Editorials
Contents Volume CXIII, Number 19 commonweal Correspondence ...
...Thus, while the abyss Single copy, $1.50...
...and its allies might soon be ready to upgrade conventional forces in Europe to such an extent that these forces could balance the might of Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, it would take not only a tremendous change of political will in western Europe and the U.S., but a willingness by the Warsaw Pact to demobilize certain of its conventional forces...
...It is time that the opted for a "strictly conditioned acceptance of nuclear deter- nature of this concept, valuable as it might continue to be as a rence...
...Contents Volume CXIII, Number 19 commonweal Correspondence 578 Editorials 579 Taking a stand: Peadar Kirb...
...The U.S...
...Even such a discussion as this, however, would falter if the The U.S...
...POSTMASTER: Send address Earlier this year, the United Methodist bishops of the United States issued a changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...The point is that, ETC...
...It is this step-by-step approach to disarmament, recom- Reykjavik must not be allowed to slip away into an icy sea, mended in both the Methodist and U.S...
...And if the West were to pursue SDI, what `enemies,' to conceive and implement step-by-step ap- could we expect by way of a Soviet response...
...Hutton's own investigators found more task their own ideas of politics and institutions...
...Its rugged crust rests Media: Karen Sue Smith 599 I over a massive volcanic silo...
...Had Mr...
...Special two-year conscious decisions, makes escape from its clutches all the more dangerous, rate: U.S., $49...
...Catholic letters, that for despite a somewhat somnolent surface, the volcanic action took an unprecedented and symbolically positive stride for- beneath the present nuclear peace marks its own time...
...is published biweekly, except monthly By our own design we have driven far too long and heedlessly down a one-way, Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by narrowing, dead-end alley...
...Not fully, it Assistant Editors: David Toolan, Karen Sue would appear...
...When the Economist commented following Reykence on nuclear deterrence...
...It was an indictment of what the bishops called "the idolatry of deterrence...
...Like President Geneva should facilitate the Reykjavik-proposed reductions Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), such a suggestion on intermediate-range nuclear forces...
...Catholic bishops admit- javik that Mr...
...Canada, $53...
...Laying one's Since Hutton picked up the tab for Griffin B. Bell, Edwin handful of presuppositions squarely on the table should be the Meese's predecessor under President Carter, who headed the first article in the interpreter's code of ethics...
...Every American president since the treaty's signing could be EXPOSING THE OBVIOUS asked point blank for his understanding of these words...
...As things SDI should be ongoing in Congress and in the public square...
...and USSR since Reykjavik...
...it, apparently to undermine the power vested in the Supreme Court - follows historical precedent...
...Catholic bishops had examined these same ques- sticking point at Reykjavik had not been grappled with, tions in their 1983 pastoral, The Challenge of Peace...
...check on a U.S...
...But when this same line of questioning is applied to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) - a treaty which has become the lynchpin of future arms control negotiations between the superpowers - the tack fails...
...dollars by International Money Order or by careful reverse...
...original intention is being misapplied to the ABM Treaty and Perhaps Hutton's executives should now consider taking the billed as a new interpretation of it, in order to conceal the series of seminars offered by its Peoria, Illinois office...
...There will have agreed to in principle at Iceland...
...Even today, hot springs, geysers, and volcanoes lie side by side with massive glaciers, steaming pressure valves serving as a warning Feast of Love: Sebastian Moore 600 and perhaps a deterrent of gross natural catastrophe...
...nuclear guarantee to its NATO allies, has served as a restraining balance of power (and terror) in Europe...
...Paul...
...In clear language the letter asked a question that eats at the heart, conscience, and nerves of just about everyone: Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be considered or returned unless accompanied by a How long can we keep threatening the unspeakable without losing our bodies, our stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...quire, as the Catholic bishops wrote in 1983, "the willingness But why wrack our own memories which are, at best, secondto open ourselves to the providential care, power, and word of hand...
...Jesus or Jefferson meant...
...There is but one option: a dead halt, and a U.S...
...New York, N.Y...
...For the the Soviet Union about SDI be realistic or legitimate...
...our brother: William M. Shea 586 'He is somebody': Jim Sleeper 590 REYKJAVIK: THE Another kind of merger: Mel Piehl 594 PERIL & PROMISE Screen: Tom O'Brien 598 log CELAND has been called "The Land of Frost and Fire...
...They namely President Reagan's vision of SDI...
...Would we be proaches to disarmament...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Here's why...
...interpreters who ask whether Jesus was politically subversive But what the Justice Department failed to do by exempting or politically indifferent, the founder of a church or a debunker individuals, Hutton has now done itself - at least in part - in of institutionalism and legalism, etc., bring to the interpretive a fit of self-regulation...
...Today's teenager can remember what happened in cally...
...Is a space-based friends in the fields of either prophetic utterance or defense shield needed when a similar degree of defense could be brinkmanship...
...ends of employing the superpowers' nuclear war capacity...
...For over a generation "extended deterrence," the U.S...
...should be agreed to at Geneva...
...While such a process of equalization is taking place, stability would have to be maintained scrupulously at every step...
...and the USSR Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...Their acceptance was granted only on condition prog- bargaining chip, be fully examined in public discussion in this ress was being made to free the world of this selfsame depend- country...
...582 Running the republic: David R. Carlin 583 A hollow ring: Abigail McCarthr 585 The pope...
...or who argue the contrary: that it fetters both...
...Meese has posed "new interpretation...
...Might Methodists write: "It will take prudent political leadership in the technicians' dreams be factually unattainable but nonethepartnership with all other nuclear weapons states, including less destabilizing...
...foreign, $59...
...To do this, steps must be taken, some of them already ousness a "backing-out process" will entail...
...But the argument of the affair...
...These were the drained faces Staff of leaders who had met the crushing issues, engaged one another in the cold northern light, and tasted both promise and peril...
...bank...
...Called Reagan administration's adamant dissatisfaction with the ac- Faith-Investing, the seminars not only.assist clients to express cepted treaty interpretation blocking SDI...
...It will re- should be expected to remember much about the treaty itself...
...And finally, even if such a goal were eventually accomplished, the question would yet have to be asked whether exchanging the absolute terror of nuclear warfare for the nearly absolute terror of modern conventional warfare - figuratively sweeping the house clean, and then inviting in seven equally apocalyptic spirits - is sufficient to address the ideological and political Commonweal: 580 To achieve a change in the world's nuclear calculus will 1972, although to be fair, only a prodigy or a person over thirty require not only political courage but moral will...
...What effect has modern European, Latin American, or U. S. culture had on biblical hermeneutics...
...New Testament scholars, for example, try to determine the original intention behind Jesus' sayings or the teachings of St...
...have manufactured six additional nuclear weapons each day...
...Pardon us for stating the obvious: it has whether Hutton lost money, broke even, or made a profit on nothing whatsoever to do with it, really...
...Canada, $30...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., is clearly unmistakable, the nuclear mechanism, driven so long by the superpowers' $28...
...For instance, however, were charged...
...their faith through investment choices, but the choices Hutton One wonders at the audacity of "re-interpreting" a treaty so offers, their PR says, "make sense both financially and ethirecent...
...The Methodist answer is that upon careful examination the Christian church's "just war tradition" does more to discredit the doctrine of nuclear deter7 November 1986: 579 rence than to support it, both in considering the means and the realities that motivate the conflicts between East and West...
...7 November 1986: 581...
...Yet a close reading of the Methodist letter provided more economically by ground-based defenses develindicates that there exists a degree of concurrence that unites oped within the terms of the ABM Treaty...
...While it may be heartening that Secretary of State Shultz now believes the U.S...
...Of course, the best historians, exegetes, and politicians Eight months later, the company was put on one year's probarecognize that the question of original intention cannot be tion and fined $350,000...
...10038...
...In the late 1700s, that cold land exploded with near nuclear volcanic eruptions, decimating the island's inhabitants, many of whom Books starved in the cold aftermath...
...housecleaning, as well as fees for the attorneys retained by What has this argument of original intention got to do with employees charged in the scheme, one wonders in the end the ABM Treaty...
...Finally, genuine debate on the merits of making the nuclear tinderbox all the more unstable...
...Gorbachev come to spring a trap...
...already made imaginable...
...What has 200 years of legislative and judicial decision-making done to the intentions of Madison and Jefferson...
...Fourth, the present may indicate the ability of some to offer magnificent dreams SALT II limits on strategic weapons and delivery systems we would all aspire to, could they be accomplished without should be maintained...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in necessary, and seemingly intractable...
...This stunning meeting, then, has sent the Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor world home more reflective and with some slight hope...
...Reagan's "Disneyland explanation" of SDI "is ted that there existed in their conditional acceptance of nuclear almost certainly nonsense," it was laying a challenge before deterrence both a moral and political paradox...
...The important question Publisher: Edward S. Skillin advanced by Reykjavik is not simply what does the world now want in terms of reducing the risks of nuclear war, but how is this to be accomplished in the near and Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, long terms...
...Third, meetings at tion of all nuclear weapons in the next ten years...
...Obviously, he had come Smith, Patrick Jordan with a purpose...
...What has 2000 years of church tradition done to the original intentions of Jesus...
...10038...
...So do inter- than one dozen persons responsible for the illegal check-kiting preters who argue that an active judiciary balances the other operation and either fired them or subjected them to fines of up branches of government and guides the process of democracy, to $50,000...
...The question of original in- what negotiators meant who are standing within earshot of the tention itself - not the manner in which Mr...
...2000 criminal counts of fraud in a bank overdraft scheme...
...It must ward, if but briefly, at Reykjavik...
...Prudence is always a moral obliga- inviting an even more ghostly apocalypse than the one we have tion...
...It's quite another thing to re-interpret Constitution originally intend...
...We could invite virtually the entire negotiating team that God, which call us to recognize our common humanity and the drafted the original treaty and ask them - before television bonds of mutual responsibility which exist in the international cameras if the truth were to be made public - "What did you community in spite of political differences and nuclear arsen- intend when you wrote Article V?" Each side undertakes not als...
...Might the fears of the two letters more practically than it separates them...
...First, a new test ban treaty on to be prudence at every turning, and a sustained willingness to underground nuclear tests, limiting their size and number, maintain the process...
...Editor: Peter Steinfels Was President Reagan adequately prepared for the Iceland summit...
...The Reagan-Gorbachev be quieted, rechanneled, and perhaps one day even finally meeting disclosed, as no other such meeting has, the precari- stilled...
...These were not the smiling faces we have come to expect and disregard in big power summitry...
...The validity of the original intention argument rests on how solid the need is to bore through a mountain of accretions formed over time, or to close gaps in distance and culture, or to make specific applications now that were unforeseeable when the principles were laid or the teachings were handed down...
...to develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based...
...But what matters from Reykjavik forward is that a certain uncomProduction Editor: Anne Robertson mon chemistry, fire and frost, made for a significant breakthrough: For the first time Poetry: Rosemary Deen Movies: Tom O'Brien in clear memory superpower leaders broached in a direct manner not only the Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, quandary and complexity of the nuclear issue, but even suggested significant, Janice Gates mutual, quantifiable nuclear reductions...
...In the near future, even ten years worth, there is little to assume its place...
...pastoral letter on the nuclear crisis: In Defense of Creation...
...foreign, $33...
...Even since Reykjavik, together the U.S...
...given our tendencies to distort history for our own purposes, • In May 1985, E.F...
...Eighteen Poems: Paul Wilkes 602 The collapse of the Reykjavik summit meeting early last month between President 604 Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev was quickly grasped by a waiting world in Thomas Merton: William H. Slavick the remarkable instant the two emerged in top coats and hat from Hofdi house: their Doomsday or Deterrence?: 604 hard faces, diminished gaits, and palpable despondency said more than the weeks of Robert D. Holsworth reinterpretation which have followed...
...souls, or both...
...Their stand, everyone in the West to clarify what reasonably constitutes the which seems at odds with the Methodist letter, won them few aims and practicality of a defense shield...
...None of its chief executive officers, asked in a vacuum devoid of presuppositions...
...now stand, dreams like "Star Wars" and the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the next ten years are not realizable as advertised...
...Hutton and Company pleaded guilty to the question of original intention is itself legitimate...
...Second, there must be a cooling Some of the discussions at Reykjavik clearly failed this of rhetoric and a reining in of the diplomatic evictions between criterion, particularly the ideas floated concerning the aboli- the U.S...
...When Attorney General Edwin Meese builds his case for Let there be no doubt about it, it's one thing to wonder what judicial restraint, he asks, "What did the framers of the U.S...
Vol. 113 • November 1986 • No. 19
