EDITORIALS
CORRESPONDENCE SubStandard Humor Philadelphia, Pa. To the Editors: Humor in the Catholic press may have been banned in the Brooklyn Tablet/Pill [News & Views, May 3] but it's doing fine in...
...Those in the pro-life movement, on the other hand, defended the use of such photos and cited comparable horror pictures of Dachau and Buchenwald: no prettier but displaying hard facts men had to face...
...But the analogies are not reassuring-earlier corruptions are dwarfed by "Watergate," a staggering tale of wrong-doing that contains shameful chapter after shameful chapter, perpetrated by shameless political technocrats...
...Chicken...
...It is rather Mr...
...The ironic selfishness of the Com~die Humaine is more personal in nature, less bearing on our public natures...
...their minds are made up...
...This necessity to cooperate with others of somewhat different views means that Catholic leaders should abandon their vain hopes for any kind of total legal ban on abortion...
...No, too genteel...
...Madame Bovary chez la Maison Blanche...
...Catholics here have two funny papers to choose from---Cardinal Krors Standard & Times and the independent SubStandard & Times...
...In a society as diverse as ours, such an absolute ban would be impossible, as well as ill-advised, and the other members of any broad coalition of moral concern could not conscientiously accept such a total ban...
...Catholics have been criticized for using shock tactics on the matter...
...Fellow Vermonter O'Brien's own apologia for why he was not, is not now and will not in future be a candidate for reading Chesterton, merits one reply...
...Thomas (Continued on page 319) NEWS & VIEWS: 208 CORRESPONDENCE: 200 EDITORIALS: 209 WASHINGTON REPORT: ImpeaehmentmNow More Than Ever: Sisyphus 300 CONTROVERSY OVER CHROME: Russell W. Gibbons 302 GAY IS NOT LIDEHATION: Michael Novak :104 LAW, MORALS AND ARORTiON: Daniel A. Degmm 305 PROTECTING THE UNRORN: Paul Ramsey 308 VERSE: James Finn Cotter 303 THE MESSAGE, THE ItI[EDIUM, THE RESONANCE: Dttniel M~lck 314 ROOKS: John L. McKenzie, Rona/d Christ 31G JAMES O'GARA: Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.: Movies BRIAN WICKER: Great Britain HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor ANNE ROBERTSON: Editorial Assistant JOHN FANDEL: Poetry ALAIN WOODROW: Paris JOHN CQONEY: Dublin JOHN 8RUBAKER: Advertising Manager COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public AfFairs, Literature and the Arts...
...Given this fact, we want to caution others not to imagine that on this question basic divisions of opinion exist among Catholics in quite the same way they do on so many other issues and as they did, say, on the Spanish Civil War, on the case for or against Senator Joe McCarthy, or even on the more closely related birth control issue...
...The disagreeable miasma of ambitious middle-class men that Balzac portrays for us...
...To the Editors: It might have befitted the Editors to answer reader-protests about a reviewer who had taken no Chesterton straight being asked to review the new GKC biography [May 10...
...An American novelist, perhaps...
...Forthcoming issues will be dated June 14, June 28, July 12, July 26, August 9, August 23, September 6 and September 20...
...Foreign $16...
...it would, hopefully, save hundreds of thousands of lives, end the growing identification of the anti-abortion cause with the right wing, and in general call a halt to the national drift toward what many already consider an abortion culture...
...Or that nobody does any more...
...Commonweal and the most conservative Catholic publications may and do differ sharply on what kind of legislation on this topic is needed or possible in a pluralistic society, but we are equally opposed to the concept of casual abortion on demand...
...But with that said, we also think it is a fact that almost all Catholics are totally opposed to the present general permissiveness on aborion (there were over half a million legal abortions in one 30-month period in New York City alone...
...To the Editors: Humor in the Catholic press may have been banned in the Brooklyn Tablet/Pill [News & Views, May 3] but it's doing fine in Philadelphia...
...Single copies S0c 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CATHOLICS AND ABORTION The abortion issue will not fade away, which is why we devote considerable space to it in this issue...
...Printed in the USA and published weekly, except biweekly Christmas-New Year's and June to mid-September, by Commolwoal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...From then on we will resume our normal weekly publishing schedule...
...First, really convinced abortionminded persons will remain totally unmoved by such pictures...
...JO PAOLIN Chesterton Reprise Saxon's River, Vt...
...Dissatisfied with the inadequacies of American historical analogies, one reaches for art--to the novel---for parallels...
...Thomas Aquinas and his belief that GKC's day is past...
...Orwell's, or Koestler's...
...Although I share your readers' surprise that you would entrust this book to someone who knew nothing of Chesterton's writing, it is not upon this point that I would like to dwell...
...WASHINGTON REPORT IMPEACHMENT--NOW MORE THAN EVER The Watergate mess stains so much and so many in Washington...
...It is to such people that Father Degnan refers in his article, and it is to them, we are convinced, that appeal should be made...
...One reaches for an analogy as if to reassure oneself that, having survived a Credit Mobilier and a Teapot Dome, then this time of troubles, too, shall pass for the nation...
...No, the evil in their novels of totalitarianism is not basic to our country...
...Only if Catholics and such men and women of moderate views join forces can there be any hope of stemming the rising tide of abortion on demand--indeed, of preventing abortion from becoming little more than simply another form of birth control...
...On wholesale abortion Catholic opinion is cohesive, and this is a fact worth noting, lest anyone mistakenly imagine that here, as on the birth control issue, they simply have to wait and eventually the "liberals" in the Church will win out...
...Not quite...
...Copyright ~ 1974 Commonweal Publishing Go., Inc...
...Secondly, such methods do offend moderate-minded, middle-of-the-road Americans who favor abortion in hardship cases but who are not firmly committed on the question of large-scale abortion-a group, Catholics should remember, which includes both Jews of various theological outlooks and committed Christians of other denominations who believe that abortion, like war, can be justified under certain circumstances...
...There may be something in this argument that it is the fact, not its portrayal, that is horrible...
...Was there editorial presumption that all literati, especially ones with Irish names, had some direct exposure to Chesterton...
...O'Brien's cavalier dismissal of Chesterton's St...
...True, there are many Catholics, we among them, v, ho think Catholic tactics on this matter have frequently been poorly conceived and who wish the leaders of the anti-abortion drive had shown a comparable concern about issues like the Vietnam war or dehumanizing racism...
...Better Polly Adler...
...Working together, however, it would be possible for Catholics and others opposed to wholesale abortion to map a prudent course which would permit abortion only for serious cause, while at the same time supplying full and effective help for women who are willing to have their babies...
...Thus many pro-abortionists deeply resented the wide circulation given to pictures of aborted fetuses already showing clearly recognizable human characteristics, some of which become visible quite early...
...308) are vitally concerned with it, the abortion issue unfortunately has come to be thought of as a "Catholic issue...
...S14 a year...
...Careless people--Tom and Daisy --they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...
...We lay people and clergy who write the Sub presume that being a Roman Catholic in Philadelphia requires a sense of humor...
...The legislation that would come from such cooperation would not, it should be emphasized, be allornothing legislation, but it would be worth working for...
...No, too precious, despite the dark intimations about the source 31 May 1974:300...
...Thackeray's...
...on balance, however, we consider such tactics unwise, for at least two reasons...
...No less an authority on St...
...I0016 MUrray Hill 3-2042...
...Although men like Methodist Paul Ramsey (p...
...Cannot good arguments be made, for example, for allowing abortion in such hardship cases as rape, incest or a badly damaged fetus...
...In recent years theological discussion and the moral arguments against abortion have moved away from the question of whether or not the fetus has a human soul at the first moment of conception to a broader respect for life at any stage of its development, and some may argue from this that abortion may therefore be allowed more readily at the earliest stages of pregnancy...
...Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby...
...Summer Sehedule In keeping with the usual practice, Commonweal will again appear on'alternate weeks during the summer months...
...To the Editors: May I be permitted to make a few comments on the spirited correspondence that has been taking place as a result of Dennis O'Brien's review of G. K. Chesterton, [May 10...
...MARJORIE MURPHY New York, N.Y...
...Further, there are many of us who feel the Church has been slow in examining new ideas in this area...
...There, too, one finds no reassurance, but a guide does suggest itself...
...US and Canada...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N,Y...
...Perhaps Flaubert's work...
...How approach the abortion issue...
...There are undoubtedly individual Commonweal: 299 Catholics who do not agree with the Church's stand on this matter (and harried Catholic women who will undergo abortions), but we see no evidence of any significant body of "liberalizing" opinion that would take a passive attitude on abortion on demand, without grave cause...
...There are Catholics, and again we are among them, who recognize the traditional distinction between civil law and morality cited by Daniel A. Degnan in this issue and who do not believe that law can or should ban everything we consider immoral----a point, surely, that is part of the heritage men like John Courtney Murray have left the Church in this country...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 13
