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I am wondering what message the reviewer of “Into Great Silence” thought this movie could convey to 21st-century people (NCR, March 23). I left the theater shaking my head, asking myself how such a rigid, controlled, isolated life could have anything to do with the life of grace? How do men living a medieval understanding of the spiritual life have anything to offer someone today who is interested in a healthy spirituality? In my opinion, they don’t. We have come so far in realizing that our connections to the Holy are directly connected to an interior surrender to what is real in our lives along with a sensitivity to ourselves and others. Living in isolation contributes to an unreal world along with infantile behavior. Witness their conversation on their weekly outdoor walk. It’s not so much the silence we’re surrounded by that is important but rather by what we do in that silence that matters. I have a suspicion these monks would become unraveled if they didn’t have their strict routine to cling to.
MARIANNE THOMPSON
Santa Rosa, Calif.
A consideration of Tom Roberts’ article, “The church, holiness and sex,” with Ms. Schaeffer-Duffy’s article “Bethrothed to Christ,” ( NCR, April 27), touched a nerve. I agree that the church is obsessed with virginity and celibacy, unhealthily obsessed in my view. The church simply doesn’t know how to deal with the subject of sex after hundreds of years of thinking about it. God made us sexual creatures. That someone may choose perpetual virginity is admirable if the choice is freely entered into, but it is not a state inherently holier than that occupied by married men and women. If we are, as St. Paul says, all equal, whether men or women, slave or free, then why has the church run aground on the notion of priestly celibacy when the priesthood as an institution is collapsing around our ears?
Healthy sex in a proper context is not theologically anathema to the church, nor should it be. I decline to accept the subtle notion that my status as a Christian is somehow less because I have a wife and children. Nor do I accept the notion that my wife, my sister, my daughter, my nieces are somehow second-class citizens to the church’s men. This idea is silly. Are we running the risk of making the church irrelevant in a hugely complicated world where archaic, simplistic notions just don’t work any longer? Why isn’t the fullness of human beings -- men or women -- of paramount importance to the church?
JACK B. LACY JR.
Brandon, Miss.
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Although I do not have a formal arrangement with my bishop, I consider myself as this: I am single, pray the Liturgy of the Hours, and serve God’s people who have disabilities. I would never make it in a religious community, but I have a great love for my women religious friends and have benefited from the spirituality of the sisters of St. Joseph. I have been associated with the Wichita, Kan., community for a number of years and with the Ursuline Sisters of Paola, Kan. I feel that my greatest gift is the freedom I feel in expressing my vocation. I am so glad that the church recognizes this in all of its forms. Alleluia!
MARILYN J. TRECHTER
Topeka, Kan.
I can’t understand how Mr. Royal can blame 53 million abortions on widespread use of contraception (NCR, March 30). This is counterintuitive. More and more-informed use of contraceptives would preclude the need for an abortion decision.
ELAINE NEWLAND
Bluffton, S.C.
I was appalled by the fact that yet again a person who was so clearly sad, lonely, depressed and afraid was able to deal with all that with a gun (NCR, April 27). All of those young people taken so quickly will haunt us for a long time. A handgun is an individual and intimate object. You must point it to do your bidding, discriminate where it is to go.
I come from a culture that does not enshrine, encourage or provide a person with the option of shooting to deal with their rage. Ninety years ago, as the new Republic of Ireland emerged, it was decided by the founding parents that we would remain not only neutral in war, but neutral in society. Guns are just not seen by the average Irish person on such a daily basis. The first time I ever saw a handgun was at the age of 29 on my first visit to the States. I was frightened and awed at the same time.
To me, readily available guns are like eating rotting fish or meat: How on earth can you? I just don’t get it and the dead are calling us to ask the question again. Seung-Hui Cho would not have killed anyone in this manner if he didn’t have a gun. I urge our church leaders to stand and call for an end to all gun usage as another aspect of the consistent ethic of life. In doing so, you support us youth ministers in Baltimore who are watching our youth shoot each other on a daily basis. Life is too precious at any age for it to be taken so quickly.
LISA O’REILLY
Baltimore
Lily Tomlin once quipped, “No matter how cynical I get, I can never keep up.” St. Vincent Archabbey’s decision to invite President Bush to speak at this year’s college commencement exercises must surely reflect a new low in the willingness of some male religious communities to sprinkle holy water on mediocrity and evil in exchange for 15 minutes of fame and a fast buck (NCR, April 27).
President Bush has not only invaded a sovereign country for no good reason, thereby inspiring most of the world’s population to resent and even despise the United States, he has also shredded considerable portions of the Bill of Rights and has approved the adoption of torture as a routine practice to be inflicted on U.S. captives. Which values in the Gospels or the Rule of St. Benedict do Archabbot Nowicki and his monks find reflected in the policies of this administration?
Has American monasticism abandoned its prophetic tradition for the sake of profits?
(Fr.) ISAAC McDANIEL
Fairdale, Ky.
Your musings about Jesuit schools having such good basketball teams (NCR, March 23) lacked a reference to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. When I was a sophomore at Holy Cross in 1946, the basketball team defeated Kansas, I believe, for the National Championship. Bob Cousey was a freshman at the time. The campus had no gymnasium. “Home games” were played in Boston Gardens. It was a grand time. Holy Cross continues to play in NCAA tournaments. It’s now one of those small college teams that terrify the big universities lest they be shamed by a close score ... or even a loss. This year the women’s team also played in the NCAA.
JOHN McCALL
New Orleans
I was happy to read about the Missionary Institute of Anthropology (NCR, April 20), which gives rural teachers in Colombia an opportunity for higher education. Recently, I visited a rural community there with a delegation from the Colombia Support Network. The community had stayed together through three years of homelessness after being forced off its land in a massacre by paramilitary forces. Among those members who had risen to leadership, I noticed a keen dedication to managing the community’s survival during their exile. With meager resources, they are now sending their children to school, hoping that one of them could become a lawyer and help defend them. Such displaced communities know the importance of education, and this institute fosters hope. We can also help them by discontinuing our annual military aid package to Colombia, which supports an army that has been implicated in too many human rights abuses and in working with paramilitaries.
(Fr.) DAVID WANISH
Argyle, Wis.
You joined the other news media’s editorializing in “Imus’ bigotry bares reality of racism” (NCR, April 20). MSNBC and CBS responded out of corporate values that dictated punishment, while Rutgers’ women responded out of empathic understanding, which is the psychological foundation for forgiveness. NCR missed the opportunity to capture this remarkable difference. Healthy forgiveness is not cheap for the offended or offender. It is rooted in understanding of our human vulnerability, fallibility and culpability. Rutgers’ women gave the gift of forgiveness. Reconciliation, on the other hand, requires accountability and change on the part of the offender. No change, no restoration. Mr. Imus agreed to meet the women’s offer of forgiveness with change. I expected NCR to follow the path opened by Rutgers’ women, namely, reconciliation by way of change.
When Mr. Imus adopts a cause he uses his considerable media power to get things done (kids with cancer, care for wounded military, autism, SIDS, greening projects). He could add to his list of causes serious change in sexist-racist language in the entertainment world, his area of expertise. Reconciliation, after all, is the essence of Jesus’ message and method of ministry.
JACK SCHIBIK
Naples, Fla.
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National Catholic Reporter, May 11, 2007