Washington Report: Hell on Wheels

...No sooner had the faithful demonstrated anew the depths of their faith, the lengths to which their devotion could carry them, than it was revealed that the Magisterium itself, at Detroit, had been playing fast and loose with that simple faith...

...For a while the lay preacher came on strong...

...When he first explained that to me, I thought the switch pretty ingenious, but I admired even more the grocer's direct solution: obviously, you could tag the switchers for shoplifting, but why bother...

...And not merely the Magisterium, but the apex of the Trinity itself, General Motors...

...that Spain was considering the establishment of freedom of religion...

...In the first farcical repetition, this goes back to the immediate past and Gerald Ford's (!) plan to stop the FBI from committing burglary by declaring that when the FBI burglarized an American home, it wouldn't be burglary but something else, protective entry, no doubt, like an awning over the doorway...

...and that the last two Popes have spoken of the Declaration of the Rights of Man as a conquest for humanity...

...Perhaps the weakness in the Carter administration is best understood in two recent symbolic gestures the President failed to make: he didn't show up at the reunion of 1000 New Dealers celebrating the 44th anniversary of FDR's inauguration, or at the national conference of mayors...

...Just as he promised, Carter pardoned draft evaders----in a plan that fell short of the total amnesty required but went beyond the earn-your-way-back policies of his predecessor...

...This is the accusation that the French archbishop Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre, suspended a divinis a year ago, has leveled time and again against Pope John XXIII, Paul VI and the others involved in the "well-organized plot of Vatican II...

...Cars is the answer, as it has been since circa 1933 when Chrysler introduced the Airflow and transportation was transmuted into status...

...If the engines are the same, they'll all do as well---or as poorly, as the case may be...

...We'd like to have some sort of recognized status in society and it's hard to do...

...Excluded as a privileged class from the Vatican in 1964 when Paul VI dissolved the Papal noble guard, the Roman nobility--once called the "black nobility" because of their support of the Pope against the monarchy and now because of their open sympathies for the neo-Fascists--also dream of turning back the clock, back to the time of the ancien rdgime, back to the traditions of the Action Franqaise...

...Truth to tell, of course, the Trinity itself had already taken a serious whack at its own hierarchical order of motor cars...

...he does this, he explains, because if the butter isn't locked up, some of the customers furtively switch contents and check out butter in a margarine box...

...Like the other corners of that triangle, GM for some years now has been recalling cars they have sold that turn out to be a menace to life and limb on the highway...

...After GM pulled itself together following the dread discovery, the grand old supercop announced that in the future all General Motors cars would have the basic GM engine, heretofore known as the Chevy, and that would be that...

...Unless you really understand engines, you ain't got a chance...

...Lock it up...

...This time, however, he dared to repeat it in the shadow of St...

...Lefebvre, however, also has a political attraction...

...WASHI]NGTOH REPORT HELL ON WHEELS If this country is the car culture everybody always says it is, we're in trouble...

...There are still many Jimmy Carters...

...Invited by the Princess Elvina PaUavicini, Lefebvre spoke June 6 in Rome in the palace of the princess in via XXIV Maggio under the same canopy where Pope Clement IX, a relative of the PaUavicini family from the Rospigliosi branch, had spoken over 300 years before...

...He attacked the Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Cardinal Colombo, for saying that a state should not propagate any particular ideology and attacked the Pope for receiving Communist leaders in the Vatican and adhering to the Helsinki conference which, according to the French bishop, is a capitulation and a pact with the enemy...

...If Americans are called upon to double their contribution to the oil cartel in order to continue their automobile worship, that is small enough sacrifice...

...That was merely an outside threat, like the Moors at Toursmmany of the same people, in fact --the sort of thing that rallies a culture, unifies it, not fragments it...

...The appearance of Lefebvre in the salon of the Rospigliosi Palace, only a few yards away from the Quirinale (the Italian Presidential Palace) in the heart of the Eternal City, has both religious and political repercussions...

...Furthermore, a great part of the General Motors program for Americans has been to discourage them from learning anything about engines or the rest of cars by making them as difficult as possible to fix or even adjust without going back to the General Motors franchised agent in the area...

...What has happened, praise Detroit, is that the small car has been taken up into the Pantheon alongside the more traditional large car, or, in liturgical language, Gas Guzzler, augmenting, increasing, the deposit of faith, not eroding it a bit...

...In appointments, personal style and foreign affairs, where the President has the greatest freedom of movement, Carter seems to have had some immediate success...

...Lefebvre's speech, uttered in the Holy City itself, was certainly an open challenge to the Pope's authority...

...The Americans, in the fullness of their faith, have not taken 8 July 1977:420 the smallies as substitutes for the biggies, but as additions to the biggies, rather in the way Fh'st Friday Devotions were never accepted as a substitute for Mass in the Old Religion, only as an augmentation...

...That was a blow to some of the faithful, though doubtless an improvement on the former system of simply letting the lemons roll, killing and maiming whom they happened to...

...But the latest revelation went far beyond that in its threat to the established faith...

...For the Roman aristocracy who accepted the invitation of the Princess Pallavicini despite the condemnation of the initiative by the vicar of Rome, Ugo Cardinal Poletti, Lefebvre offers an ideological banner under which they can gather...

...It is not legitimate," he said, "to obey those who are working to diminish the faith or to make it disappear...

...The grocer's advantage, of course, is that he's the seller and controls the commodities...

...It was enough to make you stop smoking...

...Take the matter of small ears...

...He deplored the fact that the Church was no longer defined as an infallible, hierarchical, perfect society, but rather linked to such words as communion, people and assembly...

...He is withdrawing our troops from Korea and has reprimanded two swordrattling generals...

...Small car, small belief, it was thought, not without a certain elementary logic...

...But besides Voodoo, the car cult and General Motors especially have performed a kind of Grand Inquisitor function in our democratic society...

...We Americans all feel ennobled by our national abjuration of nobility, but still, there it is, we'd like to be nobles ourselves, within, of course, the framework of democracy...

...The Constitution actually forbids the acceptance and display of such signs as are handed out by foreign governments, and it is a basic part of the American myth that all white men are created equal, with women and blacks coming up fast on the outside...

...Besides the obvious profit for both agent and principal in these repeated transactions, both the mystery of the ear and the cost and inconvenience of the visits serve to strengthen the faith of the car cultist in the cult: Obviously, anything I keep paying so much cash out of pocket for and suffer such endless and repeated expenditures of time and exasperation for, has to be of close to paramount importance in my life...

...Doubled, in fact...

...The whole thing more than somewhat resembles Voodoo and I for one would not be surprised to learn that the president and chairman of GM do the duo dance number from time to time with the strangled chicken and the wax doll of Joe Carbuyer...

...This has nothing to do with the Arab challenge...

...ChevyPontiac-Olds-Buick-LaSalle-Cadillac meant something not far removed from sexton-deacon-priest-bishop-archbishop in form, but what can one make of Baracuda-Cutlass-Torpedo-Pikestaff-Wildcat-Sabre-Epee-Grenade beyond a general inclination toward carnage...

...He has correctly issued a challenge (later diminished to a modest pep talk) calling for a moral war to confront the energy shortage...

...Who led us to believe he would value the human pain over the B-1...

...If the height of fashion is to look like Huck Finn, what's a chap to do if he wants to show his rank as at least a little bit above that of the rank and file...

...But that lift from that Ford in our past also harked back to and reversed an ancient GM doctrine: now, at last, what was good enough for the country was good enough for General Motors...

...General Motors, we suddenly learned, has been installing the engines of its cheapest brand, Chevrolet, in the bodies of its more expensive ones, in ascending order Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick...

...And we prefer the American President Carter described in his acceptance speech, the one who governs with "vigor and vision and aggressive leadership," who shares our "pain and dreams...

...I live in a neighborhood where you have to ask for butter in the grocery store and the grocer opens the padlock on the f_ridge and hands you a pound...

...If you set out to buy, say, an Olds or a Pontiac, how do you lock up the engine you've read about in the ads or had extolled to you by the salesman to prevent General Motors from filching it and unloading another low-price whiz-bang on you...

...And, anything we associate with daily and intimately and for prolonged periods which yet defies understanding automatically engenders a little awe...

...But on domestic issues, particularly those which demand visionary political leadership and bold federal initiatives to confront human economic problems too complex and deep-rooted for state and local governments, the Carter record falls short of the "compassion" he projected during the campaign...

...Anyway, the old dialectical Laugh-In sequel turned up here, too...

...Peter's itself...

...He seems determined to reduce nuclear proliferation and he has steadfastly insisted, in face of much opposition, that he is committed to radical arms reduction---although if he makes what he has described as a "personal" and "lonely" decision to go ahead with the l O0-million-doliar B-1 bomber, which he referred to during the campaign as "exotic," he will sacrifice a great deal of credibility on this issue...

...Well, that elementary logic has turned out to be totally mistaken...

...It got harder with the mass production of reasonably well-made clothes, impossible with the recent eruption of grunginess as style...

...If our simple faith resides in a cam-overhead, piston-bearing, 400 HP glide-ride, this country is having a crisis of faith and will very likely crack from it...

...I can't seem to pin it down...

...What we're seeing most frequently now is the businessman, the planner, the engineer--with unsettling glimpses of the old naval ofricer riddling with the dials of his nuclear sub...

...These are principles that do not belong to the Catholic tradition, Lefebvre insisted, but to liberalism which aims at destroying the true religion and morality...

...It is disturbing to see reports of a welfare "reform" that threatens to penalize extended families living together, that might force recipients onto the labor market at sub-standard wages, that wouldn't help anyone till 1981 and that can't cost more than the present system...

...It is as if the nation were his submarine and the control panel was a collection of programs labeled Government Reorganization, Zero-Based Budgeting, Tax Rebate, etc...

...There was a time--only a moment, really, seen in the perspective of the Long Ride--when the coming of the small car was seen as a weakening of the faith...

...We like the old, less engineerish, ship-of-state metaphor (a favorite of FDR's) better--where the captain, guided by the science of navigation and his own vision, sets the course and inspires the crew...

...With the new skipper dickering with the instruments trying to get his vessel to surface...

...8 July 1977:422...

...Was it Hegel or Engels who said, History always repeats itself, but as farce...

...For reasons not yet made clear, the Cadillac apparently was not included in the engine switch, possibly because even the Wizard of Oz believes there must be something inside the colored steam...

...It can be maintained, I would maintain myself, that these added sacrifices have served merely to strengthen the bond that ties the American people to the principal articles of their faith, the cars coming from Motor City...

...For the Catholic integralists, Lefebvre represents the last attempt to turn back the clock to the time of the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent, a last-minute attempt to revive the traditions of the Sapini~re, a clandestine organization working against Church reform that was condemned by the Pope at the beginning of this century...

...Addressing a crowd of 2000, including many of Rome's noblemen and noblewomen, Lefebvre warned of the dangers of the ecumenical movement, of religious liberty and of Communism...

...The engine switch, of course, wrapped it up...

...Thus the new Moors at Tours have produced a new Charles MarteI, en masse, who has defeated them as in the olden times...

...GM always prided itself on competing with itself rather than with Chrysler and Ford, the goal being to upgrade a Chevybuyer to Pontiac, or convince a Buick owner that an Commonweal: 421 Olds would do as well...

...Cigarettes did the same thing when they stopped being Camels-Chesterfields-Luckies and became all those other t h i n g s, Crabgrass-Charleston-Chickory-BirminghamWhatever...

...He in effect invited his followers to disobey the Pope who was putting into practice the principles of Vatican II...

...Affirming that Communism was the "most dreadful danger of our time," Lefebvre insisted that the present Pope was persecuting anti-Communist Catholics and "encouraged and nominated bishops that were favorable to Communism," citing such names as Helder Camara of Brazil, Mendez Arceo of Mexico, William Wakefield Baum of the United States, Silva Enriquez of Chile as well as Franqois Marty of France (who, Lefebvre claims, sang the Internationale with the secretary general of the French Communist Party Georges Marchais) and Johannes Willebrands of Holland...

...The changes introduced by the Council," Lefebvre concluded, "are contrary to the tradition and the teachings of the Church...

...PETER'S ARCHBISHOP LEFEB VRE'S RELIGION "They have changed our religion...

...Small car sales are up-as they could hardly not be if there were any at all-but large ear sales are up, appropriately, largely...

...With a few exceptions he has appointed a better qualified batch of ambassadors than we have seen in some time...

...but the problems of welfare, national health policy, unemployment, public transportation, housing, and rotting cities---the concerns of the old FDR constituency that elected Carter--are equally pressing and in some ways more critical in terms of immediate human cost...

...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 IN THE SHADOW OF ST...

...But while these outside threats have been repulsed or contained, even amalgamated, the inner crisis has appeared not, as in the old faith, some seven centuries later, but within a matter of months after the triumph...

...GM more than Chrysler and Ford has taken upon itself the burden of providing Americans with the outward and visible signs of rank and status in a society theoretically dedicated to the abnegation, even the abolition, of such signs...

...In fact his administration seems to show more than enough compassion for the very constituency that did its best to defeat him, the big business community and the conservative middle class of the infamous Caddell memorandum who are to be seduced by Carter's "packaging" and "style...

...The cartel, after all, along with the highway trust, constitutes an auxiliary hierarchy closely associated with the central Magisterium in Detroit...