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I’ve been thinking about the recent editorial calling for an end to the Iraq war (NCR, March 30). I was struck by the fact we are spending over $11 million an hour on the war. That’s about $1 million every five minutes. Five minutes of war would pay for 10 coffee shops like Wild Bill’s in Iowa City and provide part-time jobs for 10 individuals with disabilities to work in each of these shops. Five minutes of war would buy a home for every one of the homeless individuals my friend Kelly Dobson feeds each Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis. Five minutes of war would finance a college education for Judy and at least a dozen other people I know who don’t have money for tuition. Five minutes of war would support Altman, Sierra, Jeremy and at least two dozen other fine young musicians I know here in Aberdeen for an entire year. Think how much music they could make to brighten our lives. Five minutes of war would help close the gap in school spending in one major U.S. city. In San Jose, Calif., for example, $1 million could close the $1,000 per child difference in spending between the Alum Rock schools and neighboring districts. For one hour of war, we could do all of these and much more. Just think what we could do with a day or a week.
TOM GILSENAN
Aberdeen, S.D.
So the U.S. bishops felt challenged by the position of Marquette University theologian Daniel Maguire on birth control and other topics (NCR, April 6). They were so piqued, in fact, as to state, “The bishops are the successors of the apostles, who are given the authority to proclaim the teaching of Jesus Christ.”
I never knew that Jesus taught his successors to cover up criminal clerics, did you?
The bishops go on to say, “Laity and clergy embody and express the sense of the faith precisely when they conform their consciences to what the church authentically professes and teaches.”
Sorry, bishops, my conscience will just never be able to be conformed to your practice of allowing pedophile priests/bishops to function in the name of Jesus.
PAUL J. ACKERMAN
Columbus, Miss.
Your excellent editorial “Those ungrateful Iraqis” (NCR, April 6) missed one salient point: We gave Saddam Hussein to Iraq. In the 1950s, Iraqi citizens had elected a progressive leader who proposed to nationalize the oil wells in the country and to keep the oil wealth within the country instead of letting the oil companies siphon the wealth away from the country. Naturally, the oil barons were horrified at such a prospect and they told their pals in Washington and in London that Iraq was about to go “communist.” We and our British cousins removed the progressive leader and installed the Baathist Party to keep the oil barons happy and to serve as our political puppets in the Mideast. We did not care if our puppets might turn into dangerous lunatics with dreams of world power. As long as they proclaimed themselves to be anticommunist, we were happy.
THOMAS B. KNOEDLER
Springfield, Ill.
I recently filed my federal income tax return, paying my share, even though I am told that about half my contribution goes to support the profitable business of killing and maiming human beings. For me to choose not to contribute in that way to that business would be to risk financial ruin, even jail time. I don’t really feel up to that.
Jesus, though, if I am to believe the Gospel accounts, taught that the road to the kingdom of God included refusing to participate in violence, as he did. A strong argument can be made that using violence is God’s will under certain circumstances. If that is so, then Jesus was flat out wrong -- a compelling teacher, maybe, but wrong on a crucial issue.
If Jesus was right, however, then my paying my taxes impedes the coming of God’s kingdom. And Nigerian Christians countering “violence from the Muslim side with violence of their own” impedes that coming, and the use of force advocated by Nigerian Archbishop John Onaiyekan -- force that in the context of John L. Allen’s story (NCR, March 30) can only mean shedding blood -- impedes the coming of God’s kingdom. But that’s only if Jesus was right.
Those of us who aren’t totally up to the Jesus thing might be better off taking some responsibility. We can say: “Jesus was right on the violence issue, but I am choosing not to follow that teaching.” Or we can say: “Jesus was wrong, and I am choosing not to follow that teaching.”
DAVID J. WALKER
Wilmette, Ill.
Regarding “Mepkin, PETA still at odds on eggs” (NCR, April 6): When I was hatched, I expected to live my chicken life in comfort and peace being respected for the chicken that I am. I am driven by instinct as my bird brain is rather limited, but I do feel pain. I was shocked when my beak was mutilated and my feet hurt every day as I walked in very limited space on hard wire floors. I was not respected or honored as a creation of God. Maybe next time around, I’ll be hatched on a free-range farm, not in this godforsaken abbey.
MARTY KLEMENZ
Elgin, Ill.
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We know that we can be saved from our vices but who can save us from our virtues? I read with great interest Colman McCarthy’s column, “ ‘Cloistered’ chickens” (NCR, April 6). He confessed his past sins regarding treatment of animals while living in a monastery. I did not read his profession of faith that he is a vegetarian. He did not declare that he never eats meat. This raises the question: Can Christians eat meat with a clean conscience given the horrific lifetime suffering all animals endure under the conditions of intensive factory farming and its enormous ecological impact?
Paul McCartney wrote: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would go vegetarian.” Those who refuse to eat eggs of caged chickens can appear virtuous, but if they eat meat of any kind they may be hiding their vices behind their virtue. The question is what comes first: not to eat the chicken or the egg?
(Fr.) RICH BRODERICK
Cambridge, N.Y.
Editor’s note: Colman McCarthy eats a vegan diet.
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Your story on the conflict between Mepkin Abbey and PETA mentioned the news from Burger King (NCR, April 6). The fast food giant has pledged to buy only eggs from free-range hens. The transition from factory-farmed hens will be gradual in order to give farmers time to change their ways. My heart got sick when I read about the Trappist monks clipping their hens’ beaks and caging them lifelong in egg factories (NCR, March 2). Have they no realization that God’s life is one throughout his creation, in us, in beasts and yes, in chickens? To cause those helpless animals pain and deny them the sights and sounds and feels of God’s good earth and world, is not just evil, it cuts off much of the perpetrators’ sensitivities, turns them in some way from the one God of us all. Why do priests and bishops have to learn that child abuse is evil from the media? Why do monks, of all people, have to learn that animal abuse is evil from Burger King? The Gospel according to The New York Times, according to Burger King? It doesn’t say much for Rome’s claim to be the holy of holies.
LUCILLE OLIVER
Anderson, S.C.
Internal turmoil at Ave Maria University evidenced by the firing and rehiring of Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio (NCR, March 30 and April 6) suggests that not all is well there, although it is not clear what really precipitated those actions. Student life and activities are tightly controlled by the administration, which may account for the unexpected level of dropouts and lagging enrollments. Coeds have been barred from serving as altar girls, a discriminatory throwback to earlier days that the male students have lacked the courage to challenge. Recently, a gaggle of silly students leapt fully clothed into the campus pool in what has been termed the “Modesty Pool Jump,” which I suspect the administration looked on benignly. The original grandiose plans for the Oratory provided for 14 confessionals. Obviously, word had not gotten around that private confession is largely falling into disuse.
As regards the upscale Catholic theocratic ghetto that benefactor Thomas Monaghan is hoping to establish in the town of Ave Maria, some view it as an attempt to build the first Catholic U.S. Taliban community ruled by Mr. Monaghan’s personal Shariah-like law. Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union is closely monitoring that situation. Many priests and laity in southwestern Florida are less than thrilled at having in their midst such an ultra-conservative institution with an acknowledged presence of Opus Dei, which is known for its manipulative recruitment practices on university campuses. If the university and the town of Ave Maria languish under their own dogmatic, stifling weight, few tears will be shed.
WILLIAM J. SHCUCH
Naples, Fla.
The push is on to canonize John Paul II. In the accelerated, abbreviated process, the church is about to determine whether it has the one miracle required for beatification. If approved, it will then need another miracle to advance to canonization. I submit that it already has it, as it was truly a miracle that the church survived John Paul II.
RICHARD B. EMOND
Stafford, Va.
I appreciated the thoughtful letter of Bill Williams (NCR, March 16) on the articles on prostitution by Margot Patterson. But I continue to ask myself why, when we speak of the “dark side” of prostitution, we can so easily speak of the “grip of street life” on the woman or bemoan the “multiple addictions” a woman in prostitution may struggle with. But it seems well nigh impossible to converse about the man who purchases a woman for sexual use. Is this not a dark side? And might not many of these men have multiple addictions: money, power, secrecy from family, and “curb crawling” through the night? Not until we name and unmask this dark side with compassion, will we reach out to make substantial societal changes wherein no woman will be considered an object for purchase and where gender violence will cease.
CLARE NOLAN
New York
John L. Allen Jr. made a couple of misstatements in his piece on Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino (NCR, March 23). He said that Fr. Sobrino “narrowly escaped an attack on the University of Central America” that killed six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter. In fact, on that fateful night, Fr. Sobrino was on a speaking tour in Asia.
More serious is Allen’s description of liberation theology as “designed to break the traditional alliance of the Latin American church with social elites and to support justice for the poor.” One would infer from those words that some one or some group of activists planned to utilize the Gospel for partisan objectives. The truth is quite different.
I encountered liberation theology during the late 1960s as a pastor in Lima, Peru, before it even had a name. Clearly, it was an attempt on the part of trained theologians to answer the question: Does the Christian story have any message for the poor of Latin America and the world? These original thinkers felt the need to “ interpelar” (question, interrogate, challenge) the Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels regarding the vast numbers of humans in their world who had no possibility of a dignified life.
While the consequences of challenging God’s word this way have rightly sparked any number of political responses across Latin America, the original, abiding intent of this theology comes out of serious pastoral concerns for the poor and marginalized. This misunderstanding of liberation theology is precisely what has caused many in the church to condemn it. I would hope that a journalist of John Allen’s stature would rethink his words so as not to increase the confusion surrounding this sound, appropriate and ongoing theological investigation.
(Fr.) JOSEPH NANGLE, OFM
Washington
John L. Allen Jr. in his online Web column for March 30 said, “If Catholicism has had half a millennium to shape culture [in Latin America] and this is the best it can do, one might be tempted to ask, is it really something to celebrate? Mounting defections to Pentecostalism only deepen such ambivalence.”
Will the upcoming conference of Latin American bishops in May in Brazil -- with Benedict XVI in attendance -- come up with real answers to why millions of Latin Americans are leaving the church and becoming Protestants? The solutions must be based on the Gospel, not on some social ideology.
Years ago, when a confrere of mine complained that Pentecostals were successful in his country because of U.S. money and missionaries, I replied: “I hope more of them come down to your country. Maybe you will finally start preaching the Gospel, not some political ideology. You had 500 years to preach the Gospel and church teachings, but you missed your chance.”
The liberation theology inculcated by some of the Latin American bishops and priests has certainly not helped stem the hemorrhage of Catholics to the Pentecostals. Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, said that if Catholics in some villages in Latin America want to organize a labor union, they go to their local Catholic priest, but if they want to learn to pray, sing the Lord’s praises, and study the scriptures, they go to the local Pentecostal minister.
(Fr.) GINO DALPIAZ
Chicago
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National Catholic Reporter, April 27, 2007