HARRISBURG: A SUMMING UP:

...But the hensive, representative anthology of each other, of two books so similar...

...symbolic act meant to challenge the and also for the negative purpose of Did they act out of historic aware- whole history of America...

...it is as though a "something like being promised the number of serious and concerned writ- holocaust had been preceded by a game apocalypse and winding up with a leaky ers "of the implications of the Harris- of cops-and-robbers...

...was baptised the MARGARET WIMSATT Rhine, a misfortune for which all day he was born, and on the same Europe was later to pay...

...one, must, child's play born out of a few citizens' of evil...

...because others, priests, politicians, bishand the number of times I have read it, Catonsville was apolitical...

...ing, while the third member, Mitchell in with such long-established profesBut if the hippopotamus of the art Wilder of the Amon Carter Museum in sionals in the field was short-sighted...

...It created no constitu- of the Communist yellow peril, and the thinker and a serious man, and his ency, it did no damage to "the system...

...In all ways and speakable...

...Commonweal: 483 straint whatever on what is thinkable sort to a symbolic act against the Viet- lent rather than persuasive...

...for the present time, the unpleasant kidnapping or citizen's arrest of Henry Writes Brown: "There must be no re...

...It was More, in what special niche or narrow "quite Catholic...

...At least two of them, Mrs...

...political processes in which lower-class when he reproaches them with looking He distrusts the apocalyptic nature of Americans so often place their unwav- to politics for the meaning of life, and their "discovery of evil in the world...

...Jean walls to reappear with the names of son, .long of the Detroit Institute of de Menil of Texas, have imposing crelesser artists than they formerly bore, Art and more recently at Winterthur, dentials of their own in the larger inor vanishing altogether in exchange or are both towering figures in the scholar- stitutional art world outside the Church...

...demythologize the Berrigans and those educated elite...

...Rob- their acts were sterile and fruitless...

...attraction waned slowly as the First the famed Trappist monk's writings...

...On the home front he worked pre-Rousseau, but one feels that they dominant mood, because nothing for: the Concordat with Rome, which might have taken enough interest in ever engaged him so completely liberated church riches for the public him to find out that his wet-nurse had that he would bring it the sacri- good, state education for all, the metric let him fall from the top of a dresser, fice of personal advancement...

...persons could not...

...moral and murderous military acts...

...Nowhere does the poetry centers...

...But (as others saw it) to something less...

...His parents, Talleyrand failed of ultimate always as a citizen of the most en- busy with their Court duties, ignored stature because his actions were lightened country the West had pro- him...

...it hierarchy as ultimately responsible for Novak's aim, as I understand it, is to spoke only to "the already saved, an the Berrigan's so-called radicalism...

...I was proud of the Berrigans tive legal history and summary of the into every institution in every human and their friends, hoped they were pentrial by Ronald Goldfarb: both are society...

...position to moderate events, but sibility for civilisation-reason, political outsiders may be forgiven if they sophistication, the arts-to be spread Now in Paperback consider it opportunism...

...It was the fashion of that era, always too precisely attuned to the duced...

...Beyond Lavanoux the country painful task of rethinking all the wrong for their sympathy with, knowledge of is studded with individuals and groups decisions of their own predecessors...

...It may be regime he served...

...They sions were to serve France and 'to sionally he spoke at the Institut de wanted to aid a cause, all else having, grow rich, and so he did through most France which he had helped found in to their minds, failed, including politics...

...interested, that the best religious art the American Gallery at the Vatican The second thing missing was any might hope for from the Church was started out, in 1973, in the manner hint that the enterprise had been in what Lavanoux once called "benevocommon among American art museums touch with the numerous Catholics in lent indifference...

...He was born into an old and Prussia extend his boundaries to the famous family...

...He felt that France, where his thus breaking the bones of one foot This may have been due to a forebears had been men of importance and leaving him a suffering cripple for sincere attempt to remain in a since the ninth century, bore a respon- life: pied-court...

...Novak is convinced Perhaps they were fools to think that, who were indicted with them, by chang- that the Harrisburg 7 were scornful of as Novak chides them with, politics ing their presumed idealism and witness ordinary citizens, contemptuous of the could be the realm of salvation...

...Occait for that kind of fulfilment...

...he served three of these Bourbon fer of the Vienna Embassy, where his monarchs, though Charles X detested old friend Metternich would have been Tallegrand: The Art of him...

...lision of radical Catholics and the F.B.I...

...He refused the later ofthe Harrisburg company...

...But for so long much that I found unactendency toward a Jewish understand- the other half of him dissents from ceptable when it came to war...

...century...

...It lacked ops, were preaching the inevitability, I have not been able to come to terms organization, accountability, responsi- even the virtues, of war, the imminence with his thought...

...The strange composition of the time that now seems from another cenas in Eliot's vision, it is still accurate committee suggests that the three mu- tury, even another country, American to say, as the poet did, that "the True seum men are there chiefly because Catholics interested in art and specifiChurch remains below,/Wrapt in the they are friends or institutional cus- cally in religious art or Christian art old miasmal mist...

...Novak thinks not, but instead finds them in their idealism impatient, silly, impractical, or immoral...

...lesser education but no less intelligence when the idealist puts his freedom at Other essays in the volume are of and good faith...

...nothing less than a scandal that Maunot still flourish among museum trustees The three members are distinguished rice Lavanoux, for one, was never conand directors, they have at least taken art historians and museum people, but sulted, never even rung up on the teleon the enormous and institutionally they are not distinguished in the least phone...

...A struggle between the stake and when the end in view is oppoequal interest...

...as gifts to "study collections" in uni- ship of 19th century American paint- At best, such a failure even to check versities...

...Agreed that "politics Recent attacks on Thomas Jefferson's to waste France's treasure in needless is far from being able to fulfill the ca- morals or Richard Nixon's probity are wars of ambition, disruptive of compacities of the human soul...

...All ideas deserve to be nam war strikes him as quixotic in the it was morally and politically deficient...

...Perhaps (most chael Novak's long essay because, de- the society of actuality coincide with likely) they were not, as Novak says, spite all the time I have spent with it, the society of dreams...

...bassador to London where, in spite of spilled by the king's order on the altar He survived the Revolution, the Reign distractions and infirmity, he succeeded at Canterbury, as More had failed after of Terror, the Directory, the Consu- in laying the foundations for the longhis almost solitary defiance of Henry...

...repelled by their acts of imagination...

...of his eighty-four years, under many 1795...

...And so essentially, sion on the part of ordinary citizens of ical penetration" it may be, especially dissenters...

...Like most of us, Novak confesses Most of the Harrisburg 7 were Catho. . . the rediscovery of the seeds of to feeling half-attracted by what the lic, a church which had "symbolized" Catholicism:" of Exodus, Passover, a Berrigans and their associates did...

...The licit invasions of the...

...It lacked political penetration corner the full meaning of our lives can innocence" disturbs him, their re- and point...

...have been quietly vanishing from the Whitney Museum, and E. P. Richard- Spaeth of New York and Mrs...

...In the end, they are ro- concludes that therefore they are They (he is here talking of the brothers) mantics, Don Quixotes speaking not to "doomed to frustration," I find myself were, to him, "men too soon appalled," the Panchos of the world but to each wondering, with them and even with moved by a certain "preachiness" which other: "It (Catonsville) was the ex- Thomas a Becket and Sir Thomas is closer to moral Protestantism than pression of a personal quest...

...Like Novak I am despair at governmental indifference most is the class bias of their thinking: torn (but on the other side) by a perto their views...

...tomers of Fleischman and Kennedy, without exception took it for granted Without a thoroughly professional which has always been the leading that their Church was not in the least Acquisitions Committee at the helm, New York dealer in Western art...

...Their "all-too-Ameri- clerical...

...His greatest exploit, The external facts of Talleyrand's the one for which he is remembered life are not in dispute...

...it went back to the toes his country estate at Valengay...

...Ellsberg break-in do at Catonsville was as provocative as pragmatist in him is warmed but still and Watergate, the bugging and tailing US policy was provocative in Vietnam...

...The, great error of the "(Dan Berrigan embodies) a vision of sonal idiosyncratic preference for idealtrial as Brown sees it was "the persis- good and evil proper to the upper ism, no matter what its basis, no mattent attempt to use the judicial process classes and their children versus a vi- ter how hopeless or how without "politto destroy dissent...

...major concerns) and then proceeded saving concerns...

...He quotes to trial, the events of those days in 1972 Sheldon Smith's comment that it was Conspiracy is an in-depth study by a seem almost comic...

...realism being beaten down and discarded as ness...

...Alas, vate gossip about him, friendly or Putnam's, $12.95 he was compelled to let the King of inimical...

...Only this spring their lives to the cause of bringing into contemporary gallery in the Vatican was such a committee appointed and being some sort of intelligent relation- gives them no reason to change their when it was its composition was odd, ship between religion and art...

...Talleyrand has been much written Consul made himself Emperor (this 600 pages...

...expressed and reacted to, both for the light of all the oppressive wars and Novak's cool, historical, analytic, ethnic positive purpose of creating and refining institutions which have acted against and yet at the same time cosmic ("one new modes of expression and action, mankind throughout history...

...not political in nature, it A revised edition, edited by Thomas appearance, within a few months of P. McDonnell, of the most comprewas more like an infatuation...

...Lloyd Goodrich, long of the work...

...The from "personal need," out of epiphanic indeed scornful, of "the slow, lumberHarrisburg 7 experience-after the il- awareness of evil...

...BOOKS HARRISBURG: A SUMMING UP DORIS GRUMBACH Conspiracy shock of contrast...

...just, equal, human, fruitful-except by well as the classrooms, the podiums, But I have put off dealing with Mi- some relative standard...

...For too many it was repel- does reside, whether it is impossible .to 6 September 1974: 484 omit politics from some of the ultimate the vilifications have been spectacular...

...museum has indeed taken wing, as- Fort Worth is, like his museum, known At worst, it was insulting...

...or appreciation of contemporary Amer- of Catholics who have engaged in that For a couple of decades now, pictures ican art...

...What they chose to ing ways of democratic politics...

...morality of obedience to Caesar...

...Novak is a serious bility for power...

...understand it...

...cending from the damp savannahs to for his expertise in Western American In the old days recalled above, a be washed clean in the blood of lamb, art...

...Arthur I. Waskow's piece Berrigans and their class versus other sition to genocide, political suicide, imregards the Catonsville act as "the col- classes in America...

...In 1830, when he was seventyThey too may have failed, as it seemed changes of flag...

...The non-Catholic community if not of the ert Coles' summary of common-man War was not a unique occurrence...

...An Image Book, $2.95 about, occasionally in praise, but from Talleyrand approved, as contributing the days of his enemy Chateaubriand, to financial stability, always one of his .IDOUBLEDAY Commonweal: 485...

...system...

...of private and public persons-seems it was as well an act of self-purification Summary is not enough...

...Nowhere is the social order etrating the factories and the pews as readable contributions...

...diplomat comes from the most famous The conviction of caste, of his own of the living, Henry Kissinger, in his patriotism, were so strong in him that A THOMAS 1958 book about the Congress of he was indifferent to which particular MERTON Vienna, A World Restored...

...to Russians and Prussians if possible, This balanced appraisal of a dead but first to be maintained at home...

...After Vienna he ister, Daniel Berrigan, Eqbal Ahmad, wrote of him...

...late, the Empire of Napoleon the First, standing Anglo-French entente...

...It is minds...

...So I was ing of the world, and the addition of a their act, resents the biases of "The grateful for their idealistic and symbolic new element that is purely Christian, Movement" and feels, therefore, that act as an antidote, in the eyes of the the tradition of martyrdom...

...In the face of the Kissinger," which he calls "a trial balJOHN C. RAINES, ed...

...Franiconoclastic view of the Berrigans, et al, What was worse, he claims, ordinary cine Gray said: "I hold the Catholic deserves serious consideration...

...As a young man, he six, Louis-Philippe sent him as AmBecket had failed after his blood was attended the coronation of Louis XVI...

...working-class Catholics, to Cardinal thought on the subject, and the percep- "There is hereditary injustice written Spellman...

...Birth, ordinaKnopf, $12.95 today, was to salvage at the Congress tion, offices, death: these are of public of Vienna for a France laid in ruins record, and, in the most garrulous of Tallegrand: A Biography by Napoleon's follies a measure of ages, Memoires de . . . abound in priJ. F. BERNARD dignity and workable boundaries...

...in 1873 and for the next half to three- the United States who have devoted Th establishment of the American quarters of a century...

...JEAN ORIEUX of Charlemagne...

...ering trust...

...What seems to bother Novak clearly, take sides...

...extraordinary, felonious Watergate tales loon" leading to a trial which never and all the activities of the Adminis- justified its promise as "the political Harper & Row, $6.95 tration which brought the Harrisburg 7 encounter of the...

...It was It may well be too soon to tell about the Restoration in its several phases his last post...

...I doubt pale and polite compared to what merce, a deadly throwaway of very that Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAl- Talleyrand's contemporaries said and young men's lives...

...basement...

...notes that in his view, the facts of the volume point out, it was not the Well edited by John Raines, who sees Watergate have not reduced Harris- relatively foolish, naive letters on which the trial as an understandable striking burg: "Watergate italicizes the impor- a substantial part of the case was built back during the Vietnam war by "a tance of Harrisburg, while pointing out but that the conspiracy charge was, and White House which felt itself assaulted the trivial, even comic elements: the still is, a means of stopping free assemby its moral critics," this book offers, 'impractical and implausible' notion of bly and free expression of opinion...

...continued to serve, sometimes as MinNeil McLaughlin, Anthony Scoblick, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand- ister of Foreign Affairs, sometimes as and Joseph Wenderoth were looking to Perigord decided early that his mis- mastermind of an opposition...

...He acted day put out to nurse...

...burg Trial for the democratic tradi- Robert McAfee Brown's introduction Nonetheless, as Brown and others in tion," its somewhat ponderous subtitle...

...that some parallel between the turbu- One exception seems to have been READER lent times that led to the Congress, and the attraction he felt for the young our own time, accounts for the recent Bonaparte...

...His pedigree was as old as any glad to welcome him, and retired to Survival of his masters...