LETTERS

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 22, 2000

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, 115 EAST ARMOUR BOULEVARD, KANSAS CITY, MO 64111. E-MAIL: LETTERS@NATCATH.ORG

Demeaning conditions

* I would like to commend Colman McCarthy for his article, "A governor's doubt of a man's guilt isn't enough in Virginia" (NCR, Sept. 15), not only for bringing the case of Joseph Giarratano to our attention, but for describing the Kafkaesque bureaucracy and demeaning conditions experienced by those who are serving time in prison.

Not only are there the capricious "rules" that can cause prisoners to remain unjustly in jail and to lose their grip on reality, but it seems that prison officials go out of their way to prevent even minimal contact with those of us on the outside.

For nearly 10 years, I have been corresponding with a prisoner serving a life sentence at Florida State Prison in Starke. During that time, I have routinely had mailings returned to me as "contraband," although I have been unsuccessful in getting the prison officials to send me a list of what can and cannot be sent. I am no longer allowed to send Xeroxes of articles or writing materials -- I must hand-copy articles from NCR so that he can read them! Although I was told that books could be sent directly from a bookstore, Borders tried repeatedly to mail a book to him, only to have it returned without explanation.

I am also frustrated by what seems to be an abandonment of the prisoners at Starke on the part of our church. While various fundamental Christian groups seem to actively proselytize, my friend, who is Catholic, rarely sees a priest.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but there must be a better way.

VIRGINIA MAKSYMOWICZ Philadelphia

Sacramental encounters

* John Rich is of course quite right to suggest that Christ is indeed encountered in a variety of situations "outside" the formal and explicit sacrament of Eucharist (Letters, NCR, Nov. 11). Instead of attempting to limit such an encounter to the formal sacrament, I recall that during the interview, I emphasized the Eucharist as the pre-eminent sacrament of encounter with Christ. Thus, I think I was slightly misquoted. I am grateful to Rich for his advocacy of the reality of sacramental encounters not co-identified with the formal sacraments, not least because such a conviction keeps the church -- at its most authentic -- fundamentally open to teach and to learn from the world.

TOM BEAUDOIN Decatur, Ga.

Pacifist women

* Another influential pacifist woman Eileen Egan was friends with, not mentioned in NCR's fine obituary (NCR, Oct 20), was Muriel Lester, founder of London's Kingsley Hall, co-worker with Gandhi in India's freedom struggle and traveling secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (of which Eileen was also a member).

In her foreword to Ambassador of Reconciliation: A Muriel Lester Reader, Eileen tells of her and Dorothy Day's visiting Muriel Lester in London and how the three women talked of their total opposition to injustice and war because of their belief that the Sermon on the Mount was the very core of the gospel of Jesus. Comparing Lester and Day, Eileen wrote, "They lived lives that pitted them against injustice, poverty, colonial oppression, racism and, above all, against war, preparation for war and the vengeance that is the legacy of every war." Eileen fit that description herself, and we are all the richer for it.

RICHARD DEATS Nyack, N.Y.

Richard Deats is editor of Ambassador of Reconciliation: A Muriel Lester Reader.

Empire's game

* While I fully agreed with Rich Heffern's analysis of the woes of our political system (NCR, Oct. 20), I groaned when I got to his proposed prescription. He says we need, inter alia, "legislated limits on corporate power."

As a former U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee counsel turned Bible teacher and writer, I can assure him that achieving that goal is about as likely as legislating women's ordination.

I think if Thomas Merton, whose memory Heffern evokes, were still alive, he would be on the same path toward political sprirituality as his friends the Berrigans and St. Dorothy Day: giving birth to the new within the shell of the old. Like Jesus and John of Patmos, they refuse to play empire's game at all, preferring to seek the Spirit's guidance in finding New Jerusalem outside of empire.

In our time, I think this means a radical return to local politics, which is, after all, the reason for "church" in the first place. The New Testament word ekklesia translated "church" was the Greek political term meaning "called out," i.e., the city council in the days of the original "democracy." Jesus, Paul and John apply it to Christian communities because that is where politics (in the good sense) begins and ends: the people of God, prayerfully discerning what to do together to reveal God's reign in the world. Any attempt to transform empire into something sacred is a dead end road that only distracts faithful people from walking on the Way.

WES HOWARD-BROOK Seattle

Death penalty

* Thank you for your editorial supporting a moratorium on executions as a first step toward ending the death penalty (NCR, Nov. 10). In your editorial, you mention that the city council of Charlotte, N.C., passed a resolution calling for a moratorium, as did a number of other cities across the country. I wanted to point out to you that the campaign to spark debate and discussion about the death penalty through group resolutions is a project of Equal Justice USA and the Quixote Center. Not only have 37 city councils now passed resolutions calling for a moratorium, but so have over 1,200 other grassroots groups, parishes and religious communities, bar associations, justice and peace groups, student groups, newspapers and others nationwide. We work together with state coalitions such as the one in North Carolina (People of Faith Against the Death Penalty), who were responsible for collecting over 100 resolutions in that state including those from now nine North Carolina city councils.