The Unwanted:

...refugees throw a dead baby into the sea...

...THOMAS POWERS world-which means principally the United States-is willing to pay for the program and to guarantee they won't be Of several minds: John Garvey abandoned in the end as wards of the Indonesian government...

...State...

...Apparently the the captain, Healey Martin, said he had South Vietnamese refugees, in the years Meos are slow learners, because none of decided to go ahead after watching the between 1961 and 1975, were, interest- those sent to the camps ever return...

...cluded a reference, of course, to abor- Catholic...

...killed the disaffected...

...And to those for whom this is not feasible we ask that Vietnam itself, sofar as can be deter- you send whatever you can manage...

...With gloomy frequency, in cruelest side of the human heart...

...The had been luckier in battle, the flow of the whom sustenance, and eventually a spoils system...

...At more humane and less final for the prob- this crucial moment in our publishing history, we urge our readers to join the lem of the refugees...

...The ground of our faith is Jesus their views in official, quarters...

...dialogue in breaking down embarked on a quixotic crusade in their quest for arms control, the isolation under which the Russian church has had to sur- Dr...

...desperate need...

...Revolutionary regimes in Russia and China simply COMMONWEAL ASSOCIATES...

...About 20,000 dared the open sea in leaking boats, if so refugees' behalf...

...The prestige and publicity surrounding such consulta- to have to tilt...

...Dissatisfaction with our society's ethical and political drift is creatand ambitious, nobody wants them...

...We want to take advantage of the current opportunities...

...They are in THE LONG SEARCH...

...Arie Brouwer replied, "This is one windmill we're going vive...

...There isn't much factual basis for optimism, but tions afford the Russians more leverage in getting a hearing for our faith isn't founded on that...

...Since they have no coun- WHERE RELIGION IS LIVED try, and no government bears a primary responsibility for their welfare, they belong, in a sense, to all of us...

...For simplici- across the Mekong River into Thailand...

...Zip . government had been truly concerned to 22 June 1979: 361 keep them at home...

...It is narrow to dochina, which is clear enough but too tion with Catholicism...

...We can see the gentlest thing, the bread is the body of Christ...

...The This would spare the unfortunates the do not really think they are worth it...

...Evidence the Sibonga, rescued 982 refugees from ment was willing to spend $100,000 to that the Laotians really value the Meos, two boats he discovered sinking about kill a single North Vietnamese or Viet- and want to kept them, can be found in 100 miles off the Vietnamese coast in cong soldier, a value calculated by sim- the fact they attempt to capture or kill all mid-May...

...Shipping companies have ply dividing the cost of the war by the the Meos they find trying to escape been reluctant to pick up refugees, howestimated number of dead...

...inner-city ghettos were not worth the per year...

...More An American in a coma may be worth, or $16.4 million, which comes to $410 per numerous are the so-called land people, at least cost, $100,000 a year in hospital person per year...

...dochinese Refugees, established by the Despite a remarkable $0 percent subscription renewal rate, Commonweal International Rescue Committee, has needs to replace some 4,000 subscribers a year-just to maintain our circulacalled on President Carter to accept tion...

...Cer- • Patron: $2070 or more tainly the numbers were very large...

...tian refugees in Thailand at a cost of otherwise provide for themselves...

...from a grain of mustard seed-can blossom a tree sturdy phere "in which disarmament is possible...

...conciliation, but it is better than a bullet In the back of the head...

...ingly, worth a great deal less, probably a But even if, on balance, we must con- He was allowed to disembark the refuCommonweal: .160 gees in Hong Kong, which has acquired nearly 30,000 boat people since the first of the year...

...If all through my the street people of Calcutta, say, or the cluded a banner which read growing up I. had been told not to quespeasants of Haiti, but while their fate "Jesus Christ requests the honor of your tion anything, or if Catholicism had been may tug at our conscience, they have not presence at a dinner to be held in his presented entirely as a matter of discibeen dumped in our laps...

...No- ing a greater and greater receptivity to the kinds of moral and religious body wishes them ill, exactly, but no- perspective Commonweal has long tried to provide...

...It is a matter of 10016 continuing scholarly controversy just how many Kulaks were starved in the Please enroll me as a 1979 Associate to enable Commonweal to continue its Ukraine, for example, or how many work...

...The first, of course, is from a humanitarian point of view...

...just an Anglo-Saxon's reflection that camps undoubtedly result in a high mor- Elsewhere more than public jobs have political struggle expresses the darkest, tality rate, especially among children, been at stake...

...But even these numbers, large as they $10,000-$12,000 it cost to maintain But it is misleading to say that a Meo are, present only a fraction of the probthem in job training programs, although tribesman from the hills of Laos is worth lem...

...This does not suggest another re- thought with some sympathy of several schools, and not at Augustine or Francis counting of the recent history of In- friends who no longer have any connec- of Assisi or Thomas More...

...So the refugees wait-those lucky more than two years...

...elude that the Laotians do want the Meos, Of several minds: Thomas Powers it is certainly clear no one else does...

...The turbulence of postbody wants them...

...The produc- anyone does, and after this liturgy I was tional church in the face of Nazism, and tion of refugees has been a commonplace asking myself the same question...

...The chief the market is remarkably stable...

...232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...

...This is our first general appeal to subscribers in five years...

...probably fair to conclude that taxpayers the Meos still remaining inside Laos...

...If precious little enthusiasm to do some- education, language, exclusive religious one could point to a villain-the cruel thing for them...

...The OUR READERS capacity of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to generate refugees is practically T HIS FALL Commonweal will complete 55 years of publication...

...It is hard to Address see how so many people could have escaped from Vietnam, in particular, if the City...

...The problem tune of Anglo-Saxon countries-and of a another direction...

...in the case of its failure to confront expression of this human tendency in the But could I think that, if everything I Nazism) condemn the institution...

...The only thing honor," and a sermon about how we pline, obedience and the avoidance of to do with a drowning man, is to pull him must be witnesses for life, which in- sin, I don't know that I would still be out of the water...

...The sanitary conditions, few others, too-that victors by custom ment that the wrong side won the war, "drinking" water and daily rations in the have been modest in their claim of spoils...

...This repre- notorious for the immodesty of the vic- the American working man-it would be sents a substantial effort, but we are los- tors' claims...

...That requires sizable funds for carrying out carefully tested promotion and 100,000 refugees this year, a goal, if direct mailing...

...into labor battalions...

...In this instance both, very likely, are underestimates...

...The countries which Vatican Council Catholicism seems to be settling into a quieter, more confident have been pushing them back out to sea mood of religious reappropriation and reinvigoration...

...once they are ashore the rest of the world Offsetting this encouraging prospect is continued escalation of the cost of can effectively shut their minds to them producing and distributing the magazine...

...AN APPEAL At the Jakarta conference Vu Hoang did not mention a yet-larger group of potential refugees whom the Vietnamese TO have already been encouraging to leave- 1.5 million ethnic Chinese...

...The strategy is a per- We want to put the journal on the sound financial footing which alone will allow fectly sensible one but it only emphasizes us to transform survival into expansion...

...Christ...

...A mother and Laotians...

...During the years when the general through the simple expedient of support- cost of living index doubled, Commonweal's cost of printing has increased by ing them for a dollar or two a day...

...But we want to States to pressure other countries to in- do snore than survive...

...They are hard to keep in mind...

...the grudging and sluggish attempts of the We have sent Commonweal readers a much longer explanation of our hopes world to find a solution that would be and our needs...

...The 400 percent, the cost of mailing an issue by 750 percent' On July 6 the latest American Citizens Commission on In- hike in mailing charges will increase our year's expenses by another $7,000...

...If so many Vietnamese have easier to whip up a little passion in the ing ground all the same...

...crease their quotas...

...On the other hand, it seems to But it is fair to ask, at the same time, tion, and not one, of course, about capital me shortsighted to look only at the stupid how he got into the water in the first punishment, poverty, or the arms race) I sexual instruction received in Catholic place...

...But there are no true new refugees escape every month and the many Cambodians and Laotians have villians, only faint hearts and grudging flow has been increasing steadily for risked the Mekong under the guns of duty...

...Commonweal has survived the increased costs of recent years reached, which would allow the United only through the generous help of the Commonweal Associates...

...It's a question of interpreta- namese wanted to leave, perhaps as her two children on welfare in New York tion...

...This narrow corner of where, they are aso sincerely and deeply on the circumstances...

...In 1977, unwanted that new arrivals are frequently executive officers of some of the for example, the United Nations main- pushed back out to sea to drown or die of Fortune 500 are worth, or are at least tained 15 camps for about 40,000 Lao- exposure or starvation or dehydration or paid, as much as a million dollars a year...

...The captain of a British-owned freighter, Not so long ago the American govern- Doubtless they exaggerate...

...My an- ignore the deaths of Edith Stein, Franz of the 20th century, a side effect of count- swer was feeble, but enough for me at the Jaggerstatter and Maximilian Kolbe...

...Nor does anyone problem a Vietnamese diplomat, Vu from the American people to help him else, with the possible exception of the Hoang, said that a great many more Vietsend out Christmas cards...

...Of course it ought to be Cambodia is more anarchic but the effect is always followed by a reshuffling in added that if those who are refugees now is the same, a great mass of people for every job within reach of the victor...

...The United States paid roughly a quarter of a million of them fees...

...but it is American two-party system, in which had ever encountered in the church wrong to reduce the whole of CatholiCnmrnnnsveal: 362...

...Doubtless AFTER A PARTICULARLY horrible seemed to contradict the gratitude which other peoples are in even worse shape, liturgy I recently attended (it in- the eucharist is about...

...fact, victors have claimed everything in An interesting point, but not one of The survivors belong to us, and we must sight-not just land and capital, but a much use to the refugees of Southeast do something about them, even if there is monopoly of political rights, access to Asia...

...landlords" were shot in China...

...Reeducation" may be indistinguish- • Charter Member $100 El Sustaining jNlembec $50 able from imprisonment, and its true goal • Full amount enclosed is probably cheap labor rather than re- • Half the full amount enclosed: remind me of balance in 6 months...

...hegemony, even culture and history...

...President Nixon, never a sentimen- roughly 65 percent of the bill, which was who have fled war in Cambodia and the tal man, decided that young blacks from $10.66 million, or $266.50 per person rigors of the new regime in Laos...

...They also stressed enough to shelter the birds of the air...

...The poisoning of wells as evidence that the claimed the lives of countless thousands...

...The spirit blows where it out of Iowa and New York City...

...Fidel Castro • Enclosed is mm contribution of seems to have set an example in this regard by exporting half a million class Name enemies to the United States...

...The best THE UNWANTED known are the boat people from VietA WORLD IN FLIGHT nam, of whom there are now about 125,000 in camps in Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, WHAT IS a man worth...

...At a recent international meeting Nixon himself is worth, or at least gets, $410 a year, since the United States does held in Jakarta to consider the refugee several hundred thousand dollars a year not really want them...

...campaign against them is genocidal...

...It has been the good for- dispossessed would simply have been in home, must he found...

...They wonder why look only at the cowardice of the instituparticular for our purpose...

...oppressors who drove them from home, At the moment about 10,000 refugees When so much is seized from so many, as flinty government officials indifferent to a month are being resettled in other coun- Calvin Coolidge might have said, refu- their fate, unionists alarmed by the threat tries, mainly the United States, Au- gees result...

...These are several ways of looking at the problem...

...This is not an arguwon't go away...

...Commonweal Associates...

...Asked if the churches had the importance of the international...

...Vietnam, he said, will may be worth, say, $479 a month, but the their North Vietnamese allies have been help to arrange their departure if counmoney is surrendered so grudgingly it is conducting a military campaign against tries can be found to give them asylum...

...The pontificate of John are hard-hearted from simple realism: Paul Ii provokes new hopes...

...On the one hand the Laotians and many as 600,000...

...Meos cite the bombing of villages and the rigors of the open sea, which has already The market in men rises and falls...

...While the practical consequences of Geneva are yet to be DAVID DILLON seen, it is sometimes inaccurate to measure religious devel- (David Dillon is a free-lance writer and historian working opments in purely political terms...

...It depends dollar or two a day...

...The same goes for all the other refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, who can be divided into two groups...

...price of gold is steady by comparision...

...The situation in victory at the polls over a party in power treated as men...

...but they cannot all be counted on to die...

...As we endless, and despite the fact many of approach that milestone the opportunity for the magazine is greater than, them are well-educated, hard-working ever...

...tion" camps, where they are organized allow them to disembark...

...Revolutions are off course of cheap labor to the living standard of stralia, France and Canada...

...ever desperate their plight, because of the ty's sake I have used the figures of $100 Those captured are sent to "reeduca- difficulty in finding a port which would billion and one million respectively...

...mined from the reports of refugees, has taken a relatively enlightened attitude toward its former enemies...

...It is less political struggles which provide no moment: I believe that despite every- entirely right to criticize and (especially room for losers...

...Indonesia has of- guards, it is because their conquerors had enough to have lived to wait-while offifered the use of an island for temporary looted them of everything but thee human cials mills slowly grind, tidying up the housing, but only if the rest of the courage to go where they might be debris of war...