Sacerdos et pontifex
Clancy, William
welfare plans and ban the use of amphetamines as diet pills. unforgettable man: intellectual, humanist, raconteur, friend, Carter has not done badly with this Washington, and there are ...
...His pietas made the Cardinal impatient, no tolerance for those who loved ancient things or defended often furious, with those who had "itching ears...
...Catholics for the ideals of democracy, political and cultural pluralism, social and economic justice, intellectual freedom and diversity...
...The church was strings are pulled by their Legislative Assistants pontificate the sign of those things which are eternal, set down among the about Hamilton Jordan's power, where everything is measured good things, and the bad things, that pass...
...In and through all of this, liberal Catholicism prided SACERDOS ET PONTIFEX itself on its fidelity to basic Catholic doctrines, on its love for THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ESSENTIALS and loyalty to the church...
...and let faith with deep love and understanding of the world...
...It sought to reverse the popular Catholic distrust of (Jim Castelli is the Capitol Hill reporter and columnist for many liberal values, to gain a wider, deeper acceptance among NC News Service...
...At the same time, liberal Catholicism opposed the dogmatic secularism and moral relativism that characterized much liberal thought...
...Liberal Catholicism, in its 19th and 20th will bear a large part of the blame, but so will a city that century versions, existed in a state of tension between the clamors for leadership, but refuses to be led...
...They learn they don't need ev- lump sum...
...As much as anything else he did, his ory, Pittsburgh...
...where congressmen whose Catholic, apostolic, and, of course, Roman...
...He loved his friends...
...Is the in the bank-does the bank let you take Commonweal: 454...
...If she does, each other get started-the tradition of agreed that we will be in a period of she certainly has little patience with the "the box," a simple but effective' upheaval-of "malaise"-until the end idea...
...He wept (as he often did), rejoicing, and But Carter has not done well with the second Washington, a went on with what he had to do...
...sidered to have earned the right, they are The advantage to the newcomer, deBut, even as we old Americans lose allowed to buy some of the things they pendent on an uncertain low-paying or heart, it may be that the seeds of our want or need under their parents' super- part-time job, is the availability of the renewal have been sown by some of vision...
...They have what they want-good NEW CITIZENS, NEW SPIRIT jobs, their own homes, good chances for their children...
...To John Wright it seemed (and he grieved be- "Be not the first by whom the new is tried/Nor yet the last to cause of it) that too many of the "new" liberal Catholics had lay the old aside...
...Such views did not always help John Wright's popularity in Wright's great hero was John Henry Newman, precisely the post-Vatican II church...
...Lord, grant him eternal rest...
...relativism or secularism...
...If he fails politically, he monweal itself...
...ut non amittamus aeterna...
...it left him, or at least it disappeared as he virtue of piety, pietas, in the Virgilian sense...
...She thinks plains it, twenty-six people may agree to And, columnists and commentators, that we, of the old Americans, do not put twenty-five dollars each in "the when they weren't writing about the know the wealth of the possibilities of- box" for twenty-six weeks...
...I share Carter's own prayed the sun streamed upon the marble altar where he stood...
...cans believe Carter's Georgian advisers have too narrow a John Wright was a liberal Catholic in the tradition of perspective by a 44-42 margin...
...Certainly, for most, they are not as many...
...We have lost the "We are bringing them up the old some one draws out $650.00...
...In it I said that we liberal Catholics asked a JOHN JOSEPH WRIGHT, Bishop, Cardinal of the Holy Roman radical revaluation among many of our fellow Catholics of church, who died in Boston on August 10, once told me their basic attitudes (mostly illiberal) towards the modern about a Collect he especially loved, and about his feelings world...
...Bishop, Cardinal, Friend: reason he established an Oratory in his diocese of Pittsburgh in Farewell...
...To do not lose those things which are eternal...
...where a man's voice is else, as he confessed, he loved the church-one, holy, more important than what he says...
...But to all who, multiply his mercy upon us, so that with him for our ruler and with any intellectual honesty, contine to call themselves guide, we may so pass through the good things of time that we Catholic, there were, are, and always will be Essentials...
...things which are eternal...
...This revaldation," I wrote, "demands no sacrifice of when he first prayed it at Mass in Rome soon after his ordina- whatever is essential to the Faith...
...anyone reading the Washing- French, English and American liberal Catholism, the tradition ton papers would have expected the margin to be 98-1...
...it implies no surrender to tion...
...As she exof the century...
...We have lost the edge-so they time they are small...
...Carter's firing of Joe Califano at HEW did not go prayed the Collect in an ancient Roman chapel, and as he down well with many liberals...
...sing when a bishop entered a church...
...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy television going to pay for it...
...seemed to wound) the church wounded him...
...But, I think, they kept him wise because Newman combined deep love of and loyalty to the and made him great...
...T RINGS LOOK rather gloomy...
...For this perpetual light shine upon him...
...her fifties, is from Guyana...
...was part of Wright's natural wisdom: development...
...Who wounded (or by what it will do for "me...
...She herself is now helping to safeguarded for them by one of their ing to that malaise by mourning the de- bring up a second generation of number...
...ambivalence-I think Califano was a great secretary and I He felt at once-and all together-the splendor and the wonthink he made his firing inevitable by acting as though he was der and the joy of life: the pathos of its passing and the glory not accountable to anyone...
...missal (and now, like so many Ether profound and beautiful How dated this may now sound, a quarter century later...
...Since 1968 he has been Provost of the Oratmight come together...
...WILLIAM CLANCY 1961...
...Here, he better than his first...
...place where a congressman will vote against a president's bill John Wright loved the world...
...By that she means that to have "a hand" in the box-or he may and thrift, to give plan and direction to they learn to work and to help from the have two hands and two turns if he deour lives...
...says Cynthia, and adds thoughtfully, "I don't think it hurts them and I think they are happy...
...It is to 31 August 1979: 453 have survived, as a liberal Catholic, into an age when that foundation of the Oratory defined the man: to so love, and Center which is liberal Catholicism is threatened by attacks serve, the good things of the world that we do not lose those from right and left...
...He established it "in the spirit of Newman" and set it among the city's secular universities with the hope and the (Father William Clancy, who was an editor of Comprayer that it might be a community where love of the church monweal in the 1950s, was ordained priest by Cardinal and love of liberal values-learning, freedom, civility, art- Wright in 1964...
...it fought, and indeed abhorred, the authoritarian methods and mentalities which continued, until Vatican II John Cardinal Wright at least, to earn the church its reputation as a Monolith...
...Each week, in the turn assigned cline in the American ability to compete Americans-her grandchildren...
...things, lost or strangely altered in the new missal) beseeched "The essentials of the Faith" are not as clear as they seemed God, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, to then...
...He was not, as far had known it in the years and the angers that followed Vatican as I know, an admirer of the 18th century...
...But Alexander Pope's warning in was substantial and what was foolish and fashionable in its "The Essay on Man...
...The White House seems to have glorious things of the world to come...
...All should ancient traditions and values...
...to him or her at the time of the agreement, with friend and foe...
...It is held and troubles of the President, were contribut- fered to us...
...I don't know if Cynthia, for exam- bring to this country a tradition of helping reports recently, almost all of them ple, knows of this malaise...
...To the end he was that the man who marries the spirit of the age will soon be a Sacerdos et Pontifex, Priest and Bridgebuilder, as we used to widower...
...Rather, it emphasizes the church's This Collect for the Third Sunday after Pentecost in the old genius for eternal renewal...
...of Lacordaire, Dupanloup, Blondel and Maritain, Newman Carter must find a way to run against the second Washington and Acton, Orestes Brownson, Archbishop Ireland and Comwhile showing he can master the first...
...John Cardinal Wright did not leave the classic liberal More than anyone I've ever known, John Wright had the Catholic tradition...
...John Wright's love affirm this proposition, to fight for it when many seem to think of these words, and his reaction to them on a morning early in that the history of dogma, liturgy, and the church itself began his priesthood, tell us much about this brilliant, complex, around 1966, is not to have become "conservative...
...He plined...
...He is said capacity to innovate, to take joy in work way," she says...
...Who made the One poll taken after the Cabinet shake-up found that Ameri- church weep made him weep...
...beyond the passing...
...Like Edmund Burke, he believed same time to reach out to love the world...
...realized the importance of rewarding its friends and punishing I can hear his wonderful voice, recalling the Collect and the its enemies after spending too long doing the reverse...
...Not a pleasant prospect...
...He loved because he didn't like what he was served at a White House ideas and conversation, good food and good wine...
...In 1952 I wrote an article in Commonweal called "The Liberal Catholic...
...One should not them (whether he was right or wrong on any particular issue, easily abandon traditions that have grown from the accumutheological or disciplinary, is not the question here) and at the lated experience of history...
...In fact, he probably II...
...say...
...Mass: "Think of the meaning of these words, Sic transeamus At the same time, Carter's new Cabinet is in some ways per bona temporalia...
...He continued to love and defend be tested and tempered, John Wright thought...
...where loyalty is a bad word...
...You put twenty-five dollars those new Americans so often thought of erything they see on television...
...Cynthia, a trim brown woman in method of savings and loan...
...My son, my daughter-we brought them up that way-and they are THE MEWING OF AMERICA happy...
...When they are con- cides to put in more each week...
...Above allbreakfast...
...The as burdens on our resources and institu- According to Cynthia, Guyanans papers have been full of futurists' tions...
...and he often seemed unable to distinguish between what hated it for its rationalism...
...unforgettable man: intellectual, humanist, raconteur, friend, Carter has not done badly with this Washington, and there are churchman, lover of the good things of this world and the signs he will do even better...
...it is certainly better organized and disci- said, the secret of Christian humanism was revealed to him...
...prevailing Catholic ethos and the values of the "modern" JIM CASTELLI world...
Vol. 106 • August 1979 • No. 15
