A SETBACK FOR WHAT?
Steinfels, Peter
SAN FRANCISCO, March 24--The Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon received a major setback today when a State Superior Court judge ordered five adult members placed in the temporary...
...It is an interesting political and sociological question, and an important one for our nation...
...Mockler's scholarship is thorough, and his style is engaging...
...Adversity has always afflictedmand invigorated --new creeds...
...Indeed, the same poll, taken a couple or three years from now, could turn up more encouraging findings...
...This is done in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the fact that large numbers of voters in these states showed up election day 1976 and registered and v~ted on the spot argues that such national law would si~niflcantly increase voting participation...
...A movement like this," he warned, "can use mind control to create an army of zombies or robots who could undermine the government and law enforcement...
...Hart--and myself, for that matter --have all been around politics long enough to understand that an issue which activates citizens, or a candidate who motivates them, can emerge to renew interest in those who've lost it and quicken it among those who haven't...
...Not even: "A San Francisco judge has approved a novel and sweeping use of temporary conservatorship laws originally designed to provide the senile and mentally incompetent with emergency protection...
...Sun Myung Moon received a major setback today when a State Superior Court judge ordered five adult members placed in the temporary custody of their parents, who seek to have them "deprogrammed" fr~n the church...
...And what, in this fantasy of the Queens grand jury and their District Attorney, was there to write about...
...The legal issue seems open-and-shut - - a n d who wants to write about that...
...The judge is dealing, mind you, with "children" between the ages of 21 and 26...
...But is that really the main point...
...Study for a moment the narrow way in which that lead sentence casts the story...
...degrees will be offered...
...ALEXANDER E. BARKAN National Director, Committee on Political Education, AFL-CIO 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Steinfels (Cont...
...Many other six week courses in Scripture, Christology, Ecclesiology and Moral Theology leading to M.A...
...But the Queens case, like the San Francisco one, involved adults, well beyond the age of majority and displaying none of the usual signs of mental incompetency...
...On the religious level, there was the astounding array of sects, from the revived Vedic traditionalism of the Hare Krishna movement to the antiCommunist syncretism of the "Moonies" and the authoritarian fundamentalism of the Children of God...
...Moreover, it seems to me the number would grow impressively as time passed and the hab/t became entrenched...
...Did the San Francisco judge, for example, really rest his case on the following statement7 "We are talking about the essence of civilization-mother, father and children...
...In several footnotes, Mockler speaks of the "rather shocking contrast" between conventional modern thought on certain issues and Francis's basically simple message...
...and, in no time at all, Civilization Was Threatened...
...Maybe, maybe not...
...Will the Unification Church be impeded by the San Francisco ruling...
...If there was anything else keeping me from writing about these cases, it was that coverage of trials and legal reasoning is often incomplete...
...State power is being put at the disposal of their parents, who can forcibly confine these young adults and submit them to the range of techniques, both sophisticated and crude--isolation, sleep deprivation, threats, verbal and psychic abuse-that have been the stock-in-trade of "deprogramming...
...For some time I have wanted to write about the legal initiatives, by "deprogrammers" and others, against the new religious cults...
...June 20 - July 28: Institutes on Women, Sacramental Life of the Church, Ministry, Spiritual Direction, Religious Education...
...Not good, but certainly far better than she suggests...
...Psychologists and psychiatrists are ready with glib formulae to reduce every extraordinary religious practice, and some ordinary ones as well, to mental illness...
...BAglSAI~A MUTgOSKI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 227) some citizens would still refrain from voting if we were to trundle the booth directly into their homes and offer to pull the levers for them...
...I think, after all, the topic is one worth writing about...
...McCarthy wants to move beyond that sort of thing to a citizenry that votes even in the absence of an allaffecting issue or "charismatic" candidates...
...but a colunm should have some tension, a real conflict to be worked on...
...So do I. But when we find the key to that one, I'll settle for laws that guarantee substantially increased voter participation_~s national on' site election day registration will, as demonstrated by the Minnesota and Wisconsin experiences...
...Louis, Missouri 63108...
...McCarthy erred in saying in the 1976 elections "there were three non-voters for every voter...
...Good material for a column, at A SETBACK FOR WHAT...
...There's nothing like it...
...And yet the cases multiply...
...If I have any argument with Ms...
...With 54.4 percent of all eligibles voting, the ratio is less than one non-voter for every voter...
...PETER 8TEINFEI~ first glance...
...Louis University, 3634 Lindell Blvd., St...
...McCarthy, it is that the Hart poll--Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...Crusading parents and professional "deprogrammers" are building an impressive base of tax-exempt institutions to further their efforts...
...For details write Director, Summer Session, Dept...
...On the human level, in this episode and the many like it there was much--the parents heartbroken and baffled, the young people uprooted and searching...
...Incidentally, Ms...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance o] being published...
...Vermont and at least three other states, lacking statutes to be contorted to this new purpose, are considering conservatorship laws precisely to legalize the forcible "deprogramming" of adults...
...Yes, there may be some convoluted questions when minors are involved, when a sect grossly misrepresents itself, or when physical movement by the members is forcibly curtailed...
...a "setback," but whether freedom of religion suffered a setback...
...The child is the child even though a parent may be 90 and the child 60...
...and Mrs...
...Christiane Brusselmans...
...Commonweal: 2J5...
...Hearst instead of against them, Judge Vavuris, presumably, would have approved...
...The basic issue in San Fransico was not whether the Reverend Moon's Unification Church suffered (Continued on page 255) 15 ,qpdl 1977:232 phers treat as simply one more incident in Francis's life...
...like all others--is not written in stone, nor are its conclusions...
...9 _9 ." Not: "Current interpretations of First Amendment religious liberties received a setback today...
...Last year, faced with the charges of a 23-yearold Hare Kxishna devotee that she had been kidnapped and brutalized at the instigation of her mother, a Queens, New York, grand jury transmuted the case into indictments against Hare Krishna officials for extortion and imprisonment through "mind control...
...Modern-day Franoiscans may take issue with his observations on their Order...
...LOUIS UNIVERSITY SUMMER INSTITUTE 1977 JUNE 7 -JULY 28 June 7-17: Institute - Sacraments of Initiation, Dr...
...Had the Symbionese Liberation Army been working for Mr...
...Is there truly a need to expend ink and energy on such an obvious matter...
...But on the legal level...
...The entire and basic issue," declar.ed New York Justice John L. Leahy, in throwing the Queens indictments out of court, "is whether or not . . . the defendants will be allowed to practice the religion of their choice--and this must b c -ansWered with a resounding affm~atire...
...McCarthy, Mr...
...The Unification Church _9 . . received a major setback today...
...Deprogramming" is becoming a thriving business, with enterprising operatives contacting desperate parents and charging them from $2,000 to $10,000 to rescue their grown-up children...
...Queens District Attorney Michael Schwed took a crash course on the Krishna sect from the very "deprogrammer" he had been about to indict for kidnapping...
...McCarthy that we should try to find out exactly what turns whom off...
...The police, instead of the S.L.A., could have carried out the abduction_9 It is hard to imagine that such a ludicrous ruling will survive even the time between my writing and the publication of this column...
...Judge S. Lee Vavuris should be thanked for adding the last sentence, wrapping up his argument complete, as it were, with its own reductio ad absurdum...
...As though muggers, Mafia, and municipal bankruptcy were n o t enough to fret the good Queens burghers...
...Unfortunately, one is often more conscious of Moclder as narrator, constantly speaking for Francis, than one is conscious of a sense of Francis...
...Each Institute may be taken for 6 weeks or in 2 week segments...
...But I would not want to get hung up on it at the cost of proceeding meantime toward a law to make voting as easy as possible through a national law permitting citizens to register at the polling sites on election day...
...Justice Leahy's affirmation of the First Amendment was overshadowed in the news by Judge Vavuris's apotheosis of parental authority...
...But this debate is best left to the Franciscan reader...
...I know of no greater love than parents' f o r their children, and I am sure they would not submit their children to harm...
...I certainly agree with Ms...
...of Theological Studies, St...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 8
