To the editors. (Correspondence).

Sex & friendship

Regarding M. Cathleen Kaveny's "Friendship & Desire" (September 27), reflecting on the TV series Will & Grace: Were it not for Will's homosexuality, I think that the belief to which Kaveny attributes the popularity of the show would also play well in other parts of the world. My husband is Nigerian, so I spend quite a bit of time in Africa, where even as marriage moves away from its former polygamous model, it is not the emotional "peak experience" it is seen to be here in the United States. Wives (one or more) are useful to African men, necessary for carrying on the all-important institution, the family, whereas friends from school and age-mates from that extended family are the bonds that will sustain throughout life. Women, too, spend more time with one another than with their husbands, and polygamy, though no longer economically viable, was supposed to involve older wives becoming the friends and household managers of their husbands as younger wives enjoyed the "discretionary capital" that produced children. Friendship between men and women, the norm for me, is something of a novelty for my husband, one that Augustine, a fellow African man, might or might not be as willing to explore if he were alive today.

KATHERINE ELLIS
New York, N.Y.

Caped crusader

It might interest Fr. Willard Jabusch ("Lord of the Ring," September 27) to know that had he been Cardinal Samuel Stritch's trainbearer before 1952, he would have had thirty feet of watered silk to deal with. The length of the cappa's train was shortened in that year, and the train of the prelatial choir cassock abolished altogether.

There is an interesting historical footnote to this. A group of curial cardinals later approached Pope John XXIII, telling him that they felt their dignity had been abridged in 1952 along with their trains, and asked permission to revert to the older form. Blessed Pope John, so badly and consistently misunderstood by historians of the church, was happy to comply, adding: "Un po' di vanita fa bene alla Chiesa" ["A little bit of vanity is good for the church"]. The thirty-foot train remains to this day as a legislated option for any prelate with the right to wear it. It's a very curious thing that the cappa magna escaped being suppressed altogether in the 1969 edict Ut sive sollicite, in which so many items of prelatial vesture were consigned to the dustbin. But it does remain, for use "on very solemn occasions outside Rome." Although the thought of a bishop wearing it while the congregation is singing "Gather Us In" does rather boggle the mind.

DAVID KUBIAK
Crawfordsville, Ind.

SNAP corrections

Grant Gallicho's "Voices of the Faithful" (August 16) contains a couple of errors that have been hurtful to our organization. Arthur Austin is not a SNAP member and has never been. Susan Renehan is a SNAP member (not a leader), but made it clear she was speaking only for herself. SNAP leaders Phil Saviano and Barbara Blaine also spoke. The tenor and content of their remarks were radically different from Austin's and Renehan's.

DAVID CLOHESSY
Saint Louis, Mo.

The writer is national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

The author replies:

Arthur Austin began his address by telling the audience that he would explain why SNAP members were protesting outside the Haynes Convention Center. I therefore took him to be a member. I apologize for the error. Susan Renehan was identified in the story as a member (not a leader) of SNAP. Without identifying the other SNAP members who spoke, I wrote that their presentations were "moving, honest, and brief."

GRANT GALLICHO

Bishops & wives

Regarding J. Thomas Meyer's letter in the September 27 Correspondence column: Surely anyone who has read Trollope's Barchester chronicles would also find that the machinations of Bishop Proudie's wife are deliciously matched by the machinations of the bishop's chaplain, Mr. Slope, and the bishop's archdeacon, Dr. Grantly. Undue episcopal influence cannot be reserved to episcopal spouses.

The fictional Bishop Proudie is a vain, timid, silly, incompetent, and need it be said, proud man. He is vulnerable to the influence of everybody.

Church history contains corruption and corruptibility on the part of some bishops. In my reading, such corruption is the result of two factors. Some bishops are vain, timid, silly, incompetent, and proud men. And some such bishops are all too open to undue and bad influence by emperors, kings, mistresses, assorted family members, popes, the curia, secretaries, and advisors, and more recently, lawyers and psychiatrists. Bishops' wives pale in comparison.

Celibate or not, bishops need to be prayerful pastors, decisive leaders. They should listen to all, wait for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and do what needs to be done.

By the way: if we are using fiction as evidence, we surely must consider Loretta Young and Whitney Houston (in the remake) who as movie wives certainly used their influence to get their bishop-husbands to do the right and necessary things.

ELIZABETH G. JOHNSTON
New Haven, Conn.

Missing the point

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's comments ("Honoring the Dead," September 13) on William Langwiesche's three-part essay in the Atlantic Monthly ("American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center") seem to miss the point. The engineers headed by Burton and Holden were not the antiheroes of the September 11 story, as Steinfels states, but the heroes. Heroism, if it exists at all, exists only in the acts of men and women doing the job set before them. Holden and Burton stepped in from their obscure office and got the job done, as Steinfels notes, without further loss of life. The task that was set before the engineers and other technicians was a fraction as demanding as that of the passengers on Flight 93, but like those passengers, they got their job done.

A contrasting view of heroism is one that seems implied in Steinfels's review--that "hero" is a status that one is indefinitely imbued with.

Langewiesche's article describes the dark side of the rescue effort: the conflict that developed between the three groupings at the site. Steinfels collapses the police and firefighters into one group, set against the engineers and technical experts she chooses to label antiheroes, whereas it is clear from Langewiesche's account and news accounts from the time that the main conflict was between the police and firefighters, mainly over the belief that the latter were solicitous only over the recovery of their fellow firefighters.

Langwiesche's account also notes what Steinfels does not: the prevalence of serious looting among all three groups, with hostility toward the firefighters being so great that the uncovering of a fire truck loaded with looted garments was greeted with raucous and scornful laughter by police and construction crews on the scene.

We all have the capacity to be heroic by completing the tasks that are set before us--and we all have the capacity to fall way short--even the day after our most heroic moment. Contrary to Steinfels's review, in this there is no difference between firefighters and engineers.

STEPHEN JOHNSON
Baltimore, Md.

Parsing strange

Regarding Tim Townsend's "Watch Your Language" (September 13): Is it disrespectful to say WWII or D-Day?

We have used those abbreviations since I was a schoolgirl in the 1950s! Historic events--yes, that is the correct term--are remembered in many ways: by the names of buildings (the Alamo), places (Pearl Harbor), and dates (the Fourth of July). Pearl Harbor was a "day of infamy" whose date few now remember, but calling this event September 11 will honor it like no other date in American history, except July 4. For the millions of Americans who were at work that morning and saw the World Trade Center fall not on television but on their computer screens, the figures 9/11 are burnished in memory along side the images of the buildings. As for 911, it is a poetic metaphor that compares a public event to personal distress and evokes the palpitations we felt watching the news. I think Tim Townsend is "just parsing words."

BARBARA CORTESE
El Cerrito, Calif.

Just say `no'

The conclusion of Bishop Wilton Gregory's September 16 letter to President George W. Bush is that any unilateral invasion of Iraq by the United States would be disastrous, illegal, and unjust (editorial, October 7). As president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Gregory speaks on behalf of the U.S. bishops. There is nothing infallible about their moral conclusion--they agree with the Vatican on this issue--but this view is one of a moral dimension derived from their moral authority as bishops in the Catholic Church.

If a Catholic comes to the same conclusion in conscience with his Catholic bishops, he or she must oppose this coming war.

PETER J. RIGA
Houston, Tex.