Credit Where Due

The prodigious Father Andrew M. Greeley, who observed his 75th birthday this month, used to direct his ire at incompetent bishops, faulty practitioners of sociology and resigned priests who wrote about the psychosexual problems of the clergy. In The Times and Sexual Abuse by Priests (2/10), he finds The New York Times guilty of atavistic no-popery.

Thereby he resembles, perhaps more than he would like, the 76-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the diviner of one’s innermost thoughts, who recently apodictically attributed the media’s coverage of clergy abuse to an intentional desire to discredit the church.

E. Leo McMannus

Accurate

The Rev. Andrew M. Greeley’s conclusion that The New York Times’s coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the church constitutes virulent anti-Catholicism is irresponsible (The Times and Sexual Abuse by Priests 2/10). The Times, like most major newspapers that covered the scandal, never implied that most priests were predators. And this is especially true of Laurie Goodstein, whom Father Greeley attacks. Never have I found her to be anything but professional and accurate in her reporting.

It does no good to blame the messenger for bringing bad news.

William A. Donohue,President, Catholic League for

Knows Our Needs

I appreciated the article The Delight of Sunday, by Robert A. Senser (1/6). He offered some good insights into the observance of the Lord’s Day. One aspect he did not touch upon explicitly was one that I have been preaching about for years: the Lord’s day of rest is a gift, something that God gave to us because of the need we have for rest. It should not be a day to anguish over just how much work we can or should do. Rather, we should recognize the rest as a wonderful gift from God who loves us and knows our needs.

(Rev.) Phil M. Tracy

Without Comment

I find it appalling that a letter in your Jan. 6 issue was published without an editor’s comment. The Rev. Alistair McKay says that the very lives of homosexual men are witness to selfishness and sterility, even those who are celibate and chaste. That is a gratuitous and totally unwarranted insult to every gay man in the world. How could you have published that without comment? The same applies to his question, How can homosexual priests proclaim the holiness of family life when their whole being is centered in attraction to others of the same sex? Father McKay’s very apparent homophobia prompts the unfounded and rash assumption that there are no homosexual priests (and never were any) who proclaim the holiness of family life. He then makes the totally illogical and unsubstantiated jump to the statement that barring homosexuals from the priesthood will help to restore faith in the Vatican and the U.S. hierarchy. Moreover, you helped to create a completely false notion by providing for his letter the caption, Restore Faith. It must have been a bad day in the editing department.

Peter M. Kopkowski

Prophet Remembered

The Dec. 29, 1990, issue of America (pg. 499) had an excellent comment on the Muslim world by John Alden Williams. I recently reread this editorial and discussed it with my family and friends. It is timely and timeless. It was also prophetic, as the events of 9/11 proved: A form of radical activist Islam has the potential to be much more fearful...because it would be driven by religious energies. Please consider reprinting it. Now, more than ever, we need the voice of prudence and wisdom.

Gerard C. Jebaily, M.D.

Keener Comprehension

One of your correspondents (Letters, 1/6) was outraged that the severe penances practiced by Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha were described in a favorable tone in the Of Many Things column on Dec. 2, 2002, by George M. Anderson, S.J. I think the correspondent is forgetting that things were viewed in a different light 300 years ago. Among us, pain is practically a dirty word. We do not wish to suffer a minute of it, and we believe that our doctors should immediately find medications and treatments to relieve us of it. But years ago, pain was simply a fact of life. This was well known to Blessed Kateri. But her deep faith enabled her to understand that the pain Jesus suffered was not a necessary part of our divine Lord’s life; she knew he had suffered pain willingly for our salvation, and she was grateful for that. And her love encouraged her to be like him; since he had suffered, she wished to suffer with him.

Furthermore, saint that she was, she had a much keener comprehension than we do of her human failings, and saw them as more grievous than they really were, or than we would be willing to acknowledge. Her faith made her want to suffer in order to resemble her suffering Savior, but also to make reparation for her failings and those of people who had not responded to the love Jesus poured out for us.

In speaking as he did of Kateri’s penances, I don’t believe Father Anderson was saying, Go thou and do likewise. Rather, he was presenting this indication of the depth of Kateri’s love and devotion that we might admire it and be moved, in our own modern way, toward a similar devotion to him who has loved us so much.

John J. Paret, S.J.

Broken Connection

Your editorial and the interview with Patriarch Michel Sabbah (12/23) brought back memories of my childhood in Bethlehem and my student days at the College des Frres in the Old City of Jerusalem. The majority of Christian Palestinian towns, such as Bethlehem, Nazareth, Beit Jala and many other smaller towns, are losing population. The native Christian community that has maintained for almost 2,000 years a living presence in the cradle of our faith is slowly being forced to seek refuge in other lands. Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter are festivals that I recollect vividly and wistfully. They were celebrated as community and family festive occasions. The processions of pilgrims and Arab Christians from the local congregations as well as the neighboring countries were a visual demonstration of a living church.

The Christian right pours in millions of dollars in support of the oppressive Sharon regime and lends it moral support, while the Catholic Church and other mainline churches take very timid steps in support of the Palestinians. Is it fear of being branded as anti-Semitic, or is it a lack of connectedness to the Holy Land, our Promised Land?

Gabriel John Batarseh

Reliable Course

One could not but be touched by the sincerity of Kevin O’Brien, S.J. and Peter Clark, S.J. in their article Drug Companies and AIDS in Africa (11/25). Unfortunately, they touch on only one aspect of the AIDS plague in that continent. Simply put, the greatest contributor to the spread of the disease is promiscuity and subsequent infection of sexual partner(s). One has only to read of the incidence of the disease among truck drivers and the prostitutes they frequent along the main highways in Central Africa to see that this is the case. This aspect of the spread of this plague is clearly in the hands of the Africans themselves. A second contributor to the spread is the reuse of needles, not only by corner-injectors who provide vitamin and antibacterial injections to anyone who can pay, but also by hospitals and clinics that persist in this type of reuse. Given that the hospital and clinic contribution to the spread of the disease is now put at between 5 percent and 20 percent, might it not be advisable to put some of the vast funds suggested by your authors into a program for supplying single-use needles? Finally, as good as the best of the current treatment regimens are, they are no more than a stopgap, and a poor one at that. The vast bulk of treated patients will succumb to the disease either through resistance development or through noncompliance. Let us not kid ourselves. Throwing money at this disaster will only delay the outcome. A radical change in behavior is the only reliable recourse.

Sean O’Connor

Broader Context

Thanks for your forthright editorial regarding Ordaining Gay Men (11/11). In the broader context of today’s church, I would add married men to your conclusion. Preventing the ordination of gay and married men would deprive the church of many productive, hard-working and dedicated ministers and would, moreover, ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who has called these men to holy orders.

Lee P. Kaspari

Difficult Questions

Regarding An Isolationist View of the International Criminal Court, by Brian Farrell (11/25): I am surprised that the editors would print such an unbalanced criticism of the Bush administration’s position with respect to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of July 17, 1998.

The I.C.C. treaty was written at a conference attended by the Clinton administration. The United States voted against the treaty because provisions it sought were voted down. Quixotically, President Clinton both signed the treaty and said that his successor should not submit the treaty for Senate ratification in its present formfor good reasons.

The I.C.C. treaty extends worldwide jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and the yet to be defined crime of aggression. Nationals of countries that do not ratify the treaty are, nevertheless, subject to the court. Countries that do ratify the treaty are obliged to surrender persons charged before the court found in their territories (which is why the United States sought an exemption from the Security Council for its peacekeeping forces dispatched to Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 2002).

The United States is now the world’s principal peacekeeper. American forces are being called upon to serve all over the world. American servicemen are subject to, and protected by, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, with final review by the United States Supreme Court. This would not be the case with the I.C.C., which will develop its own set of rules.

Because of international missions, American forces are more exposed to events of war than forces of any other country that is a party to the treaty. Most of the countries that have a vote in the treaty assembly equal to that of the United States are not as big as many of our cities and are unlikely to provide peacekeeping forces. The assembly will adopt procedures, elect judges and define what is meant by the amorphous term aggression. Many of the treaty countries do not share our understanding of criminal procedure or evidence, and many are not friendly to the United States. They, however, will elect the court and have a voice in the selection of, and the work of, the prosecutor.

The United States unsuccessfully asked at the treaty conference that at least at the outset, cases be sent to the court by the U.N. Security Council on a case by case basis. The United States did not know what the procedures would be, what investigative activity the prosecutor would undertake or who the judges would be.

There are other problems with the treaty, including the important question of whether it would be constitutional to subject Americans to a court not established under the United States Constitution.

Whether the United States should ratify the treaty is surely debatable, but any article about opposition should at least acknowledge the difficult questions involved.

William T. Hart