaders...
...The bishops devote an enormous amount of time and resources to pursuing the church's social-justice concerns across a wide va riety of issues, from war and peace tc the treatment of immigrants...
...But I'll bet he doesn't think members of Congress need their colleagues' permission to speak out...
...The basic point remains: priests, religious, pastoral workers, lay people, and good bishops will have to take the initiative and do something if the church is to face the current scandal honestly...
...The section vests in the Senate the special responsibility of advising on and consenting to treaties and the appointment of ambassadors...
...We know that many chronic diseases are caused by flawed genes that we will be able to reach and fix...
...I have been a constitutional lawyer for thirty-three years, and I am writing to criticize John Callahan's constitutional analysis in "As War Looms" (March 14...
...Give us infections...
...He is a great guy...
...God is good...
...Let us force the issue of health insurance for the poor onto the national agenda, and let us work spiritually to accept that we are not immortal and that desperate, expensive eleventh-hour interventions prove our lack of faith and loss of hope...
Vol. 130 • April 2003 • No. 7
