To the editors. (Correspondence).

Byron's daughter

I suppose I am among scores of readers who will have noticed Edward T. Oakes's slip in his review of The Tristan Chord ("Pride of the Valkyrie," October 25) when referring to Lord Byron's daughter "by his half-sister." The daughter, Augusta, was by his wife, Arabella Milbanke, whose primness led Byron to refer to her as "the princess of parallelograms"--a prescient epithet since the daughter became a skilled mathematician who is regarded as one of the foremothers of the computer age.

In the same issue, Lawrence Cunningham ("Religion Booknotes") laments the absence of any centrist Catholic magazine that can accommodate lengthy contributions. If the Jewish community of roughly 5 million can support three serious monthlies across the spectrum from Tikkun, to Midstream, and Commentary, why can not 60 million Roman Catholics support at least one such journal?

JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER
Saint Charles, Ill.

War & justice

Regarding George Lopez's "Iraq & Just-War Thinking" (September 27): The article argues for a presumption against the use of force as the foundation of just-war principles. That is not, I believe, in harmony with the tradition that developed those principles. Rather, the foundation is a presumption in favor of justice (or at least against injustice), not against the use of force as such. This omission skews the debate quite badly on both sides.

The more I read and listen to people on the left and right debate principles of warfare, just or otherwise, the more I realize that the left and the right have abandoned the traditional Catholic understanding that linked war and peace to the principle of justice. The left is quite content to have an unjust peace, and the right an unjust war. Both cover their respective tracks on this score, of course.

KARL SAUR
Melrose, Mass.

Criticizing Israel

Murray Polner and Adam Simms ("When Israel Is Wrong," October 11) are of course right when they insist that someone who dissents from a policy of the Israeli government is not necessarily an anti-Semite. I am particularly sympathetic to this assertion because I remember being assailed twenty years ago in Commentary by the usual collection of Jewish right-wingers. They claimed that, along with Abba Eban, I was a "functional anti-Semite," because I was not then a propagandist for "the undivided land of Israel," stretching from the Mediterranean to at least the Jordan River.

Nonetheless, I am concerned about the nature of the intervention in this quarrel by Christians who supposedly bring only good will to the discussion. Have such peace-loving Christians, inspired by love and morality, already finished with the recent slaughters of each other by the Serbs and Croats in the name of nationalism and of their vehemently opposed versions of Christianity? Have they already bound up the wounds of Rwanda, where churchmen were among the murderers? The preoccupation of Christians with the Israel-Arab quarrel is out of proportion, unless we take into account the religious and political interests of various Christian groups in their own communities in the Middle East.

I will no doubt be told that I am over-sensitive, but I also hear in this preoccupation some echo of Christian discomfort with the return of the Jews to the Holy Land without having converted to Christianity. Jews remember that most of the various Christian establishments have not been friends of Zionism and their acceptance of Israel's existence has been late and grudging. This leaves Christian moralizers open to the charge that they are pointing out Israel's failings not in order to call it to behave better, but in order to suggest that it has no right to exist.

This is, in fact, the essence of the matter. Do we criticize Israel's conduct in order to help it live up to its own highest political standards, or do we point out the mote in its eye in order to defame it to the world? The basic test for all those who would criticize Israel, both Jews and Christians, is that they wish it well and are committed to helping it survive.

ARTHUR HERTZBERG
Englewood, N.J.

Switching elites

At the end of his excellent review of Christianity Incorporated ("God: Half-Off," October 25), Eugene McCarraher writes: "But one must question whether a larger role for the laity really promises a more open and prophetic church. Are the laity really up to the job? Righteous talk about `lay power' obscures both the spiritual formation of the laity in corporate culture and the related possibility that laity can form an elite every bit as insular and undemocratic as the clerical fogies they'd replace."

It seems to me that McCarraher is alluding to "elitist" theories in political science and sociology, such as Vilfredo Pareto's "circulation of elites" and Robert Michels's "iron law of oligarchy." Simply put, large organizations are always going to be ruled by elites. As any particular elite group becomes more self-serving, it might be overthrown, but only to be replaced by another elite. The new elites may at first be more interested in the welfare of the masses, but will inevitably become more self-interested. This line of thinking predicts a recurrent cycle of the rise and fall of elite groups.

The "official" organizational theory of the Catholic Church today appears to be a holdover from the old "divine right" theory of leadership. Secular kings or CEOs are not said to rule by divine right--the church is the exception. Part of our present crisis of authority is the increasing incredibility of the truth of this theory even as applied to the church. This might be why there is such papal panic about the decreasing authority of the Vatican.

The majority of contemporary U.S. political and social theorists are like the majority of American citizens, preferring democratic or republican theories to elitism or divine right. This makes us all guilty of heretical "Americanism."

While it certainly is possible--probable, even--that the laity might create an autocratic elite within the church, that is not the autocratic elite that is currently misleading us. Needed reforms cannot take place without greater participation by the laity in the governance of the church. In the future, it will be up to others to reform the things that will go bad as a result of today's reforms.

RICHARD MOODEY
Erie, Pa.

Solidarity forever

Robert Bellah's call to overthrow the new American imperialism is not unrealistic ("The New American Empire," October 25). As Catholics, we are part of a universal, global, and diverse community that calls us to transcend our individualism and recognize the "thousand ties of interdependence" that bind us with the rest of the world. In Sollicitudo rei socialis, John Paul II attempts to clarify the need for a real virtue of solidarity, not as vague interconnectedness, but as interdependence, where people around the world suffer with the suffering of anyone, even citizens of countries deemed "evil." If we truly embrace this virtue, we cannot hold a view that the United States, or any state, is greater or more "good" than other countries. What is needed, as the pope writes, is "the sacrifice of all forms of economic, military, or political imperialism, and the transformation of mutual distrust into collaboration." As Bellah shows, the "Bush doctrine" goes against this virtue.

KEVIN AHERN
Valhalla, N.Y.

Oxbridge fellow

In his otherwise excellent article, Robert Bellah twice favorably cites "the Oxford Catholic scholar Nicholas Boyle." Nicholas is indeed a Catholic and a scholar, but has been a Cambridge man since 1964, and may still be found at Magdalene College. The confusion may have come from the fact that he has been published by the university press of Another Place.

JAMES T. BURTCHAELL, C.S.C.
Phoenix, Ariz.

Omega point

I applaud Robert Nugent and Commonweal for affirming Teilhard de Chardin ("From Silence to Vindication," October 25). Particularly appropriate is the quote from Gaudium et spes: "the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one." I wish the sentence immediately following the quote had been included: "In consequence, there has arisen a series of new problems, a series as important as can be, (emphasis mine) calling for new efforts of analysis and synthesis."

New efforts of analysis and synthesis is a major unfinished (unbegun) work of Vatican II. Traditional theological presumptions must be confronted by new efforts if Catholicism is to be renewed.

SYLVESTER L. STEFFAN
New Hampton, Iowa

Teilhard's other battles

Robert Nugent's "From Silence to Vindication" was a moving account of Teilhard's struggle to publish his theology in the face of Vatican opposition. Of course, Father Nugent's article centered on Teilhard's life as a priest. He was also a scientist. As a scientist, Teilhard became a hero in different struggles. Just as his religious work played a posthumous role in Vatican II, so also his scientific work played a role in two United Nations conferences.

Teilhard saw already in 1929 that Asia was producing skilled scientists. He decided that great geological and archeological discoveries should remain in Asia and be studied there. He resisted the claim by European and North American museums that all treasures belonged to them and should be shipped to them. As a result, the Paris Museum of Natural History cut off his funding.

But this severance was not the end of his scientific career. The Chinese Geological Survey gave him a job with its team in Choukoutien. Soon this team made a great human fossil discovery. Teilhard went from unemployment to worldwide fame.

In 1930, the Chinese discovery was called Peking Man. Now these fossils are called Homo erectus pekinensis. Unfortunately, these fossils did not remain in China despite the resolve of Teilhard and the Chinese Geological Survey to keep them there.

MARK MIDBON
Madison, Wis.

Sound the canons

Grant Gallicho's report on Voice of the Faithful ("VOTF Watch," October 11) and the many bishops who oppose it, banning VOTF people in their dioceses' buildings, upset me. This distress comes from rereading canons 212, 215, and 218 in the Code of Canon Law.

Canon 212 [section] 3 reads: "In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, they [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and dignity of persons."

Canon 215 says: "The Christian faithful are at liberty freely to found and to govern associations for charitable and religious purposes or for the promotion of the Christian vocation in the world; they are free to hold meetings to pursue these purposes in common."

Canon 218 says: "Those who are engaged in the sacred disciplines enjoy lawful freedom on inquiry and of prudentially expressing their opinions on matters in which they have expertise, while observing due respect for the magisterium of the church."

Could it be that the bishops who have banned VOTF are unacquainted with the rights of lay people, or worse, they don't care?

ANTHONY F. AVALLONE
Las Cruces, N.Mex.

Exclamation point

I think Jo McGowan is a marvelous addition to Commonweal, and I look forward to her homespun tales of the exotic and the familiar. But aren't six exclamation marks (!!!!!!) too much enthusiasm for a one-page article ("Toy Story," October 25)?

JOSEPH D. POLICANO
East Hampton, N.Y.