LETTERS

National Catholic Reporter, June 2, 2000

Honoring the agreement

In your May 12 article on the meeting of the presidents of bishops' conferences that are members of ICEL, you noted that Cardinal Francis George did not respond to your telephone calls or faxed messages. There was a good reason for his refusal. Cardinal George was honoring the agreement made by all the parties not to comment to the press on the meeting. We decided to allow the press release, to which all agreed, to be our comment on the meeting.

Since Cardinal George's position on the revision of ICEL statutes was characterized as being rejected by the other parties, your readership should know that this revision was approved by all the parties present in the discussion and now must be approved by each of the member conferences of ICEL.

I want to add that Cardinal George's contribution to the meeting was very helpful and greatly appreciated.

(Bishop) JOSEPH I. FlORENZA Washington

Fiorenza is president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Editors' note: The May 12 article reported that a draft set of statutes presented by George at a January meeting of the board of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy in London met with resistance, not that anything George said at the April meeting of English-speaking bishops' conference presidents was rejected by the other parties.

Architectural regression

This is in response to the essay by Michael DeSanctis, "Notre Dame's neoclassicists yearn to build grand old churches" (NCR, April 21). When I was a freshman in the department of architecture in 1949 we were cautioned not to copy the campus Gothic buildings. They were not the future of architecture. Paradoxically, over the years as the department became a school, it evolved to a different position about architecture. This new position focuses on recreating the clerical past, especially in church architecture.

Architecture reflects the beliefs and motives of those who commission it. Most church architecture tries to inspire reverence. But classical pre-Vatican II church architecture also provided grand spaces and mysterious nooks to accommodate the sacred. This was a place to worship, a place to feel the omnipotence of God and the importance of doctrine and magisterium. I don't see how the gospel message was conveyed from those places, and history offers evidence that it was not. Churchgoers continued to practice greed and make war.

Church architecture strives to emerge from the past seeking new expressions of truth for the modern person. But it is commissioned with mixed messages in a confused social and theological context.

Some architects resort to conflicting geometries, contrasts in light and shadow, spaces to be explored and asymmetries that say there are no pat answers. A few of these experiments are successful. A small number of architects return to past cultures for civility and predictability, to forms that say all decisions about life and afterlife have been made for us. Absent from these attempts are expressions that partner us with nature, inspire us to work for the common good and recognize that communion with other people is meeting Christ. It may shock design professionals that the best church architecture for today could be streetscapes.

Does Notre Dame understand the consequences, the theological regression that churches designed on neoclassical themes impose on the layperson?

DONALD F. CUDDIHEE SR. Greer, S.C.

Making amends

I have been reading in issues of NCR and in national and local newspapers the statements of our Catholic leadership regarding issues of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation. John Paul II has spoken out in many lands, acknowledging the injustices of the past and asking forgiveness. But nowhere have I read about the injustices done to women by church leadership. Why is there no mention of the suffering of women in the Roman Catholic church -- women suspect because of their sexual identity, women allowed to clean sanctuaries but not to serve at the altar, women not allowed to make decisions about their own bodies, women considered to be second-class and second-rate. What about asking forgiveness of the women who have been serving in pastoral and diocesan positions struggling against the clerical tide because of their education, their expertise and their compassion -- women who have been targets of "Inquisition-like" tactics and forced to leave their religious congregations and parish communities? Where is the outreach to us? Isn't it time in this new millennium to make amends, acknowledge injustices and transform the church into a discipleship of equals?

(Sr.) CATHLEEN RYAN, DP New Britain, Conn.

Los Angeles cathedral

While reading through the excellent issue of April 14, I noted that one of the major liturgies commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero was presided over by our Los Angeles archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony. Some might ask what he was doing in El Salvador March 24. What I was left with was a series of contradictions.