CORRESPONDENCE.

Mischievous modifiers

I enjoyed Paul Elie's remembrance of Ted Hughes ["A Poet's Unmistakable Voice," July 16], muted though it was, except for this statement: "When he died last October, Ted Hughes was eulogized as one of the only truly great English writers of his time."

One of the only? Not "one of the few" or "one of only three" or (alas) "one of the last"? Mr. Elie is an editor; he should know better-and so should the guy who edited his copy.

Perhaps this corrupt locution comes from too much reading of the New York Times. That'll do it every time.

George Murray 

Ossining, N.Y.

From the editors: (1) How do you know it was a guy? (2) Only editors are human.

Attila speaks

I'm genetically disposed to right-wing intolerance. I've tried being progressive, but I just can't live a lie; I have to accept who I am. And "who I am" is vicious, mean-spirited, intolerant, insensitive. Further to the right than the hands of a clock at 3:15.

Having said that, I must confess that I enjoy Commonweal for its occasional happy insight into that strange and curious thing, the Liberal Catholic Mind.

At least two of those last three words belong within quotation marks, but I shall resist the temptation to commit such crass veracity.

Thomas Defreitas VI

East Boston, Mass.

From the editors: Mr. Defreitas's "tolerance" for Commonweal is yet another proof that genes aren't everything.

The future has arrived

From my "re-read this sometime" file, I have retrieved a copy of Commonweal dated October 31, 1969, bearing on its cover the title "The Church in the Year 2000." (Also the price: "75 cents.") My motive for keeping it was to see whether any of the authors' observations, made so daringly thirty years ago, would hit the mark in 1999.

I also hoped that I would be alive to see what things would be like in the year 2000!

I have not been disappointed on either account. The editorial, so insightful then, still strikes a chord today. I hope you will provide an opportunity for your readers to revisit this gem, which the editors at the time labeled as an exercise in "futurology...whose methods and possibilities are still highly tentative." paul g. crowley

Tucson, Ariz.

From the editors: There's a problem here. The contents of that issue (Vol. XCI, No. 5) are too bulky to be quoted, too multifarious to be summarized. We content ourselves, if not Mr. Crowley, with this concluding passage from the editorial:

"Finally, what are targets for future discussions of this sort? Much more attention must be given to the quite specific and concrete political and social events which seem likely in the next thirty years: the growth of the gap between rich and poor; changes in structures of work and leisure; the development of subtle techniques of social control and pressures to apply them to previously private realms of human life; the very 'invention' of futurist planning itself and the type of rationality it implies. The church of the year 2000 may look like that of 1969. If so, looks will be deceiving."

What Cuba needs

Brian Brown's "Strangling Cuba" [August 13] humanely documents the suffering of the Cuban people during this "Special Period" of their history. Little seems to have changed since I wrote in Commonweal of my experiences there a few years back.

But your author is in error when he claims the cause lies with America's economic blockade of the island. Cuba is broke and could not pay for anything if the blockade were lifted tomorrow. When the Russians were Cuba's "sugar daddy," as your author recognizes, life was pretty good on the island even with the blockade in full force. But without Russian support the economy simply imploded.

What Cuba must have in addition to lifting the blockade is American credits to buy what it needs. Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans and their supporters in Congress would never approve that without significant concessions from Castro (one of which would probably be his retirement) and a reopening of the economy to American (that is, Miamian) influence, thereby undoing everything the revolutionaries fought for.

Clearly, Cuban and American negotiators (and negotiations are going on, don't doubt that for a minute) have reached an impasse on those issues. So simple citizens must live in poverty and shame, seeing their women turn to prostitution and their men trivialized while both governments wait for the other to blink first.

Joseph D. Policano

East Hampton, N.Y.

No quick fix for Cuba

I agree with Brian Brown that the embargo against Cuba makes no sense, but my reasons are quite different from his. Yes, the embargo intensifies the myriad evils that plague Cuba (some of which he points out, many of which he doesn't fathom)-hence my firm belief that it should end. But the embargo is hardly the sole cause for the misery of my beloved homeland.

Apart from being immoral, in seventeen years the embargo has not produced its sought-after result. Instead, it has provided the Cuban government with a scapegoat to hide the inefficiencies, mismanagement, and corruption of a forty-year-old dictatorship that demands blind loyalty and silences dissent by means of exile, prison, or execution.

The recovery of Cuba must include not only lifting the embargo and removal of the present government, but also profound changes at many levels. Making people aware of these complexities might be one way to start.

On a happier note, I am glad to inform Brown that, as of July 29, Smith Kline Beecham received approval to buy the meningitis B vaccine from Cuba.

Maria Cristina Prince

Floral Park, N.Y.

The problem is Castro

While I agree with the basic premise of Brian Brown's article, in that I believe that medical supplies should not be part of any economic sanctions, I found the article one-sided and feel it either ignores or distorts a number of basic facts.

Brown conveniently overlooks or misrepresents the following: (1) The embargo was put in place to fight a brutally repressive regime; (2) the same regime has actually increased repression of dissidents every time it has promised an opening; (3) in the exile community both support for the embargo and opposition to it cuts across class lines; much of the support for ending the embargo in the United States comes from large companies that want to do business in Cuba, or to take advantage of cheap labor there; (4) there is no evidence that trade with Cuba helps anyone outside the ruling class; (5) the embargo was originally presented and is still seen as a more humane alternative than war and preferable to doing nothing about human-rights abuses. The last course of action is defended in the name of respecting sovereignty, but this is little comfort to those who are persecuted.

Yes, the embargo has failed, and should never have been applied to medicines. But let us not seek its termination without an alternative means of restoring human rights in Cuba. As we allow tourists to patronize Cuban hotels where Cubans themselves are not allowed to enter, let us not pretend that this is being done out of friendship for the people.

Pedro J. Saavedra

Kensington, Md.

The author replies:

The embargo is not a "humane alternative" to a person deprived of life- saving medicines, and I believe food should never be used as a weapon, particularly by the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.

I do not defend Cuba's human-rights record, but if individual freedom is the issue I question why our government has no trade restrictions against a repressive regime like China's. brian brown

Let's clone Kevin Doyle 

Maurice Timothy Reidy's biographical sketch of Kevin Doyle ["Doyle for the Defense," August 13] did this old Irish Catholic heart good. Would that we had a Capital Defender Office in every state that allows capital punishment, and a defender in the model of Mr. Doyle occupying it.

I see in Mr. Doyle a younger version of my dad, Joe McCann. A captain in the Pennsylvania State Police in the 1940s and 1950s, he was governed by that same potent mixture which is the bright side of Irish heritage: a deep Catholic faith and a strong sense of social justice.

My sisters and I had the great good fortune to grow up in a household where justice issues sparked the dinner table conversation. The Sisters of Mercy who taught us in high school were wonderful women academics who nourished this same spirit. Sister Sylvanus cultivated the reading of Commonweal, America, Integrity, and the Catholic Worker in her English classes. Our youth was an exciting, mind-forming environment.

Now, fifty years later, my concern for Catholic culture in the United States is that we stand at risk of losing our best collective voice. If an empty secularity and New Age spirituality supplant the rich heritage of an expansive and grounded faith coupled with commitment to the common good as formative elements in Catholic life, a pearl of great price will have been lost.

Sister Patricia Mccann, R.S.M.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Doyle's challenge

Thank you for Maurice Timothy Reidy's fine portrait of the remarkable Kevin Doyle. I am privileged to serve with Kevin on the National Center for the Laity's Council of Advisors. I have read him in the pages of Commonweal and heard him speak to audiences of hundreds and a handful. In any venue, Doyle commands your attention-whether or not you agree with him on any particular issue-because of his eloquent and impassioned articulation of his beliefs.

What I admire most about Doyle's public persona is his willingness to live in the breach between the staked-out positions of "the Left" and "the Right." His intellectual honesty in seeking out the truth of the matter is an increasingly rare commodity in our public discourse.

Doyle's experience of the institutional church-mediated through his parents, parish, and Catholic education-has produced in him an unyielding respect for the dignity of each person, a love of justice, concern for society's marginalized, and intellectual rigor. He is right to challenge us all to stop hiding this exquisite gift of faith under a bushel. We should all let it shine.

Kathleen Mcgarvey Hidy

Cincinnati, Ohio

Amen, Amen

I thoroughly enjoyed Maurice Timothy Reidy's article. Our church and society need more people like Kevin Doyle, who not only espouses his religious and moral convictions but lives by them. Let us have more of this kind of coverage.

joseph eulie

New Paltz, N.Y.

Open those files

As Robert White points out ["Rethinking Foreign Policy," June 4], earlier this year Guatemala's courageous truth commissioners dared to indict their own government for its massacres of entire Mayan communities. The commissioners also denounced our government for financing, training, and arming the Guatemalan military in these murderous campaigns that were cold war business-as-usual for the United States over a period of decades in Central America.

White is on target when he calls for a United States truth commission on the model of those created in El Salvador and Honduras as well as Guatemala. A full accounting is long overdue, especially since the United States continues to provide nondemocratic regimes with arms and military training.

Though we cannot bring back the dead in Central America, we can help bring justice to the living by supporting the Human Rights Information Act (H.R. 1625), which would declassify U.S. government documents about human-rights violations in Guatemala and Honduras, thereby helping victims' families reach closure, aiding in prosecutions, and strengthening the rule of law.

Barbara Bocek

Forks, Wash.

The writer is Guatemala coordinator for Amnesty International-USA.

Not a martyr

Your editorials are generally on target, insightful, instructive, and careful. But your use of the word "martyrdom" in referring to the death of John F. Kennedy ["An Eerie Echo," August 13] is not well advised. No evidence has been produced indicating that the president was murdered for his public witness to the Christian faith. President Kennedy may have taken his religious faith very seriously, but he did not die for it. Real martyrdom is too precious a reality to be spoken of carelessly.

Edward F. Doherty

Flushing, N.Y.

Fading into the crowd

The final sentences of the editorial "An Eerie Echo" [August 13] brought to mind some words of a brilliant Catholic layman, Gustave Corcao, about the time of Vatican Council II. Lamenting "the appalling averageness of the average Catholic," he wrote:

"It is not that our lives are marked by flagrant scandal, or that we are more vicious or selfish than others. It is not that we are less scrupulous than the other fellow. The greatest scandal of our times is that we are like everybody else. In its confused and disorderly indictment the world accuses us of this strange, collective, nameless sin. The world accuses us of worldliness...[It] knows that we are committed to follow the bloody footsteps of a God who endured a Passion for me; it knows that our flag is a sign of contradiction; it knows that we are scheduled to be counted as fools; and knowing that, it is not surprised that we are guilty of this or that humiliating sin or of some evil which is the consequence of weakness but that we live by the same standards as does the world and that we glory in its prestige."

Without pointing any fingers, but striking the breast, it seems to me these words have a validity for today.

John B. Pesce, C.P.

West Hartford, Conn.

From the editors: The editorial remarked that, following election day in 1960, it turned out that "Catholics...were more like the rest of America than either they or the rest of America imagined. That remains, it seems fair to say, both a blessing and a challenge."