News & Views
NEWS & VIEWS The Neutron Bomb The American Catholic press by and large has maintained a characteristic equanimity over news that the U.S. has developed a neutron bomb, that seeming...
...Their neighborhoods are being torn up...
...For support, The Tablet invokes Vatican II's Gaudium et spes: "Men should be convinced that the armaments race in which so many nations compete is no safe way to guarantee peace, nor is the balance resulting from it sure and genuine peace...
...This, recall, is the study that examined varieties of sexual behavior, including the most exotic, and offered tentative criteria for understanding and accepting them...
...theological community...
...While many mourn the death of the Republicans, Jimmy Carter has quietly called to them as Jesus called to Lazarus...
...secondly, it quickens the likelihood of nuclear war, since it will be a much greater temptation to use the weapon in a crisis exactly because of its limited effect and precision...
...The Tablet called on Father F. X. Murphy, the American theological writer Of a couple of existences, and he ranked the study "as an achievement . . . marking the arrival at maturity of the U.S...
...Baptizing' Republicans Well, the republic can rest easier tonight...
...Respect for living things has made him Republican, a party being born again in the bosom of its enemy...
...Bishops' Conference, that the hierarchy's theological commission would respond to the document, 'many of whose conclusions are not in accordance with the teaching of the Church,' seems premature if not absurd...
...The Tablet is terribly upset and finds it incomprehensible that the President who would save the world from the B-1 would give it the neutron bomb...
...The satirical scenario of the preceding paragraph comes in fact from its editorial columns...
...Preaching in St...
...Paul's, he declared: "Whatever from the worldly point of view may be true or false about statements in favor of the use of nuclear power for military purposesmwhether as tactical or strategic weapons, whether as so-called 'deterrents' or as instruments of actual warfare---surely as Christians we need to question every such statement from the point of that wisdom which, to quote from St...
...Odds and Ends --One of the large names of modern British Catholicism has asked to be relieved of some of his duties...
...Said Murphy: "In the evolving Christian view of sex, the relationship between the pleasure motive and the maturation achieved by self-control still needs clarification...
...Paul, to the Greek is foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling block...
...Bishop Butler, 75, will remain as an active Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, and continue his writing and lecturing...
...Bishop Basil Christopher Butler, the same who was Abbot of Downside, will step down as Area Bishop of Hertfordshire County...
...The Tablet sees the neutron bomb aggravating international relations in two ways: It escalates the arms race, since the Russians must move towards protective measures and imitation...
...His comments appear in Twin Circle--where e l s e ? - back-to-back, ironically, with a column of one of the midwives, if I might use the word, of the ethnicity phenomenon, Michael Novak...
...Thanks for nothing...
...Joseph's College in Indiana...
...Not so The Tablet, the international Catholic weekly published out of London...
...Novak also is concerned about religious Republicanism, but not quite in the same way as Shea...
...In view of all this, the alarmed reaction of several bishops and chancery officials, and the prompt assurance given by Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, as president of the U.S...
...The Republican party favors the individual and preserving neighborhood life," Shea declares...
...So does that between grace and the motivation and internal strength to practice the virtue of continence in the various stages of man's physical and psychic growth...
...I think it can best answer the problems that Catholics--and especially ethnic, Eastern European Catholicsmface today...
...The Republican National Committee has an Ethnic/Catholic Division, and its head is Father Donald Shea, on leave from St...
...Said The Tablet: '~l'he line between a tactical and a strategic exchange is very fine and the neutron bomb, in making the first more likely, points also to the second...
...His role will be "to point out the essential similarities between Ethnic/Catholic interests (his cap 'E') and Republican philosophy, and to help bring individuals from such interests into the mainstream of Republican party efforts at all levels of government...
...If it's led by crazies, then, says Novak, the "Republicrats of Jimmy Carter" may be running things for 40 years...
...Human S e x u a l i t y Going back to The Tablet, the controversial human sexuality study of the fivemember commission of the Catholic Theological Society of America received a much calmer and more urbane evaluation there than anywhere in the American press, except perhaps for Father Eugene Kennedy's piece in the Washington Post...
...JOHN DEEDY 2 September 1977:546...
...Paul's Cathedral in London, blasted the neutron bomb as "our old friend the arms race in a new guise...
...And how are we to square the use of threats, whether they be of strategic nuclear bombs or of tactical ones, with the injunction we Christians so frequently forget or reject: the injunction to love one another...
...What of Democrats...
...If there was a kindred sermon preached in this country, I didn't hear of it...
...It slowly aggravates the causes of war instead of doing away with them...
...Meanwhile, Canon L. John Collins, .the outspoken former Precentor of St...
...has developed a neutron bomb, that seeming answer to the moral theologian's prayer that "limits" the effects of a nuclear blast to a radius of about 1,000 yards and radiation effects to 24 hours, so that all the victor need do is remove the bodies, rebuild a few buildings, and "normal" life can continue...
...The stone has rolled away...
...Jimmy Carter has cut into the 40-year-old tree of the Democratic party and discovered rot...
...The garments lie athwart...
...Republicans are born again...
...Novak's conclusion: A new party of the left is now in prospect...
Vol. 104 • September 1977 • No. 18
