Correspondence: Rabbi Greenberg & his critics; NFP; Catholic schools
C O R R E S P O N D E N C E He stands alone There is no one now writing about Jewish-Christian relations whom I read more willingly than Irving Greenberg ("Anti-Semitism in 'The Passion,'"...
...Supporting Catholic schools I read with great interest the thoughtful articles in the April 9 issue by Maurice Timothy Reidy ("Needed: The Vision Thing") and Anthony Andreassi ("Higher Ed...
...THERESA NOTARE Washington, D.C...
...bishops founded the Diocesan Development Program for Natural Family Planning to help dioceses build NFP ministry...
...Tentler notes that after the promulgation of Humanae vitae in 1968 "almost no Catholic leaders were talking publicly about contraception...
...No satisfaction Rabbi Irving Greenberg is nothing if not straightforward...
...In arguing that the Gospel account is part of the problem, I was not trashing a treasured family recipe...
...History shows that the bishops have been providing guidance on this issue for years...
...Neither Rabbi Irving Greenberg nor anyone else gives evidence that Gibson's movie has contributed to the recent alarming rise of anti-Semitism...
...bishops helped to establish the Human Life Foundation (later renamed the Human Life and Natural Family Planning Foundation) in 1969...
...I was one of many priests who had to guide couples who agonized over family growth...
...JACK MILES Los Angeles, Calif...
...It felt like being at a dinner party where a respected guest not only declines a second helping of his host's treasured family recipe, but goes on to criticize the recipe as unhealthy and the family as unwise...
...RALPH SCHEIDLER Fort Fairfield, Maine Watered down The violence of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ seemed to me aesthetically excessive, but the charge of anti-Semitism is a blatant attempt at emotional blackmail...
...Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 June 4, 2004 C S P O H O E c E (Continued from page 2) Nor do I quarrel with the theme of suffering in Christian doctrine...
...For me, his style merits classroom study as something close to the ideal in the difficult interreligious challenge of being true to oneself and fair to one's counterpart...
...MARK FRANCESCHINI, OSM Denver, Colo...
...All honor to the bishops for insisting on a historically informed reading of the Bible, but, even for the most liberal Catholics, the Gospels Coming June 18 Donald Senior responds to his critics have a higher authority than the documents of the Second Vatican Council...
...Older teaching religious gave the strongest support, while the younger clergy, Catholic intellectuals, and younger teaching religious gave the least...
...When I first read his article, I was surprised by his shift of focus from Mel Gibson's movie to the Gospels themselves...
...In June of 1973 I finished a field study on The Role of Religious Teachers in the Future of Catholic Schools...
...C O R R E S P O N D E N C E He stands alone There is no one now writing about Jewish-Christian relations whom I read more willingly than Irving Greenberg ("Anti-Semitism in 'The Passion,'" May 7...
...May 7), much more complex than "satisfaction theology...
...Had the author checked with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) rather than relying on the New York Times, she would have learned that the document is being designed at the specific request of priests as a resource to use in counseling couples...
...Gibson portrays Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, the male disciples, and Simon of Cyrene as Jewish in appearance and, for those too dense to get the point, has them speak Aramaic...
...I have written that it was God's will to bring Christianity into being out of Judaism in order to bring redemption to the Gentiles...
...PHILIP E. DEVINE Providence, R.I...
...But in addition to issuing their own affirmation of Humanae vitae almost immediately (August 26, 1968), the U.S...
...Few Christian commentators on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ have shown half the upclose familiarity with the text of the Gospels that he demonstrates...
...But he never studies merely to flatter...
...RABBI) IRVING GREENBERG Priests & contraception Leslie Tentler's article on contraception ("A Bitter Pill," April 23) awakened many memories in this priest entering the declining years of life and ministry...
...EDWIN KLINE, CSB Redford, Mich...
...The most sadistic human figures in the story are the Roman soldiers (not Jews) who flog Jesus...
...4, VALERRY the World Health Organization...
...All such texts (which are found in my tradition and others also) must be addressed...
...They should be contextualized and their interpretations modified so as to bring out their loving, redemptive power...
...In his response, Donald Senior conceded these points but stressed that there are other approaches and emphases in the tradition...
...It was sad to watch them struggle with the issue, fearful of ever going against church law and authority...
...I have also said that the Jews should celebrate the fact that hundreds of millions have been brought to the God of Israel, the Creator of the World, through the Christian faith...
...they look very Italian, making The Sopranos look like a celebration of Italian culture by contrast...
...Given the church's limited resources, I would make kindergarten through second grades a priority followed by high school...
...Tentler presumes a negative intention behind the not-yet-published bishops' document on contraception, referring to it as an "episcopal fait accompli...
...My article was an appeal to Christians to uphold the alternate views against Gibson's skewed version of the Gospels...
...The Passion should have been deemed unsatisfactory because it breaks the dynamic balance in Christian theology between Crucifixion and Resurrection in order to glorify pain and death and elevate a satisfaction theology...
...The study indicated a wide variation in support for Catholic schools...
...It continued its work until about 1980 after which the U.S...
...That is their folly which continues to bring pain and disillusionment to a good number of the faithful...
...This effort coincided with the work of lay and clergy pioneers at the diocesan level...
...Tentler's article speaks of a bleak history with brokenhearted priests and suffering laity who have "nowhere to go...
...That office eventually worked with the National Institutes for Health, the then Department of Health Education and Welfare, and z...
...Thankfully, the long, difficult struggle to form a good conscience, and the peace of trusting in their decision, restored many to full enjoyment and participation in church life...
...The bishops & NFP Leslie Tender's article on contraception presents an incomplete history that rests on negative presumptions...
...The writer is assistant director of the USCCB's Diocesan Development Program for Natural Family Planning...
...The author replies: Both Ralph Scheidler and Philip Devine are clearly troubled that a non-Christian wrote so candidly in a Christian publication...
...I was asking Christians to face up to the continuing, nonhistorical, literal understanding of the Gospels so as to stop any further harm from being inflicted on Jesus' immediate family...
...I write as a person who wants to help Christianity be the Gospel of Love that it wants to be...
...I am a committed practitioner of Judaism, the original and continuing divine covenant, the nearest living religion to Christianity and the faith most intertwined with it...
...When published, this document will be just one small part of a pastoral effort that has been ongoing for more than forty years...
...To that end, in my article I stated (as the bishops did at the Second Vatican Council) that Christians must stop teaching and presenting the Gospels in any way that justifies hatred and slander of the Jews...
...If Rabbi Greenberg wants Christians to become Jews, let him preach that message as much as he wishes...
...Ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit who sustains the church, this body of human frailty, in spite of itself...
...As The Passion of the Christ flagrantly violated the U.S...
...I'll leave the analogy there, but Christianity's understanding of the Suffering Servant is, as Donald Senior points out ("Blame the Gospels...
...If by "publicly" she means in the media or the pulpit, that is generally correct...
...The three companion pieces in your symposium are all commendable, but Greenberg is in a class by himself...
...Commonweal 4 June 4, 2004...
...The authority figures may still attempt to block the influence of the Spirit...
...Its purpose was to systematically fund and conduct research on the female menstrual cycle...
...For them, obedience to the laws of the church was their way of being good Catholics...
...Therefore, I write not as a hostile Other, and still less as one who wants Christians to become Jews...
...Personally, I thank Commonweal for inviting and publishing a dialogue of equals, including loving criticism and respectful instruction...
...Greenberg writes that Christians should "reject the glorification of suffering" and "strive to take away the power of tyrants and nations to abuse the innocent...
...Diocesan programs were established and some Catholics eventually founded their own national NFP educational programs, such as Couple to Couple League, Family of the Americas, and Creighton FertilityCare...
...bishops' guidelines in this respect, it was disappointing that the film received so much support from traditional Christians...
...Much remains to be done, but the full story needs to be known...
...In a dialogue that so often lumbers under the dead weight of cliche and boring earnestness, he invariably writes with a freshness and candor ever so lightly dusted with wit...
...I am now a high school teacher and principal of an elementary school...
...But it is absurd to demand that Christians censor the central documents of their faith, producing a milk-andwater religion that has nothing to say to a world in which abortion, terrorism, and war abound, and in which children can be as cruel as those who tormented Gibson's Judas to his death...
...Yet it is precisely Jesus' suffering and death that have inspired so many to speak out against injustice, even if it means putting their lives in danger...
...Regional organizations such as the New England NFP Association cropped up to train teachers in NFP and organize classes for couples...
...Least of all was I asking that the Gospels or any sacred text be censored...
...The pervasively tribal atmosphere of contemporary culture aside, a more likely culprit is the imprudent decision of some of the Jewish leadership to brand criticisms of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic...
...Believers must act together to prevent canonical texts from being used for hateful purposes that contradict their divinely inspired, noblest objectives...
Vol. 131 • June 2004 • No. 11
