Firmly Resolve

The Sisters of St. Joseph taught me to say, I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. It strikes me that avoiding sin and amending life are the same, although I used to think that the resolution to confess sins was strange in view of the fact that I had just done so (Of Many Things, 5/12).

On a related topic, when I teach the canon law of the sacraments to students each summer at The Catholic University of America, I am amazed at the students’ cluelessness on the difference between perfect and imperfect contrition, the former being sorrow for love of God, and the latter being sorrow for fear of punishment or hope of reward (and sufficient for forgiveness only in sacramental confession). They are also vague about the necessary matter for an integral confession: all serious sins by number and species committed after baptism not yet directly remitted through the power of the keys or acknowledged in individual confession that I remember after a diligent examination of conscience. I marvel that many of us knew these things at the age of seven and that there are priests in my class who do not know them at 40!

James J. Conn, S.J.

Not Polite

I have followed with fascination the exchanges about the Second Vatican Council between Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., and John W. O’Malley, S.J. (2/24). Equally fascinating have been the numerous informative and thought-provoking letters that America readers have written in response.

Two sentences by Cardinal Dulles keep haunting me. Stating that style should not eclipse substance and writing approvingly of Dominus Iesus, he said: At times the Roman authorities have found it necessary to speak more plainly and less diplomatically for the sake of truth and fidelity.... The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seems to have learned from hard experience that when you couch unpopular teachings in polite’ language, people easily conclude that you don’t mean what you said.

I found myself asking, If the church is not to use polite language, then what language should it use? Some antonyms for polite are: impolite, rude, harsh, discourteous. How do we help people hear what the church is obliged to preach? Is it by being rude, disdainful and disrespectfulas many Catholics, Jews and Protestants found in the language of Dominus Iesus? Or is it by seeking to make our words more expressive of the attitudes enjoined upon us by Christ and St. Paulhumility, gentleness, meekness, patience, tenderheartedness, long-suffering, kindness and loving concern?

Because God is truth, we are tempted to respond to the world’s skepticism by speaking more sharply and shouting more vociferously. But because God is love, the world will not hear the truth about which we speak unless it is couched in a loving spirit. If not polite, then what?

Richard K. Taylor

R.I.P.

It’s never easy to lose a friend, and when I heard on April 29 that Alma Roberts Giordan had died, I felt a deep loss, tempered only by the fact that we had brought affirmation and joy into each other’s lives. She certainly had done the same for readers of America, as your respected and wise octogenarian writer (Am., 4/21)

I first came upon the name Alma Giordan some 40 years ago, when I would be reading a Catholic magazine carrying one of the articles I had written. There, in that same issue, would often be an enjoyable article by Alma. Then, 21 years ago, when I accepted a position as executive editor of The Litchfield County Times in Connecticut, then a brand new paper, waiting for me that first week was a stack of articles submitted by freelance writers. I was surprised to see a familiar name, Alma Giordan. It didn’t take long for me to call her.

Wonderful friendships often begin in coincidental ways. It turned out that Alma had been happily married to Bob Giordan, an artist, since 1939 and had never stopped writing for magazines, secular ones like Good Housekeeping, the Saturday Evening Post and McCall’s, and religious ones like America, Liguorian and Catholic Digest.

I happily accepted much of her work, often illustrated by her husband until his death, finding that Alma had a special gift. She could take the ordinary, small things we encounter every day and make these vibrate with life with her observations and words. She painted the mundane elements of this world that we all encounter in a way that highlighted how truly profound these arebe they a chipmunk, a crocus, a shoe, a mourning dove, a dogwood tree stump. She had the gift of seeing, as a poet expressed it, the God of things, and she could express this wonder beautifully, yet asking, Are words really necessary at the instant of a scarlet poppy’s miraculous unfolding? Is not my involuntary gasp of delight perhaps a more genuine prayer?

Last year she collected some of her good published work (several items were columns I had placed in The Litchfield County Times) and produced a book. I read it all in one sitting, enjoying her gift of seeing wonder and beauty that most of us need to be prodded to see. She called the book What This Old Hand Knows, the title of a truly notable piece she had written for America, an ode to the remarkable gift that is the human hand, our telltale lifeline (10/3/98). The book was humorously illustrated with her husband’s legacy of sketches, many of which I remember well.

Alma and I remained devoted friends. We were supposed to have lunch together this week. While I think she is having a more sumptuous banquet in a new and glorious place, we’ll nevertheless all be missing her.

Antoinette Bosco

Right Intention

George Weigel in The Just War Case for the War (3/31), argues that the war against Iraq is justifiable in light of traditional just war thinking. While I find his reflections on the criteria of just cause, legitimate authority, proportionality and last resort both reasonable and in some places compelling, I am surprised that he says nothing whatever about the criterion of right intention. According to Aquinas (who follows Augustine), It is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention in order for a war to be just (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 40, a. 1). This was never an add-on to classic just war reflection, but an indispensable factor. I think Weigel’s case for the justice of the present war is significantly compromised by his decision to omit the question of intention.

It is no doubt true that this criterion is difficult to apply: intentions (as opposed to reasons or pretexts) often go unarticulated, and different people within the government and armed forces of a nation will have different objectives and different motives. Nevertheless, thanks to our democratic institutions and advanced forms of communication, we can know a great deal about what our leaders are thinking and what motivates their decisions. We know, for example, that a number of the prevailing voices in the current administration believe that the United States should exercise unfettered global hegemony in the 21st century. Does the White House’s National Security Strategy propose an ethically acceptable approach to international relations, or, like Athens at the close of the 5th century B.C., are we descending into a reckless and dangerous policy of aggrandizement?

Our intellectual culture urges us to be ever suspicious of the intentions of the powerful. When this attitude preempts serious thought and discussion, it departs from rather than contributes to a responsible moral debate. But the dogmatic rancor emanating from Noam Chomsky and others does not excuse someone in Weigel’s positiona theologian who is also a Washington insiderfrom making a critical assessment of what motivates his fellow neoconservatives, who presently dominate our government and are severely reorienting our relationship to the rest of the world. Without applying some kind of hermeneutics of suspicion to current U.S. foreign policy, our appeal to the just war tradition in debating the present conflict will not only be unconvincing, but tendentious and untraditional as well.

Tom Irish, O.P.

Just Unwise

George Weigel challenges me to rethink my position on the war (3/31). I find myself caught between the logic of his position and that of the pope’s. The war in Iraq in my estimation is an unwise war, but I find it difficult to discern whether it is or is not a just war. And, as Mr. Weigel writes, is that not a judgment call for competent authorities to make? And is that not why the Vatican’s spokesman has said that one who makes the choice for war assumes a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and history?

Robert Fontana

More Inclusive

Since Cardinal Avery Dulles mentioned me in his article Vatican II: Substantive Teaching (3/31), I would like to make it clear that I also understand the Second Vatican Council to mean that it is only in the Catholic Church that the church of Christ continues to exist with all the institutional elements that Christ bestowed on his church. However, I have never understood subsists in to mean that it is only in the Catholic Church that the church of Christ continues to exist. If that were the case, one would have to say that in 1054 the church of Christ ceased to exist in half the Christian world. Then one could not describe the Orthodox churches as true particular churches, nor could one say that by the celebration of the Eucharist in those churches the church of God is being built up. The question at issue is whether the church of Christ is wider and more inclusive than the Catholic Church. It is not clear to me where Cardinals Ratzinger and Dulles stand on that question.

Francis A. Sullivan, S.J.

View of Jesus

Your Of Many Things column on March 17 referred to Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan, O.P. For six years in the late 1970’s, my family and I lived in Cape Town, South Africa, during which I did a three-year certificate program at the Kolbe School of Theology.

One of our three main teachers was Father Nolan. We had the privilege of reading Jesus Before Christianity the year before it was published. It was and is still a refreshing, provocative view of Jesus, which dramatically deepened my earlier beliefs and made them much more real. That change has persisted. My memory is that he had a similar impact on the other participants.

What a wonderful difference a single individual can make!

Terry J. van der Werff

Sound Principle

Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., in Vatican II: The Myth and the Reality (2/24), suggests a sound principle for interpreting the Second Vatican Council in a continuum, which effectively refutes the arrogant polarizations of ahistorical and pseudo-theological extremes. But the setting up of straw men and their facile demolition hardly honors the principle and can even be, as we used to say, offensive to pious ears. One small example: In this time of manifest clerical sinfulness and hierarchical mismanagement in our church, to draw any conclusion, as Cardinal Dulles does, from the premise that people outside the church fall frequently into sin and error is at best embarrassing and at worst hypocritical.

(Msgr.) Thomas D. Candreva, J.C.D.

Right to Life

Your editorial on gun control (2/10) misses the value of firearms in preserving human life. Just as we support the right to life of the unborn and the elderly, the lives of bus and cab drivers, gas station attendants and convenience store clerks are equally precious. Such people often must work at night in dangerous urban or even rural areas, becoming easy targets for predators, whom the courts and law enforcement cannot control.

Each year between one and two million armed Americans defend themselves and their families from injury, sexual assault and death, often without even firing their guns. Would you prefer to condemn them to submit to the savagery of criminals by disarming them?

The solution to violent crime involving firearms and other deadly weapons is to get the criminals who carry or use them in crimes off our streets by long prison sentences. Imposing liability standards on cities, police, judges, parole boards and probation officers would inhibit the Turn Them Loose Bruce types from releasing dangerous felons into the population. The prospect of million-dollar lawsuits by victims and their families would make our society far safer than any gun control scheme that merely keeps decent people helpless in the face of violent criminals.

William J. Brennan

Spread the Faith

Dr. Richard J. Rodeheffer’s article (2/3) is superb. The obvious influence of the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum is most refreshing. As significant is Dr. Rodeheffer’s faith rekindled in essence: don’t keep the faith, but spread it.

Hugh J. Mullin