Correspondence: Donald Senior & his critics
CORRESPONDENCE Tough love I very much appreciated Donald Senior's response to Rabbi Irving Greenberg ("Blame the Gospels?" May 7). However, I was disturbed by Senior's dismissal of Greenberg's...
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...The 'how' of Christ's death is lingered on at the expense of the 'why...
...The novel closes with the main character walking off the ship for a better life in America—an old ending that would be forestalled today by Homeland Security officials...
...Our fertility is one of God's greatest gifts to us...
...bishops conference which I also cited...
...If even wealthy New York City can-not conquer its rivers, one might well ask how individual nations, some impoverished, can control the seas that surround them...
...Likewise I am not sure how my article "overemphasizes Vatican II's endorsement of historical/critical approach to biblical scholarship...
...Under the spartina," Casey writes, "there was black earth richer than any farmland, but useless to farmers on ac-count of the salt...
...However, I was disturbed by Senior's dismissal of Greenberg's argument that "satisfaction theology" is at the heart of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and, by extension, the Gospels themselves...
...Catholics viewing the film should recall the teachings of the Second Vatican Council's decree Nostra aetate, which affirms that, 'though Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion...
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...Each goes into debt to pay for his flight to New York, only to find that none will be paid until they make the ship seaworthy...
...Perhaps by aligning two seemingly contradictory ways of understanding Christ's Passion, the sisters and priests of Eidle's youth instinctively knew that satisfaction theology was not adequate...
...William Langewiesche, in his riveting The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime (North Point, $23, 239 pp...
...Both the bishops and the biblical commission clearly endorse the need to be aware of the historical context in which the Gospels were composed, especially in dealing with texts that have the potential to be interpreted as anti-Jewish...
...In which case, he may need to admonish Pope John Paul II who is the church's foremost exemplar of thoughtful ecumenical and interfaith dialogue...
...Ultimately, most novels about the sea center on human rage and folly, followed by redemption sought and sometimes won...
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...This seems much different to me than the experience of the men and women who grappled deeply with the issue of accepting and raising children forty years ago and who had their expectations dashed by Paul VI's encyclical...
...Only the spartinas thrived in the salt flood, shut themselves against the salt but drank the water...
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...Moreover, the ships draw their crews from "pools of the poor—several million sailors of varying quality, largely now from southern Asia, who bid down for the jobs in a global marketplace and are mixed together without reference to such conventions as language and nationality...
...but in these instances, it sure helps...
...says they haven't, they can't, and they never will...
...The tides still obey laws of their own, and they are not the laws of man...
...Less than 2 percent of shipping containers arriving in the United States are inspected physically...
...But I stand by my statement that the extreme forms of satisfaction theology are not the most representative of Catholic tradition...
...They are abysmally paid, hired by third-world "manning agents," who are in turn paid by owners whose identities are hidden behind corporate structures that exist only on paper...
...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) "no consequences" way that sex is portrayed almost everywhere else...
...I am not sure how my response exemplifies "politically correct ecumenism resulting in fuzzy theology...
...Based on an actual incident in New York Harbor, Goldman's novel centers on fifteen Central American sailors (though only one has ever been to sea) who are hired to man an appallingly derelict ship, the Urus...
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...The world's oceans remain "radically free," and that isn't good...
...Here are some other quotes which indicate that the review is more nuanced than your readers might otherwise think: • "However, by choosing to narrow his focus almost exclusively to the Passion of Christ, Gibson has, perhaps, muted Christ's teachings, making it difficult for viewers unfamiliar with the New Testament and the era's historical milieu to contextualize the circumstances leading up to Jesus' arrest...
...Spartinas grow not far from where the Urus docked, shutting themselves against the salt but drinking the water—and re-minding us why we regard the sea hope-fully, even as its anarchy threatens our peace...
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...Goldman's tone of magical realism is vividly appropriate for a tale juxtapos-ing the hope and despair of the bereft crew, who gaze starboard at the Statue of Liberty and the glorious Manhattan skyline, but portside at the threatening Red Hook shoreline...
...The most visually distinctive representatives of Jewish authority—the high priest Caiphas and those in the Sanhedrin aligned with him—do (Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 June 18, 2004 thousands of ships wrecked in its waters...
...a story about an angry man, the boat he's building, and his voyage to self-discovery and redemption...
...Senior, meanwhile, overemphasizes Vatican II's endorsement of the historical/critical approach to biblical scholarship...
...It was up to us to try to integrate these two seemingly disparate images of God...
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...When I hear people casually saying that their "factory is closed," as a young mother of two recently told me, I find it a depressingly shallow dismissal of this gift...
...If anything goes wrong, these expendable crews are abandoned to their fates—at sea or on land...
...he uses the review to claim that the conference "sanitized" the film...
...WILLIAM R. EIDLE Poughkeepsie, N.Y...
...Or does he mean to imply that "ecumenism" and "fuzzy theology" (with "political correctness" thrown in for good measure) are one and the same...
...Will they do more than simply give out prohibitions...
...As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger writes in his introduction to The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, the Pontifical Biblical Commission is merely an advisory body, "not an organ of the teaching office...
...The author replies: No doubt, as William Eidle testifies, some Catholic teachers taught (and still teach) a brand of satisfaction theology alongside an emphasis on God's unconditional love...
...When this proves impossible, the Yuppie, college-educated owners abandon the crew—whose visas have long since expired—assuring they will be illegal aliens as soon as they step on shore...
...Like Luther, he wants to censor many significant pas-sages of the New Testament as "epistles of straw...
...Furthermore, more than forty thousand large merchant ships, not to mention innumerable small coastal craft, wander the world with little or no regulation, plying the open seas and carrying nearly all international trade...
...DONALD SENIOR, CP The bishops & 'The Passion' In his article, "Anti-Semitism in 'The Passion'" (May 7), Rabbi Irving Greenberg quotes from a review of The Passion of the Christ by the Office Film and Broadcasting (OFB) of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB...
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...Concomitantly, we were taught that ours was an unconditionally all-loving God...
...The council's document on revelation insists that "the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of tradition, has been en-trusted to the living teaching office of the church alone" (emphasis added...
...As a practicing Catholic whose early formation was in the pre-Vatican II church, I can attest that "satisfaction theology" was clearly at the center of what we were taught about Jesus' Passion and death...
...Goldman's basically romantic ending reminded me of John Casey's lovely 1989 Spartina (Alfred A. Knopf, $18.95, 375 pp...
...A few are scanned for radiation, but almost none is examined with anything like the care now showered on airplanes...
...The bishops may be right in saying that this teaching is due for a renewed presentation...
...Greenberg provides a good study of the tactics of "victimology...
...They are further reluctant to do that because the ship is docked near the Red Hook Houses, a notorious public housing project...
...The nuns and priests told us that Jesus died so that our sins would be forgiven...
...Before 9/11, this kind of book would have traumatized readers on environmental grounds alone—and not just the horrific spills like that of Exxon's Valdez, but the daily, relentless pollution that comes from aging, badly maintained ships flying under indifferent flags of convenience...
...Do the bishops have the moral authority to do it effectively...
...A historical/critical approach to biblical scholarship is not the only method in the church's repertoire...
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...One can only hope...
...JOHN F. KOBLER, CP Chicago, Ill...
...I've seen no commentary linking Langewiesche's brilliant, much-discussed reporting with the equally brilliant 1997 fictional ac-count of abandoned crews—Francisco Goldman's The Ordinary Seaman (Atlantic Monthly Press, $32.50, 288 pp...
...There is, of course, a rise of anti-Semitism in the West, due not so much to the Gospels, but to the TV newscasts of Israel's unrelenting wars with the Arabs...
...Fuzzy theology Donald Senior's reply to Irving Greenberg's reflections on Mel Gib-son and the Gospels struck me as "politically correct" ecumenism resulting in fuzzy theology...
...John Kobler's letter contains some interesting broadsides but no specifics...
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...Kobler is correct that the Pontifical Biblical Commission is not equivalent to the magisterium (although it serves the Office of the Doctrine of the Faith in an official capacity), but it surely is in harmony with it, as is the statement of the U.S...
Vol. 131 • June 2004 • No. 12
