To the editors. (Correspondence).

`Veigh' off course

Patrick Giles's article on Simone Weil ("Looking for Simone," May 3) was very good; but writing from this side of the pond, I have to point out that he sets her grave in a nonexistent town. There is no "Ashbrook-on-Kent." It should be Ashford in (the county of) Kent, and it's not really suburban, being more than forty miles from London. You might pass this on to your readers, in case Giles misleads other potential pilgrims.

BERNARD BERGONZI
Warwickshire, England

Non-prophet

Anthony DiStefano says Garry Wills is "something of a prophet" who should be taken "very seriously" because of his views on "the proper relationship among the pope, clergy, and the laity; the role of women in the church; a celibate priesthood; contraception; treatment of the Jews" (Correspondence, August 16). There are millions of Catholics who share those goals. However, what many don't share is Wills's mutilation of texts, distortion of facts, and slanderous accusations as a means of attaining such goals. To the cliche, "if the ends don't justify the means, what does?" the response is the means are justified in the public forum of analysis of texts, determination of facts, and disproval of slanders. Not even prophets are exempt from this public scrutiny.

JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER
Saint Charles, Ill.

The writer is author of Popes and Politics: Reform, Resentment, and the Holocaust (Continuum).

VOTF conference

Grant Gallicho's well-reasoned critique of the July 20 meeting of Voice of the Faithful ("Voices of the Faithful," August 16) closes with several suggestions that he hopes might give VOTF a chance to succeed in shaping "structural change within the church." He rightly points out that if VOTF is to avoid the fate of other reform groups, it will have to reach out to conservatives and be able to speak to and work with bishops. But more important, I believe that it will also have to move beyond its narrow goals and work toward a more urgent and critical one: removing the hierarchical and sacerdotal patterns that prevent non-ordained men and women from gaining access to the church's ministry of governance. There are many theologians who agree that most functions in the official government of the church can be carried out by laypeople. If VOTF is to succeed in shaping "structural changes within the church," it will have to find ways of coordinating and working with other church agencies, such as the two conferences of religious, canonists, theologians, etc. Otherwise, by itself, it will meet the same fate of other reform movements within the church.

(BRO.) THOMAS MORE, C.F.X.
Louisville, Ky.

Recipe for futility

Thank you for Grant Gallicho's article on Voice of the Faithful. I was struck by his comments about VOTF's focus on the victims of abuse. A "sufferers-only club" is, indeed, a recipe for futility.

Thank you for putting into words my own inchoate discomfort with that meeting.

MAUREEN MULLARKEY
Chappaqua, N.Y.

Uncommon ground

A few comments on Grant Gallicho's column, in which he writes that VOTF "will have to reach out more vigorously to conservatives and it will have to be able to speak to and work with bishops. Not to mention the young and minorities."

I agree completely. As an outside observer in a church that makes the Catholic Church look ultraliberal (which means my opinion doesn't count for much), I don't think VOTF will be able to accomplish these goals.

According to Gallicho, VOTF spent two-thirds of its time trying to get conservatives to come to its conference, with mixed results at best. Catholic conservatives tend to be so hung up on the magisterium that I doubt they truly want lay participation in church governance. Liberals and conservatives may have found common cause in the current scandal, but they are too far apart for such a coalition to last. Their visions of the church differ too much.

Unless groups like that set up by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin become more common, or bishops are chosen in a way that reflects what the local church wants, bishops don't have to listen to the faithful and bishops know it. When the liberal/conservative alliance over the scandal sours, the degree to which a bishop listens to VOTF will only mark him as conservative or liberal.

The youth. What can I say about Generation X (of which I am a member) and Y? Let's be polite and just say they are apathetic. "Active participation" sounds a lot like work.

VOTF might very well have a chance with minorities, but I have little doubt that many minorities could give VOTF members lectures similar to the ones given by representatives of the Survivors Network of the Abused by Priests.

If VOTF's success depends on the factors mentioned in Gallicho's article, its future looks bleak indeed.

TIMOTHY A. GRIFFY
Phoenix, Ariz.

The center holds

Grant Gallicho is right in warning that VOTF must not allow itself to go the way of some other reform groups, and, if it is going to be effective, must remain genuinely centrist, reaching out to conservatives as well as liberals, speaking to bishops as well as to the laity. My impression is that members are working precisely to that end, and my sense, at least from what I can glean from news reports and from their own weekly e-mails, is that they are doing a pretty good job.

VOTF needs help, and I hope Commonweal can give it to them. Already the Boston archdiocese has launched a disinformation campaign against the organization (see the July 26 Pilot, www.rcab.org), and some other dioceses are telling pastors not to allow their churches to be used for VOTF gatherings. Such actions, like Cardinal Bernard Law's trying to tell Catholic Charities not to accept VOTF donations, show, not for the first time, that some ecclesiastical leaders prefer to adopt an adversarial posture against the church they are supposed to be heading, and that, for them, the real issue is not charity, but the continuation of control.

Gallicho's other warning, namely that VOTF cannot allow itself to become too much a reflection of the ideas of the victims is also right on the mark. God knows, the victims have enough to feel victimized about, and no one can blame them. But at the moment there appears to be in the United States a disturbing view that only victims can speak up for the oppressed, or even that victims should have the deciding voice in determining the appropriate measures to take against the victimizers. The abused deserve all our sympathy--they must be heard, understood, and met with charity and other kinds of help. But they should not control the agenda of a group like VOTF, which, in its search for reforms in the governance structure of the church, has a mission much broader than simply dealing with sexual abuse (or financial abuse, for that matter). We are not dealing simply with those forms of abuse; we are dealing with a far deeper crisis of confidence in the church's leadership.

NICHOLAS CLIFFORD
New Haven, Vt.

U.S. terrorism

I am more than dismayed at your August 16 editorial, "Preparing for War." In your analysis of the Iraq situation, you leave out any mention of the biological terrorism the United States has perpetrated upon Iraq for the last twelve years. I think you have indeed heard the facts. You have probably even seen the documents outlining how the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency got this great idea to take out all the water treatment plants. Wow, what precision bombing that must have taken to incapacitate all fourteen hundred of them, and then how logical to prevent all further shipments of chlorine and medicine to Iraq, in the hopes of causing epidemic outbreaks of cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, acute diarrhea, dysentery, respiratory ailments, measles, diphtheria, perussis, meningitis.

And how richly our hopes have been fulfilled: in the deaths of 1 million Iraqis. And you have the gall to conclude your analysis in counseling no invasion at the moment with "The wiser course would be to continue the present policy of Iraqi containment, militarily and economically." And hooray, we continue to dispose of five thousand Iraqi children each month!

SARAH FREEDMAN
Durham, N.C.

The editors reply:

As Ms. Freedman must know, every figure she mentions in her letter is in dispute, even by those opposed to the sanctions. True, children and adults have needlessly died in Iraq. But why? In northern Iraq, the Kurds are subject to the same sanctions regime as the rest of the country, yet they prosper. They have cooperated with the UN food for oil program; unlike the Baghdad government, they have distributed what they have received. They have welcomed a variety of NGOs able and willing to help them. Saddam Hussein has rejected such help. Both parts of the country engage in extensive smuggling. Each puts the profits to very different uses.

Sex for bishops

Rodger Van Allen hits the nail on the head when (going beyond the practice of our separated brethren of the Eastern churches) he suggests that even the culmination of the sacrament of orders, the episcopate, should again be made compatible with the sacrament of matrimony--just as it is for every other baptized Christian ("Bishops Should Marry," July 12).

Who would think of taking people born deaf or blind, people who have never heard a symphony or viewed a painting, and appointing them to be supreme arbiters of music or art, and have them try to coach those who do hear and see on how to compose music, or to paint and sculpt? Yet that is exactly what we (yes, we, because we are all church!) have been doing for close to two millennia, when we burden people who, by definition, cannot (at least not legitimately so) experience wholesome human sexual activity to act as our standard setters, coaches, and in a sense even role models in these matters. Granted, God can supernaturally enlighten anyone he pleases; but isn't one of our fundamental theological tenets that, as much as possible, God reveals himself and his will in and through "natural" events?

At the risk of sounding outrageous, I dare say that (at least in my clinical opinion) the harm done by the sexual abuse of children pales in comparison to the spiritual harm and mental torture inflicted for centuries by the celibate and virginal interpretation of chastity on the myriads of "simple faithful" made to feel guilty, or at least less pleasing to God, for simply living as God created them.

EDMUND F. KAL, M.D.
Fresno, Calif.

Gems

I don't know the exact source of this verse, but my late spouse, Thomas Eugene Moore, loved to entertain with such gems:

   Vatican One, for good or ill.
   Declared the pope infallible.
   Vatican Two, the recent sequel,
   Made pope and bishops more co-equal.
   And that is why, betwixt you and me,
   The pope isn't calling Vatican Three.
   But should there be a Vatican Three,
   Each bishop with his wife will be.
   And if there were a Vatican Four,
   Each bishop would have her husband, or more.
   Ecclesial power remaineth, Oremus!
   With men who can claim "testiculi habemus."
   But millions of women think it ridiculi
   To base empowerment on a pair of testiculi!

Nina Polcyn Moore
Evanston, Ill.