EDITORIAL
CORRESPONDNew Orleans, La. To the Editors: I hope not to be tarred as reactionary if I express mild shock at David P. Chandler's bland "Transformation in Cambodia" [Apr. 1]. Too bad Mr....
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...While ultimate authority in matters of faith rests in Rome, the Detroit-Chicago issues, in spite of their dogmatic dimension, were primarily matters of discipline...
...We understand that the bishops are not professional theologians, but we suggest that it is not the dogmatic problems involved that keep some of Detroit's goals from being realized but rather the absence of a welldeveloped American theology shared by the bishops and us their people...
...Meanwhile the gesture of removing the penalty of excommunication from divorced Catholics in unauthorized second marriages is so small a gesture we almost wish it had not been made: it may give the appearance of progress when no real progress has been, made...
...We had heard all that before...
...There was no real surprises, the closest being Nixon's change of his motive from national security-the Russians were coming, the Russians were coming-to political containment-- the Democrats were coming, the Democrats were coming...
...worse: in the name of socialism...
...The sad paradox of Detroit may be that the participants may have expected that on the controverted issues there was an American theology in the making that would lead the bishops to speak up to Rome Commonweal: 323 rather than just comply...
...SCHROTN: Auoclato Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSON, Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBIECK, JR.: Movlos JOHN FANDEL: Poetry FRANK GIPTLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER| Great Erltalo ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DISMOND FISHER: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publlshor Sto~: LINDA P. KAYUER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETT| BALSKY COMMONWEAL 2~ MAOISO44 AVE., NEW YORK: N.Y...
...and we would h~ve liked a more vigorous Roman-American dialogue about them...
...Louis, whose theological attitudes can be partly gauged by his opposition to Communion in the hand on the grounds that this would allow devil worshippers to steal the Eucharist for their "black masses...
...Certainly no one expected that the American bishops would vote to allow priests to marry or to ordain women immediately...
...In one sense the Church has become very American in that its members share the dominant American .values--competitiveness, equality, patriotism and the thirst for economic prosperity...
...The one thing I did not expect was to learn something, but I did...
...Nixon ac27 Moy 1977:324...
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...We acknowledge that a good argument can be made that culturally the popular demand for these changes is not yet ripe...
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...Nixon was innocent, guilty only of humanitarianism if of anything, of too heartfelt a concern for the people who worked for him and that's what did him in...
...REPLY: The price I pay for seeking an historical perspective, I suppose, is to be found "bland" and "disappointing," In trying to explain rather than to judge the new regime, moreover, I concealed my personal feelings, which are embedded in the last paragraph of the piece...
...but its appointed hierarchial leadership--listen as they might to the grass roots and concerned as they are on social justice issues--have their theological ears cocked most sensitively to Rome...
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...But the social action emphasis of "Call to Action" was preserved and the bishops backed Newark Archbishop Peter L. Gerety's final move to establish a stronger new ad hoc committee, over the old Advisory Council, to push ahead with the five-year "plan of action...
...Chandler hadn't read Franfois Ponchaud's carefully researched book, Cambodge, annde zdro, reviewed in the March 31 issue of The New York Review o ! Books (hardly a reactionary journal), or at least Jean Lacouture's account titled "The Bloodiest Revolution...
...In this sense, at the Chicago meeting the bishops collectively approached the issues with dogmatic implications--priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, birth control and the second marriages of divorced Catholics---with their hands tied...
...And on some matters the bishops not only stuck to tradition but rejected amendments that would have softened the document's negative impact and held out hope for future change...
...But there are ample theological resources that would have enabled them to take a more realistic and open position on birth control...
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...In fact, that would inevitably 'be part of .the "Call to Action" problem, the 200-year old American Catholic difficulty in knowing to what degree the community's values, theology and discipline could have roots in American culture...
...The 182 Detroit proposals emerged after the widest consultation in the history of the American Church...
...I wonder, all the same, if what has (Continued on page 3;$1) NEWS ~ VII~WS: 822 CORRESPONDENCE: 823 EDITORIAL: 828 P/ASHINGTON REPORT: NL~on Without D i e t r i c h : Frank Getlein 324 DEATB COMES FOR A CARDINAL: John Cooney 326 CONFESSIONS OF A NON-ADDle: Peter Steinfels 328 WITII HUMANITY AS PAWNS: Douglas Mattern 329 DILACK CALTBOLICS: Christopher Vecsey 3B2 PRESS: J . F . K ~ - - R . I . P . : Thomas Powers BaT MEDIA: The L a s t S y l l a b l e o f Recorded Time: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...WASHINGTON REPORT I I NIXON WITHOUT DIETRICH I expected to be fascinated, revolted and disgusted by Nixon's performance on that chapter of the Dick and Dave Show dealing with Watergate...
...Ponchaud has kept up on documentation and broadcasts sent out by the new masters of Cambodia themselves and points out their boast "of having eliminated, in a single year, one quarter of their own population...
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...According to Lacouture, they "have invented something original, auto-genocide...
...He was Emil Jannings in the last scene of Blue Angel, when, having thrown away everything in pursuit of Marlene Dietrich's Lola-Lola, he is reduced to performing in her cabaret troupe, imitating a cackling hen as the vindictive master-of-ceremonies breaks an egg over his head and, up the stairs, Lola-Lola cuckolds him one more time with one more suitor...
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...As the old stager twisted and turned in his familiar role, it suddenly occurred to me who he was...
...These unfortunate people are still not officially free to receive the Eucharist either on the tongue or in the hand...
...The Jannings character, of course, accepted this ultimate humiliation for love of Lola-Lola...
...I, 1924, to date available through University Mlcre~lms...
...He included Cardinal John Krol ~f Philadelphia and the almost humorously reactionary Cardinal John Carberry of St...
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...Tragically, the effort of Cardinal John Dearden to lobby for a more progressive document was cut short by his heart attack right before the Chicago meeting...
...To characterize the Detroit Conference, as some critics have done, as a radical putsch was to miss the point that the Detroit process, in tune with the historical occasion that inspired it, was no more radical than democracy itself...
...One early sign that no major changes would come out of Chicago was the decision by NCCB President Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin to appoint a dominantly conservative eight-bishop task force to draft the "preliminary response" to the Detroit proposals...
...Indeed, it is fair to say that if many of them had shown a lively tendency to think independently about Roman authority early in their priestly careers they would hardly have been made bishops...
...In their minds there was already an "authoritative" position to which they were committed, because of their understanding of what it means to be "loyal" to the Holy ,See...
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...0 @ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 DETROIT, CHICAGO AND ROME If last October's "Call to Action" Conference in Detroit the conclusion of an almost three-year process of grass-roots meetings, public hearings, social research and theological exploration in which American Catholics celebrated their Bicentennial with a renewed call for liberty and justice,--was the full-flowering of the "democratic" American Church, this month's response of the American bishops in Chicago to the "Call" shows how much the American Church is still the Church of Rome...
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...Lacouture concludes that Ponchaud's "book can be read only with shame by those of us who supported the Khmer Rouge cause . . . . For may not the most sinister crimes of all be those that betray the principles of socialism and assassinate human hope itself...
...What made Chandler's article so disappointing is his almost total failure even to suggest the horrors that are besetting Cambodia...
...In this light we could characterize the Chicago meeting as a social justice success but a theological disappointment...
...I assumed that the old dim-dam man would continue on course and by and large he did, giving nothing away, yielding nothing, always ready with a se[f-serving misinterpretation of whatever facts Frost brought up, whatever quotations from the White House tapes, whatever readings of the law of the land...
...But what I did learn ,from that first and undoubtedly best broadcast, from a show biz point of view, was something new about the classic movie, The Blue Angel...
...After Auschwitz and the Gulag, we might have thought this century had produced the ultimate in horror, but we are now seeing the suicide of a people in the name of revolution...
Vol. 104 • May 1977 • No. 11
