The Poet President
I read Jacqueline Vaught Brogan's article on Father Charles L.
O'Donnell ("Time and Again," Autumn) with great interest. Although
I am a relative of Father O'Donnell's (my great-grandmother's
sister was his mother), I didn't learn very much about him until
many years after I graduated in 1968.
I began collecting and reading his poetry (the collecting made
much easier in the age of the Internet), and at my Notre Dame
reunion 10 years ago, Rev. John Conley, rector of Siegfried Hall,
kindly gave me a tour of the CSC cemetery where Father O'Donnell
is buried. There I learned that, as an Army chaplain in World
War I, Father O'Donnell's grave is also marked with an in-ground
granite headstone, a tribute evidently reserved for CSC military
chaplains. Father Conley also told me to visit the World War I
memorial side entrance to the Basilica ("God, Country, Notre Dame")
and look up. Hanging from the ceiling upside down is Father O'Donnell's
old Army helmet with insignias of the Army battalions he was chaplain
of painted on the ceiling.
When I attended my reunion five years ago, I looked to see if
there were any republished books of Father O'Donnell's poetry
in the ND section of the bookstore. Finding none, I asked the
clerk about any University plans to do so, only to find out he
was a poet and a great admirer of Father O'Donnell's poetry. Later
that day, I visited Father O'Donnell's grave and noticed that
someone had taken a small piece of earth from in front of his
headstone.
Evidently, Father O'Donnell lives in the hearts and minds of
many people, and it was wonderful to enjoy Jacqueline Vaught Brogan's
rediscovery of his poetry. Will the University ever republish
Father O'Donnell's poetry so more people can become acquainted
with him?
Brian J. Kenny '68
Ellington, Connecticut
Forgiving
With respect to "As We Forgive Those," published in the Autumn
2003 Notre Dame Magazine,the parent of an abused or murdered child
can and has found it nicely and comfortably available to them
to forgive the perpetrator. And, in fact, forgiveness was not
an issue for these parents as they understood the behavior and
the actions of the perpetrators. The concentration camp victims
can forgive the perpetrators. The word forgiveness has been in
all the dictionaries I've ever looked in, under "F." I'm 69 years
old.
Phil Kramer '56
Villa Park, Illinois
Israeli Myth
Just a few comments in response to the letter by Mandel S. Ziegler.
Characterizing Israel as "a tiny nation . . . greatly outnumbered
militarily" perpetuates the myth of Israel being a small helpless
country surrounded by teeming hordes of warlike Arabs. In fact,
Israel has the third most powerful army in the the world. This
is courtesy of the largesse of the U.S. government, which is also
responsible for 20 percent if the GNP of this country devoid of
natural resources. A true peace in the Middle East will only be
achieved by an impartial U.S. Providing Israel with the Apache
helicopters that are destroying Palestinian homes and automatically
vetoing any U.N. resolution critical of Israeli policies will
only prolong the violence and increase hatred and mistrust of
the U.S. government throughout the world.
Regina Pakalnis '77
Foreign Policy
In "Going Our Way," Robert Schmuhl quotes Max Boot: "[W]ho today
thinks it was wise of Britain and France to stay their hands in
the 1930's when they could have thwarted Hitler's ambitions early
on." To me, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait so closely parallels
Hitler's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia that it was
a direct threat to the future security of the United States. Had
we not removed him from power in Iraq, this threat would still
exist.
The cat and mouse game he played with weapons inspectors, eventually
ejecting them, and his flagrant disregard of United Nations resolutions
further convince me that his aggressive ambitions continued. If
we had not fought him in Iraq, we might later have had to fight
him in Saudi Arabia, where some are not friendly to us, nor are
many in some neighboring countries. If he ever obtains control
of Saudi Arabia's oil production, he will have the ability to
wreak havoc on the world's economy, even without using weapons
of mass destruction which we know he has the ability to produce
and the will to use.
Clarence Quinlan '48
Roseville California
Thank you for Robert Schmuhl's scholarly look at President Bush's
new foreign policy. The war in Iraq brings to mind the Tompkin
Gulf pretext as well as the groupthink that ensnared us in two
intractable situations -- Vietnam and Cuba. Our current government
is a poor student of its own predecessors. The new "Bush Doctrine"
(BD rhymes with VD) is an ill-conceived idea that was waiting
for a weak-minded leader to fall for it. On its surface, it is
an appealing and proactive stance to deter terrorists. On its
inside, it contains a Pandora's box of problems that Mr. Schmuhl
brings out. Why is the USA the only country authorized to act
on its own to preemptively defeat a threat? This same logic would
appear to give either the Israelis or the Palestinians the right
to engage in mutual destruction at a more rapid pace than they
are now doing (your own Letters to the Editor, "Both Sides Now").
How about Pakistan and India, Russia and China?
It is simply too obvious to ignore -- you cannot invade a dictatorship
and reconstitute it as a democracy in a short period of time (e.g.,
Yugoslavia). We have suffered a terrible failure of intelligence
both in the clandestine sense and in an intellectual sense during
this current administration. The juxtaposition of your article
about college admissions (students of alumni get preference) with
the evidence of what it can lead to (G.W. Bush) is ironic. We
have been given an illustration of what happens when you cannot
achieve what you are measuring (apprehend bin Laden), you substitute
achieving what you can measure (topple Saddam) and hope that no
one notices the difference. It doesn't work in business and it
is no better suited to world affairs.
Hope is not lost, however. The greatness of America may be evidenced
by its considerable armed forces, but it is the right-thinking
of its democratic people that makes it truly powerful. In one
year, we will have the ability to topple an inept government and
turn back this anachronistic approach to world affairs without
firing a single shot. We can turn out of office the man who claimed
to be "a uniter not a divider" and then proceeded to make America
the independent, ill-regarded instigator of Pax Americana for
the 21st century. While popularity is not the goal of statecraft,
mutual support and respect are and we are not on a path toward
them. I applaud President Bush's strength of his convictions (regretfully,
I voted for him). However, strong convictions coupled to faulty
thinking are a dangerous combination as Barry Goldwater clearly
illustrated when he gave us "Extremism in the pursuit of virtue
is no vice."
Let us hope the next crop of presidential candidates has someone
with the insight to recognize that we are indeed in a new era,
albeit one different than Mr. Bush sees. That is an era necessitating
greater international collaboration where we listen better to
our neighbors when they tell us we are about to make a mistake.
We can never afford the costs of war except for those rare occasions
when danger is imminent, not suspected. Surgical preemption may
need to remain an option to reach individual terrorist elements,
but wholesale preemptive invasion is not the American way. It
makes for uncomfortable and guarded neighbors, suspicion, and
increased defensiveness -- in short, it can exacerbate rather
than remedy the problem. Eighty-seven million dollars (for starters)
could buy a lot of peace instead of war.
I enjoy Notre Dame Magazine for its diversity, readable prose,
and thoughtful articles. Keep on writin'
Don Barkman '69
"Going Our Way" by scholar Robert Schmuhl '70is an absolutely
brilliant analysis of how the ill-conceived and ill-fated Bush
doctrine of preemptive strikes has universally brought ridicule,
condemnation and loathing to our country's foreign policy and
reputation. Schmuhl's article is abundant with history, insight,
candor and intelligence -- those qualities in rare display in
the current administration.
But what can one really expect from a president whose only experience
was posturing as governor of Texas, who admittedly has practically
never read a book or a daily newspaper, and who has almost zero
knowledge of world affairs or other cultures.
Bush is relegated, therefore, to accept whatever slanted and
self-serving spin that is given to him by a small group of neo-conservative
elites who surround and shield him from any intelligent input.
The Bush doctrine has already done incalculable harm, and, worst
of all, as Mr. Schmuhl rightly concludes, "countries that
consider themselves possible targets of the United States could
be inclined to seek advanced weaponry, triggering a new arms race
of frightening dimension."
John J. Kane
Levittown, Pennsylvania
Nader problem
Your Autumn 2003 issue's "Seen and Heard" column quotes Ralph
Nader calling lack of civic motivation the biggest problem in
America. He says to imagine a grandchild sitting on your lap asking
what you did to solve the world s problems. I find this rather
ironic, given Mr. Nader s refusal to throw his support to Gore
in the 2000 Election. In the pivotal state of Florida alone, Bush
ended up ahead by 537 votes when the Supreme Court halted the
recount and Mr. Nader received over 97,000 votes in that state.
So now we have the assault on our environmental standards and
the push to mine our public lands for their natural resources.
Don t Green party members see some irony there? Oh yes, and then
there are the hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis
civilians dead, and the postwar Iraq stabilization tar baby resulting
in record deficits that (guess who?) the hypothetical grandchild
sitting on your lap will still be paying for as an adult. These
seem to me like larger problems in America than a lack of civic
motivation.
Mr. Nader has done much to make us aware of pressing problems.
He has also done much to cause serious problems in this country
with his stubborn, shortsighted principles.
Ken Howard '68
Tickets
I am writing to express my disappointment with the article written
by Ed Cohen concerning the ticket office's attempts to discourage
alumni and others from submitting lottery applications for football
games that they do not wish to attend. A good reporter would do
more than merely regurgitate the ticket office's statements. Shouldn't
he at least ask why so many alumni and others win tickets that
they don't want to use?
While I applaud the school's efforts to discourage scalping and
preserve ND's home field advantage; the announced steps are cosmetic
and fail to address the underlying cause of the problem. If the
University were really serious it would take the following steps:
1) Disclose the win percentages for every game going back at
least 3 years. Because this isn't done, it took several years
for alumni to realize that they should reduce the number of applications
to reflect the changes caused by the stadium expansion and the
Bob Davie effect. As a result, alums won tickets to games that
they didn't expect to win and couldn't use.
2) Change the algorithm that determines lottery winners. Now,
with only the most minor exceptions, every game is an independent
event. This means one's chances of winning the 3rd or 4th most
demanded game are not altered by the applicant's having won tickets
to more heavily demanded games. Therefore, if an alum on the West
Coast wishes to take his family to see a game that is likely to
be the 3rd most demanded, he should apply for all the games. This
strategy gives one the best chance of getting tickets to some
game. One may then use tickets won to trade for the desired game.
If ND used a system that moved winners of tickets to the most
popular game to the bottom of the list for subsequent games, everyone
would tend to be much more judicious in their application strategy.
This would very quickly reduce the number of applications submitted.
Cohen fails to point out that the big winners from the present
system are not just the scalpers, but also the University that
profits from the artificially increased float. Aren't we owed
an explanation from the ticket office why such steps have not
been taken? Certainly the great demand for football tickets is
not about to disappear and these proposed changes are not a panacea;
however, until ND makes such changes to the lottery system, all
admonitions to limit lottery applications seem very insincere.
Robert Metz '68
Chatham, New Jersey
Freedom
I was disappointed in the lack of response in your present issue
to your absorbing summer 2003 issue feature on the idea of freedom.
I may yield to temptation to write again, but I feel that this
will be my last correspondence to you. Before I depart, like Hamlet's
ghost, I have a few portending remarks to make.
I see no indication that the church takes seriously what the
modern world has taken seriously since Spinoza and Goethe: that
there is a new organ critical to the discussion of moral and political
philosophy. This organ is the psyche. In more recent years it
has come under the closest scrutiny from the perspectives of thinkers
very different in character and intent. The most central, I think,
are William James, Santayana, Freud, and Thomas Mann.
The church is heir to a very powerful and culturally formative
tradition of moral philosophy. But this civilizing tradition has
failed to deal honestly and convincingly with this new entity.
A major but possible adaptation is necessary. In Santayana's Idea
of Christ in the Gospels, the ancient traditions meet the
modern discovery in a most interesting way. No one reads this
book. What a shame. It is a classic. Santayana makes me think
that the key change the church might undergo is to snap the trance
of philosophical idealism and to recover her roots in Mediterranean
naturalism before it was bewitched to regard entelechies as powers.
There would be no offense over the way in which the psyche grows
and is formed; no hubris of the intellectual soul. Man
is the intelligence of his soil. His potential immorality is that
of the whole man.
Let me conclude with a Jeremiad. If no effective attempt at
change and adaptation is made by the present authorities in our
leading Catholic universities, there will be increasing abandonment
of the church by thoughtful people, by no means all of them "intellectuals."
They will regard the church's great tradition of moral philosophy
as a liability. And in part they will be right.
Joseph F. Ryan '59
Yarmouthport, MA
(January 2004)
