To the editors. (Correspondence).

Stay in touch

This is just to congratulate you on the November 8 fall books issue. It was such an enjoyable read, but also soulful, challenging, and enlightening enough for even this fussy reader!

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels: thanks for your "Editor's Note." Please keep readers in touch with what you decide to explore. And best wishes from me.

MARYLEE MITCHAM
Golden, Colo.

A cad

I cannot judge how many readers wrote to Commonweal besides Justus George Lawler ("Byron's Daughter," Correspondence, November 22) to point out the error in my review of The Tristan Chord ("Pride of the Valkyrie," October 25), in which I said in passing that Lord Byron's daughter by his half-sister was the one who died by neglect. Lawler credits many other readers with having written to the editors noticing the same error, surely a pleasing compliment to the caliber of this esteemed journal's subscribers. But I rather doubt these same astute readers would have written their letters using exactly Lawler's formulation. For his letter leaves the impression that the author of Childe Harold had no daughter by his half-sister, Augusta. In fact, as surely all Commonweal readers know, even Lawler, it was the widely credited rumor of his incest after the birth of a baby girl to Augusta in 1814 that prompted his wife (correctly named by Lawler as Annabella Milbanke) to abandon him. Indeed, she fled to her parents only a year after their marriage in 1815, and just months after the birth of their own legitimate daughter Ada. Moreover, after Byron fled England for good in 1816 in the wake of his notoriety, he had another illegitimate daughter, named Allegra, born in Europe early in 1817 (by a mistress, for those who need to know such things, named Claire Claremont). It was this daughter, Allegra, his third in almost as many years and by as many women, whom he neglected and who did die young. Still, I am grateful to correct the record, for it helps to emphasize yet more strongly my main point: that Byron serves as a perfect example of how artistic genius is no guarantee the artist will not turn out to be a cad. Of course, Byron's vices do not thereby vitiate his poetry, only his character--again, the main point of the review.

EDWARD T. OAKES, S.J.
Mundelein, Ill.

Springtime

Thank you for George Lindbeck's "How a Lutheran Saw It" (November 22). His recollection of John XXIII's homily, with the reflection that "the mercies of the Lord are new every morning," are words of hope, a needed tonic in the face of the news and events that daily unfold before us. To paraphrase the poet: in the midst of winter we are reminded of the invincible spring.

LAURA GELLOTT
Racine, Wis.

Shannon at Vatican II

Joseph A. Komonchak's excellent "Vatican II as Ecumenical Council" (November 22) shined a kind light on a great Catholic, Yves Congar, and his huge contribution to Vatican II.

Another excellent source of inside information on the workings of Vatican II is Reluctant Dissenter (Crossroad, revised 2000), by James P. Shannon, former bishop of Saint Paul. In his book, Shannon clearly articulates the various positions among the bishops, including the overwhelming votes favoring collegiality and the large role of conscience regarding birth control. He observed all of it as one of the youngest bishops in attendance at the last three sessions. Shannon was stunned upon returning from the final session of the council to find that the curia had overruled the bishops' vote on contraception, and had formulated what became Humane vitae. His appeal to the conscience of the bishops and his arguments with Cardinal James McIntyre led to his resignation as a bishop.

I was greatly influenced by Shannon's progressive views of the church when he was president of my school, the University of Saint Thomas, in the 1950s. His three-tape lecture on Vatican II, given at Saint Thomas in 1999, is a masterpiece of precise and often humorous description of the council (with several tributes to Yves Congar).

I am also told that Shannon, still a devout Catholic, is supportive of the group Voice of the Faithful, believing they are doctrinally sound in advocating an increased presence of Catholic laity in bishops' administrative decisions.

ANTHONY A. WIGGINS
Wilton, Conn.

Get a life

E. J. Dionne's "Election Autopsy" (November 22) might have mentioned among the faults of the Democratic Party its need to revise its positions and platforms pertaining to "life" issues--if it wishes to win back numerous former supporters.

The party needs to recognize that it has lost support and stature among a sizable number of voters because of its absolute opposition to legislation that would in any way grant rights to the unborn or place any limitations on access to abortion. Furthermore, for the past fifteen to twenty years, the Democratic Party, at least at the national level, has made it impossible for candidates who oppose abortion on demand to advance to a level of national prominence. Richard Gephardt was a so-called pro-life Democrat during the 1970s and early 1980s, but he made an about-face on this issue shortly after he began to assume more leadership in the party. Jesse Jackson and Mario Cuomo where originally pro-life Democrats. And let's not forget how the pro-life contingent was treated at the 1992 Democratic Party Convention, where Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was, in effect, dismissed as a viable candidate for the presidency because he was pro-life.

Perhaps the Democratic Party leadership needs to assess how its unusual adherence to a strange combination of political absolutism and moral relativism on these life issues has contributed to its gradual decline.

TONY ROTTINO
Racine, Wis.

Neglected treasure

Mentioned in Peter Quinn's provocative essay "The Catholic Novel" (November 8), I am the friend who gave Peter a list of eighty novels. During the last fifteen years, I have been teaching a Catholic novel course in the philosophy department of Saint John's University and also coordinating such a course for the Brooklyn diocesan adult education program. In the university course I stay with such classics as Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and George Bernanos's The Diary of a Country Priest. In the adult education program we have covered eighty novels. More than seventy of them have fit the working definition I have been using: "A Catholic novel is one whose theme is based on some Catholic dogma, moral teaching, or sacramental principle, and in which Catholicism is basically treated favorably." We have read some of Brian Moore's novels and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, novels which, though filled with Catholic symbols, do not strictly fit the definition. Of course, not every novel written by a Catholic is a Catholic novel and, strange to say, some non-Catholics have written Catholic novels. Budd Schulberg's On the Waterfront, A. J. Mojtabai's Ordinary Time, and Mark Salzman's Lying Awake are examples. Sigrid Undset wrote Kristin Lavransdatter a year before she was baptized a Catholic, but she had probably been intellectually converted to the Catholic faith by the time she wrote her masterpiece.

Saint John's students and the adults who have taken the course love the novels, so I definitely think the genre is worth our attention. I created the course fifteen years ago because I met a graduate of a Catholic college who had majored in English literature but had never read Greene or Waugh--had never even heard of them. Talk about neglecting a tradition that is a treasure!

(REV.) ROBERT E. LAUDER
Jamaica, N.Y.

War & peace

I would like to respond briefly to a couple of letters that appeared in the November 22 Correspondence column. First, in "War & Justice," Karl Saur says that a presumption against the use of force is not central to the just-war theory. If "Thou shalt not kill" and "Love thy neighbor" do not mean that there is a presumption against the use of force in war or outside of war, then for heaven's sake, what do they mean?

Second, in "Criticizing Israel," Arthur Hertzberg states that "the preoccupation of Christians with the Israel-Arab quarrel is out of proportion...." "Out of proportion" to what: the number of deaths and human-rights abuses that have occurred there over the past fifty-four years, or "out of proportion" to the $3-$4 billion the United States spends each year to support Israel? Most Christians are not concerned by the Jews' return to the Holy Land. Rather, we are concerned about the senseless, endless slaughter that is taking place there. We want more than survival for Israel; we want a just and lasting peace for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

ANTHONY DISTEFANO
Alexandria, Va.

Israel & U.S. Christians

Arthur Hertzberg's letter (November 22) in response to "When Israel Is Wrong" (October 11) says that "The preoccupation of Christians with the Israel-Arab quarrel is out of proportion," perhaps because of the reluctance of Christians fully to accept Israel's "right to exist." While there certainly are Christians to whom this criticism can be applied, a couple of points need to be made for the sake of balance.

First, we must ask which is the more operative factor shaping Christian attitudes toward Israeli government policy: "Christian discomfort with the return of the Jews to the Holy Land without having converted to Christianity" (as Hertzberg puts it), or rather guilt over the role Christians have historically played in Jewish suffering--and with it an unwillingness to hold Israel to internationally accepted standards of accountability for its actions. Christians must honestly come to terms with this understandable but inexcusable abdication of moral responsibility (without, of course, denying the reality and continued danger of anti-Semitism). In this world, after all, no one's hands are clean; yet if we allowed that fact to deter any of us from addressing injustice whenever we see it, who would want to live with the consequences?

Second, for U.S. Christians--and for all Americans who pay federal taxes--the need to confront the morality of Israeli policy is inescapable. Our government supplies Israel with aid at an average rate of more than $10 million per day, thus making us responsible for Israel's actions in a way that we are not for those of, say, the North Koreans, the Libyans, or the Palestinians. Such taxpayer-sponsored largesse represents more than simply a commitment to Israel's "survival"; it deeply implicates us in the Sharon regime's project of colonization of the occupied territories in violation of international law. The least we are called upon to do in the cause of justice, it would seem, is relentlessly to press our own government to fit the gravy train with some brakes.

EUGENE MORETTA
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Code for bishops

In reference to Voice of the Faithful and those bishops who oppose it ("Sound the Canons," Correspondence, November 22), Anthony F. Avallone notes usefully that Canons 212, 215, and 218 in the Code of Canon Law support the rights of the laity to form associations for charitable and religious purposes, and to appeal to the bishops. Avallone wonders whether the bishops are aware of such canons or just don't care.

Anthony, first read Catch-22. Next, read page 265 of the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (2000, Commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America): "The second paragraph of Canon 212 expressly recognizes the right of all the faithful to express their needs and wishes to the sacred pastors. Unfortunately, the canon does not explicitly express the concomitant obligation on the part of the sacred pastors to listen attentively to the faithful."

It follows that the bishops are not obliged canonically to listen attentively or to respond, as the recent history of the bishops' handling of clerical child molestation makes abundantly clear. Note that "the concomitant obligation" is merely a moral and spiritual obligation, not a legal and enforceable one. After all, the law is the law.

D. W. ODELL
Altamont, N.Y.