DIVORCE, SI-PAPA, NO
Kortenaar, Henry Ten
(expressed in an interview with the New York Times) that "It was never contemplated in our system that judges would make drastic changes by judicial decisions" and how does it square with his...
...It is clear that there has been more at stake than the mere survival of the divorce law...
...What the Council never achieved, was done by the referendum--or rather, the referendum has brought to light what the bishops have always refused to admit: that the Council has done its work in Italy, just as in every other part of the world...
...After the disappointing result it faces a difficult choice...
...It said: Do you want to repeal the law nr...
...Despite the violence of the official reactions, it was their opinion which prevailed and swayed a considerable portion of the Catholic vote...
...had high hopes of victory, since it had succeeded once more in rallying the Church to a common goal...
...This meant that those who were against divorce had to vote yes, and those who were for it, no...
...Burger was part of a counter-revolution...
...Commonweal: 357...
...Some bishops (notably Cardinal Pellegrino of Turin) even made separate statements, emphasizing the freedom of conscience and forI HENRY TEN IKORTENAAR is Cornmonweal's regular correspondent in Rome...
...The vote did not solve any of the very serious problems their country is struggling with, but it was certainly worth one night's roaring festivities...
...but there are signs that the bishops have taken notice...
...In their postreferendum statement, while deploring that a large number of Catholics had not followed their prescriptions, they suggested these persons might allay their supposed remorse by promoting modern legislation to protect the family and by a common effort to remove the causes of the family crisis, such as unemployment and underemployment, emigration, lack of low-cost housing, etc...
...But this time it did not work, and there can be no doubt that this Church has forever lost the battle...
...And if one considers the mounting interventions of the hierarchy during the campaign and the official reactions afterwards, it would seem difficult to come to any other conclusion, At first the bishops' conference had published a moderate declaration, which, while leaving no doubt that it was every Catholic's duty to vote for repeal, rejected the very idea of a "war of religion" on the divorce issues...
...The "new Catholics" are not the obnoxious minority the bishops thought, which could easily be disposed of by declaring them "outside the ecclesial community" (the use of the horrible word "ecclesial" is one of the bishops' concessions to the "spirit of the Council")Mthey are rapidly becoming that community, or at least a considerable part of it...
...Either it seeks to re-establish a link with the Catholic dissent, which has swung to the left and has other aims than confessional power-politics--but for this it is probably too late and besides, the party is hardly fit for such an enterprise...
...Paul's, among them), laymen were declared apostates, associations were dissolved--in short, the whole arsenal of the old authoritarian Church was produced from almost forgotten closets...
...HENRY TEN KORTENAAR 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 MARGARET DIORIO BRINGING IN THE PLANTS More than peat moss clung to my fingers I remember thinking, pausing to reflect on the begonia my hands held, and our encounter in an October drizzle...
...In the first comments on the results everybody agreed that the Catholic Church had been the big loser in the contest...
...In a true sense it can therefore be said that the Church is among the winners, tort--but it is a different 28 June 1974:356 Church from the one represented by Siri and his followers...
...What they celebrated that night was their coming-ofage...
...How does he pose as an ethical leader when, in the wake of the Fortas and Haynsworth scandals, he undid a Warren proposal for full financial disclosure by federal judges (prompting one critic to note that "Earl Warren [proposed] measures that amounted to a semirevolution in ethical norms for federal judges...
...DIVORCE, SI - PAPA, NO HENRY TEN KORTENAAR Almost 60 percent of Italian voters refused to do away with the law It is a sound rule that a reporter should never quote himself, and I don't remember ever breaking it...
...A new type of adult Christian has emerged and made his options for a new kind of Christian presence in the world...
...Who has not dreamt of the chance to say No to all the pseudo-fathers, the know-alls, the moralists, who know so well "what is good for us," who keep deciding, wit.hout ever asking us, but always (of course) "for our own good...
...I had been potting and repotting plants an hour perhaps...
...I pressed on knowing if no one brought in the philodendrons, frost would kill them, if left untended the geraniums would die...
...Before the referendum, there had been some perplexity as to the wording of the question on the votingpapers...
...898, of December 1, 1970, on the regulation of marriage dissolutions...
...Old illusions, like soldiers, die hard, but it will be interesting to watch developments in the years ahead...
...Or else, it chooses to be what in fact it has become: a moderate conservative party, which might successfully try to catch votes from the Fascists to their right...
...The opponents of the divorce bill invented brilliant slogans, such as YES, as on the first day of your marriage...
...The adjustments will take much time and a new leadership (which is already emerging...
...Another place where the outcome of the vote will be the topic of some interesting reflections is at the headquarters of the Democrazia Cristiana...
...This party owes its power to the all-out support it used to receive from the Church in the past, when most of its canvassing was done from the pulpits...
...His example was followed by many bishops, especially in the South, and a large section of the clergy...
...Two years ago, writing on the divorce question in Italy, I referred to the Concordat of 1929, by which Mussolini and Pope Pius XI "decided, over the heads of the Italians, that theirs was a Catholic nation...
...Something, someone, doubtless, is attendant on my house and being, that, not unlike the plants, were set out for a season on the Earth...
...Insofar as the Chief Justice of the United States has a noble role to perform in alerting the organized bar and the public to the need for reform of our judicial institutions (his more general reform impulses present debatable issues of competence and separation of powers), the blinkers that limit him limit all of us...
...In the many years I have spent in this country, I have seen a good deal of exuberance, but I don't recall ever seeing so much of it...
...On the night of May 13 I was in the Piazza Navona, where thousands of nay-voters had assembled to hear the results and to celebrate the victory...
...And as it turned out, they were right...
...bidding their priests to interfere in what they considered a civic, not a religious debate...
...the others did no such thing, iust covered the walls with gigantic No's...
...And I must confess that on that night I envied them...
...Rather, it severely constricts his field of vision...
...But this time I cannot resist the temptation...
...The mere word No had an irresistible attraction for the majority of Italians...
...Now the referendum is over, and almost 60 percent of the Italian voters have refused to do away with the law, despite the pressing invitations of Pope Paul, the bishops and the official Catholic party, the Democrazia Cristiana (for the occasion joined, once more, by the Fascists of the MSI, Movimento Sociale ltaliano) to vote "yes...
...Cardinal Siri in Genoa began to preach a new crusade: the only freedom of conscience he recognized was the freedom ~to choose between sinning and not sinning, between the fire of hell and heavenly reward...
...Pope Paul expressed his "astonishment and grief" at the outcome-and the bishops deplored that the Christian model of marriage had disappeared from the law of the land...
...The sooner the bishops realize this, the more hope there is that the Church will still have an important role to play in modern Italy, and that the defeat may turn out to have been a victory...
...The results had in fact confirmed the opinion of those Catholics who had maintained that the Church could no longer pretend that its religious models and values should be upheld by state law, and that its real task in a modern society consists in freely witnessing to the Gospel, without power or compulsion...
...But gradually the intransigent wing of the episcopate took over...
...Human scenery like the empty outdoor window boxes receded, voices faded though briefly...
...Since Pope John's days the relation had grown a little lukewarm, but this time the D.C...
...The Italians had that chance, and used it...
...Burger's ideology does not disqualify him as a reliable critic in many areas of public concern...
...I concluded: "If the referendum (i.e., the popular vote on the repeal of the divorce law of 1970) is to bring any clarity, it is surely not on the question whether this is true, but whether the Italians still want somebody else to decide it for them...
...In a country where votes in parliamentary elections are still given to party symbols, not to list numbers or names, because of the still considerable number of illiterates, the problem of how to explain the apparent contradiction to the simpler voter seemed insoluble...
...The most vivid impression I got was of almost youthful elation at a common act of disobedience, an adolescent revolt against parental authority...
...In both cases it would have to give up the impossible pretense of representing Italian Catholicism...
...To vote against repeal, he declared, was mortal sin...
...And as the date of the referendum drew near, their reactions became almost hysterical: priests were suspended (Giovanni Franzoni, the former abbot of St...
...Certainly a sensible and timely program, but how much more sensible and timely it would have been if proposed before, and instead of the absurd referendum...
...expressed in an interview with the New York Times) that "It was never contemplated in our system that judges would make drastic changes by judicial decisions" and how does it square with his belief that "change is the very essence . . . of the common law concept" and with his knowledge that such "drastic changes" have been the staple of Supreme Court decisionmaking-before 1937, on behalf of big business...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 15
