Correspondence
C O R R E S P O N O E N Cardinal George I was very disappointed that Cardinal Francis George declined a direct inter-view with Peter Feuerherd ("Chicago's Cardinal," January 16, 2004), since...
...I was impressed by him as a gentle-man and a scholar, as well as a dedicated religious...
...Feuerherd might have offered, along with George's much-quoted condemnation of liberal Catholicism, George's less quoted (and milder) criticism of a conservative Catholicism, "so sectarian that it cannot serve as a sign of the unity of all people in Christ...
...To write of George's agenda without some notice of this growing absence seems to miss an essential part of the story...
...George's motivations for the sack aren't very clear...
...C O R R E S P O N O E N Cardinal George I was very disappointed that Cardinal Francis George declined a direct inter-view with Peter Feuerherd ("Chicago's Cardinal," January 16, 2004), since George seems to be a key figure among thoughtful Catholic conservatives...
...Yet, on the basis of twenty years of re-search, I am confident in the type of leadership exhibited by Cardinal George...
...3-line minimum...
...MISSIONARY INSTITUTE LONDON The Missionary Institute London is pleased to offer the following courses to people involved in any form of mission activity in the world...
...Could I have been reading about my own bishop...
...But vindictiveness doesn't seem consistent with George's brand of conservatism...
...To say that he "supports" the archdiocesan gay and lesbian ministry is a stretch...
...One sentence struck me as being right on: "To make no distinction between a committed homosexual couple and someone who is promiscuous is morally obtuse...
...In your estimation, must a "religious" candidate be a crusader for Good against Evil (read: terrorism, abortion, homosexuality...
...I have never read such a milquetoast piece of journalism in Commonweal...
...People who criticize him do not appreciate his intellectual depth (John Paul II has the same problem...
...You should urge Johnson to write a thoughtful essay on the notions of inspiration and inerrancy...
...Still, more and more people—administration after administration, bishop after bishop—feel they are neither needed nor nourished...
...Why is nothing said about the difficulty George has had in keeping or hiring the kind of people who for five decades or more made Chicago a center of vital Catholicism...
...For this was the same Spitzer who in 1973 headed the task force that persuaded the APA to abandon its traditional view that homosexuality is "a mental disorder" and therefore subject to treatment by reparative therapy...
...The incident hints at vindictiveness, a quality many liberals and moderates suspect conservatives of harboring...
...Journalist Online MEMORABLE MOMENTS WITH Cardinals Bernardin, Cody, Wright, others in a changing church...
...405, New York, NY 10115, or e-mail copy to Malena Seldin at: circulationmgr@commonwealmagazine.org (e-mail is preferred...
...A mere review of the secular press would have revealed just how tumultuous his seven years in Chicago have been, from arguments over liturgy both here and abroad—culminating locally in Gabe Huck's summary dismissal after twenty-seven years of service (how easy it is to dispose of a layman...
...When his term of office was up at the Institute, George was offered a job at Catholic University, but his provincial countermanded that assignment because he wanted George to lead a spiritual program for the laity at Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois...
...He adds that if patients "bring in the spiritual component," the recovery rate is "significantly higher...
...Making peace Rand Richards Cooper's story about making war and eventually peace with his neighbor and her dog ("Delicate Negotiations," December 5, 2003) went straight to my conscience...
...JEAN RABER Ovid, Mich....the manager On the day I read Peter Feuerherd's assessment of Cardinal Francis George, I received an article about George's archdiocese from a recent Chicago Tribune: "Catholics See Drop in Attendance...
...Now two years later, six of LTP's eight editors are gone...
...PETER FEUERHERD The good doctor Your lead editorial, "Getting Religion" (January 16, 2004), is carefully unspecific about what qualities make a candidate "religious," although you seem to accept Franklin Foer's judgment in the New Republic that Howard (Continued on page 29) NoesammmimmutummaigmailmannaMl Commonweal 4 February 13, 2004 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) Dean is "one of the most secular...in modern history...
...Journalistic coverage of bishops must be neither hagiographical nor cynical...
...Feuerherd casts me as "George's strong opponent...
...An incident occurred in which one of my colleagues wronged another...
...Advance payment required...
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...10 percent, 6 times...
...Not true...
...and the Christian mandate to attend to basic human needs—housing, food, medical care, and education...
...So I bent over back-ward to be fair...
...Johnson writes that "Kass seems unworried about the moral implications of massive retaliation" in the Book of Genesis...
...There are many parts of the Old Testament that can cause a conscientious Christian to wince, worry, and wonder...
...Obviously, some readers thought I bent too far...
...Surely that fact counts for something...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...through the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops, he has stridently opposed the passage of a bill to include sexual orientation as a category in the Illinois Human Rights Act...
...George continued to challenge various books ("Why is LTP publishing the cardinal of Los Angeles...
...My own books are being withdrawn one by one...
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...JOHN C. CORT Nahant, Mass...
...I am somewhat bemused by the cardinal's critics who are so confident in their interpretation of Vatican II's pastoral renewal programs...
...Jean Raber is under the impression that I didn't get to interview the cardinal...
...This (2 semesters) course provides a sound foundation for mission taking into account the challenges of today's world All enquiries should be directed to The Registrar Missionary Institute London Holcombe House, The Ridgeway, London NW7 4HY, Tel: +44 (o)zo 8900 1893 Email: milOmdx ac uk Commonweal 2 9 February 13, 2004 And Spitzer is not alone...
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...MATTHEW HARRIGAN Chicago, Ill...
...REV...
...Perhaps, though, he and others see this decline as a weeding out...
...Francis George him-self must have been surprised at how benign the piece was...
...soul was at peace again...
...The first I heard from him was that he wanted to know if I was an ex-priest, if I was divorced, or if I was remarried—apparently believing any combination thereof put me on shaky ground...
...a leader so confident of his divine calling to spread the gospel of unfettered capitalism that he can assemble a bevy of pastors for the laying on of hands, as President George W. Bush did in 2000...
...BETSY DARKEN Chattanooga, Tenn...
...In a great show of righteous indignation , I counterattacked...
...My sympathies to Feuerherd, who had to rely on his own observations, his correspondence, and second-hand accounts...
...CLASSIFIED RATES: $1.20 per word...
...chess316@aol.com...
...What I find troubling about Feuer-herd's story is the dismissal of Gabe Huck...
...I'm sure many find his style refreshing, but I and many others find it unnuanced and heavy-handed...
...One notices that George tends to chew more than he can bite off...
...wwwsabbathretreats.org Commonweal 30 February 13, 2004 Become a 2004 Commonweal Associate Benefactor: HI,U)(1 or more Supporter: 5511)--9-OH Patron: `7)'l-)(L4~)O Charter: H I –` 24') Sustaining: HSO--"L-.24 hCcL Or monc\ order for fuN amount cnc=loscc Check or nioncv larder for 1-1,111 enclosed...
...What often gets lost in the kerfuffle over the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson is that he was legally elected by the people in his own New Hampshire diocese who had known him for twenty years...
...1~I~tcrc~rd~mcX Name ~ddre L it\', Htitc, 1i Commonweal Associates Riv cr',idc 1 )riv C, Room 4O Mc\~~ l"ork, N 1(111...
...After reading Cooper's article, I eventually admitted that I—who had been proud of my courage—was the antithesis of a peacemaker...
...Not too long after that he was appointed bishop of Yakima, and my The extraordinary program that takes "ordinary" Catholics from membership to discipleship it only three hours...
...Subdued and soft-spoken George is not, and he certainly does not shy away from invoking and using episcopal authority...
...His point that every day we each face the choice whether to "opt for diplomacy, or reach for weaponry" immediately brought to mind a choice I had recently made at work...
...Donations Also Are on the Decline...
...The author replies: While researching this story, I often found myself in disagreement with Cardinal George...
...a man not ashamed to be seen withdrawing for prayer prior to a prime-time TV announcement that the war in Iraq was about to begin...
...Gospel truth...
...Chicago's Cardinal" deserves more honest treatment...
...George has not been afraid to distance himself from political conservatives who do not espouse the social-justice teachings of the church...
...GABE HUCK New York, N.Y...
...To me, it is also reaching out to the God who dwells within each one of us...
...As fortune, or perhaps God, would have it, I was given an opportunity during the Christmas season to make amends...
...Your readers could profit from an up-to-date and thoughtful article on this subject...
...As for Harrigan, no fair reader could claim that the article did not delve into contentious issues such as liturgical reform, women's ordination, clerical sexual abuse, and racism...
...To those of us who have experienced his leadership, Feuerherd's image of George assome mild-mannered, Clark Kent of a bishop with great intellectual firepower misses the mark...
...The good doctor preaches the peacemaking of the Sermon on the Mount...
...the scholar Many thanks for Peter Feuerherd's balanced profile of Cardinal Francis George...
...I delivered a message of conciliation and was quite pleased when it was received in kind...
...MICHAEL R. BECKER Philadelphia, Pa...
...Faculty In-Service...
...George seems to be pointing the church in the direction of some sort of "reformed" conservatism, and I would like to know more about what that might look like...
...gospel justice for workers here and in the third world...
...And yes, I have read the cardinal's writings...
...That cannot of course be pinned on Francis George, any more than the ever-falling participation in national elections can be blamed on any one administration...
...I believe that Cardinal George came to town in 1997 with sights set on getting me out and gutting Liturgy Training Publications (LTP...
...I don't even live in that archdiocese any longer...
...I have news for Garvey: on May 9, 2001, Robert Spitzer of Columbia University appeared before the convention of the American Psychiatric Association [APA] in New Orleans and declared that his research, basedon interviews with two hundred former gays and lesbians, proved to him that he had been wrong to believe that "once you are gay you cannot be changed...
...I'm flattered but not worthy...
...I further suspect that George shares the quandary of liberal Catholics in the voting booth—how to select the candidate that best embodies one's worldview, when all of them seem badly lacking in some critical way...
...Has Feuerherd read anything that George wrote him-self...
...I have writ-ten two books and more than fifty articles in academic journals on Vatican II, and I still cannot claim to under-stand the council in all its dimensions...
...Yet he was the only one among the dozens of people I interviewed who questioned the cardinal's intellectual abilities...
...Yet my two paragraphs of fame—as well as the rest of the article—miss a few important things...
...Even if George were "cerebral," that would be only one vital qualification to lead the archdiocese...
...As an almost-cradle Episcopalian who has been gay since his first gulp of air, I was delighted with what Garvey had to say, particularly in his concluding paragraph...
...Cooper referred to peace-making as recognizing the other per-son's point of view...
...I objected to such questions but did not resign, trying for the next four years to continue the work of two decades...
...MA Theology, University of San Francisco, summa cum laude...
...Experienced Microsoft Word...
...When I heard of this decision, I expressed my opinion to George in somewhat irascible terms...
...I stand by the "cerebral" description...
...One wishes for a fuller account of the story...
...Rejecting the zeitgeist On the subject of homosexuality, John Garvey has apparently decided to abandon Christian tradition in favor of the zeitgeist...
...I had a short discussion with him while he was between appointments, though his written responses to my questions were far more helpful to the story...
...JOHN F. KOBLER, CP Chicago, Ill...
...Ditto for the New Testament, which contains passages approving of slavery...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
...The local church of Chicago—as well as Commonweal's readers—would have been better served by a profile with a bit more journalistic edge...
...It is ironic that this decline continues after George has had six years to put in place that evangelization he sees "as the solution to perennial problems...
...This course will examine those changes and find today's basis for evangelization Diploma in Mission Spirituality Evangelization flows from a deep personal conviction...
...No Superman As one of the people of God in Chicago, I read Peter Feuerherd's article on Francis George first with shock, then hysterical laughter...
...His "How to Read Scripture" (January 16, 2004) is a fine example of his good sense...
...Moral distinctions Let's hear it for John Garvey...
...LTP was one of many events/entities that made Chicago of service to Catholics and parishes all over the United States and beyond...
...Your January 16, 2004, issue was very well done, especially Luke Timothy Johnson's review of The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon Kass ("Among the Patriarchs...
...George has degrees...
...JOSEPH TIKHON MURRAY Waterford, Conn...
...ANDY GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...Richard Fitzgibbons, a practicing psychiatrist who has specialized in reparative therapy, says, "There are at least nine major studies that show that the recovery rate is about 30 to 50 percent...
...I became acquainted with (Continued on page 4) Commonweal 2 February 13, 2004 ORRESPONDENCE: (Continued from page 2) George before he became a bishop, while he was running Cardinal Bernard Law's Institute for Faith and Culture in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Gabe Huck is understandably angry...
...That is what I tried to do...
...biblical respect for God's universe...
...Yet scholars have long recognized that there are various types of error in Scripture—not simply historical and scientific, but even moral and religious...
...Put Feuerherd in that cohort who consider George "cerebral," a great disservice to those who are...
...It seemed to take a push from those who were helping him dismantle the Inter-national Committee on English in the Liturgy before he announced I was fired (and would I sign this paper never to talk about anything that ever happened...
...I myself will take Dean's "resolute secularism" any day...
...R. Raza...
...In this, I think he should be lauded for depoliticizing Catholicism and preventing it from identifying strongly with one major party...
...to public controversies over the appointment and movement of pastors...
...His response was: "Holy obedience, you know...
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...He justifies this on the ground that if homosexuality were a choice, he could "agree that it is an evil, an objective disorder, but no homosexual person I know has experienced it that way...
...It wasn't Stritch or Meyer or Cody or even Bernardin who did that—it was the people they had sense enough to trust...
...You may very well, in fact, have a choice, but this is not the most interesting part of the story...
...Dynamic Creative Preaching PARISH MISSIONS, RETREATS FOR RELIGIOUS...
...Literalists believe God approves of such things because Scripture is "the word of God...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 3
