To the Editors.

Solidarity with Kung

In the October 6 correspondence columns, Bill F. Mazzella writes that Hans Kung's fellow theologians "shamelessly" let him "stand alone" when Rome moved against him. Not all theologians: one hundred signed a letter of protest that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Moreover, shortly after this ad appeared, and as a direct result of Rome's actions, some theologians and other concerned Catholics in the United States founded the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC). This organization is pledged to work for justice in the church and for the implementation of due process procedures. ARCC's Charter of the Rights of Catholics in the Church states that "Catholic teachers of theology have a right to responsible academic freedom. The acceptability of their teaching is to be judged in dialogue with their peers, keeping in mind the legitimacy of responsible dissent and pluralism of belief." ARCC's membership includes many theologians.

MARY LOUISE HARTMAN
Princeton, N.J.

The writer serves on the Executive Board of Directors of ARCC.

Rev. Obi-Wan Kenobi

Having relished the musings and idiosyncracies of Commonweal's inspiring pantheon of scribes and icons, it was a delight to savor Keith Burris's recent commentary on stage and screen actor Alec Guinness [September 22].

While Sir Alec himself would disclaim any characterization as one of the twentieth century's preeminent screen actors, his presence and portrayals were not only distinguished, but "smashing" as his compatriots would attest. Burris captured both the screen persona of a remarkable actor and the subtle psyche which marked his genius. "Guinness was silence." Like Burris I have repeatedly viewed many Guinness movies and concur that his cinematic portrayals have a priestly aura which brought joy to his audience.

Perhaps due to space restraints reviewer Burris failed to comment on one great performance: the sergeant major in the movie Tunes of Glory. His hubris and affection for his comrades-in-arms, and his nefarious scheming which drove his commanding officer to suicide, left us to ponder whether our protagonist was mad or totally bereft of scruples and compassion.

BILL HONNEN
Saint Augustine, Fla.

The 'homosexual agenda'

The subtlety of your commentary "The Homosexual Agenda" [October 6] is likely to arouse the ire of homosexual-rights activists and fuel the sanctimonious self-satisfaction of those who oppose legislation protecting gay and lesbian people from job discrimination and hate crimes and providing them with civil recognition of their same-sex partnerships.

As difficult as it may be when discussing matters that so closely affect the core of one's being, there is every reason to agree that dialogue on these issues should be reasoned, respectful, and absent of name-calling. Those who oppose the measures on the homosexual agenda, while firm in their beliefs, do in fact urge a policy of discrimination. The fact that they believe their discrimination is justified on religious principles does not make the discrimination any less real. We have to agree that society is full of discriminations that are felt to be justified and we do not call them wrong.

What is important for gay and lesbian activists to remember is that our work is not just about changing laws. We must be about changing attitudes and beliefs. This is tough work and the reality is that we seldom have access to the forums where we can honestly dialogue with those who believe differently from us on the moral questions involved with homosexuality. So while we earnestly seek those opportunities to address religious beliefs and moral views, we continue to press for civil action. We recognize that one function of law is to express society's view of what is right and wrong. The law frequently leads and points the way to a change in or clearer understanding of moral views.

ROBERT F. MIAILOVICH
Arlington, Va.

The writer is director-at-large and past president of Dignity/USA.

Punishing gays

Regarding your editorial, "The Homosexual Agenda," is it right that the government punishes gays and lesbians who serve or wish to serve in the armed forces? Is it right that legislative bodies deny that there is even need for hate-crime laws?

I don't think it is good for society that gays and lesbians have to depend on the good will of the straight majority for civil rights. Moreover, I think it very insensitive of you to discuss the measure of pain and abuse in various groups saying that, well, the pain of women and gays cannot compare to that of African Americans.

For African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, Jews, and Gypsies, pain is pain, and the frustration at being excluded affects all. Who are the Lindas and Joyces of this world, the good darkies, the assimilated Jews? It will not wash to say those who look like us, keep a low profile, and don't agitate for reform can expect to get some measure of acceptance.

JAMES STUART OSBOURN
New York, N.Y.

Justice, not sex

At least you appear to wrestle with the subject--a hopeful sign--but otherwise your editorial on "The Homosexual Agenda" is at best misleading in its caricature of a presumed "agenda."

You write of a "reasoned resistance to same-sex unions and to teaching that homosexual and heterosexual sex are equivalent." Really? Is that what you believe the impetus is behind Vermont's law to permit domestic partners to register their civil unions? Equivalent sex? Or, as you later say, "to overlook strongly held views about appropriate partners for sexual intercourse"?

This isn't about some medieval conception of equivalency of sexual intercourse. That's silly, and it trivializes the very real and widespread discrimination faced by gay and lesbian domestic partners in insurance, employment, housing, and inheritance. This discrimination often owes directly to the failure of the state to recognize these loving and committed unions. This is an issue of public policy, whereas sexual relations are a private matter. Ending this pervasive and harmful discrimination is the agenda.

Reading Commonweal's editorials on this subject in recent years has been consistently disappointing. Yes, there have been excesses and even outrages performed by demonstrators, and Commonweal has been justified in noting these failures. But one searches largely in vain for appropriate advocacy on behalf of gays and lesbians whose human rights are still in jeopardy, everyday and everywhere in the world. You can do better.

THOMAS HIGGINS
Pasadena, Calif.

Civil rights

I was disappointed to read your editorial "The Homosexual Agenda." I do not believe that same-sex couples can validly contract marriage, but I do not see how permitting those in such relationships to inherit, make health-care decisions, or adopt children harms any individual couple's matrimonial bond. The Vermont legislature made specific distinctions between marriage and domestic partnerships. Is that not what is appropriate? What more do you want?

I do not maintain that the discrimination I experience as a gay man is equivalent to that suffered by African Americans during the period of American apartheid; in some ways it is similar, in some ways it is different. I have been told outright that I was denied employment due to "lifestyle differences" (I had included in my resume employment by a national aids research foundation). A friend of mine was told outright that he could not be hired because he "did not fit in with the other executives, who are all married."

Our struggle is similar to that of African Americans in one way: we are constantly referred to as dangerous, inferior, criminal. In another way our situation is worse: we are viewed as the greatest of sinners and godless, a threat to the very existence of civilization.

I recall early one morning in 1994 waking to the terror of a major earthquake, my ceiling raining down upon me as furniture crashed around my apartment. After many hours without electricity, I finally was able to clear a place among the rubble to sit and see my city on the television, in ruins. Among the images I saw that day, between the images of destruction and death, was Pat Robertson, who said that the earthquake was God's punishment for homosexuality. I was responsible for the devastation of my city!

When one has lived through something like that, after a lifetime of being told how evil you are, then you can make nuanced distinctions between what is and is not prejudice or bigotry.

ERIC STOLTZ
Los Angeles, Calif.

Where's the church?

I was deeply disappointed and disturbed by your editorial "The Homosexual Agenda," which addressed the conflict in Vermont about civil unions for same-sex couples. Civility should reign on both side of the fence, you say. Yet you lay the blame for the rising level of antigay sentiment--whose vehemence and potential for violence you blithely minimize--overwhelmingly on the side of the gay-rights movement.

"It got political because gay-rights advocates made it political," you write. You chide those same advocates for "abandoning democratic debate and legislative arenas for the pursuit of remedies in the courts." You question whether drawing an analogy between the African-American struggle for civil rights and the campaign for gay civil unions is justified.

Although these are highly contentious statements about complex issues, you summarily dismiss possible objections to them before arriving at the core of your argument. You say that the debate encompassing homosexuality, same-sex unions, gender, procreation, and family must ultimately be settled in the public square, not in the courts. Fair enough.

Gay-rights advocates would welcome a full, open, and informed discussion of these issues, which would include the views of gay people, scientists, historians, and religious leaders, among others. Furthermore, gay-rights advocates are not, as you suggest, under the illusion that court rulings or legislation alone are enough to alter deep-seated attitudes toward homosexuality, just as they were not sufficient to overturn longstanding attitudes toward race.

But where, in all this, is the contribution of the Catholic church--a subject that, astonishingly, you manage to ignore entirely? The church potentially could offer rich theological, spiritual, and historical perspectives to this discussion. Tragically, however, it has not advanced beyond the position put forward in its 1986 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in which homosexuality is described as a "tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "an objective disorder"--language that is echoed in the new catechism.

Sadly, the begrudging tone and one-sided emphasis of your editorial call to mind another passage from the same Vatican letter: "When civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent actions increase."

JEFFREY A. STONE
New York, N.Y.

Bracing stuff

I thought the editorial, "The Homosexual Agenda" was terrific because it says, in effect, words matter enormously, and words change things, and slippery analogies lead to half-truths, which lead to a muddy public life, and maybe to a bloody public life. Courteous but sharp- tongued piece of work there. A bracing corrective--the Commonweal Rx.

BRIAN DOYLE
Portland, Oreg.

True equality

The "homosexual agenda" is not, as you suggest, about "teaching that homosexual and heterosexual sex are equivalent." It's about teaching that homosexual and heterosexual people are equivalent! Our equality before God is at the core of our Catholic social-justice tradition. As moral theologian Father Richard Peddicord puts it: "The social participation of gay and lesbian persons is not regulated by the virtue of chastity, but by the virtue of justice" (Catholic Courier, Rochester, September 24, 1998).

CASEY LOPATA
Rochester, N.Y.

Confession demanded

Your criticism of Pope Pius IX [August 11] is proof positive that Commonweal is anything but Catholic.

In fact, I find little substance in any of your editions. Do your readers a favor and admit to them that you're not a Catholic publication.

You'll only be admitting what most of us already know!

PAUL MELANSON
Gardner, Mass.

Freedom from religion

I must take issue with your editorial reproaching those who decry Joseph Lieberman's "God talk" [September 22]. In that editorial you say that religiously based political claims are justifiable and should be as debatable as any others.

But this is precisely the problem. Divine revelation is not debatable. If God has told me that, for example, abortion is wrong, no amount of rational argument will convince me otherwise. Someone might convince me that tactically holding back is the best way to achieve my goal, but that is far from a debate about core goals. Someone might seek to argue with me from within my religious tradition, to convince me that my religion does not, in fact, require me to oppose abortion. But that is a very different type of argument, not appropriate for general public debate, since no country (and most especially not this country) is composed of followers of only one faith.

For all of us to have freedom of religion, our political discourse must indeed have freedom from religion.

NATHAN LANDAU
Berkeley, Calif.

The editors reply

Nowhere in the editorial is it suggested that biblical revelation be used to resolve public questions. Religious people must put forth rational arguments to defend their positions on the issues of the day. The Catholic church's opposition to abortion, for example, is made by an appeal to moral reason, not faith.

Commonweal's Orthodox

As an Orthodox Christian I take great pride in seeing the name of our Father John Garvey at the head of a regular column in Commonweal. His words seem to be a variation--but always insightful, always provocative--on the same theme that I have come to hear again and again since my conversion to Orthodoxy some eighteen months ago: This business of being a Christian is a serious one indeed.

I am reminded of this as I reread his May 19 column, "Opting out of Belief." I have never read more lucid and cogent arguments addressing the subjects of religious indifference and the shallowness of a faith that is shaken by the moral behavior of the clergy.

We are all richer for the Orthodox perspective that Commonweal brings us through John Garvey.

JOSEPH TIKHON MURRAY
Waterford, Conn.

Naming names

In your introduction to "Rome and Relativism" [October 20] you say: "many Catholics worry that it is yet another effort to quash theological exploration, especially among theologians engaged in dialogue with Eastern religions..." But I do not find any names or specific writings mentioned in the three critiques.

Father Jacques Dupuis, S.J., may well be the most prominent theologian targeted in connection with Dominus Iesus. Dupuis was professor of theology at the University of Delhi, subsequently at Gregorian University in Rome and a specialist in Asiatic religions. His major work is Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis). These are the bits and pieces I have been able to glean from Internet sources: In 1998 the CDF (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) sent a letter of inquiry to Dupuis. Dupuis was relieved temporarily of his teaching duties at the Gregorian in order to reply. He was hospitalized for two weeks (due to this upheaval?). Cardinal Franz Konig protested to Ratzinger publicly in the British journal, The Tablet. Ratzinger replied in the same journal to justify himself. On September 4, 2000, a day before Dominus Iesus was issued, Dupuis met with the CDF but, according to sources, the meeting was inconclusive.

This is all the information I have been able to find and I would appreciate further knowledge of the disposition of Dupuis's case. It is, I think, an important one, and his book is a serious and groundbreaking contribution.

NELSON WHITAKER
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Redactor at work

With a view toward the colossal task of correcting Scripture and tradition in light of Father Philip Kennedy's insights on Dominus Iesus [October 20], I would like to make two very modest contributions: first, John 14:9 should be corrected to read, "Jesus said to him, 'Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen not the complete revelation of God in history, but a partial manifestation of what God may be like'"; and second, 1 Corinthians 12:3 should be ammended to read "no one can say Jesus is Lord, because God is illimitable, no historical reality can manifest the full richness of God." (With apologies to John, Paul, the Holy Spirit, and the RSV.)

Give me a break.

(REV.) RICHARD G. SMITH
Haverstraw, N.Y.