Surprise Memorial

Many thanks to Robert Ellsberg for his scholarship and recent reflection, Five Years With Dorothy Day (11/21). This remarkable woman, arguably the greatest American Catholic of the 20th century, I include in religious education classes at our Catholic secondary college.

A visit to New York this year afforded me the opportunity to seek out her grave. It took several phone calls to the Catholic Worker to find out the precise location of her resting place. On a sunny Sunday April afternoon, my wife and I drove to Staten Island to pray at the seaside cemetery. Having visited Lincoln’s grave in Springfield, Ill., reflected before the pool-surrounded tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta and often guided family and friends through Arlington Cemetery, I eagerly anticipated the visit to Dorothy’s resting place. Americans brilliantly celebrate in symbol and stone famous people and important events, but memorial was a real surprise.

Upon entering the cemetery grounds we began our search. The Catholic brochure did not mention this famous figure. The attendant at the information center, though initially unsure of the location, finally guided us to her resting place on the side of the road. Her plaque was not different from the hundreds of other plain marble blocks resting on the grass with a simple name and two dates. I was reminded of the difference between the ostentatious Roman tombs of some popes and the elegantly simple resting places of others.

Given her commitment to the poor, the humble plaque is somewhat fitting; but for those who want to visit and pray, could there at least be a sign? It is intriguing that the Catholic community of New York does not seem to celebrate her memory in this place. If I taught in New York, I would take Catholic classes to her grave on pilgrimage.

As my 12th-year students scrutinize her life, I hope some are empowered by her unrivaled story. The works of mercy echo a Gospel call: Care for the sick, help the poor, enlighten and rebuke. I especially appreciate the last maxim, knowing her fearless denunciation of priests, politicians and presidents. We are emboldened by the spirit of great people, and their resting places elicit prayer and encourage Christian action.

Joe Doolan

Lack of Progress

Reading the obituary of the esteemed, recently deceased John F. Long, S.J., (Signs of the Times, 10/10) and the tribute to him in a recent address by Brian E. Daley, S.J., reported in America (Signs of the Times, 11/7), I began to wonder what the results might be of the decades of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue. Little is reported about this.

The few differences in doctrine and practice between the two halves of the church do not appear to a layman to be major obstacles. If the filioque matter is even being discussed, it seems totally irrelevant to the religious lives of ordinary people, and theologians who are concerned with it could do more useful work elsewhere. The Orthodox provisions for married clergy and a second shot at marriage seem far more sensible than Roman Catholic practices and should be adopted by Rome.

I fear the obstacle is power and authority. As Father Daley delicately puts it, For the Catholic Church, growth toward ecumenical unity must unquestionably involve the readiness to accept new forms of synodal decision-making and teaching that will be more complex, more mutual, more inclusive and less centralized than is conceivable within the classical modern model of papal primacy.

In other words, the papacy, which will not even allow a national bishops’ conference to decide the wording of a Bible translation into its national language, has to accept substantial independent decision-making by patriarchs and autocephalous churches! Whoowee! And how is the pope to be elected? The Orthodox have no College of Cardinals, a Roman invention not found in the early church.

Such details could be worked out, of course, given the necessary flexibility on all sides. But the apparent lack of any real progress after decades of work is striking and dismaying.

Tom Farrelly

Not Rhetorical

Thank you for writing about the important matter of torture and for the good editorial, The Shame of Torture (11/7).

I was a bombardier in Europe during World War II, which I regret in my old age, and I am even more ashamed of our country today because of its blatant practice of torture on human beings.

To those who have paid attention to this subject, my comments might seem trite, but I believe there are two key issues we have not dealt with adequatelynot the government or the media.

First, while there has been a baker’s dozen of investigations on the use of torture by the U.S. government, these have been fox-in-the-henhouse inquiries, and not one of them has been an independent investigation. Why is this?

Second, a large body of evidence shows that the U.S. practice of using torture is not an aberration or the work of a few bad apples (the entire barrel smells like something washed up by Hurricane Katrina). Yet the blame is placed on a few low-ranking noncoms at a single prison, Abu Ghraib. The policy of state-sponsored cruelty has not led to anything but the trial and conviction of a private in the Army, as well as eight other hapless G.I.’s.

Am I missing something? If this were in a novel, no publisher would touch it; the plot is too far-fetched. When do we get to the heart of this problem? After America has lost its soul? The question is not rhetorical.

Tom Brubeck

Already in Place

It would be a mistake to assume that the recent meeting in Rome of the World Synod of Bishops did very little to alleviate the associated problems of the unavailability of the Holy Eucharist and the shortage of priests (Signs of the Times, 10/31). A decision to go with married priests, suddenly and everywhere, would have been a colossal disturbance. But the ordination of married viri probati was floated at the synod. Married convert ministers are considered such, and are ordained. Therefore, the policy of ordaining viri probati is already in place. This policy can easily be extended, a quantitative change only, to permanent deacons. They, of course, would have to request priestly ordination. There is little reason to think they would not be offered the same treatment as converts. Neither of these groups, by the way, has been involved in the sexual scandal.

(Rev.) Connell J. Maguire

Regard to Decorum

Much of what James F. Gill says in his article, Advice and Consent (10/31) concerning the proper role of the Senate in passing upon presidential appointments to the Supreme Court is incontestable; but his view that the Senate should confine its inquiry to questions of integrity, intelligence, experience and the like and pass over questions of ideology is not. The difficulty, of course, arises because the Supreme Court, rightly or wrongly, has taken control of a wide array of important and contentious social and political issues such as abortion, birth control, homosexual intercourse, differential treatment of gays and women, and voting rights. Moreover, given the potential sweep of the privacy rights that the court has discovered in the penumbra of the Bill of Rights, more may well be on the way, depending very much on the makeup of the court.

When the presidency and the Senate are in the hands of a single party, there is normally no problem barring a filibusterwhich has no support in the Constitution and which can be overridden when the majority sees fit to do so. But when control of the presidency and the Senate is divided, reflecting a like division among voters on important issues within reach of the court, then I suggest it is far from clear that the public interest is best served by leaving the president free to put control of the court in the hands of justices whom he is persuaded will reflect his views on such issues rather than the contrary views of the majority of the Senate.

Whatever the opinions expressed during the Constitutional Convention, the text of the Constitution does not support or even suggest such a narrow senatorial role, nor could the framers have anticipated the vast expansion of judicial power that has taken place since their time. And the effect of such unconfined presidential power is greatly amplified by the fact that the composition of the court may be essentially unchanged for decadeswitness the current court before Chief Justice Rehnquist’s deathirrespective of decisive intervening changes in the control of the elective branches.

It would be much less messy, to be sure, if senators would look only at a nominee’s qualifications of mind and experience; and surely they should not seek to learn how a nominee would vote on a particular issue likely to arise before the court. But I, for one, hope my senators would vote against a nominee who, for example, had authored a lower court opinion or an article endorsing the expansion of the right to privacy to gay marriage; and I would expect and support the right of senators of contrary view to embrace such a nominee.

In a sense, this contentious situation has been forced upon all of us by the Supreme Court itself by way of its Roe v. Wade decision. But that’s where we are, much as we might like a return to the good old days. Since each party now takes either a wide or narrow view of the senatorial role, depending on who’s in control, and since plainly neither is going to change, it seems to me we might as well relax and confine ourselves to insisting that the Senators act with a decent regard to decorum. That’s challenge enough, it seems to me.

William H. Dempsey

Careful Scrutiny

In his excellent column Of Many Things on Sept. 12, Drew Christiansen, S.J., mentions the contention of Michael Buckley, S.J., that the roots of atheism were in 17th-century natural theology and suggests that the proponents of intelligent design...are repeating the mistake of using science as evidence for belief in God. He seems to hint that if scientific evidence is the foundation of belief in God, science will sooner or later (or again) turn us into atheists.

It seems that both intelligent design theorists, and certain evolutionists who oppose them, share a faulty and dangerous assumption: if God is involved in the creation and development of life, we will catch him in the act. Intelligent-design advocates believe that examination of life at the molecular and cellular level provides evidence of divine intervention. Atheistic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins believe that there is no such evidence, and that therefore God does not exist or at least can have had no part in creation.

These professional scientists prove amateur theologians. Who says that if God is involved in creationeither as an intelligent designer or the directing force of evolutionwe will find evidence of it? Is it not equally possible that God’s creative activity may be so perfect, so pure and so seamless that we will, in fact, find no physical or molecular evidence of it at all? The biblical tradition itself finds evidence of God not at the molecular level, but in the glory, beauty and overarching order of creationdecidedly unscientific evidences, grounded in human aesthetic perception. If the scientists are going to moonlight as theologians, we had better subject their theology to as careful a scrutiny as their biology.

Patrick J. Nugent