People of the Lie
O'Donovan, Leo J.
ing life plans and procreative choices. Indeed the oft-repeated phrase "life plan" created echoes in my mind of something most befitting a briefcasetoting MBA pursuing a well-mapped career....
...This is not a question of liking the movement or what it stands for...
...Are such experiences really only the result of a socially induced, moral passivity which women must now wholly reject...
...Phillip Berryman writes with the sensitivity and passion of a Christian who has livedthe biblical option for the poor...
...Paige is able to spin out theories of a New Right "putsch" of the right-to-life movement for the same reasons she can conjure up imaginary alliances...
...Ten pages into either book is sufficient reading to persuade anyone without an axe to grind that neither Paige nor Merton has anything original to add to the discussion...
...For one thing, the reader never is sure who or what she is referring to: "right-to-life" expands and contracts accordion-like to suit her purposes...
...his use of personal example is adroit, unselfconscious, revealingly apt...
...It is at once instructive, persuasive -- and distressingly idiosyncratic...
...Professor Merton's principal contribution is to suggest that " a t some level[!] right-to-lifers do not, in fact, regard the zygote, the embryo, or the fetus as fully human...
...Now, with a darker palette, he shares his reflections and data on the human capacity to thwart development and even destroy it...
...Here is an established psychotherapist who expresses his humanistic and religious concern without any academicism or professionalism whatsoever...
...Indeed, after reading several of his chapters, you already feel you know him...
...REV...
...Their self-deception spreads, and the refusal to acknowledge it becomes their unpardonable sin, marking them out as "people of the lie," true children of the "father of lies...
...Peck is at his best in detecting the malicious side of certain patients he or his colleagues have treated...
...Yet it is true that the right-to-life movement is radical...
...Professor Merton would have us believe that the movement is "inherently extremist...
...Read these pages on their own terms acceptingfor the moment that these three priests have been truly represented, and that they are sincere in what they say...
...H.C...
...Far from persecuting women the goals of the movement are both to assist women in their time of need and to save the lives of their unborn children by helping these women find other solutions to problem pregnancies...
...A book review is not the place where one could explore such differences at the length that the level of Harrison's own argumentation would require...
...1,IIIQ horn ChicallO the cost includes round trip from New York or Chicago on SWISSAIR, 1 msht Netanya, 4 nilhts Tiberias...
...Now its source is named quite explicitly as God the Father of Jesus Christ...
...This misunderstanding is fundamental...
...Need it be pointed out that if devoting one's primary attention only THE HOLYLAND - May 2tw)une 10, 1944 S1,71S |tom N.Y...
...The stark contrast between darkness and light, good and evil, is of course perennially revealing, and the figures of therapist and exorcist may rightly be recognized as modern heroes in the struggle...
...It centers on the My Lai massacre and the United States' involvement in the tragedy of Vietnam...
...It is nowhere better embodied than in the life of the martyred archbishop who did much to cement the alliance of the Salvadoran Church and people, restoring the Church's credibility as a force for peace and justice...
...Merton shares with most violent critics of the right-to-life movement a complete misunderstanding of what is at its heart...
...Worldview ISBN 0-88344-364-3 Quality Paperbound 256 pages $12.95 Ministers of God, Ministers of the People Testimonies of Faith from Nicaragua by Teofilo Cabestrero Extensive interviews with Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Culture, Fernando Cardenal, Youth Movement Coordinator, and Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister...
...Is there such a torpor in our sacramental life, in our liturgy, even in our best spiritual direction that a person committed to healing can simply overlook them...
...direct mail wizard Richard Viguerie is elevated from a county campaign'manager to campaign manager for John Tower's successful 1960 senatorial race, and credited with converting William Buckley to the cause at some unspecified time in the mid-to-late seventies when, in fact, BuckleY was writing anti-abortion columns in the 1960s...
...Illness, on the other hand, is any bodily or personal impediment to fulfilling our human potential...
...Characterized by "willfulness" rather than "willingness," such people stubbornly resist any change in the pattern of their destructive behavior...
...At the center of the book is his effort to identify evil as an illness...
...he introduces case material with novelistic vividness...
...For another, Paige wildly inflates the importance of marginal groups and imputes motives to people that they themselves would undoubtedly find strange...
...It seems as if when writing about the right-to-life movement, not only do the gloves come off but respect for even minimal standards of accuracy and evidence is deemed unnecessary...
...His style is disarmingly straightforward...
...Harrison is a woman of moral integrity -sensitive to the claims of the socially disadvantaged...
...Instead they are content to pander to the worst prejudices and most unfounded generalizations about the right-to-life community that circulate in liberal and left-liberal circles...
...Well-taken, however, is Harrison's caveat that it is unfair to hold women to an ethic of selfsacrifice, while men are permitted a minimalist ethic of self-interest...
...One needn't place much store in what rightto-lifers profess to believe to recognize that they must be touching something very vital if they are not only able to maintain themselves but flourish in the face of almost unremitting hostility from virtually every major source of power and authority in our culture...
...It requires ignoring the 1,400+ problem pregnancy centers established around the country by pro-lifers, the Contemporary Christianity and the Struggle for Justice in Central America The Gospel in Art by the Peasants of Solentiname Edited by Philip and Sally Scharper Thirty-one stunning, full-color prints of Nicaraguan peasants' depictions of the Gospel stories...
...7 NIGHT ITALYIASSISi EIr/IENIlION $770 pt~r penms For color brochure send coupon Io: BIBLICAL JOURNEYS 27A Mare Street k~tlwmplo~ N.Y...
...But knowing this does not make it any less disappointing that Connie Paige, an investigative reporter, and Andrew Melton, a director of a university journalism program, would pass up the opportunity to come to grips fairly and objectively with both the strengths and weaknesses of the "ultimate populists," as Ms...
...PENNY LERNOUX With extensive notes and bibliography...
...GARY MacEOIN "This is a provocative and important contribution to understanding the role of Catholicism in the struggle for justice in Central America...
...Harrison is well aware of the finitude of human resources and human ingenuity which lies at the root of problem pregnancies...
...She does not explore the fortitude and generosity which would allow a woman to undertake a pregnancy that imperiled her "life plan...
...Here, as in his evaluation of personal cases, his moral sense is signally compassionate, patient, and balanced...
...The history of the human race is full of instances in which the powerful refused to acknowledge the moral worth of the powerless...
...Paradoxically, this may be because for all the ink spilled on the right-to-life movement, it is yet to be taken seriously...
...I can only signal my disagreements, while emphasizing that Our Right to Choose is a major, and even brilliant, contribution to the abortion debate...
...19.95 thereafter The Word Remains A Life of Oscar Romero by James R. Brockman "Oscar Romero was archbishop of San Salvador for a scant time, but it was his fate to be named to the post in the years when his country awakened to the terrible injustice embedded in its society...
...MULHOLLAND Commonweal: 190...
...By and large, most of the informational gatekeepers in our society, along with an overwhelming preponderance of our opinionmakers, do not grant to the movement the kind of ethical and moral stature necessary for it to be considered a voice worth listening to...
...More significantly, he needs to recognize the call to repentance and the experience of forgiveness which are ordinary, practical aspects of the Christian life confronted with the problem of evil...
...Pro-choicers on pro-lifers (cont...
...Generous spirit, idiosyncratic book PEOPLE OF THE LIE THE HOPE FOR HEALING HUMAN EVIL M. Scott Peck Simon and Schuster, $14.95, 269 pp...
...People of the Lie is a candidly personal statement of belief in the reality of evil and a sustained argument for studying the phenomenon scientifically...
...Yet it seems to me she gives no consideration to the possible positive moral significance in accepting situations we did not choose -- in the "making do" and "keeping on" which women have maintained for generations...
...Yet without some sense of the transcendent life of God to which human life is called in communion, our fulfillment becomes a matter of self-improvement, more or less nobly conceived, and sin loses its radical meaning of being lost or fundamentally estranged...
...Merton comes to this conclusion by (1) a relentlessly wrong-headed reading of an article in NRL News written by National Right to Life's general counsel, James Bopp,Jr., and (2) asserting that right-to-lifers, if III I III they really meant what they said, would insist that women who abort be prosecuted for murder...
...Refusing criticism from others or themselves, they become immured in narcissism and a desperate fear of detection...
...A ma~or reason the movement is pummeled the way it is, and provokes blind reactions like those in these books, is because it very accurately reflects not some outlandish doctrines but deeply felt values of its Middle American members...
...In the end, one's dissatisfaction with this deeply felt book may turn into dissatisfaction with the level of one's own response to the Spirit's call to life...
...No other time or place offers us such a detailed and comprehensive record of what "ordinary" Christians made of the Gospel in the context of their own lives...
...It relies instead on the dramatic use of Johannine dualisms...
...ISBN: 0-88344-382-1 Cloth $9.95 The Religious Roots of Rebellion Christians in Central American Revolutions by Phillip Berryman Berryman provides the best historical account of what the churches have done in Central America in the past twenty years...
...9 nights lerusalem, daily breakfast and most dinners, 9 touring days...
...Continued from page 183) dure...
...Peck's judgment on our national responsibility is unequivocal but not harsh...
...Paige calls the right-to-lifers...
...But these are basically naturalistic definitions, admitting no real transcendence of the psychological order except in mythical terms...
...the authoritative statement against which all other accounts will be judged...
...Graciously and modestly, but with equal vigor, he there surveyed the resources and requirements for lives of true spiritual attainment...
...In The Road Less Traveled, a widely read and helpful book published in 1978, Peck tried to show how religion and psychology interwine on the journey of spiritual growth...
...11968 NAM[ to races in which there is a chance of making a difference is adopting New Right methodology, then the Democratic party is also a client of the New Right...
...Circumstances beyond our control often foil our "life plans" and even our most sophisticated efforts to control our fertility...
...Finally, she simply knows very little about politics...
...Correspondence I (Continued from page 162) seemed appropriate for Father Hehir to apply those principles...
...My distress over Peck's latest work is chiefly a result of his frequently uncritical theology...
...People who vehemently oppose certain strategies are converted into supporters...
...The book's focus is On the evil in individuals, but there is also a long chapter on what the author calls "group evil...
...And on and on and Oil...
...On the other hand, we more explicitly ecclesial Christians may well wonder why we have not been able to make deCommonweal: 186 nominational church membership, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the communion of saints more compelling realities for a spirit as generous as Peck's...
...There is no horizon beyond the human...
...It is radical, as Richard Neuhaus has explained, "not by virtue of how far out it is but by virtue of how deep and central is the question it raises...
...The texts facing each painting are commentaries of the peasants on the Gospel passage relatingto that painting...
...ROBERT McAFEE BROWN ISBN: 0-88344-335-X Quality Paperbound 160 pages $6.95 23 March 1984:187 from the pages of The Right to Lifers...
...ISBN: 0-88344-105-5 Quality Paperbound 464 pages $14.95 ti110/31/64...
...Leo | . O~ S COTT PECK is the kind of author a reader naturally wants to meet...
...I hope the bishops' pastoral on peace will not become like some church documents which became historical records of brave principles which were never applied to contemporary life...
...Moreover, nothing is allowed to be taken at face value...
...It is no wonder, then, that the book has little sense for a religious history lived before God in community...
...NotiCing could be further from the truth...
...Put on 'hold' for the moment the stereotypes and impressions you receive about Nicaragua from the public press, and from the Administration...
...a professional fundraiser who has raised millions of dollars is demoted to a bookkeeper and placed on a television program on which she never appeared...
...As in The Road Less Traveled, he knows the path of love as "a dynamic balance of opposites, a painful creative tension of uncertainties, a difficult tightrope between extreme but easier courses of action...
...By focusing on the alleged motives of right-to-lifers, the anti-anti-abortionist is able to evade the unsettling fact that we abort at least 1.6 million unborn humans every year...
...In the earlier book, a pervasive grace arising from our personal unconscious empowers such love...
...Mildred Jefferson was elected president of the National Right-to-Life Committee (NRLC) not because she is dazzlingly articulate and a brilliant spokeswoman for unborn babies but because she is Protestant and, as a black and a woman, "was able to fend off charges of anti-feminism and racism" -- the very unfounded charges created out of whole cloth by people like Paige...
...These three priests in the Nicaraguan government explain how they combine their priesthood and their political commitment...
...Nevertheless, her theory that human rights are a product of our moral commitment to one another, not rooted in any independent moral reality, such as GOd or the natural law, disturbs me...
...That question, which Neuhaus says is the beginning of all moral judgment and all just law, "is simply this: Who, then, is my neighbor...
...Sin is defined as falling short of the mark, evil as a force destructive of life or liveliness...
...The history of that awakening and its legacy of struggle is now also the history of the Salvadoran Church...
...How much more productive a use of Paige's and Merton's time it would have been to drop the sneering, condescending tone and work to shed real light on the people Michael Harrington once described as the single authentic grass roots movement to emerge in the 1970s...
...I am not content to ground the rights of the vulnerable in a social contract...
...In 1980, NRLC's political action committee did not go after undefeatable pro-choicers nor spend a lot of money on pro-lifers who were shoo-ins, but instead focused on contested races that could be won, particularly in the cases of vulnerable pro-choice incumbents...
...Finally, the matter of fetal life...
...In Malachi Martin, Peck has chosen a curious witness for the church's practice of exorcism...
...This commonsensical strategy is offered as evidence that NRLC adopted the New Right's political methodology "wholesale...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 6
