Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number 7 The class of '79: John Ahern, Martin E. Marty, Paul R. Messbarger, Michael Zeik, Monika K. Hellwig, Jean Bethke Elsh- tain: 203 The supper of the lamb:...
...Acthat candidates who outspent their opponents won 28 of the 33 cording to Kozol, the functional illiteracy figure is high for contested Senatorial races...
...Kozol's statistics may be a little quesfall's Congressional races candidates spent $150 million as tionable and his proposed emergency remedy somewhat utocompared with $100-million two years earlier, and there is no pian, but there is no doubt that the problem of functional end in sight...
...prepared carefully for class...
...The Soviet first was simply that they got there in the There's an old Louis Armstrong story Union then, bringing to fruition plans course of chasing the Germans out of that applies here...
...dom...
...Like their arts, the Soviets' world, followed immediately by the turn- selves bankrupt on arms, ruinously in- Eastern European policy is the continuaing of the entire rest of the world against flate the economy by so spending, con- tion of czarism by (slightly) different the United States, followed, probably, script our young men and send them to means...
...gards Iran...
...A LIHOUGH it is still unrecognized "China" thus remained part of the free The second explanation for the infuanywhere, American foreign pol- world and a bastion against the Soviet sion of Soviet soldiery into East Europe icy is shadowed by a cloud now no drive for global conquest, there were still and the Balkans is simply that many of bigger than the clenched fist of the an awful lot of Chinese over there on the those countries had at one time or another Communist salute but destined soon to mainland in what must thenceforward be been owned by Russia, and Russians refill the sky, perhaps even to rain upon the considered Russia's largest province, or garded their independence as stolen parade to national bankruptcy our foreign "republic" as the Russians outlandishly property, rather as Henry Kissinger repolicy has been conducting lo, these styled their captive nations...
...In the Senate races more than a dozen candidates made six-figure loans or gifts to their own campaigns, without which they would not have been viable contenders...
...Clearly, if that huge mass and enor- part of the world for centuries was conFor those three decades, in case you mous population from Thuringia to stantly being carved up and redistributed hadn't noticed, American foreign policy Shanghai were indeed dedicated to the among Russia, Prussia, Austria, Turkey, has been to spend ourselves broke and destruction of the free world at large and at times even Sweden and, good grief, then some on fantasy weapons to defend the United States in particular, we would Lithuania...
...Reluctant as incumbents often are to aid a challenger, this seems an idea ONLY THE BEGINNING whose time has long since come...
...One dollar out of every six the 20 new U.S...
...Best placed of all the candidates, of course, were those who were independently wealthy...
...The average House candidate, winner or loser, spent $108,000 in 1978, up from $71,000 two years before...
...are as slow learners in geography as they Of several minds: Frank Getlein are in history...
...After all...
...more women than men tion's concerns into specific proposals...
...more women than men panicked The task proved difficult...
...foreign policy...
...Senator John Tower (R.-Tex...
...More hundred participants to Notre Dame to translate the Declarawomen than men took careful notes...
...foreign policy...
...Senators received as contributions in 1978 came from special interest groups...
...10016...
...In New York, silk-stocking Democrat Carter Burden spent $1.4 million or $20 a vote for the privilege of losing his bid...
...was up to, while the Russians were all WAR IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER bad Russians who were well aware of and enthusiastically approved of Stalin's doings...
...For the candidate who is not a millionaire, there is a sudden surge in special interest giving...
...though not quite enough reason to im- The third explanation was, if anyThe evidence of such Communist in- pose wage-price controls that control thing, even more unthinkable to those tent was as follows: The Soviet Union prices as well as wages, nationalize Gen- present at the creation, so to speak, of our had driven deep into middle Europe in eral Motors and Boeing and ration adoption of national bankruptcy as the closing years of World War II, seiz- gasoline...
...Republican H. John Heinz III, for another example, loaned $2.6 million to his 1976 campaign, none of which has been repaid, and now he sits in a body that includes more than 40 other millionaires...
...In an Education issue, two items of educational news are Training laity for paraprofessional status appears to claim worth noting: virtually all the diocesan budgets devoted to "lay" programs...
...freedom-loving Germany...
...What we need to do, says Kozol, is to sign up 5 million rial candidates averaged spending of more than $1 million, literacy teachers to go into the homes of these 30 million Democrats about $700,000...
...Twice...
...Typically, 10 percent of the women and 16 National Center for the Laity in Chicago, and invited over a percent of the men said they wanted to become doctors...
...Subsequently, however, the Supreme Court threw that provision of the law out, saying that it violated the candidates' First Amendment rights, equating spending money with the right to free speech...
...Among his duties ousting the famed freedom-loving extremely difficult, although it can be was hauling water from the bayou to the Chiang Kai-shek (I have no idea how the done, to get from New York to Worces- backyard boiler...
...That's bad, but the escalation in the cost of a Senate seat was even worse: $552,423 in 1974 and $1,058,671 in 1978...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...In the executives, professionals, government officials, educators survey 54 percent of the men and 46 percent of the women said and parents...
...In last pestilence or war...
...Warren Weaver Jr...
...215 . Books Letters of Flannery O'Connor: Robert Phillips 216 The Culture of Narcissism: George W. Shea 220 Christ in Eclipse: John B. Sheerin 222 Staff Editor...
...The the only one that has dropped it...
...As the man said, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better...
...Biggest spender was Senator Jesse Helms (R.-N.C...
...As a kid, Louis picked going back to the young Andre Malraux Russia and pursuing them.back into up and delivered the laundry his mother and all that, seized control of China, Germany...
...they thought they would earn a doctorate...
...exile on the island of Formosa, renamed Connecticut...
...Lacking a consensus Jonathan Kozol said that 20 percent of the adult men and on why those earlier organizational forms had collapsed, unwomen in this country cannot read enough to understand a willing to rush headlong into new organizational initiatives, Commonweal: 198 and scrupulous about not simply asking others-whether a burst of rhetoric was successfully resisted...
...want ad or write enough to fill out a job application...
...who laid out $6.9 million or more than $13 a vote to win a second term...
...Senator Donald Stewart of Alabama, a man of modest means, borrowed $239,800 to keep his candidacy alive and received $164,300 from various special interest groups...
...James O'Gara Executive Editor Peter Steinfels Associate Editor...
...Besides, they were busy rewriting World War II to reveal that the Germans were all good Germans who hadn't a clue as to what bad old Hitler PEACE DIVIDEND, HAll...
...The present method in which It was St...
...The continuing Russian occuourselves against the hideous threat of indeed have a lot to worry about and pation, while indefensible, is certainly Communist takeover of the rest of the more than enough reason to spend our- no novelty...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number 7 The class of '79: John Ahern, Martin E. Marty, Paul R. Messbarger, Michael Zeik, Monika K. Hellwig, Jean Bethke Elshtain: 203 The supper of the lamb: Jack Miles 209 Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...We do understand that it is did for the white folks...
...the same forms aren't viable...
...Something will have to give, and hearings on the illiteracy in our society is a real one that cries out for practical topic have already begun in Congress...
...In the 1978 election, each of the 68 Senatorial candidates, winners or losers, spent an average of more than $900,000 on their campaigns...
...In six states," said Mr...
...experience that college students by the thousands would volunNonetheless, the inflation of campaign spending is so bad that teer, and what he proposes is an all-out national attack on Congress may soon be forced to take action...
...bidder is clearly a national scandal...
...and though the bishops or some undefined audience of Christians-to under- participants contented themselves with a modest affirmation of take what they themselves would not, the participants seemed the need and the difficulty of sustaining the laity's service in caught in a simmer of creative conversation that never quite the world, that in itself indicated their seriousness about carrycame to a boil...
...Special two-year rate: $35...
...This is up sharply from 1976 when the average was $555,000...
...In New Orleans Republican Robert L. Livingston spent $1.3 million in his campaign...
...In races for 366 contested seats, the welfare and lowered productivity, he estimates at $6 billion a bigger spender won 82 percent of the time...
...spent $4.3 million, compared with $2.3 million in 1972...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...Three explanations, in fact...
...Patrick's day, but frustration rather than celebraCongressional seats are too often up for sale to the highest tion ruled the recent Assembly of the Laity at Notre Dame...
...Defi- for this condition, which is crippling to any dream of leading a nitely yes...
...likely to take two forms: a spending ceiling on each candidate and a plan to eliminate the need for special interest contributions by providing federal funds to match individual contributions raised, as is done now in the presidential race...
...The Washington Post's Bill Peterson did a little homely calculation to dramatize the point...
...Poetry: John Fandel Correspondents: Brian Wicker (Great Britain), Desmond Fisher (Dublin), Alain Woodrow (Paris) Staff: Linda F. Kayler, Harriette Balsky Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Auaud, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...The problem seemed more readily over an assignment or exam...
...Over a year earlier, the Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern had lamented, in Russell Barta's words, "the fact that a truncated, narrow vision of the laity's role was replacing the broad vision developed by Vatican 11...
...The number of unions, corporations, trade associations and other groups with political action committees has more than tripled since 1974 to 1700...
...giving it the same priority as an attack on plague, to put some reasonable ceiling on campaign spending...
...Or as Ed Marciniak described it at Notre Dame, "lay ministry" had come to mean WOMEN & ILLITERACY that "the laity become the Church's paraprofessionals...
...and Canada, $20...
...of the New York Times estimates productive or rewarding life, is "functional illiteracy...
...What cost you $123 at the corner grocery in 1972 cost $168 in 1976 and $215 in 1978...
...Incumbents in general had almost illiterate adults on an emergency basis...
...While many of study put it, "Maybe society does not encourage them enough...
...In the 1974 election law revision Congress set limits on candidates' contributions to their own campaigns, $25,000 for a House race and $35,000 for the Senate...
...The same principle applies "Mammy, Mammy, I can't get the wa"China" for the purposes of American to the Leningrad-Stalingrad to Berlin ter, there's an alligator in the bayou...
...Subsequently, in pursuit of free speech William Clement became the first Republican Governor in Texas history after lending his campaign effort $3 million...
...It would be naive to imagine that such 13 April 1979: 197 groups will not seek a return on their money...
...quick, almost too quick, insistence that "you can't go home • Writing on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, again...
...Kozol has no doubt on the basis of his legislate away their own built-in advantage as incumbents...
...the winners outspent the losers so dramatically but won so He thinks the total figure of illiterates is 23 million at the least narrowly that it could be argued plausibly that money had and more likely 30 million...
...Volunteers would twice as much to spend as their challengers...
...Senator Charles Percy (R.-I11...
...Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be considered or returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...foreign, $22...
...the participants were veterans of the "specialized" Catholic Something happens to make women accept a lower level of action movements of the '50s and early '60s, there was a achievement...
...But even though this route, but our foreign policy fabricators "Louis, go back and get the bucket and 13 April 1979: 199...
...The Senate, of course, as befits what some people consider the "upper house," was more expensive...
...Other comparable figures are just as bad...
...foreign, $39...
...In short, as the director of the felt than articulated in ways leading to action...
...Few want to old, students and retired...
...The impulse to wrap up the weekend's work in ing on this effort...
...Perhaps this will come as no surprise, but a recent study Social and political transformation is equated with church done at six of the country's most prestigious schools indicates lobbying, episcopal pronouncements or dramatic "witness," that women have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations than but not with the workaday efforts of trade unionists, business men, even though their grades are about the same...
...Of the women, 49 Barta, professor of social science at Mundelein College, and percent said they were confident that they were well prepared Marciniak, president of the Institute of Urban Life, were for graduate or professional school, as compared with 61 among the signers of the Declaration who had established the percent of the men...
...Single copy, $1...
...Efforts at reform are remedies...
...receive a crash course in methods and would receive a minimal That last point is part of the reason it is hard to get reform salary, say $20 a week, and would be drawn from young and legislation on this subject through Congress...
...The cost of this to the nation, in produced the result...
...The 35 who won Senate seats invested an average of nearly $1.2 million each...
...by our ultimate defeat but if not, certainly die so that some corner of a foreign field But, again, State Department thinkers by our devastation in a war against the would be forever Nixon's, ignore grow- are as slow learners in history as they are rest of the world for the survival of free- ing social problems at home, all that, in geography...
...This is simply that the ing the briefly independent nations of the There was, of course, another, alterna- Russians were scared out of their britches Baltic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hun- tive explanation of why the Russians by America, to this day not only the gary, Roumania, Bulgaria and, poten- moved into all those East European coun- country that invented the atom bomb, but tially worst of all, a third of the famed tries...
...Raymond A. Schroth Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Columnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein, Abigail McCarthy, Thomas Powers Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...spent $2.5 million compared with $1.4 million in 1972...
...One day he came runNew York Times now spells his name) to ter, Mass., without going through or over ning back without water, without bucket...
...Weaver, blacks, 44 percent, and even higher for Hispanics, 56 percent...
...Commonweal Correspondence 196 Editorials 197 Peace dividend, hah!: Frank Getlein 199 The Irish: look again: Abigail McCarthy 200 ROTTEN BOROUGHS 1N CONGRESS E VERYONE knows about inflation in the supermarket but not in Congress...
...their donations have also almost tripled to an estimated $35 million last year...
...Republican Senato- year...
...The awful truth is that that thirty years...
...One step would be illiteracy...
...The term Does all this money, from whatever source, pay off...
Vol. 106 • April 1979 • No. 7
