Current Wisdom

...The first time I saw a woman baptize her own baby I realized there was a real claiming of power...

...And there is no question that it is overwhelmingly the poor, the minorities, and the oppressed who end up in our nation's prisons...

...Let's be serious...

...Prescott S. Nichols, teacher of "prison literature" at San Diego State University, dumps the contents of his mind onto a page while reviewing an imbecilic anthology of "prison lit'' and awaits the arrival of the inevitable garbage truck: These people are victims...

...I think you've got a problem with your pope," said Bedell, a Methodist...

...About the most that can be said for it is that while the United States always supports the wrong side, at least the Soviet Union has helped the cause of progress, sometimes inadvertently, by aiding revolutions in the Third World...

...The Romans were self-satisfied...

...He told her that she and Gerry were married in a previous life and that Gerry had taken part in cultural-exchange programs with extraterrestrials...

...postal stamp with the words "Return to sender" and "Addressee unknown...

...One day, while climbing to 15,806 feet, MacLaine and David saw a signpost, which, translated from Spanish, said: "Flying Saucers Do Exist...

...When the possibilities of violent resistance are too awful to contemplate, one might have to resort to nonviolence...

...Take that, Jerry Falwell...

...But she can't help it...

...June 2, 1983] The New York Times Book Review Learned socio-economic commentaries from a fan of the torero, Prof...

...Pravda quoted the schoolgirl as saying she could not believe her eyes...

...Moreover, it is also a fact that the prisons themselves constitute one of the grossest forms of oppression...

...She explains: "A burial service offered by a very pregnant woman would present the whole death-birth cycle...

...They drank too much...

...I understood that the American Postal Service did not know where the White House was," she said...

...She had several lifetimes with David, too, she learned...

...Thus, Bedell suggested, Pope John Paull II takes a hard anti-communist line in Central America and would be eager to see the defeat of leftist governments there...

...For every Soviet apologist I have encountered, there are ten on the opposite side who have lost their moral outrage at the United States in their eagerness to condemn Russia...

...Disembodied spiritual masters spoke to her through these mediums...

...Gill Westcott Leeds [March 6,1983] The Des Moines Register A leading congressional moron descants on a papal weakness: Iowa Representative Berkley Bedell criticized the Catholic Church hierarchy Sunday for not working hard enough to end violence in war-torn Central America...

...Their work ethic was too low...

...November/December 1982] The Guardian Reflections of an irenic hue from a reader of Britain's incomparable Guardian, who, it is only fair to say, lives very far from Eastern Europe: Hugh Seeds's letter about Gandhi (January 23) was very interesting...

...After all, there is racism in our society...

...Adjusting his vibrations," Kevin assumed the character of John, informing MacLaine that she had been incarnated several times during a 500,000-year period...

...Still, that probably won't sell as well from the pulpits and the podiums as generic depravity and plain, old-fashioned sin...

...A supremely anti-Communist Administration like Ronald Reagan's is all one needs to remind oneself of the moral vacuous-ness of American foreign policy...

...Postal Service said the addressee was unknown, the Soviet Communist Party daily Pravda said Thursday...

...He's seen what the heel of communism had done" in that nation...

...January 22,1983] The Chicago Tribune What happens when the inhabitant of a statist regime confronts the simplicities of plain-black-coat American republicanism: A Soviet schoolgirl who wrote to President Reagan pleading for peace had her letter returned because the U.S...

...September5,1982] The Washington Post A Mr...

...I was struck dumb...

...He concludes that the early Maori leader Te Whiti was unsuccessful in nonviolent resistance against the British in 1870, and what chance would Gandhi have had against the Russians...

...Bedell, speaking at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Des Moines, praised nuns and priests working in Central America, but said church leaders have not condemned American aid to forces attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua...

...They loved not wisely but too well...

...Pravda published prominently a photograph of the envelope bearing a U.S...

...Their standard of living was too high...

...Young people talked to the soldiers...

...It would be nice to predict, in any instance, the likely success of non-violent resistance, though there are some, like Gandhi, who would rather fail a thousand times than be the perpetrator of mass violence...

...March 6, 1983] The American Book Review The eminent Dr...

...Bedell blames American involvement for fueling violence in the region...

...June 18,1983] The New York Times Magazine Still more New Age Christian ravings: Miss Gilliss, who was one of the first women to be ordained as a priest, thinks that "if people grow up seeing both men and women perform a range of roles in the church, their associations will be different from people who have seen only men perform those roles...

...However, we must finally come back to the individual's own attitude and self image...

...Lead poisoning is a chemical failure, not a moral or a mental one...

...This was a remarkable achievement, and may well be among the reasons why Solidarity was allowed to flourish for so long, and why Poland was not subjected to a similar invasion...

...Undoubtedly, there are legions of Bible-thumpers out there who will be disappointed by Bisel's work...

...In sermon after homily after commencement address, speakers have pinned the blame for Rome's fall on all manner of mortal vices...

...Twice as a male, once as a female...

...Bill Kelley offers worldly sapience, based on the facts, in the correspondence section of the eminent Post: Secretary Shultz's analogy implies that he believes the Soviets do not share our aims of peace and arms control...

...How the hell could this guy know about us...

...I have yet to meet a single writer of my generation and temperament who likes the Soviet Union...

...I need not have worried...

...Hugh Seeds speaks as if it is obvious that "they" are far more callous than the British authorities were in 19th century New Zealand...

...They should note that many art historians now believe that at least some of Vincent van Gogh's crazed genius may have derived from the painter's predilection for a white lead-laced pigment...

...Bisel's findings, reported earlier this week at a meeting in Detroit of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, appear to confirm earlier speculation that the erratic behavior of Roman aristocrats was caused by the inadvertent consumption of lead used in making dishes and pots and cups...

...Juan Antonio Ramirez of the University of Salamanca, laboring in the correspondence section of the New York Times Book Review: And how can it be said that "the bullfight sets Spain aside among civilized people even today...

...A problem peculiar to our time is how to distance oneself from one side in the cold war without falling into the clutches of the other...

...We-not just prisoners-need, it is true, to have enough social and political understanding to realize the extent to which we are victims of circumstance, though ultimately we have to take responsibility for the concreteness of our own individual lives...

...In every civilized country (including Spain) there are "clean" corporate headquarters where cruel decisions are made that cause terrible human injustice...

...They ate too much...

...He not only knew about Gerry-he knew what Gerry had said...

...Davenport's historical, anthropological and esthetic readings...

...Her questioning mind led her to seek out trance channelers in Malibu and then in Stockholm, Sweden...

...Eventually her search led her to the Andes with David, where an extraterrestrial woman named Mayan from the Pleiades supposedly had helped him in his spiritual conversion...

...A classical archeologist and physical anthropologist from Rochester, Minn, has presided over a chemical analysis of Roman skeletons which indicates that Rome may have fallen not for any of these reasons...

...Baptism is another such rite...

...What the man does is so clean, so different from the real birth process, with pure water in place of blood, perhaps rose petals instead of water, because water looks too much like amniotic fluid...

...June 26,1983...

...But what about the Russians...

...These were the tactics employed by the Czechs when Soviet tanks entered their country in 1968...

...This attitude is insulting and can be expected to continue to generate animosity...

...I am amazed at Mr...

...The working assumptions should be that they share our aims...

...Supply trains took three weeks to reach their destination...

...Vesuvius at Herculaneum and determined that they contained extraordinarily high levels of lead...

...meddling in the Third World...

...As I grew more critical of the Soviet Union, I wondered if I too would moderate my hostility toward U.S...

...Their effectiveness in demoralising and converting Soviet soldiers is indicated by the fact that the entire force had to be sent back and replaced every few weeks...

...UFO Contact Point...

...May 23,1983] The Nation The Rev...

...CURRENT WISDOM The Boston Globe Gibbon and Falwell undone-a learned editorial from the sagacious Boston Globe printed in its entirety as a public service: For years, while historians studied the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, moralists have thundered on that the lessons of that once great civilization should not be lost on contemporary souls...

...there is poverty and there is oppression...

...June 22, 1983] The Indianapolis Star The Hollywood de Beauvoir continues her excogitations in a secular age: Shirley MacLaine knows she is in danger of sounding like a real flake...

...Alan Wolfe proffers more moral tosh in that fabulous journal of progressive Jesuitry, the Nation...

...According to the New York Times, Sara C. Bisel studied the bones of 55 victims unearthed from the ruins of Mt...

...The problem is the pope comes from Poland," Bedell said...

...One, Tom McPherson, channeled through a mild young man named Kevin, held forth in a thick brogue, "Tip o' the hat to you," and asked for a mug of tea before repeating the advice given her once by Gerry, her friend in the British Parliament: "To get to the fruit on the tree, one must go out on a limb...

...I was silent-floored," MacLaine writes of this experience...