The Pope & the Pill

Sir: Despite Pope Paul [Aug. 9], many of us will continue to do as we have done in the past: take the pill, go to Mass and receive the sacraments, because we live by our consciences, which tell us that the law of charity, affecting our relations with our husbands, children and society as a whole, is more binding than an encyclical filled with unrealistic opinions.

MRS. R. LAMBERT

Arlington Heights, Ill.

Sir: As a Catholic mother, wife, lover, therapist, chauffeur, social worker, comforter, healer, organizer, charity worker, cook, gardener, laundress, carpenter, secretary, messenger, nurse, artist, interior decorator, landscaper and homemaker, rhythm has wrought me babies, frustration, anger, frigidity, sorrow, incompatibility, bitchery, unhappiness, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, discontent, bitterness, instability and more babies.

To the Pill I can accredit harmony, communication, fulfillment, satisfaction, happiness, stability, understanding, acceptance, relaxation, achievement, compatibility, courage, love, peace and Christ.

ROSEMARY E. DALTON

Livonia, Mich.

Sir: According to Pope Paul's latest encyclical, sexual intercourse may only take place when procreation is the object of such intercourse. What then is the position of a woman who marries when past the age of childbearing? Are the parties to such a marriage to forgo sexual intercourse? In which case the marriage will remain forever unconsummated.

DOUGLASS B. MARSHALL

Barcelona

Sir: Paul VI's reasoning goes deeper than the surface problems of sexuality and birth control. He bespeaks man as a spiritual as well as a material being. He upholds continence as a possible virtue whereas his every critic (including, sadly, many Catholic priests) at least implicitly regards continence as an impossible virtue to modern man. To deny the possibility of continence (in any human field) is to profess the democratically fatal doctrine that man is a determined being, not a free one--a doctrine at the base of too many political, social and economic practices already eating away at the foundations of human liberty.

DOUGLAS J. MURPHEY

Roslyn Estates, N.Y.

Sir: On Aug. 22 the Pope will come to Colombia. Of course we will show him the best of this city, but we should take him to the horrid places where people try to survive, like animals, in an incredible misery, full of sickness, without any education and without any hope for a better tomorrow. We should introduce him to family fathers who earn $1 daily with which to provide the needs of a family of twelve. The government, not the church, makes an effort to solve this situation; but every day it is bigger, and it grows in a proportion that prevents solution.

The Pope says there's a way for birth control. Yes, let's tell the Pope to talk about fertile periods with an illiterate woman and talk about abstinence with a drunken and brutal man who keeps his woman like a slave.

Catholics are no longer sheep who can be taken by their shepherd through any gate, without question, terrified by the menace of being burned as heretics. There are people who think like the Pope, and nobody stops them from having as many children as they want, or making of their love something like a medicine, given by doses in a certain amount and at a certain time.

ANA DE VARGAS

Bogota

Sir: I would rather appear "irreverent" than unobservant. In your excellent and balanced piece on Humanae Vitae, you have me saying "nobody cares enough about religion these days to want a schism." Interest in religion has been increasing as interest in the institutional church has been decreasing. What I said was that there is certainly not enough interest in organized religion these days to produce a schism.

(THE RT. REV.) JAMES A. PIKE

Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Society's Monuments

Sir: If, as Architect Nathaniel Owings states, "architecture has always been the mirror image of a civilization," your cover article [Aug. 2] exemplifies the disturbing preoccupation with monumentality that exists in our society. Architecture as the molding of a physical environment can make no significant changes in how human beings live unless it is linked with a change in the social, political and economic environments. The major portion of the architecture you show expresses the "needs, priorities, aspirations" of the corporation, the industrial megalith and a national state of mind that is more interested in the economics of production and performance than in the amelioration of the human condition.

S. IRA GROSSMAN

Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: Quite a smashing story on Nat Owings and U.S. architecture. But how can you present a survey of the latter without showing a single building by Louis Kahn? He may well be the most influential U.S. architect since World War II.

PETER BLAKE, A.I.A.

Editor

Architectural Forum

Manhattan

Sir: Your article on Mr. Nathaniel Owings and today's architecture was indeed much overdue. Buildings have long reflected the people that inhabit them, the times that harbor them and the civilizations that grow with them. It is especially apparent today, when one has only to go to Harlem or Watts or Hough to see how the buildings reflect the temper of the people.

New buildings can build new hope. They can be representative of a "fresh new start." With people like Mr. Owings, knowing they hold this precious key with all the social responsibilities that go with it, the year 2000 may indeed be universally welcomed.

ADAM LINTER

Manhattan

Sir: In American history, great architects, such as Bulfinch, Richardson, White, Maybeck and Wright, have created a style and generally stuck with it to the end. This is not the way of Nat Owings and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. If one looks at the works of S.O.M., there is an astonishing range and volume of design. S.O.M. does not play variations on a theme and is perhaps the first major architectural firm to remain uncommitted to its past.

JOHN BOIT MORSE

Santa Ynez, Calif.

Remembrance of the Past

Sir: Regarding "The Overshadowing Issue" [Aug. 2], it is no doubt true that there were over 50 major race riots in the U.S. with whites on the offensive, but I challenge Dr. Franklin's statement that they were not followed by cries for "law and order." I can still remember the horror with which, some 30 years ago, a white man told me of a race riot he had witnessed and his pity for its victims; and though it may seem strange to some, his relation of the incidents was absolutely without racial bias. The fact is that in those days no one who did not condemn race riots would have come out of his hole to admit it. Indeed, until recently it would have been difficult to find anyone of intelligence, or even coherent of speech, to express any justification for such outrages.

GEORGE D. JAGELS

Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: The 50 riots in 60 years that Franklin talks about look like picnics compared to the bloody riots we've had every summer for the past several years. Nobody had to call for law and order because it was there and was respected.

So now, it's "racist" to call for law and order (Dick Gregory). Does Mr. Gregory mean that if you're for law and order you must be against Negroes, because they are not (for law and order)? I'm trying to figure that out.

MARY J. JANCOSKI

Travis Air Force Base, Calif.

Freedom Marcher

Sir: Letter Writer Dooskin [Aug. 2] should know that there was at least one demonstrator for the Czech cause. An American by naturalization but a Czechoslovak by birth, I ran around to my liberal friends and tried to work up a little low-keyed demonstration. They responded yawningly, "Oh yes, I did hear something about something going on . . . Uh, where is it now?" So, I took myself on a lonely little freedom march up Fifth Avenue. Needless to say, nobody even noticed me. Why wasn't there more response? Because protesters are programmed to protest "liberal, new-left, pro-revolutionary, antiwar" causes, and this didn't quite fit. You can't sing the song if you don't know the words.

VIERA BRNA

Bellmore, N.Y.

Busy Bees

Sir: Regarding Air Commando Squadrons in Thailand [July 26], I'm reminded of the story during World War II when Lieut. Ryan of the U.S. Navy Seabees stepped out of the jungle of New Caledonia and onto the beach to greet an assemblage of Marines assaulting the beach with "The Seabees are always glad to welcome the Marines ashore." As in that case, in 1968 the Seabees of the more than 20 Seabee teams that have operated in the remotest parts of Thailand since 1963 are happy to welcome the Air Commandos aboard. We've treated nearly 50,000 patients at sick call, dug 75 wells, constructed 25 schools, built 125 miles of road with some 30 bridges, and trained 15 counterpart Thai border-patrol police teams in civic action work!

B. W. VAN LEER

Captain, CEC, U.S.N.

Washington, D.C.

Bowled Over

Sir: Here in Down Under we loved your bit on our national game, cricket [Aug. 2]. One thing though, mate. It's not "yonkers" but "yorkers," a difficult type of ball to play, particularly if it's fast. It lands right up in the batsman's (not batter's) blockhole--the point his bat rests on in front of the wickets.

Right now we're at the close of another Test series with England; we've just drawn the fourth Test (five are played in a series) and retained the Ashes, an entirely mythical trophy that began this wise: In 1882, on August 29, a team of Australian cricketers defeated England for the first time. It so shocked English cricket lovers (egad! the impertinence of those demmed colonials, sir!) that the Sporting Times the next day ran the following notice:

"In affectionate memory of English Cricket, which died at The Oval on the 29th of August, 1882. Deeply lamented by a loyal circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. R.I.P. (N.B. The body will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia!)" So we get the Ashes and we've been playing for them ever since. Who else but the Poms (God love them!) would play international sport for a trophy that doesn't exist--a tradition that arose from their own defeat?

R. CARSON GOLD

Brisbane

Disservice or Service?

Sir: Your quotation of Ebony Publisher John Johnson about the Negro's right to be a professional golfer as well as U.S. President [Aug. 2] is indeed supra-inspirational--to the point of being pure fantasy. With only one Negro on the professional golf circuit and election to high political office requiring almost quixotic efforts, any readers who give substance to such a statement perpetuate the myth of Negro progress.

Discrimination, rejection and deprivation rather than progress and prosperity form the stark reality of the black presence in America. A distinct disservice is done by mythical treatment of such an important matter as race relations when candid, realistic treatment is desperately needed. Unfortunately, we don't generally get it from the white press. Now it turns out that the biggest of the black press feeds the myth too.

THAD SPRATLEN

Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: A salute of thanks for your article on Ebony Publisher Johnson and his journalistic endeavors. Most Negroes are proud and pleased with Ebony and its presentations. At this point of individual resolve and conflict, the magazine continues to give a balanced picture of black Americans. Unfortunately, you are accurate when you project that the bulk of Ebony's circulation is among Negroes; a law should be passed requiring readership by whites. Perhaps regular reading of Ebony would help to offset white America's ofttimes mistaken ideas as to the varied feelings of a larger majority of this country's black populace. Ebony successfully fills a void that the white press seemingly ignores: functioning Negroes in a hard, cold, bitter white world.

HURLEY GREEN

Chicago

The Word, or Worse

Sir: The review of Henry VIII by J. J. Scarisbrick [Aug. 2] mentioned that Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry, said "a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never" before being beheaded. This may not mean that the King was an admirable character, since it was traditional in those days for condemned persons to say a good word for the monarch before their death. If a convicted person started a last-minute inflammatory tirade against the monarch, he could be dragged off at the very last minute, to a much crueler death.

A. J. HAMPER

Philadelphia

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