Editorials

...Schmidt's comment was followed by an announcement from Italy that it would honor all signed agreements to supply equipment for the natural gas pipeline, despite the Reagan ban...

...ban on supplies for the 3700-mile Soviet-Western Europe gas pipeline...

...The fact is that PAW confuses defense of pluralism and of the Constitution with its own liberal leanings...

...They are simply not persuaded that such a course is anything but a dangerous and ill-conceived idea which could well lead to international catastrophe...

...The new official Catholic Directory, published by P.J...

...grain shipments...

...Many conservative positions on these issues deserve to be debated on their merits, not summarily branded as assaults on constitutional freedoms...

...In sum, what the Reagan administration has managed to do is to create what may be the most serious crisis inside the Atlantic alliance since its creation-and this after already alienating most of our Latin American allies by our policies in that area...

...Professor Jeffrey K. Hadden, author of Prime Time Preachers, kindly brought to our attention the source of this quotation...

...These are complicated matters, and it is easy to imagine that, distressed by the demagoguery of the New Religious Right, citizens might feel justified in shrugging off these distinctions...

...The leaders of the new religious right are capable of saying some pretty fantastic and frightening things...

...Chicago, the largest archdiocese in the country, is more or less typical...

...It was in this context-the familiar one of warning against the limits of majority rule-that the preacher said, "In our country we have a republic...

...Not somebody else's...

...Well, not quite-as believing racists, wife-beaters, sweat-shop owners should (we hope) know...

...Six years later that figure had declined to just short of 23,000...

...The diocese of Brooklyn, with thirteen men retiring, will ordain only three...

...foreign policy inside their host country...

...Is this what PAW means by promoting diversity and pluralism...

...We think not...

...The talent that Norman Lear can command should be able to live up to what he originally announced as the goal of the organization: "appealing to the best instincts in our people-not to their fears and anxieties...

...This year it will ordain only seven priests, far fewer than the number who will die or retire...

...The United States seems totally indifferent to our problems...

...This was the compromise hammered out by then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig, but our allies soon found that this agreement and Mr...

...Immediately afterward, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany said: "The pipeline will be built, and the British, the French, the Germans, and other Europeans will stick to the agreements which their firms have been making with the Soviets...

...the Constitution . . . a Bill of Rights") with a monarchy ("rule by one"), an oligarchy ("rule by a few"), and a democracy ("rule by a majority...

...nor are we satisfied with many of the other things he said in the same sermon...

...Last year there were 51,207,579 Catholics in the U.S., up 57,737 from the year before...

...They suspect that the Reagan administration would like to wage total economic war on the USSR in an effort to bring the Communist system down, and they think there was a suggestion of this in Mr...

...The New Right seems to slide from the proposition that its adversaries' positions are wrong to the proposition that its adversaries' positions should be suppressed...

...That strikes us as a highly unsound (and also quixotic) political position...

...Are we asking PAW to abide by unrealistic standards of thoughtfulness in this age of media overload and "negative campaigning...

...Shortly after Mr...

...Podesta's letter similarly denatured...

...Now Mr...

...According to the Kenedy directory, there are now 58,085 religious and diocesan priests in the United States...

...Stanley contrasted a republic ("rule by law...

...Infant baptisms were up 38,954 to 982,586 and there were 92,861 adult conversions...

...How many churches will have to be without priests, we wonder, and how many Catholics without the Eucharist before the leadership in the church is willing to re-examine this assumption...

...farmers...

...So there the matter stands at this mometnt...

...With remarkable unanimity, the Atlantic allies are unpersuaded by American arguments against the pipeline, and the U.S...

...The seminaries reflect the problem...

...First, even on the most elementary level, PAW's "facts" are deceptive...

...The PAW ads slur the difference between "belief and "practice," not acknowledging society's right to set certain standards of behavior...

...Likewise, issues like what textbooks should be adopted by public schools, or what books belong in school libraries, or what degree of state intervention in family life is legitimate to protect children, are not all cut-and-dried...

...They had-or thought they had-reached an understanding with President Reagan at the Versailles summit just a few weeks ago...

...and there are some quite respectable ones) to be lumped with Phyllis Schlafly...

...Reagan is clearly trying to go far beyond the normal limits of an embargo, endeavoring to nullify sales that were perfectly legal when they were made...

...Furthermore, when PAW promotional material counters the New Right claim to represent the one true Christian or American position with a pledge "to affirm the right of every American to hold any opinion," it unfortunately contributes to another widespread confusion...

...The weak spot in the Soviet economy, they say, is food...

...We no longer speak the same language," he said...

...It simply presumes that the only ones who can be called to the priesthood are male and celibate...

...By the end of this century-only eighteen years away-there will be fifty percent fewer active priests than there are today...

...DISAPPEARING PRIESTS It is underlining the obvious, but let us do it anyway...

...The prediction by the NORC is mat there will be fewer than 25,000 by the end of the century...

...That organization's Executive Director quickly wrote to say that the PAW ads are only deploying "facts...

...And our European partners make two other points...

...Why penalize Europe and not U.S...

...Haig himself were early casualties of the Reagan return to the fevered climate in Washington...

...MORE ON PAW At the beginning of the summer, this journal criticized a series of newspaper ads run by People for the American Way...

...wants to punish the Soviet Union for Poland, why not cut off U.S...

...Church leaders customarily refer to the declining number of priests as a crisis caused by a shortage in the number of vocations...

...But this way of describing the problem, of course, ignores any question of permitting married priests and of reconsidering the question of women priests...

...Today there are 11,500-down 800 from a year ago...

...Thus they can loosely talk of "forcing" and "imposing" beliefs on everyone, and appear to reinforce the liberal tendency to see any religiously inspired civic position as an imposition of "particular religious beliefs...

...Podesta names several people who, he says, claim to work together and head a movement-and therefore should be held accountable for one another's statements...

...PAW seems to slide from the proposition that Americans have a right to hold any opinion to the proposition that no one can claim some opinions much worthier of being held than others...

...There is a remarkable incomprehension, and that is grave...

...if the U.S...

...We repeat our belief that PAW's distinguished Board of Advisors ought to set the group back on the right track...

...The pipeline deal will diversify their sources of energy supply, the Europeans argue, not making them unduly dependent on the USSR but releasing them from overde-pendence on uncertain Middle Eastern oil...

...The American Way," declare the ads, "is the freedom to hold your own opinions and practice your beliefs...

...The Religious Roundtable, for example, thinks that Social Security should be abolished in favor of a private pension system...

...Reagan's London speech...

...but if that's what PAW means, it should simply say so explicitly in its ads...

...But that only leads us to our second objection-the central one of our original editorial- that the PAW ads played up a number of outrageous statements and acts to discredit a large, undefined group of "moral majoritarians" who had no responsibility for such matters...

...Appealing to fears and anxieties, however, is precisely what the recent newspaper campaign was calculated to do...

...In a sermon (preached four years ago), Rev...

...One final objection to the PAW campaign is its weakness for the slippery half-truths and stock slogans of moral relativism and unthinking individualism...

...The chief reason, as indicated in research by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago: rejection of the policy of celibacy...

...He was referring, of course to the tensions that have arisen over the U.S...

...Nor do we want a democracy in this land because if we have a democracy a majority rules . . . and a majority oftentimes becomes mob rule...

...We doubt it...

...All of this only made worse what may have been the crudest blow of all, the statement by longtime Reagan ally Margaret Thatcher to the House of Commons that it is wrong for "one very powerful nation" to try to prevent the fulfillment of "existing contracts" in the pipeline dispute...

...AH it needs to do now is drive China back into the Soviet Union's arms and it will have come full circle to what it may really want-back to a Fortress America, armed to the teeth and alone in the world...

...The fact is that the shadowy "they" featured in the ads could include anyone opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment ("If you're a woman, they want to keep you 'in your place.'") or to abortion ("They want to involve the government in your decision to have children...

...But the context clearly shows that his intent was quite different, and far less ominous, than the impression given by People for the American Way's truncated version...

...Or not to...

...We don't think the matter is that simple...

...All of this is happening at a time when the Catholic population is increasing...

...It is not surprising that our European allies are upset...

...Cheysson's statement, the French government officially announced that it was instructing French companies to fulfill their contracts to produce American-licensed components for the pipeline despite a ban by President Reagan...

...We are not sure exactly why Jerry Falwell should be held accountable for Phyllis Schlafly's every statement, or vice versa...

...In 1966 there were 48,000 seminarians...

...Kenedy & Sons of New York, is out, and the figures make plain the fact that the shortage of priests in the United States will in die not so distant future reach the crisis stage...

...How can our allies be expected to tolerate such a procedure...

...Even more emphatically, they fear the whole Reagan approach...

...Evidently there are facts and there are facts...

...The meaning of these figures, obviously: a greater need for priests, not lesser...

...It is the major ally and the world's biggest country and we don't even talk anymore...

...We do not want an oligarchy...

...They certainly do not want such a course to be followed without ample consultation among the allies, and this condition they feel has not been given even lip-service...

...Even more fundamentally, our European allies believe a certain amount of two-way trade with the Eastern bloc will help ease tensions and reduce the danger that cold war will become hot...

...Political philosophers might not be satisfied with the Reverend Stanley's distinction between republic and democracy...

...Going by past indications, about half of those ordained this year may be expected to resign from the priesthood by the year 2000...

...One ad, for example, quotes the Rev...

...Reagan's decision to tighten the ban on the sale of American or American-licensed equipment for the pipeline runs directly counter to that agreement, which involved a vague consensus to limit future credits to the Soviet bloc, in return, the Europeans thought, for an easing of the American position on the pipeline...

...Is every constitutional scholar who is cool toward the E.R.A...

...Are all the other quotations provided in the ads or in Mr...

...But, pace PAW, Social Security is not a constitutional right...

...must take this unanimity into account...

...his letter is printed in this issue...

...And to make matters worse from a European and Canadian point of view, he is trying to enforce American decrees on foreign companies through their American owners or through their licenses for American technology-in short, to make such companies compliant instruments of U.S...

...Charles Stanley as saying, "We do not want a democracy in this land because if we have a democracy a majority rules...