Letters to the Editor – Weekly Issue of July 11, 2011
Teach men to be like women
In her June 6 commentary "Why women still can't make it up the career ladder," Courtney E. Martin states that there is a moral obligation to socialize women to fight as fiercely as men to gain entrance into the upper echelons of the workplace.
Consider the multiplicity of disasters wreaked by the confident men operating in the workplace's top tiers (damaged economy, massive fraud, environmental degradation, disregard of safety regulations, etc.). We must then conclude that socializing women to join them before we socialize the men to act competently in the interest of their businesses and professions is a perfect example of "What's Wrong With This Picture?"
When we socialize the "I Am Just Awesome" men to become more like the "Other Things Are Important, Too" women, we will make a better workplace – not utopian, but better.
Marilyn Mathews
Russia's resurgence of faith
Walter Rodgers's June 13 column, "How Russians survived militant atheism to embrace God," is perhaps the most outstanding commentary piece the Monitor has ever run on Russians.
Rarely have I read such a wise, insightful piece on these people with whom I've spent years listening to their life stories and being brought to tears by their sincere spirituality.
If the West believed that huge nation was truly atheistic, it says more about the West's understanding of God. For it declared that a man-made system could extinguish that God-lit flame of faith Mr. Rodgers so powerfully describes. A Russian friend once told me that his grandmother never "taught" him the Bible as a little boy. She simply sat with him while he played and "happened" to read the Bible aloud.
Eventually however, my friend, indoctrinated in communist ideology, came to believe that there was no God. Yet, he said, he could never forget the sound of how his grandmother said the words "God is love," and what he felt when she said them.
Years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he came to believe that his beloved grandmother, and not Lenin, was unquestionably right.
Jeannie Ferber
Alton, N.H.
While Rodgers's commentary on renewal of faith in Russia is insightful, I must take issue with his observation that Russians today show more faith in God than interest in organized religion, particularly the Orthodox church.
While there may have been communist infiltration of the church to a degree in the past, the church is now enjoying a new freedom of faith and attracting many believers back.
Archpriest William DuBovik
Pastor and rector, All Saints Orthodox Church
Hartford, Conn.
