Editorials
Contents
I Volume CXI~ Number 16 Correspondence 482 Editorials 483 Rules for liberals:'Dav/d R. Carlin, Jr. 486 'Christ Among Us': John Garvey 487 The End of Catholicism?:...
...When wealthy parishioners chided him for his outspokenness, warning such forwardness would limit his ecclesiastical rise, Fr...
...Maybe we should be more worried about wfiat seem to be the normal ethical levels of business practice in large parts of the economy...
...Reagan's attribution of seculariza- tion to malign courts is a gross distortion of a process that has had numerous valid sources...
...Unwilling to recognize how older forms of the civil religion were not, in truth, neutral but gave their own brand of Christianity a privileged status, they now found themselves frustrated by a secular "overculture" whose proponents were often equally unwilling to allow that it, too, might not be neutral but leave distinctly secular outlooks "more equal than others...
...This conclusion is based on judgments regarding Ferraro's personal intentions and the intent of the law...
...Yet if one views the matter not from Smalltown, U.S.A., but from a cultural capital like New York, there is a striking amount of intolerance toward reli- gious belief, and it is particularly frustrating because it is frequently displayed by those who hold themselves as models of tolerance and openmindedness...
...Well, it's a category that includes crime -self-interested, grasping crime -- and also not-quite-crime -practices that tread just within the boundary of legality but which indicate a manipulation of the rules to escape their proper purposes...
...Now that the fascination with the Ferraro/Zaecaro finarices has abated, it is time for a little reflection...
...Rather it is part and parcel of an opposition to all those forces which either eliminate, threaten Commonweal: 486...
...and the resolution not at all easy --or in sight...
...They are giving up identity with those values and goals traditional to the church, and consequently are causing a crisis within themselves...
...But what faith...
...The Ferraro case is particularly instructive...
...What is sleaze...
...He called these sessions "the best medicine I've got...
...More often, however, such intolerance toward religious belief takes the forms blacks and women have known so well: stereotyping, condescension, dismissal, ignorance, neglect...
...When Mr...
...When he welcomes a "rebirth of faith," it is not the faith of the Talmud or the faith of Jesus' death and resurrection that he appears to have in mind, though no doubt he wouldn't rule those out...
...Canada, $47;'fgreign, $53...
...10016...
...foreign, $29...
...Originally used in the textile trade, sleazy means flimsy, insubstantial...
...Civil religion has been transformed as new groups of believers and nonl~elievers have claimed their rightful places in what was once a Protestant "overculture...
...He was rightly known as one of the most effective and innovative Catholic social ac- tionists of this generation, and we shall miss him...
...wrote Angelo Roncalli at the death of his younger brother in 1957...
...It can be a vehicle for other faiths, assisting them into the public forum...
...Many of our priests and nuns are . . . moving away from their heritage, their culture, and their traditions...
...m||| '.-,., -,-.~ an III F MR...
...Sleaze 2 raises questions about a person's fitness for assuming such a trust...
...Reagan is a Jeffersonian...
...Zaccaro's business dealings...
...Can a spouse disqualify one, or is that "sleaze by association...
...Like slippery, as in down the slippery slope...
...The story is more complicated, of course...
...A~ this point, whatever service the president's civil religion performs in reintroducing an alienated segment of believing Ameriyans into public life is outweighed by the subx'ersion it \works on authentic religion --the kind that not only can celebrate family, hard work, and "strength and purposefulness in our foreign relations" but believes that even these things stand under God's judgment...
...when he first links politics, morality, religion, and government's need for the church, then warns against intolerance and celebrates the fact that there is a wall between church and state guaranteeing all Americans' rights to their own religious beliefs or to no belief at all, he is not acting the political hypocrite, as his critics aver...
...Telephone: (2,12) MU 3-2042...
...Yes, ours is a jealous God...
...icons...
...By appear- ing before sectarian groups, by announcing prayer weeks and Bible years, by endorsing an interpretation of recent history as enforced secularization, he has presided over the civil religion in such a way as to unrrhstakably give back to those Americans their share in it...
...He was ordained in 1956, and soon stationed in a Johnstown, Pa., steel-mill parish where...
...Anyone who has ever "stretched" a bit on a tax form feels some identification with that concern...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 232 Madi- son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...But the "trust factor" should also rest on what a ticket's policy proposals reveal of solidity, consistency, and vision...
...a "nation of believers" in more secular terms: "we are believers in justice and liberty ani:l union...
...It can be critical --as in the appeals of reformers from Thoreau to Martin Luther King, Jr...
...2) whether the financing for her 1978 campaign was proper...
...This involvement was presumed by Baroni...
...Sleaze 2 consists in shady private behavior, not involving any public office...
...Yet, with the removal of Zaccaro as executor,~of the estate from which he borrowed, and later repaid with interest, the sum of $175,000, the judge made explicit that Zaccaro had not been convicted of illegality...
...Greeley's agnosticism: Thomas Sheehan 501 New houses from schoolhouses: J.S...
...GETTING OFF SLEAZY ST...
...But not simply an activist or social mover, his concern was genuinely pastoral, for the life of parishes and his fellow workers...
...The destructive side of Reagan's forays into civil religion is revealed in its political centerpiece --"voluntary" organized prayer in the public schools...
...There was a ~ boldness in this approach...
...Reagan goes before B'nai B'rith and applauds a renewed concern for Jewish identity...
...During the ordeal no one ever suggested any taint of Sleaze 1. Sleaze 2 was suspected in certain comers of Mr...
...10016...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...Weekly, for over two years, he met with other cancer patients at the Washington School of Psychi- atry for attitude therapy sessions...
...lllllll', .m...'=_111...
...Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Like disease --unfortunately infectious...
...He recalled that in high school, "When I took my salami sandwiches to school, the teacher fussed about the smell...
...As Pope John XXIII would have put it,' 'Ah, what a good life, and what a fine death...
...They shouldn't have forgotten LBJ so quickly, or the unfortunate examples of Sleaze 2 that have injured the political saga of the Kennedy family...
...bank...
...How many citizens could even understand the theological anguish of Lincoln's Second Inaugural today...
...But the immediate fact is that President Reagan has understood this sense of griev- ance, as the Democrats have not, and exploited it...
...Canada, $26...
...You can say, 'I have to learn how to live,' and not let something die within you while ygu're supposed to be waiting for the end...
...What they see has many ingredients: Protestant "civic piety," the Founding Fathers' belief in a somewhat Deist Providence, evangelical fervor and the democratic "faith in the common man," with its W.P.A...
...Referring to "the essentially authoritarian straitjacket of religion," it quoted Diderot: "Mankind shall not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest...
...Ordinary white people met ordinary black people and became friends...
...Onomatopoetic...
...Early this month, the New York Times ran a fairly comprehensive, medium-sized news story outlining the positions of the major religions toward abortion --only eleven years after Roe v. Wade...
...Reputations take years to build and minutes to ruin...
...Contents I Volume CXI~ Number 16 Correspondence 482 Editorials 483 Rules for liberals:'Dav/d R. Carlin, Jr...
...plays such a prominent part, Mr...
...Sleaze 1 is a direct assault on the public trust...
...He was concerned for their sense of rootedness and continuity...
...In Johnstown he initiated a credit union ("Man does not live by bread alone, but by credit as well") that today includes 7,000 members...
...9 Ann Harrigan Makletzoff died of cancer in Toronto last June 23...
...But still...
...Perhaps the best sign of sleaze is the kind of alibis it generates: strained, prevaricating, obfusCating...
...And it can be exclusive, both of those Americans whose own languages it refuses to accommodate and of the rest of the world...
...Exactly what is the nature of the marital relationship in a sleaze-hunt...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $43...
...This is one possible conclusion...
...Friendship House had no chart or formula, recipe or manual...
...The Times concluded: "Nothing now known casts any doubt whatever on Mrs...
...So let us try to distinguish...
...In public life it is at least as difficult to recover, and any newcomer is at a disadvantage...
...The reason is, again, his particular version of civil religion...
...He conducted healing services at his old parish, and told friends, "There's a great tension between the will to live and the will to die...
...There is Sleaze 1 and Sleaze 2. Sleaze 2 is what J. Patrick Dobel wrote about in "The Political Philosophy of Sleaze" [July 13] --bending tile standards of public service tO fit the ethos of private gain...
...What remains to be seen, and what the moment-by-moment poll-taking fails to measure, is whether the mere suspicion of sleaze is so sticky that it cannot be removed from the public memory regardless of a positive disclosure...
...The danger in all this religion-in-politics business, the editorial warned, "comes from people who are oh so sure they're fight, who insist that they alone represent the one true political faith, who revile the other side as godless, intolerant obstruc- tionists...
...Lost in the din of these voices is the wee quiet voice of the liberal anti-abortion camp...
...What his opponents don't recognize is that he is not promoting religion in the sense of the many particular faiths that we know in America...
...We are ready to love and serve our nation but not worship it...
...JFK, at his inaugural, declared the nation's "belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God...
...The idea of a civil religion --a generalized faith that binds together the nation and links the national purpose to some higher or deeper reality --has been batted about among observers of the American scene for some time now...
...A volunteer in the interracial apostolate of Baronness de Hueck's Harlem Friendship House, in 1942 she went to Chicago at the invitation of Bishop Bernard Shell to become one of the founders of a Friendship House there...
...The Times, which regularly displays an extraordinary capacity for both obtusity and superiority when dealing with mattcxs that touch upon religion, greeted the president's latest foray with an editorial headed "Oh So Sure They're Right...
...Public scrutiny, in short, should ex- tend to tax returns, but it had better not stop there...
...You've got to have both...
...It is the faith of productivity at home, assertion abroad, and a vague divinity whose major function is to make us feel good about ourselves...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $24...
...You can panic, be fearful, wary, and distressed, or you can go on...
...Reagan is no philosophe, but in his own way he thinks much the same...
...In recent times, she was encouraged by friends to complete an account of her work...
...they are hoping to have it published soon...
...Not quite, although that is part of it...
...Single copy, $1.25...
...Occasionally this intolerance surfaces rudely, as in a recent editorial of The Nation, a venerable journal of the doctrinaire left...
...ReaCommonweal: 484 gan's civil religion, self-congratulatory and sentimental, turns out not to be an umbrella under which our particular beliefs can flourish...
...This proposal is simply double-talk and a real threat to conscience...
...In the 1960s Baroni became the pastor of a racially diverse parish in Washington, D.C...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Something, maybe, but not too much...
...We couldn't agree more, except that it may come as a surprise to the Times that, minus the word "godless," this shoe would sometimes fit their own editorial foot...
...Such diversity was salt to him, and his naturally cheerful spirit combined with a tactical gift for building concordances...
...r . .9 .' fF.dh~ ' .9 .9 *~ mm .9 , .mmmmmm...
...After two weeks of media coverage, enough to rival any soap opera for intensity and complexity of plo, t, Geraldine Ferraro's responses during a ninety-minute press conference left the public wondering whether its suspicions of sleaze had been over-aroused...
...I'm just an Italian kid lucky to be ordained at all...
...21 September 1984:485 SEEKERS AFTER JUSTICE .9 "Ah, what a good life, and what a fine death...
...Reagan is sincere, and he even comes close to being consistent...
...Like slime and like grease, hard to get hold of, but also hard to get rid of...
...Religion is caricatured in history books, left out of TV documentaries on public issues, presented in stock negative images by columnists and editorialists, treated as a curiosity, or welcomed when it is "our kind," i.e., "progressive...
...We are among those who think it contains all these possibilities...
...And we believe in ourselves...
...for others it is an authentic religious form that places the nation, for self-understanding and judgment, in a transcendental framework...
...Right-wing Christian fundamentalism, say his critics...
...Or it can be their rival, subverting their particular challenge in a miasma of "Americanism...
...All this explains how it is possible to see something positive when Ronald Reagan sends the liberal editorialists into a dither...
...If things have improved recently, the sad fact is that the new attention probably owes more to the militancy of the Jerry Falwells than to the tolerance and sensitivity of the national media...
...Jefferson thought that underneath the surface of sectarian differences, the real message of his day's religions was pretty much the same, and as Enlightenment reason dispelled the obscurities of priestcraft, this common denominator would become clear...
...Suggestive...
...Like squeeze, which is sometimes what the practitioners of sleaze do, and in the past tense is probably how someone accused of sleaze feels...
...last month after a long struggle with peritoneal mesothelioma cancer...
...With the fall campaign beginning to reach full tilt, Democrats must do all they can to assure the nation of their moral authority, their leadership, and the strength of their political positions: the "trust factor" must be their first order of business if they hope to compete with the popular image of President Reagan as a moral leader...
...21 September 1984:483 Not a few Americans have felt excluded by this shift...
...Fuerst & Sam Mancuso 502 Screen: Tom O' Brien 502 Books I I The Unraveling of America/A Time of Passion/Troubled Journey: Jim Sleeper 506 The Return of Martin Guerre: Stephen Wagley 510 West with the Night: David Toolan 511 Staff Editor...
...5, 1978...
...A New York Times editorial boiled down the controversies: l) whether Ferraro should have claimed an exemption from disclosure for her husband...
...His own version of it...
...He is preaching something else, and that something is civil religion...
...It recognizes the difference'between a mistake and a willful evasion...
...Of course, the aim of vigilance concerning sleaze is to undergird public trust...
...One can only imagine how lighthearted that journal's mini-Diderots would be if Jerry Falwell charmingly announced that he looked forward to the day when the last Commie dictator was boiled in the juices of the last secular humanist...
...But given the degree of current attention to the abortion question, there exists the chance --a slim chance, no doubt, but still a chance -- that some notice will be given to this third, apparently eccentric, position...
...She was survived by three children...
...What seems grimly certain is that the process of joint disclosure by professional couples will become commonplace, and we will see more of this complex haggling in the future...
...Sleaze is one of the few things in American politics that is /genuinely bipartisan, as Democrats, who were complaining quite rightly but also a bit self-righteously about the Reaganites' "slb, Aze factor," have recently been reminded...
...Geno Baroni, 53, who died in Washington, D.C...
...There is something downright frightening about a civil religion in which the chant "U.S.A...
...It is the faith of "bedrock values," of "hard work" and "family" and "strength and purposefulness in our foreign relations...
...For still others, it is a shallow celebration of the American Way of Life...
...Sleaze...
...Furthermore, reports indicate that all the publigity has had a deleterious effect on Zaccaro's real estate business...
...The religion faded, and the strictly civic expanded...
...I think that the sense of identity and heritage is very important to the life of the church," he told the Notre Dame Journal of Education in 19"~3...
...So he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., founded the Campaign for Human Development, estab- lished neighborhood development groups in over forty-five cities, and served as undersecretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development...
...No one seems to be sure about the derivation of the word, but it is undoubtedly a good one...
...Lyndon Johnson chose to declare the U.S...
...It seemed that their way of thinking and talking was no longer part of legitimate public discourse, at least on the national level...
...We have now had both --his life and his death...
...In any case, brushing the whole thing aside in a fit either of misplaced largesse or resigned worldliness doesn't help...
...And it can be complacent --congratulating ourselves on material wealth or military might...
...REAGAN'S CIVIL RELIGION p RESIDENT Reagan has called for a rebirth of faith...
...Ferraro's capacity to serve the nation as Vice-President...
...Not surprisingly, the objection now being raised in business circles is that many good people are being deterred from government service because they will refuse to bear such scrutiny...
...The two really loud voices in the political debate on abortion are of course the conservative pro-life camp (captained by Ronald Reagan) and the liberal pro-choice camp (led by virtually the entire top leadership of the national Democratic Party...
...9 Maintain a generalized pro-life context...
...it turns out to be the ardent elevation of the American Way of Life, of which our particular beliefs are presumed to be only superficial variations...
...The same must be said at the death of Msgr...
...Cameron, Fre- derick J. Crosson, Robert lmbelli, John Jay Hughes, Anne Carr, Richard J.~ Sklba, Loring W. Batten, I11, Sebas- tian Moore, Gerard S. Sioyan, Francis Sch~ssler Fiorenza, Jack Miles, John L. McKenzie 490 On Satan & Catholic liberals: Thomas Sheehan 498 Fr...
...It is possible to see something inclusive and democratically healthy in this --and also much that is opportunistic and dangerously demagogic...
...Born of an immigrant coal-mining family in Acosta, Pa., Baroni brought the stamina of the laborer to all he did, and a relish for ethnic variation...
...What follows are some suggested rules for liberal anti-abortionists should they join the current debate...
...The way the candidate responds will determine whether clearing such a preliminary hurdle successfully qualifies her/him for high public office...
...It is, in our view, completely unlike questions about Christmas crfches, "equal access" for high- school religious groups, chaplains for state legislatures, reli- gious themes on postage stamps, and a host of other issues about which we could live comfortably with considerable give-and-take...
...Marcy Kaptur of Ohio recently recalled that at a meeting of community leaders from around the country she discovered "that the thing we all had in common was that we became involved in public life because of Geno...
...In an odd sense, Mr...
...Peter Steinfels Assistant Editors: David Toolan, Karen Smith, patrick Jordan Production Editor: Anne Robertson Poetry: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky Advertising Manager...
...Could this be Sleaze 2 even though Zaccaro him- self is not running for office...
...the pastor spoke for the company, and I spoke for the union...
...No doubt, the "trust factor," like the "sleaze factor," involves a lot of imponderables --matters of character and judgment and sensitivity which are communicated by a candidate (or, alas, by a slick advertising campaign...
...He was removed to avoid any trace of impropriety...
...Meanwhile, the disclosure process has cost the Zaccaros plenty: $50,000 for accountants and lawyers, the loss of Zac- caro's expected payment as conservator, and back federal taxes plus interest -- only discovered when the latest accountant found a previous accountant's error...
...We demur...
...Even in private 'life, it is difficult to recover from suspicion...
...It can be inclusive --providing a common language, part religious, part secular, so Americans of different outlooks can adequately voice their deepest convictions...
...His suggestion that all opponents of his version of civil religion are "attacking religion" and intolerant is shockingly unfair...
...but, adds Nina Polcyn Moore, "her survivors are all who were moved by her example, her eloquence, and her overflowing dedication to the precept: 'Love one another.' " i Abortion debate RULES FOR LIBERALS MAKING THEIR VOICES HEARD T HE VICE PRESIDENTIAL candidacy of Geraldine Ferraro who is simultaneously a Roman Catholic, a liberal Democrat, and the defender of a pro-choice position on abortion --has assured that the abortion issue will remain front and center throughout the election season...
...That, one supposes, passes for pleasantry at The Nation...
...U.S.A...
...Her friend Nina Polcyn Moore recently wrote to us about her, "She was a white woman committed to change the face of the earth from that little begirming place in a black neighborhood...
...Baroni wryly responded: "Me, a bishop...
...I am interested in legitimizing pluralism," he said...
...Obviously sleaze is a broad category...
...486 'Christ Among Us': John Garvey 487 The End of Catholicism?: Responses: Peter Chirico, J.M...
...The anti- abortion liberal must maintain that opposition to abortion is not an isolated pro-life position...
...Our civil religion has its rituals and obligations --on the Glorious Fourth, on Memorial Day, in presidential inaugural addresses...
...For some observers it is a necessary social glue that holds together a wildly disparate people...
...His own last illness, after repeated bouts with cancer, was the mark of his own mettle...
...Why --besides the obvious political capital -- cannot the president see this...
...Ann Harrigan Makletzoff reflected on her Friendship House experience six years ago in Commonweal ("Living a Revolu- tion," Dec...
...and 3) whether the family paid its fair share of federal taxes...
Vol. 111 • September 1984 • No. 16
