EDITORIAL
CORRESPONDENCE Speliman and Murray New York, N.Y. To the Editors: We are indebted to Donald E. Pelotte, S.S.S., for his John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict and to Philip Scharper...
...A code of ethics, after all, is something one believes in, or something the members of a given society subscribe to...
...I have no quibble with her citation of the Hart survey which, she points out, found large numbers of citizens not just failing to vote but "choosing not to vote...
...The ethics committees apparently believe that the great ethical problem for members of Congress is how much earned income they get on the side and more specifically how much lecturing they do to get it...
...Murray may have been an "isolate" figure in some sense but his wisdom and civility gave him a remarkable relationship with his country's ethos and with his Church...
...On the other hand, wealth gained by inheritance or by speculation is no problem and need not be dealt with by composers of Congressional Decalogues...
...To the Editors: Abigail McCarthy writes interestingly and with concern-which I, of course, share--about the problem of the non-v.oter in our democracy [Feb...
...needless to say, such interest as is produced is not returned to or credited to the taxpayer whose income derives from his labor...
...To be a valid religious experience it must move the viewer beyond the screen to the pages of the gospel where the real demands o f Christianity are made...
...Partly because the scope of his vision, self-understanding and conversation so exceeded that of his contemporaries he became the focal point of their varied and often contradictory fears and expectations...
...WASHIHGTOH REPORT ECCENTRICITIES OF ETHICS TlO l,: When you think of it, the very use of the word "ethics" to describe efforts to keep congressional self-aggrandizement within reasonable bounds, or at least to give such self-aggrandizement the appearance of being kept within such bounds, is funny all by itself...
...In dealing with Murray's conflict with Ottaviani and Fenton, the review mentions the lack of strong support that left Murray an "isolate" figure...
...I daresay any such poll at any time since universal suffrage would have turned up a significant percentage feeling this way, though perhaps it is higher now...
...TWO VIEWS---I: THE REVOLT AGAINST COLLEGE: Maurice R. Berube 233 TWO VIEIW~...-ll: TRE NEED TO KNOW: Robert Gorham Davis 236 THE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Similarly, in the emerging code of ethics, the senatorial working stiff who works the Communion Breakfast-Women's Club beat takes a beating, while the senator who makes his in oil or aircraft stocks or any of a myriad of legislation-related ventures is encouraged to continue in these ventures, blessed with the knowledge that since they do not require his off-duty participation, everything is hotsy-totsy, ethics-wise...
...Oddly enough, that distinction and getting the distinction exactly backwards parallels a similar distinction and upside down view of reality to be found in the income tax, a timely comparison for us all...
...it is not something imposed, it is something observed because it is thought to be right...
...Foreign $33.50...
...As entertainment this TV Jesus has scored...
...Natlanal Serials Data Profiram No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...Peter Steinfels 232 IS COLLEGE WORTHWHILE...
...There is no way of knowing...
...It occurs to no one that it is just faintly possible for a senator to be quite as corrupted by the prospect of profits in oil or aircraft as he may be by that of a substantial fee for a commencement address...
...Meanwhile, contemporary theologians might stress that if we really take the humanity of Jesus Commonweal: 227 seriously we must see how his understanding of his mission and his identity grew, developed gradually throughout his public life, and that he may not have fully understood in what way he was the "Son of God" until he was face to face with the Father at the moment of his own death and "glorification"ujust as we too will understand the meanings of our own lives at that final encounter...
...For us he remains all the more illusive because the gospels do not give us, according to any modern understanding of what history is, the story of his life...
...Pelotte also reports that Spellman had sent the U.S...
...They are, rather, four sometimes contradictory interpretations of his life, in some passages already filtered through the memories of several generations, rewritten and edited to solve the practical problems of communities all over the Mediterranean, and directed to different audiences of Jews, Romans and Greeks...
...Foreign $19...
...MSGR...
...Microfilms from Vol...
...The speculator's taxes are not withheld on any regular basis and are not finally due until three and a half months after the end of the year...
...In this context it is important to see the NBC Anthony Burgess-Franco Zeflirelli over-six-hour Palm and Easter Sunday television film, lesus of Nazareth not uncritically as Jesus of Nazareth but as several other things as well: an extremely successful, cinematic, literary, artistic, commercial, highly orthodox, obsessively reverent, almost offensively inoffensive, media event...
...telephone: 12121 MU 3-2042...
...Single copies 7Sc...
...It is possible (Continued on page 255) NEWS & VIEWS: 226 CORRESPONDENCE: 227 EDITORIAL: 22T WASHINGTON REPORT: The E c c e n t r ~ t i e s o f E t h i c s : Frank Getlein 228 POLICE HRUTALITY IN IRELAND: Desmond Fisher 230 VE~E: Richard Snyder 231 A SETBACK FOR WHAT...
...If the presi15 April 1977:228...
...48106...
...Bishops' petition to the Holy Father who ordered Ottaviani to consider the religious liberty issue...
...1924, to date available through University Microfilms...
...In fact, of course, there is something to be said for senatorial lecturing as a part of the job...
...300 N. Zecb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich...
...I at once acknowledge the gross unfairness of the comparison to all Talmudists, past, present and future...
...God knows what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if composed by a committee of proto-Talmudic scholars, but perhaps an approximation may be glimpsed in work the ethics committees in Congress have been in labor to bring forth...
...In the collection of the income tax, the working stiff pays his taxes every week when he gets his pay check...
...0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 JESUS TODAY Every generation, since the child himself grew up in Nazareth, has had a Jesus of its own...
...an imaginative and lovely attempted reconstruction--with all kinds of authoritative advice--of a life that, from what we actually know, really can't be reconstructed...
...And then to a later understanding of these moments that enabled the early Church Councils to declare, in answer to specific challenges and heresies, that the man who said these things was both "God and man...
...Least of all is a code of ethics something drawn up by a committee...
...another stage in the unending dialogue, one more interpretation--in a generation that has given us Jesus the Marxist revolutionary~ hippy and rock star--of what image of Jesus, for better or for worse, seems to be fitting for our time...
...In contrast, the taxpayer whose income derives from speculation of various kinds has two clear advantages over the working stiff...
...Already, by the time the New Testament was completed, the Jesus of Faith had undergone several transformations from the Jesus of Nazareth who first stood up in the synagogue and applied to himself the prophecy of Isaiahm"The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me to bring good news to the poor" i n t o the philosophical Jesus whom the Gospel of John has say at the Last Supper, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life...
...Thus, a clear "image" for Jesus was impossible from the moment he first opened his mouth...
...246 'THE CASE FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION': An Exchange o f Views 242 FOSTERING HUMANE EDUCATION: Richard Kuczkowski 24T HOOKS: George W. Shea, Dennis Vellucci, Raymond A. Schroth, Barbara Mutkoski 249 [LLU~RATIONS: Front cover: "The Graduate," by Emery, 1915 JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSON, Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBBCK, JR.: Movies Jk)HN FANDBL: Pantry FRANK GETLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER: Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMONO FISHER: Dab/In EDWARD S. SKIll.IN: Publisher JOHN BRUBAKER: Advertising Manager Staff: LINDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARIUETTE BALSKY COMMONWEAL A review of Public Affairs, L/teroture and the Arts...
...10016...
...The review might well have mentioned, as the book does, the strong support Murray received from Cardinal Spellman who was responsible for Murray's being invited to Vatican II as a "peritus" and who, when the religious liberty issue was dropped from the agenda, sent a letter in the name of the American bishops, to Cardinal Cicognani, the President of the Council, insisting that the issue be restored to the agenda...
...Commonweal Is Indexed in Reader's Guide to Perlodlcal Uteratorn, Catholic Per/rid/ca/ Index, and Book Review Digest...
...To the Editors: We are indebted to Donald E. Pelotte, S.S.S., for his John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict and to Philip Scharper for his fine review [Mar...
...Prlntod In the USA and published bi-wenkly by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Mad/son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...The taxes he thus pays through withholding are held either by the federal government or by the stiffs own employer for varying periods, during which periods the government or the employer has the money so withheld for operating capital or for interest-producing bank deposits...
...In this sense the life of faith is not just a commitment to the authority of Scripture passages and Church Councils but a commitment, over twenty centuries, to the integrity of fellow-believers, a confidence that, whatever has become of Jesus of Nazareth, the riving heart of his message has not been lost...
...Copyright (~ 1977 Commonweal Pub'llshlng Co., Inc.~S and Canada: $17 a year...
...and at that time, he gets to compute them himself with the aid of the lawyers and accountants for whose benefit the tax laws are largely written by other lawyers in Congress...
...In this sense the history of Christianity since the death of Jesus has, over the centuries, been an endless dialogue in which believers and would-be believers have struggled to answer both for themselves and one another the same question Jesus, in a moment of self-searching, asked about himself: "Who do men say that I am...
...Indeed, the gospels tell us that even in his own lifetime and among his family and followers he was a most misunderstood young man...
...S~eclal two-year rate $29.50...
...Second class postage pa/d cl~ New York, N.Y...
...HARRY J. BYRNE Voter Apathy Washington, D.C...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 8
