To Be Heard

Have we, and the media in general, completely forgotten that one of the last great peace efforts by the dying Pope John Paul II was to send Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington (Signs of the Times, 11/6), to try to talk President Bush and his advisers out of their ill-advised rush to war? I am sure that today, in his deep heart’s core, our president really wishes he had heeded the pope’s voice.

Cardinal Laghi tried in vain to point out to him the difficulty of the language, the serious conflicts among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and that while America’s formidable war machine would make quick work of Hussein’s inferior defenses, unmanageable human problems would certainly follow.

I have come from Rome not only to hear you, Mr. President, but also to be heard, Laghi complained at one point in their conversation. I had the impression that they had already made their decision, Laghi said in a remarkable speech in Camaldoli (Arezzo, Italy) on Oct. 4, 2003.

President Bush had been offered the best intelligence available on Iraq. The bishops in Iraq are in touch with the apostolic nuncio in Baghdad, and he with the Vatican. They speak the people’s language and have their hand on the pulse of the nation. Their knowledge of Iraq was more reliable than that of our highly paid intelligence agencies who cost us billions but whose information has been repeatedly proven embarrassingly wrong and misleading.

It was President Reagan in 1984 who urged the Senate to confirm William A. Wilson, his personal envoy to the pope, as the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. His reason was his oft-repeated conviction that the Vatican is the world’s greatest listening post.

I spoke at length with Cardinal Laghi last September in Rome. He recalled his sense of failure when President Bush tried to end their meeting on a positive note: at least they held common positions on the defense of human life and opposition to human cloning. The cardinal replied that those issues were not the purpose of his mission to Washington.

Larry N. Lorenzoni, S.D.B.

A Magnificent Witness

I do canonical work for women religious in the United States and in other countries. Some of this work has been with cloistered sisters. Therefore, I was deeply touched by the beautiful photographs of the women from the three Carmelite monasteries (Who Can Argue With Love? by Lily Almog, 10/2). The Jewish photographer made it clear that these women live in a simple dwelling conducive to prayer and recollection. The expressions on their faces conveyed a tranquility that could come only from women who have an intimate relationship with Christ. It is amazing that such a way of life can be lived in a world that is so deeply torn by violence. At the same time, it is the very witness that the people in our own day and time need.

Eileen Jaramillo

Justice for All

On behalf of the bishops of the California Catholic Conference I wish to respond to the article in America by Marci A. Hamilton (9/25), who is both an attorney for plaintiffs suing the Catholic Church and a professor at Yeshiva University Law School. The full response to her article can be found at www.cacatholic.org.

Under the guise of presenting lessons from the crisis of sexual abuse of minors, America has provided one of the most vociferous and bitter critics of the Catholic Church with a forum to publish a new plaintiffs’ brief. In federal court, she has argued the case against the Diocese of San Diego in its challenge to the California law that repealed the statute of limitations for the duration of 2003. She has opposed the church in several major legal issues, including the Archdiocese of Portland bankruptcy action. To describe Professor Hamilton merely as having represented numerous survivors of sexual abuse by members of the clergy of various denominations on constitutional matters is not transparent and certainly not full disclosure for the readers of America.

Professor Hamilton completely ignored the findings of the John Jay Report. The directors of that Report describe it as one of the most extensive collections about sexual abuse of minors and one of a very small number not based on forensic content. As such, it is a very valuable source of knowledge about sexual offending (John Jay 2006 Supplementary Report).

Her book God vs. the Gavel (2005) makes extravagant claims about abuse in the 1990’s that are not sustained by evidence. She has defended California’s targeting of the Catholic Church, and she promoted the same cause in Colorado. However, the John Jay Report shows that after 1985, as society became more familiar with the evil of sexual abuse of minors, church authorities dealt with it vigorously, and that it declined precipitously in subsequent years.

We agree with Professor Hamilton that the protection of children must be an absolute priority. However, we note that her priority extends only to children abused in private institutions. Sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is a terrible tragedy, but it represents a small fraction of one percent of the whole unfortunate problem of sexual abuse of minors. Clearly the extension of the civil statute of limitations in California targeted the Catholic Church. That is how it was drawn up, and that is how it operated. In fact, the thousands of children Professor Hamilton claims were abused in churches during the 1990’s were more likely abused in public institutions, but she closes out the possibility of suits against those institutions.

The Catholic bishops of California reaffirm their absolute commitment to keeping the church safe for all, particularly children. They hope that the lessons learned and the evidence provided regarding sexual abuse will be of universal assistance in dealing with this terrible problem. Our society must go beyond identifying sexual abuse as a Catholic issue. It must treat all victims equally and not just focus on those whom trial lawyers can select to make a great deal of money for themselves. Justice must include all children.

(Most Rev.) Stephen E. Blaire

Worth Reading

I was delighted to read the articles by Robert Ellsberg and the Rev. Gerald S. Twomey concerning Henri Nouwen (9/8). My son, a priest, gave me Nouwen’s book, Bread for the Journey, for my birthday in April 1999.

Since that time it sits on my kitchen table, and I don’t miss a day without reading it. It is truly a beautiful book with inspirational thoughts for every day of the year.

Keep it on your kitchen table or your nightstand, because it is really worth reading!

Frances C. Higgins

Voice in Wind

Thank you extremely for publishing such a well thought out editorial, with which I thoroughly agree (Sowing the Wind (8/14). I felt that you were expressing my very thoughts over the last few weeks. It makes me prouder to be a Jesuit who grew up in a Catholic environment in Jacksonville, Fla. with a large Maronite minority, and even a few Catholic Iraqi families. Please continue to be a voice in the wilderness.

Bert Mead, S.J.

Wake Up

Terry Golway’s column A Nation of Idol-Worshipers (7/31) was right on target.

It’s sad to see so many young adults wasting their time and energy for such low standards, while there are so many challenges everywhere to benefit society. There are numerous fields of labor that can make one feel fulfilled. The sad part of this pop culture is that our children feed on it.

Wake up, America; there is work to be done by you!

Regina Licameli

Agenda of Manipulation

FIRE, FIRE, HOUSE ON FIRE would have been a better title for your Current Comment Al Gore’s New Mission (7/17). You state that this documentary (I use the term loosely) An Inconvenient Truth, which deals with Gore’s version of global warming, is sobering stuff.

More sobering to me is your illustrious Jesuit magazine buying into the movie hook, line and sinker, and passing your gullibility off to your readers. An Inconvenient Truth is nothing more than an infomercial and propaganda blitz portraying Al Gore as so much more intelligent than us mere mortals.

If Al Gore were selling a product in this movie, the Federal Trade Commission could charge him with false and deceptive advertising. Maybe your magazine could have done some fact checking before presenting the movie to your readers as glowingly as you did, and bestowing on Al Gore the mantle of a genuinely dedicated public servant.

Unfortunately, America lost an opportunity to shed light on this important topic or add anything of substance to the conversation. You have only allowed the uninformed minority to frame the global warming discussion. How unfortunate.

Barbara Ann Mueller, O.P.

Gospel Ethic

Regarding the article by Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., The Corporate University (7/31), I agree that much of third-level education today emulates the corporate business model. But I question whether this corporate university model is as intrinsically immoral as Father Miscamble seems to imply. If it is, then what other model would he propose?

University education today has become institutional on a grand scale, and we do not correctly read the signs of the times if we simply yearn for a return to the way higher education was administered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Responding to the core of Father Miscamble’s concerns, I think that the management and marketing models that a university espouses do not necessarily imply an underlying ethic. Corporate is not necessarily bad and non-corporate is not necessarily good. I suggest that one can have a corporate university based on a Gospel ethic that is capable of being communicated to its students.

One final point: Father Miscamble says that as a matter of urgency Catholic universities should take the lead in American higher education in providing just compensation for adjunct faculty. I must say that I am adequately compensated for my duties as an adjunct professor. Adjunct faculty are, by definition, temporary faculty who supply some particular need not provided by the regular faculty. Historically it has been assumed that they have or had some other primary profession and so do not need to be compensated with a living family wage for their adjunct contributions.

Robert N. Barger

Dynamic Universe

I am frustrated by the recent action of the bishops in considering certain changes to the liturgy of the Mass (Signs of the Times, 7/3). Why are they wasting their time and ours on trivialities when there are so many important issues that need attention?

Are they using their command function to remind us that they are in control? I would prefer that they learn to exercise leadership and lead us into the 21st century. This would involve many issues, including the priest shortage, which I attribute to their woeful lack of leadership. Leading into the 21st century would involve updating their teachings from the static universe of St. Augustine and other early leaders to the dynamic universe we know today. Some of the changes include now knowing that the universe is billions of years old and that humans have been here for perhaps millions of years.

I know the teachings of the catechism, but it is hard to relate them to the conditions of the 21st century. Since I know the bishops are not likely to address these issues, I must make my own interpretations. Yes, I am a Catholic and will remain one, but in some issues on my own terms.

John L. Coakley Jr.

The Truth of Parable

While I very much enjoyed reading Peter C. Erb’s The Schwenkfelder Code (6/5), I would have to object to a few of its assertions. I cringed when the author suggested that a faith based on a fictional narrative was adolescent. Since the embrace of historical-critical methods in the field of biblical scholarship, few would disagree that the Bible contains fictional assertions that do not uphold historical integrity. The historian Arnold Toynbee suggested, however, that the genre of fiction was the most truthful way of communicating a description of human relationships. Artistic recreation reaches more of the intangibles of a human story line.

The article assumes that fiction, its depictions being historically inaccurate, is a less adequate technique when communicating such truths as articles of faith. I would argue the contrary: it is more accurate, especially in the discussion of the transcendent, because through art it relays and evokes the emotive elements of relationship. I do not defend Dan Brown’s work. I would agree with much of Erb’s critique (I especially appreciated his point about the contradiction between Brown’s content and formula in one of the final paragraphs), but in the process of this critique he downgrades the power of fiction and the desire of the human to be involved in another’s story. That is not adolescent. That’s simply human. And it can work both ways, which brings me to another, final point.

Despite misgivings, if the reader were to accept the analogy of a mature faith, based on church teaching and history, versus an immature faith, based on the popularity of a piece of fiction, should maturity so flippantly dismiss immaturity? Is there not an obligation to listen, as a parent should, and to respect the needs of their children? Regarding the Da Vinci experience as adolescent demonstrates a divide between the church and its flock. We are called to bridge this divide. The point is that there is much to be learned from the phenomena surrounding The Da Vinci Code. One is that the world very often does not listen to historically accurate doctrinal explanations. It listens to stories that are rich in true and human intangibles. It yearns for the truth of fiction and parable, rather than the truth of catechesis and history. And the church should listen and learn before it thinks of itself as so mature, losing its members to popular trends because it no longer speaks the world’s language.

Joseph Arner