The Gains and Pains of Change

To the Editors:

Thank you for your article on the American Catholic Church [May 24]. It is nice to know that I am not alone in my spiritual dilemma. I am unable to accept a church that has become so concerned about questions of language and the direction the priest should face that it cannot rationally address itself to such problems as birth control and abortion.

Will I send my children to a Catholic school? Definitely yes. It still seems the best place available for their religious and moral education.

Arthur E. Fournier Jr.

Yuba City, Calif.

Thank God. The Catholic Church has finally emerged from the catacombs.

Clare Kristofco

Altoona, Pa.

I am an "apostate" Catholic who returned to the church after ten years of disowning it. Why? Because I find the whole scene exciting, and my church (defined as community, not hierarchy) just plain heroic.

The conservatives can get jittery, the radicals edgy, but here I am in the middle, digging it all.

Helen K. Westover

New York City

My friends and I did not "leave" the church; we were driven away by guitar-strumming, Protestantizing ecumenists.

Greeley calls the past church false security; I called it a rock.

Frances Noel Barber

Farmersville, Ohio

The "old" church was openly and honestly authoritarian. If some regulation was difficult, one knew that everyone was struggling with the same difficulty. Now we have the authoritarianism of the personal whim of some bishop or parish priest, and people are just as truly "stuck with it" as they would have been years ago with a decree from the Pope.

(Mrs.) Mary D. Paulhamus

Frederick, Md.

The question puzzling most thinking Catholics today is not "How long will the church endure?" but "How long will the church endure Andrew Greeley?"

Rita Anton

Oak Park, Ill.

Catholic priests allowed to marry?

Perish the thought. If they were allowed to do so, who would tend to the affairs of the parish--bingo, Cadillac raffles, trips to Las Vegas, St. Patrick's Day dances?

Carlos A. Hidalgo

Mount Fern, N.J.

The garments I wear at the beach differ from those I wear at a wedding, yet I am the same person. Customs and outer appearances change, but the heart of the church is one and undivided in hope, faith and love.

Paul W. Harper

Rochester

A word of thanks from the "parish that copes and hopes." You helped us to know ourselves better and to see ourselves as others see us.

(The Rev.) Frederic J. Harrer

St. Ignatius Loyola

Hicksville, N. Y.

Small-Town Presidents

The main reason "Why Small-Town Boys Make Good" [May 24] is simply that there are so many of them.

Presidential candidates are normally in their fifties and thus born around 1920 when almost half the population lived in communities of under 2,500. TIME'S definition of a small town is unclear, but if Grand Rapids (100,000-plus in 1920) needs only a little imagination to qualify, then over three-fourths of the population was born in small towns.

There may or may not be any special virtue to small-town boys, but the number of presidential candidates has nothing to do with it.

David Carl Argall

La Puente, Calif.

I believe small-town boys (and girls) leave home and sometimes make good elsewhere because the opportunity simply isn't there at home.

The green trees, purple and white petunias and fundamentally decent people who live in Dixon are probably the same as in most small towns. But a leader only leads as he (or she) becomes aware of the people in the cities too --their hurts and frustrations and despair. A bright smile, glad hand and simplistic phrases are not enough.

Claire Metzger

Dixon, Ill.

When I was a fifth-grader in New York City, I was taken by the teacher to visit the Daily News on 42nd Street. With great pride, he pointed out that the copy boys running about were making $9 a week, were all college graduates, and that there was a long waiting list for the job. The message was clear: life in New York City is tough, you have to struggle and still you won't make it.

The litany of defeat is not drummed into small-town kids. They're not told they have to lose, so they don't.

Herbert J. Teison

Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.

I would suggest another reason for the small-town backgrounds of our Presidents: male WASPS are somehow perceived as representing everyone. Ethnic minorities have been concentrated largely in urban areas. It is no coincidence that the only (Irish) Catholic President was from an urban area.

Patricia Dillon New Haven, Conn.

A Human Actor

The excellent article on Marlon Brando [May 24] showed him for what he truly is: a human being who's an actor, rather than vice versa.

Alfred L. Weisfelner

Akron

Since when do we concern ourselves with a lout, a boor and a phony like Brando? For God's sake spare us!

Lawrence Wertan

Charleston, S.C.

Mr. Brando may mean well, with respect to the Native American Movement, but his lordly countenance on that atoll in the Pacific smacks of autocratic rule. Like most radicals, Mr. Brando seeks power. Granted it's power to do good, but sheer, raw power all the same.

Robert S. Harris

San Francisco

Hills for Ford

You report the allegations [May 24] that 1) I am unwilling to speak for the President, and 2) I can't decide whether I am a Republican.

The easily verifiable facts are that I have given speeches for the President in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and California.

I have been a registered Republican ever since I became eligible to vote. Anyone who has read any of my speeches would certainly perceive that there is no more enthusiastic supporter of President Ford and his policies than I.

Carla A. Hills, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Washington, D.C.

Soccer Is Spared

Re "Soccer Soars" [May 24]: in six years our Celtic Soccer Club has grown from one team of eleven boys to 51 of boys and girls.

Because soccer is still not a major sport in the U.S., it is spared the posturing of its professional heroes, the attacks on referees and umpires, the fighting, the outrageous salaries and all the show-biz trappings that have just about ruined every big sport in this country. The leaders of youth soccer can still insist on sportsmanship as an essential quality of the game, and not be made liars by the pros.

Ann Marsland, Director

Palatine Celtic Soccer Club

Palatine, Ill.

As anyone with soccer sense knows, the amateur soccer capital of the U.S. is St. Louis, where kids went bonkers over soccer long before kids on the East and West coasts knew what that checkered leather ball or Pele was.

Bill Stevens

St. Louis

Babylift

Not all of the children who arrived on the babylift [May 24] were given up by their mothers at the last minute. There were children who were abandoned long before, were already assigned to adoptive parents and were awaiting passports to leave.

The children rotting in the An Loc orphanage and similar institutions needed not only loving parents but food and extensive medical attention that they never received before leaving Viet Nam.

The children who should never have been given up cannot overshadow those who now have a chance at life.

Mr. and Mrs. Howard F. Pritz

Middletown, Pa.

Not only are many Vietnamese children wrongfully classified as orphans but a subtle form of thievery is also taking place: I see that one of the "foster parents" has decided to rename Ya Hinh and call him "Keith." What is wrong with Ya Hinh as a name? Shall we deny them their names and their culture as well as their country and their parents?

Arthur Kurzweil

New York City

I do not know any details of the situation involving Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, whose adoptive Vietnamese son Ben failed to acknowledge the presence of his mother in court. However, I thought someone should point out to the Nelsons that it is most natural for a small child to turn away, avoid or ignore a parent after a separation. It is one of the few ways in which he can express the hurt and anger he feels over a separation he can not begin to understand.

Mary Ritchie

Jamestown, N. Y.

Made Funny

How long are we going to keep up this ridiculous thing about penis envy as a "substantial problem for girls" [May 24]? I remember the first time I ever saw a naked baby boy. I distinctly remember feeling sorry for him. I'd never noticed that some people were made funny like that before.

Betty Harlan

North Benton, Ohio

To think that after nine long years Dr. Galenson and Colleague Herman Roiphe should come up with the wrong answer. As any normal girl, 17 months to 70 years, will agree.

Evelyn E. Elie

Lewiston, Me.

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