Editorials
commonweal SOUTH AFRICA: MEDICINE OF CHOICE IN THE PRIMAL act of creation, God chose ossified dust and dry bones to manifest the incomprehensible. God breathed forth the power of decision, and...
...Which is exactly what I believe the ad's sponsors had in mind...
...Yet as the entire country seems plugged into separate economic head sets, only the American Catholic bishops have unequivocally stated the number one national priority: jobs...
...The American bishops, called upon to rebut the statement at their November meeting, delegated the task to its Committee on Doctrine...
...It notes,' 'The government spends eight limes more per capita for white students than it docs for blacks...
...In The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation (Orbis, $9.95,268 pp...
...Perhaps there is little more at work here than the purge mentality...
...So is another I had in mind: is THE VATICAN PRO-CHOICE...
...the question of national priorities has finally hit the fan...
...Those who live in the situation ought to know better, and do...
...In December, the Lutheran Church of America intensified its efforts to influence corporations doing business in South Africa, threatening divestment of church-held stock if those companies did not adopt the "Tutu Conditions" as a code of conducting business in South Africa...
...A healthy economy...
...In 1978 the Bergstraesser Institute of Freiburg, Germany concluded a study showing that most whites in South Africa expect black majority rule by the year 2000...
...The committee issued what, to my mind, was a rather blanket reassertion of the "clear and constant teaching of the church" on abortion, but it quite rightly picked up on what the ad had implied without saying...
...Because the unemployed are disproportionately black...
...it is primarily a debate about the legacy of Roe v. Wade and a status quo which approaches abortion on demand...
...Then the Vatican got into the act...
...Catholics for a Free Choice tried to get as much mileage out of it as possible...
...The wave mounts...
...domestic economic policy is the creation of new jobs with adequate pay and decent working conditions...
...Tomorrow several dozen nuns declare, "We recant...
...We're optimistic enough to think that government and private business can stimulate such employment, but not if no one is even directing attention to what remains the number-one economic priority: jobs...
...c) put Catholics for a Free Choice center stage and made them the beneficiary of sympathy for the penalized signers...
...They appeal to us as agents of choice who make a de facto difference in the manner in which they live...
...An outspoken pro-life friend of mine said that she had no quarrel with 95 percent of it...
...Some had signed the statement months earlier, long before its sponsors decided to publish it in the Times in mid-election campaign...
...we must choose...
...Many doubtlessly read the statement largely in intramural terms as calling for a discussion within the church...
...Joining this latter group will be those laid off from heavy industry, many of whom will find themselves earning half their former wages...
...Yes, but with 8 million people out of work even an increase in revenue will not cover the real social costs of joblessness: unemployment compensation, food stamps, welfare, and a host of indirect social costs, as well as a reduced tax base...
...Furthermore, the much hailed technological revolution threatens to perpetuate a dual wage scale: high wages for trained technicians and designers...
...A number of outstanding feminist theologians, including contributors to this journal, were among the signers, although few who have written professionally in the area of morals or abortion...
...One obvious possibility is that it just doesn't know what it is doing, that it doesn't understand the American situation, that it never thought through the consequences of its action...
...low wages for operators and assemblers...
...policy for a generation has been the Reverend Leon Sullivan...
...A crash program of job creation, job training, and job placement will not, of itself, be enough — at least not unless we are thinking about long-term jobs with real pay...
...Yet, the New York Times reported on December 13, it is only now with pressures growing in (he U.S...
...In his own homeland, the Archbishop of Johannesburg cannot vote...
...It is both a burden and an exaltation, one that dogs and delights...
...But the ad was a dud...
...It did not recognize that what is at stake in the public debate about abortion is only secondarily the question of prohibiting, whether legally or morally, abortion "in all instances...
...The most urgent priority for U.S...
...The choice must now be to fortify and enlarge this wave of moral indignation with our own voices so that the sea mounts up and opens a way on to dry land...
...b) shifted attention from the issue of abortion to the issue of free speech and intellectual integrity (which is more or less what the ad wanted to do in the first place...
...The names of numerous eminent theologians, many of whom have frequently taken dissenting or unpopular public positions, were noticeable by their absence...
...It did not indicate that the "diversity of opinions" among recognized Catholic moralists on the morality of direct abortion is largely limited to a very narrow set of "hard cases," leaving the impression that these differences might in fact extend to the wide range of conditions that the pro-choice movement accepts as justifying abortion...
...Another possibility is that SCRIS simply doesn't care...
...It is the capacity for decision that transforms humans from random constructs of the most intricate and detailed chance into images of God...
...In view of the penalties threatened by the Vatican, we totally disavow our previous position...
...Projected into that context, the ad had quite a different meaning than some of its minimal wording might suggest...
...The question for the United States then is one of complicity...
...PETER STEJNFELS // January 1985: 5...
...That the Foundation lets this be known is a sign of promise...
...Take, for example, the governments of South Africa and the United States...
...So it was with this ad...
...Specifically I am thinking about the recent action taken by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (SCRIS) against two dozen women and one man in religious orders who signed an ad sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice...
...Hope for economic growth as a curative looks misguided as long as we arc locked into a conservative Keynesian trade-off: to bring down inflation is to tolerate higher unemployment...
...Despite its being submerged, that land is ready...
...Perhaps it has no interest whatsoever in the credibility of American Catholics, in the respect the bishops have earned in the public arena, even in the effectiveness of the anti-abortion movement...
...The December Letter of the Ford Foundation calls for basic changes in South Africa's education policy...
...With what assurance do we sit opposite him, looking into his face, and say the situation in South Africa has gotten better for non-persons in the last four years because of our many and mighty efforts...
...We applaud them...
...They tell us that four more years of American "constructive engagement" is the wrong medicine for transforming South African apartheid...
...When President Reagan and Archbishop Tutu sit in dialogue, the South African government does not see two people: it sees one and a fraction...
...The list was ultimately filled out with the names of Catholic activists and academics from other fields...
...I spoke to a handful who had refused to sign, both men and women, but all outspoken on feminist issues...
...Perhaps the best way of picturing the folly of the SCRIS intervention is simply to imagine that it succeeded...
...According to SCRIS these individuals must either publicly retract their adherence to the statement or face expulsion from their orders...
...d) provided substance to the ad's claim that behind the appearance of Catholic opposition to abortion lurks the fear of ecclesiastical sanctions, whether of hellfirc or expulsion from one's religious order, (c) made it more difficult for Catholic liberals and feminists to part company with their liberal and feminist associates on the question of abortion...
...We are chosen...
...Disturbing as that possibility may be, it may still be the more consoling explanation...
...But other signers I gather (both from conversations and newspaper reports) were mainly reacting to what they saw as untoward intervention by bishops in the election campaign, to attacks on Geraldine Fcrraro...
...South Africa has chosen apartheid as the framework of its political and social structures...
...This is a staple argument of Catholics for a Free Choice...
...It did not distinguish between the legal and moral dimensions of the problem, for instance, leaving the impression that the diversity of views among Catholics might be as wide in the one area as in the other...
...As they parted he spoke to them of the endless nightmares of apartheid...
...Hispanic, young, and female heads of households, the same groups that compose the poor (plus children) and whose current job possibilities so often promise inadequate wages...
...Again like Novak, the Maguires have a fondness for making appeals that arc vague and unexceptionable in themselves, but that take on a definite meaning from their context and from what questions they choose to address and not to address...
...Consider this...
...All this is pretty mild as far as the abortion debate goes...
...Its white minority has done this consciously, over generations, with disciplined foresight, employing brutal sanctions...
...that 120 American companies which operate in South Africa have agreed to Sullivan's demands to press for broad changes in South Africa, including the repeal of all apartheid laws...
...This "diversity of opinions" necessitated a "candid and respectful discussion" of abortion within the church, free of institutional penalties...
...Our moral decisions in 1985 must be concerted acts to breathe forth life...
...We just want to breathe...
...In the United States the moral pressures on financial and political bodies must continue to intensify...
...Individual states, economic lobbies, and advocacy groups have been anxiously surveying the proposals from the Treasury Department to determine what effect each change will have for them...
...God breathed forth the power of decision, and what was...
...The latter two points are important...
...THE FIRST JOB IS JOBS With all the talk about tax simplification and budget cuts (freezes...
...With one masterful stroke SCRIS has (a) resurrected a forgotten statement from the dustheap of abortion manifestoes...
...But those questions arc not so much my concern at the moment as understanding the mentality behind this action...
...but like most such ads, it enjoyed its day in the sun, and that was pretty much that...
...They are being heard: in the White House and the Transvaal...
...Marjorie Hope and James Young write of the man who guided them through the poverty rows of Sowcto, the black township near Johannesburg...
...We applaud our own citizens who have taken to the steps of South African consulates across this land in recent months demanding an end to the lie...
...Some of the signers, of course, hold positions on abortion that are radical departures from Catholic tradition — and which ought to be argued openly (there have been, after all, radical departures in the past which were ultimately vindicated), but not advanced behind the stalking horse of "diversity of opinions...
...What appeared to be a unified electorate now seems engaged in a tug-of-war among interests...
...Catholics should not seek "the kind of legislation that curtails the legitimate exercise of the freedom of religion and conscience or discriminates against poor women...
...Its sponsors but not necessarily all its signers...
...he said...
...Ultimately, the capacity for decision expresses the essence of our human nature: we are deemed worthy to be accountable...
...painful and exalting as such acts must be...
...They certainly had not refused to sign out of fear — and they rather resented the sponsoring group's implication that fear was a major factor in keeping Catholic thinkers in line...
...and what is true for individuals must be true for societies as well...
...What would be the impact of such a performance on the credibility of Catholics in general, of the bishops in the area of public policy, indeed of Catholic pro-life activists themselves...
...without indicating any limits to that diversity, could not help but be a declaration for the status quo, and the status quo not only legally but morally...
...dry and barren became flesh and blood...
...This is the first time American companies have entered the political arena in South Africa and pushed for an end to apartheid," Sullivan said...
...Yes, but health is illusory with 7 percent unemployment...
...The intervention by SCRIS certainly poses questions of individual justice, of the proper application of canon law, of the appropriateness of the penalty which Vatican officials immediately invoked — expulsion from the religious family to which someone has pledged her life...
...What is needed is the creation of jobs that produce goods and services valuable to society, for which investors will risk capital and employers will pay competitive wages...
...Sixty-point headlines announcing "A UNiVERSITY OF OPINIONS REGARDING ABORTION EXISTS AMONG COMMITTED CATHOLICS...
...Like Novak, the Maguires make the case theologically for what, in fact, is pretty much the status quo in society, all the while presenting themselves, with justification, as dissenting underdogs in the church...
...So much for the ad...
...Why had the statement received such a cool response among theologians...
...Don't you understand...
...second, that polling data found only a fraction of American Catholics opposed to abortion "in all circumstances...
...The government of South Africa legally denies the full personhood of the majority of its people...
...which was run in the New York Times last October 7. As far as I can ascertain, the moving forces behind the statement were Daniel Maguirc and Marjorie Rciley Maguire...
...and to attempts to mobilize Catholic voters on the abortion issue alone...
...January 1985: 3 A realistic voice for change in U.S...
...To breathe...
...All right, I admit it — that headline is hyperbolic...
...Now I am no fan of cither Catholics for a Free Choice or of this particular ad...
...Tax reform...
...Are we aware that the archbishop is not considered a full person by Pretoria...
...In 1981 a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored study found that while most South African whites resist fundamental change, beneath the surface there exists tangible unrest and widespread ferment, a basis for realistic openness to change and accommodation...
...How did SCRIS manage to box itself and the church into such a no-win situation...
...They boldly state the contrary: in their arrests, blood, imprisonment, and dying...
...The actions of some people in ihe Vatican seem almost willfully calculated to harm the church and to injure the anti-abortion cause these same people purport to be defending...
...IS ROME ANTI-CATHOLIC...
...The Maguires are to the pro-choice movement what Michael Novak is to free enterprise...
...The ghosts it would raise of a monolith in Rome would almost certainly alienate that moderately liberal "middle" of American public opinion which is essential for any viable resolution of the abortion question...
...In some respects, its claims were minimal: first, that "a large number" of Catholic Commonweal: 4 theologians might differ with the official teaching that abortion is morally wrong "in all instances...
...Rather they believed that the ad gave a distinctly false impression, more by what it did not say than by what it did...
...A sign of promise...
...Behind the hyperbole, however, is a real question...
...Although the text had been circulated widely among Catholic theologians, what is striking is how few chose to sign it...
Vol. 112 • January 1985 • No. 1
