WASHINGTON REPORT: Nixon Without Dietrich

...These unfortunate people are still not officially free to receive the Eucharist either on the tongue or in the hand...

...Still, who was Lola-Lola...

...At least it did me, and I suppose I've seen the picture half a dozen times...

...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...

...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...

...Everybody laughed and said, Student Prince...

...After several key speakers--including members of the Canadian hierarchymin support of the ordination of women had pitched in for change, Cardinal Conway delivered what was to be the decisive speech when he warned that the admission of married clergy would change the whole structure of the Church: he saw-as did the majority of his colleagues--that a married clergy was the thin-end of the wedge that would end the system of celibate male dominance...

...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...

...That haunting facial structure and the business with the eyes, used deliberately for the ruin of men, or the reduction of them to conveniences for Lola-Lola, have their exact farcical equivalent in Nixon as political buffoon...

...He included Cardinal John Krol ~f Philadelphia and the almost humorously reactionary Cardinal John Carberry of St...

...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...

...In his objective of controlling the pace of change, Cardinal Conway emerged as an archetypal prelate: after Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae encyclical in 1967 on birth control it became clear that the occupant of the Petrine See was endeavoring to contain as much as possible of the new tendencies emanating from the Council...

...Then think of the bridge in the Dietrich song, "Men flutter to me like moths round a flame, And if I break their hearts, I know I'm not to blame...

...The role of sex in Watergate was that there wasn't any...

...As Julie Eisenhower would have been proud to say, if she'd thought of it, at least no one shacked up in the Nixon White House...

...Like other heads of national hierarchies the Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh was sensitive to the mood of the Vatican, and was an influential figure in the movement to counteract the more dynamic features of the Council by adopting a watered-down but official view of the nature of the Council teaching...

...He is the Professor betrayed and the singer betraying...

...Yet, this virtue was the key to the man's weakness...

...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 IRISH PRDL~'I~ DEH TH COllIES FOR H CHRDINH It was the misfortune of Cardinal William Conway to preside over the Irish Catholic Church at one of its most transitional and turbulent periods in history...

...We acknowledge that a good argument can be made that culturally the popular demand for these changes is not yet ripe...

...The cultural scene in Ireland had changed so radically that new responses from the Church were required...

...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...

...But if you accept the parallel, and I think it's valid, you immediately are reminded of something about Janning's Professor that may have escape you at the time...

...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...

...The combination was irresistible and there he was, cocka-doodling away while Frost broke th~ eggs and the computers whirred, softly counting the take...

...He is neither a scholar nor a teacher...

...In class and at home be is a martinet, enforcing an exaggerated discipline...

...Nixon was Lola-Lola...

...But this, of course, is also the secret of the Nixon presidency as it was of Nixon as member of Congress and Vice President...

...The anti-Communism which seemed to provide the one consistent policy strand in his career finally proved of such little consequence that he could drop it casually for the sake of the frisson, the spectacular feat of legerdemain of the China Trip...

...Even Gerald Ford, one likes to think, might have gpne quietly into decent retirement from the House full of years and modest honors had he not been tapped to play an essential role in the farce, the Pardoner...

...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...

...In remaining loyal to the tradition into which he was born, Cardinal Conway was no different from most mif not all--leaders of the Irish Catholic colonial world...

...One aspect of the Watergate tapes that has attracted too little attention is that all these felonious giants in the land spent so much time sitting around the Oval Office worrying about Watergate, speculating on their chances of squeaking through, wondering how to corrupt the law or assault the Constitution...

...The Jannings character, of course, accepted this ultimate humiliation for love of Lola-Lola...

...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...

...confessionalism in the Republic...

...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...

...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...

...Yet his attachment to the traditional system of church governance and to its devotional values, particularly the Rosary...

...This and this alone constitutes his professorship...

...We are shown no single instance of Jannings either pursuing learning for its own sake or showing joy or even competence at teaching the young men in his class...

...was a source of comfort to more hard-pressed administrators of the Church in Boston, in Glasgow, in Melbourne...

...Money itself, we have said above, is part of it as is, surely, the authentic show biz drive for the spotlight in whatever costume, cut ring whatever capers...

...In show biz terms, Dick and Dave have taken their eleven-o'clock-number and used it as the curtain raiser...

...In our restaging of Von Sternberg's tragedy as political farce, Nixon plays both the leading roles...

...In Northern Ireland he refused to accept that the Churches as institutions in society had contributed to the terrible social malaise that erupted in the violence which still persists there today...

...He was essentially of the devotional era of Catholicism, and although he adapted more easily than many prelates to the new order of Vatican 1I, he failed to absorb the spirit of the post-Vatican II age...

...But there are ample theological resources that would have enabled them to take a more realistic and open position on birth control...

...It got people into the theater, all right, but the house is going to seem mighty bleak about eleven o'clock...

...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...

...None of that: just as Jannings never worried about the problems of scholarship or whether the students really grasped what he was lecturing them about...

...No matter what happens Commonweal: 325 to his friends and associates, his country, the Constitution, the Southeast Asians, government by law, whatever, he knows he's not to blame...

...Like Jannings as scholar, Nixon never really stood for anything at all in American politics...

...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...

...WeN, no, but it is the pure, authentic Nixon strain...

...Passing infatuation was as far as she was willing---or able?--to go in transferring her concern from herself to someone else...

...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...

...Who is the person or what the power for which Nixon lost the world and ended up playing Quasimode for money...

...He could not properly understand the importance for the Church to accept a pluralistic society so that he remained intransigent against the legalization of contraceptives, divorce and was utterly opposed to the integration of schools...

...The one thing I did not expect was to learn something, but I did...

...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...

...He was more open-minded than contemporaries of the Irish tradition such as Cardinal Heenan in England, Cardinal Gray in Scotland or Cardinal Spellman in the United States...

...Yet, one of the most perceptive Nixon scholars in Washington, David Bratton, firmly believes, with no evidence at all, that Nixon over the years has had a series of affairs: "Why," Brattou asks with iron logic, "should Pat be the only person close to Nixon never betrayed by Nixon...

...I remember being in Rome as the correspondent of the Glasgow Herald in 1971 when there were still hopes that the liberal wing of bishops and theologians could get acceptance of married priests...

...His many undoubted abilities suited him for the traditional style of church leadershp that was fast becoming outmoded...

...Dietrich's great song in The Blue Angel, translated as "Falling in Love Again," is ironic even in the movie, deeply so when given to Nixon as Professor Lola-Lola...

...In comparing Nixon to the Jannings Professor, Watergate to The Blue Angel and the Dick-and-Dave Show to that grotesque final scene of cuckold-doodle-do, we come inescapably to a serious critical problem...

...In this light we could characterize the Chicago meeting as a social justice success but a theological disappointment...

...The uniforms the delinquent duo wanted their household retainers to sport were those traditionally sported by German students of the sort tyrannized over by Emil Jannings...

...It's a hard question to a n s w e r . But it does answer the other question...

...While Ireland--until a few years ago--escaped much of the internal conflict that beset most national Churches, this was largely due to the slowness of the hierarchy to inform the people as to the nature of the new thinking aimed at ending centuries of intellectual stupor in Catholic circles...

...Given the unprecedented crisis in the priesthood with massive departures, particularly in the United States, and with the awarehess of the acute shortage of clergy in the developing world, the arguments for change appeared convincing...

...To ask the question is almost to answer it, but first a passing consideration on the role of sex in the whole scandal...

...Besides the whole crew of actual felons who have served or will serve time for their activities in behalf of Nixon, think of the others, not involved in felonious little plans, whose possibly productive careers in public service were truncated or blasted by association with Nixon...

...Above all, there was the opening provided by Rome in the form of Vatican II---an opening that led to a divided Church...

...Remember those ludicrous uniforms for the White House police run up by the notorious Spire Agnew, who was probably set for a kickback on the gold-braid concession...

...He professed nothing except a profound self-satisfaction with the respect he got with the job, the almost reverence given him by the German society...

...As President, he was like a poem in the old definition, his purpose not to mean but to be...

...Precisely...

...We had heard all that before...

...To many traditional-minded Catholics, these stances were strengths, not weaknesses...

...Who is Lola-Lola...

...As it is, poor Ford is following his creator's bad example, happily and lucratively exhibiting himself for pay...

...Atlhough he constantly spoke out against violence, he gradually lost credibility because his Church ap27 May 1977:326...

...Consequently, he could not appreciate the importance of giving up church privilege and of approving mixed marriages and integrated schooling...

...However, at a time when Catholics and Protestants were being shot on the basis of denominational identity in the North and when a more educated generation emerged in the Republic, it was insufficient to reiterate the old pietistic slogans as if they were immutable formulae...

...It sounds more like Nixon than Nixon himself...

...As the old stager twisted and turned in his familiar role, it suddenly occurred to me who he was...

...That's probably true and it's one of the things that was wrong with the administration...

...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...

...they never seem to have spent any time preoccupied with what most of us think of as the normal concerns of a President: the state of the union, threats and opportunities in the economy, problems in the fisheries and wild life department, whatever...

...and we would h~ve liked a more vigorous Roman-American dialogue about them...

...Certainly no one expected that the American bishops would vote to allow priests to marry or to ordain women immediately...

...He was unwilling to accept that the Churches were as guilty as the Unionists in living in a closed world...

...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...

...I don't think the upcoming installments will be as good as the opener, which indeed was originally scheduled as the closer...

...The dramatic beauty of the Dietrich character singing, "Here I go, falling in love again . . ." is that Lola-Lola was incapable of love...

...As soon as you hear the Bratton question, you know the answer to Who Was Lola-Lola...

...Like the old geezer down river in Huckleberry Finn, Nixon will paint himself blue and dance naked on all fours as long as you throw him a Shubert-pink follow-spot and something lively in the brass...

...In particular, he did not come to terms with two of the main challenges to the Irish Catholic Church: that of sectarianism in the North...

...Nixon ac27 Moy 1977:324 cepted his for love of himself and for love of money...

...This is simply that in fact the Professor was no professor at all...