Editorials
Contents Volume CXI, Number 7 ..,'~i~i,,,., . l . . . ' ~ . " - - i I . . . P.V ' IPV~,ib.~ *&V~ m ,m l i . .,,n;ll..-... , . . . . i l l ' ; j s a m ' , - , ' , ' , ; . . . . I I I I r " , ,...
...Replying to an editorial on the Indian government's restriction of tea exports, the letter writer solemnly referred to India's "moral commitment to the international tea community...
...One is the matter of "equal access" for secondary students who wish to organize religious groups in public high schools on the same basis as other extracurricular activities like hobby clubs or political groups...
...Nah, that's only the columnists and Republicans...
...In some sixtyfive inches of text, there were, of course, numerous references to "abortion," the "abortion process," and the decision "to abort a fetus...
...10016...
...And if our state and national legislatures have ever been much elevated in their labors by the invocations Of the chaplains they have on call, it has escaped our notice...
...In this world, however, the fight answers are yes, yes, and yes...
...It's Hart by a length...
...Make a generalization about "blacks" or "Jews," and it sounds both Commonweal: 196 too specific, as though your observation applied to every single member of the group, and too cold, as though you were referring to nothing more than a statistical conglomerate...
...It is a non-religious one, to be sure, and probably one not sincerely espoused even by most of the enforcers...
...The Republicans frighten me most, but the Democrats offend more...
...i t ' s . . , it's Hart...
...Should the Senate have rejected a constitutional amendment designed to return organized prayer to America's public schools...
...To argue that the school which allows a Young Democrats club to meet cannot allow the Young Christians to do so because the latter, like the former, requires an adult monitor to satisfy school insurance policies, or because it might actually convert a few students (what are the Young Democrats doing...
...The sun never sets on the international tea community...
...In this, the Court has set itself firmly against that view which seems to demand an absolute scouring of all religious references from the public forum...
...Mondale and Mr...
...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 tnonthly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...dollars by International Money Order or by cheek on a U.S...
...The State Department concoction," it e0111orialized, "is particularly repellent . . . . a bloodless abstraction...
...Media democracy is too important to allow false spoilers in the final stretch...
...Taken as part of a pattern, they begin to be worth defending...
...Taken individually, none of these recent targets of the advocates of absolute church-state separation matters so much...
...But refer, instead, to the "black community" or the "Jewish community," and there you have something at once warmer, more human, and yet savingly vague...
...That is all fight," say the absolute separationists, "Religion is essentially private...
...POSTMASTER" Send address changes to Commonweal, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind...
...Ford 202 American indian spiritual politics: Christopher Vecsey 203 On not rendering to Caesar: Tim Langley 208 Stage: Gerald Weales 210 Screen: Tom O'Brien 211 Media: Frank O' Connell 212 Verse: Edmund Pennant, LeRoy Smith, Lee Richard Hayman, Joseph Awad, john Nixon, Jr...
...In fact, there's a reasonable answer to that question, one that is implicit in the Supreme Court's decision on Pawtucket (see p. 202...
...But to give them up in present circumstances would be no contribution to a genuine pluralism...
...There were references to the merits of an abortion procedure that"eliminates any possiblity that a fetus might live...
...We can, of course, also depend on two -- and only two -candidates in the fall...
...Say you want to comment on tensions between two ethnic groups...
...Quite fight...
...Why recognize Thanksgiving...
...That is an exaggeration, and a dangerous one...
...L ~ IIII IIII I IIIII II Election '84 MEDIA DEMOCRACY THE HUCKSTERING OF THE PRESIDENCY I IusT TRY to follow the quadrennial presidential horserace: Last year it was Mondale with Cranston moving out of the pack...
...Line-&awing and a sensitivity to circumstances, of the sort figuring in the Pawtucket decision, would be required in these matters, too...
...At Academy Award-winning time, we hear a lot about the "motion picture community" (known during the rest of the year as the "film industry...
...I don't know if this is purely because TV covers no sport well with more than two sides, or whether for this particular sport "one-on-one" is simply better video...
...But what really jogged us back to the topic was a letter in the London Economist...
...Then we recalled that tea time can't arrive simultaneously all around the globe...
...i iii1|1111111 ii i l l II I commonweal FROM POLAND TO PAWTUCKET S Supreme Court have allowed Pawtucket to include in its a Nativity scene municipal Christmas display...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $43...
...Yet no matter how they twisted and turned, they could not offer a persuasive explanation of how these spontaneously generated prayers would actually be orchestrated by teachers and recited by schoolchildren without serious offense to individual conscience...
...Perfectly logical theories effloresce in disregard of messy, contradictory realities...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...Mondale is also a faction Bionic: pieces have been gathered from nearly every pressure 6 April 1984:197...
...In some remaining portion, it would open deep wounds or chafe old scars, until, ignored or enforced, it would only discredit the religious faith 6 April 1984:195 it was meant to serve...
...Absolute separationists like the ACLU are, as always, insisting that both practices contravene the First Amendment...
...Only heretics like Gene McCarthy or John Anderson fail to understand the grave danger of choice in a game so sophisticated and charged with such electric suspense...
...foreign, $53...
...Only he can go the distance...
...Why allow Bibles for oath taking...
...Will we be able to draw on our heritage, or even understand it, if we diligently forbid all public acknowledgment of it...
...9 What a useful word is "community...
...But that is not all fight...
...Both matters are currently at issue in the courts and in legislatures...
...But it is fed by the similar exaggerations of the absolute separationists...
...This latter abortion by dismemberment, admittedly traumatic for those who must witness it, was given its medical label, "dilation and evacuation," or "D and E." Thus one gynecologist says "I do D and E's," although he admits "it is a horrible procedure...
...Cranston fades...
...they're coming 'round into the stretch...
...nonetheless it claims the kinds of privileges once attached to established churches...
...Jesse's gaining on Fritz...
...In the abstract, crucifixes on the walls of state classrooms are not a happy solution, and for some in Poland they may possibly represent a nostalgic attachment to an illiberal ancien regime...
...The other is the matter of a formal moment of silence in public schools...
...All the better, we thought...
...Little old ladies in Malmesbury, an Afghan gun runner in Pakistan, two bookstoreclerks in Toronto, a cabdriver in Nairobi, indeed the entire international tea community was steeping and sipping...
...In those circumstances, Polish Catholicism provides a counterweight, and the privileges that it retains create a bit of space free of the official orthodoxy...
...No, wait a minute, wait a minute...
...Then there's the "intelligence community" (spies) and no doubt the "community-organizing community...
...II I IIII II I IIIII I I ETC...
...We've thought these thoughts many times, particularly during homilies featuring "community" in every sentence...
...We got the inevitable two-man race between Mr...
...Two specific practices that could calm the exaggerated fears of school prayer supporters are now confronting the exaggerated claims of absolute separationists...
...It was also a recognition of the greater role that compulsory schooling had assumed in the socialization of American youth...
...Organized school prayer might go down painlessly -- or remain a dead issue -- in half or three-quarters of the nation's school districts...
...Glenn is fading back...
...It is, moreover, an answer that is instructive for looking at any number of the religiously charged issues that seem to bedevil our public life, In theory, church and state are separated in Poland...
...Our national past, both in its bright and dark aspects, is thoroughly religious and, yes, largely Christian and, yes, largely Protestant...
...No wonder there's the "gay community" and the "academic community...
...10016...
...bank...
...Hart's about to fold...
...Canada, $26...
...We're not sure what the answers might be in some crystal kingdom of unadulterated political philosophy...
...Now that is the sort of thing to which one could really make a moral commitment...
...Frankly, commercial Christmas displays complete with stab!e, oxen, and baby Jesus do not rank among our favorite things...
...that "generally results in fetal death...
...A custom that had proved relatively unobjectionable for a nation which was overwhelmingly Protestant had to give way before the reality of twentieth-century Catholic and Jewish immigration and the emergence of a significant segment of principled non-believers...
...Way out...
...But they cannot be wielded in the abstract, with no sense of the concrete, historical setting...
...i l l ' ; j s a m ' , - , ' , ' , ; . . . . I I I I r " , , . . - = i . ,,v.%v,, - . - ~ i i i P F Correspondence 194 Editorials 195 Media democracy: Keith C. Burris 197 Running on new: William G. Mayer 198 Crbche landing: Maurice deG...
...Questions of church and state -- of which there seem to be an unusual number lately -- lend themselves to dogmatism on all sides...
...No less than eighty percent of the public favor overturning that ban, which thus becomes probably the most popular political cause in sight...
...But the Democrats do poorly on either score, too...
...Why recognize Christmas as a national holiday at all, instead of the winter solstice...
...It is not all fight because to exile religion from the public forum, or simply to handicap its role there heavily, is to perform a kind of lobotomy on American culture...
...There are important principles at stake in church-state questions...
...The one word that never appeared in this story was "kil_9 ling...
...No doubt, Christianity can stand without municipal Christmas creches...
...They are not very persuasive...
...Single copy, $1.25...
...I don't expect much of Republicans...
...Ever get the feeling the presidential race is like that famous broadcast Dutch Reagan did back in Iowa years ago...
...Why admit references to God or Providence on ceremonial occasions...
...The Republicans may be, by turns, stupid and cold-hearted, but the Democrats are the biggest phonies since Clifford Irving...
...Even more to the point, most American citizens still construe their ultimate values in religious terms...
...Walter (Fritz) Mondale, the quintessential veep, is now one of them, a "Washington lawyer...
...I'm sorry about that...
...It is a curious kind of educational philosophy that would end up outlawing any school-administered call to personal reflection or meditation on larger purposes...
...The Times is aot buying that...
...I don't like either major party...
...and indeed Christians might better serve their own beliefs and their non-Christian neighbors' sensibilities by taking those life-sized figures off the public payroll and installing them on church property, minus the reindeer, clowns, and six-foot candy canes...
...Foggy Bottom prefers the usage "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life...
...It's Glenn...
...220 Islam: faith & ideology: Jane Hussain Books Inevitable Revolutions/The Cuban Threat: Joseph A. Page 214 218 The Passionate Life/Spiritual Passages/The Fire of Your Life/A Listening Heart: William James O'Brien 221 Marcovaldo: irving Malin 222 Staff ' I III I II II Editor: Peter Steinfels Assistant Editor...
...At what point do they begin believing that the official "rules of the game" are simply disqualifying them from participating in the public discourse about what counts most...
...At any given moment, it's tea time somewhere...
...Christianity can also do without religious themes on Christmas postage stamps...
...the debt, when examined structurally, is as much or more their heritage as Reagan's...
...To travel down the road of the absolute separationists is eventually to make the specifically religious, among the whole set of intellectual, educational, moral, and spiritual beliefs, practices, and institutions, positively disadvantaged in its public existence...
...Whether a moment of silence is a covert form of officially endorsed prayer would depend on how it was administered...
...9 Speaking of words, a brief editorial in the February 15 New York Times chided the State Department for banishing the word "killing" from its human fights reports...
...The State Department says "killing" is too imprecise for the sort of thing that Central American death squads do to their victims...
...foreign, $29...
...that, by dismembering the fetus in the womb, "eliminates any possibility of live birth...
...but to argue that the idea is an unconstitutional equivalent of school prayer simply because that is what some of its proponents originally favored is illogical...
...Here comes Jesse...
...Canada, $47...
...Hart -- after exactly one primary...
...But combine that with the political courage shown by those who voted against the school prayer amendment and the chances are good for genuine pluralism under the First Amendment...
...The proponents of a school prayer amendment did implicit homage to these realities in their insistence that the organized praying they foresaw would be purely voluntary and in no way put the state into the business of composing prayers...
...They are supposed to be corporate apologists and militarists...
...Why pay chaplains in the military, or exempt religious institutions from taxes...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $24...
...The constitutional ruling against organized prayer in American public schools, on the other hand, was a belated recognition of exactly that sort of pluralism...
...McGovern' s a spoiler...
...Hart in the stretch -- he's pulling out...
...David Toolan Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, Sheila Tanksley Poetry: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Advertising Manager...
...Elsewhere, the same day's Times carded an unusually long and informative report on the problem of late abortions, a problem created by the fact that what was being aborted was the equivalent o f " a highly premature infant...
...Wait, wait a minute...
...Its comparison, for example, between a municipal Christmas creche and the display of religious paintings in public art museums strikes us as specious...
...Circumstances," wrote Edmund Burke, ". . . give in reality to eve D, political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect...
...It is not all fight because, denied public expression, the strictly "private" will eventually be drained of reality...
...Which brings us back to Pawtucket and the recent Supreme Court decision...
...And all those D.C...
...superlawyers, the Clark Cliffords and Harry McPhersons, and who-have-you's, gathering in elegant dining rooms and discussing nostalgically the Great Society's war on poverty...
...Glenn's movingup...
...Obviously, that is the way many citizens feel about th'e constitutional ban on school prayer...
...Nor is the Court's reasoning in the Pawtucket case above criticism...
...But the merit of the decision overall is its refusal to abstract the creche case from its concrete circumstances and to take a "rigid, absolutist view" of church-state separation...
...Why crucifixes in Polish classrooms but not organized prayer in American ones...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...You know, the sound went off, and he had to improvise to keep the attention of the listeners, and to stop them from touching that dial...
...Is Hollings coming on...
...All that hand wringing about the poor and the downtrodden, all that talk about compassion -- when the party establishment is controlled by corporate lawyers, lobbyists, brokers, and real estate developers...
...is once again toplace religion in a special, disfavored status, it is true that proposals for a moment of silence have been made as a "second best" arrangement by, among others, some frustrated backers of organized vocal prayer...
...The cause is assisted by more than a little political opportunism, but also by the belief of many school prayer supporters, that they are in a position analogous to that of the Polish Catholics: surrendering the schools to "neutrality" is, in fact, only surrendering them to a different -- secular -orthodoxy...
...Ah, the steam arising from our cup of Earl Grey misted over our eyeglasses, and we had a vision of a worldwide tea time...
...belief in God can survive without "In God We Trust" on our coins...
...Jeez, McGovern's a statesman...
...In practice, the nation labors under an officially enforced orthodoxy...
...In any case, the print media has obliged (His Eminence David Cardinal Broder says the Hart-Mondale race is "exciting" and that we will learn "a lot...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
