Editorials
Contents Volume CXIII, Number 21 ...
...The reform that we seek to continue the search for a more just bishops have not abandoned, as they were urged to do by many economy...
...While Arafat past, present, and especially future...
...The message sent to the public-and to the American Catho- CLOUD OVER ST...
...can alter significantly the delicate balance of power at some remove from those it claims to speak about...
...In this respect, the economics pastoral faces a different situation than did the Single copy, $1.50...
...But most Cathowondering, in fact, what exactly the bishops had done...
...In disinformation campaign, and the unseemly closeness of pil- this regard, the Vatican should look to the exemplary letter of lars of this administration to the downed Nicaraguan contra Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, "The Church's Resuppliers, each episode stacked on top of the other, to raise the sponse to the AIDS Crisis" (also published in October...
...widespread approval (the "complex" nature of homosexualWorse, the Iranian arms deal may jeopardize the interna- ity, according to the document, requires "attentive study, tional cooperation needed if terrorists are ever to be confronted active concern, and honest, theologically well-balanced counwith a strong, unified policy among allies...
...dollars by International Money Order or by victims...
...On the last day of their recent Washington meeting, the bishops passed the com-d pleted document...
...Contents Volume CXIII, Number 21 commonweal siillI...
...Every time the bishops had to their bishops for help and guidance...
...Teflon peels...
...lics were only taking the statement at face value if they read it The problem is that the bishops offered not one but two as largely concurring in the action taken against Seattle's responses to the situation facing them...
...Who can deny that nuclear war is problematic...
...Special two-year moreover, have little or no direct contact with the planning or preparation surroundrate: U.S., $49...
...the discussion is by no means exhausted...
...moral and spiritual dimensions are uppermost...
...Why objections that have been made to every extension of power should one person's chances in life be so radically different and participation, from the right to vote to public schooling, because she is born in Central Harlem-or Central America...
...Nor is it whether deserves censure as well for its misguided and misleading "moderates" in Iran actually exist whose cause may be aided (albeit oblique) reference to the AIDS situation, and its bacin some future power play...
...bank...
...Cloud sponses he had written to the Vatican's charges...
...No more ten-month periods of failure The U.S...
...Not even Taken together, the damage done by a handful of inexperithe honest and full disclosure of what really transpired, who enced appointees on a covert mission which was never fitted the players were, and what the motivation was will be more into any well-thought-out policy (and which had virtually no than an apt beginning...
...First, he published a Vatican's proceedings had to be deleted...
...on this one, there is obviously a lot of Frank Burch Brown, Bernard Mc- common ground between "liberals" and "conservatives...
...How much of a bishop's energy hausen was too much to be expected, there were still a multishould go into enforcing rules and patrolling the boundaries plicity of concerns that could have been given prominence in the rather than making a common faith pervasive through teaching statement without frontally questioning the Vatican's jurisdicand dialogue...
...Two years ago, the first draft of the pastoral was John Fandel 660 unveiled amidst heated controversy...
...Only then can the tongues to let the ire of Reagan supporters sink in: Former president and American foreign policy begin to recoup their Senator Barry Goldwater called the sale "one of the major extensive losses...
...president at first determinedly failed to notice, this snake is no The letter places these rights in a communal, not an indi- party joke...
...Commonweal: 644 Now there are long- and short-term damages to pay...
...10038...
...What presented itself as a "neutral" trol...
...The matters that had brought the archbishop into the numerous cross-currents...
...Bishop Malone's warning of grow- church is otherwise nil have instinctively realized...
...The bishops were plagued with that question is moving to Taiwan can be remarkably similar to that of the throughout their deliberations, and generally tried to avoid it as Wall Street investor learning of Mr...
...The lawyerly State University (St...
...They looked to were matched with votes...
...Perhaps its au...
...The recommendation that Congress confirm the presipublic relations experts, however successful such efforts may dent's national security advisor also deserves consideration...
...The hypocrisy of our recent statement on "The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Perworld-wide Iranian arms embargo crusade, "Operation sons" (October), begins with a similar disclaimer ("an Staunch," has - given our double-dealing - embarrassed exhaustive treatment of this complex issue cannot be ateven Mr...
...arms sales to the Iranian nation from state interference like freedom of worship and speech...
...They they have proposed a strictly conditioned moral acceptance of have succeeded, too, in bringing into fruitful relationship the reformist capitalism...
...statement, disclaiming any authority or ability to judge the Obviously, the American bishops are not all of one mind, case at hand, actually was a rhetorically one-sided affair...
...The vote was 225-9, what you'd call a winning margin...
...There is, practical grounds, and though their arguments were redolent of most obviously, the disturbing presence of the left-outs...
...With each successive draft from the committee Screen: Tom O'Brien 659 headed by Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, and despite each successive gust from assorted critics right and left (mostly right), the consensus has grown stronger...
...Years ago, Jacques There are also those gnawing questions about work: about its Maritain in Man and the State dismissed the idea that "new" purpose, its frequent misdirection of talents, its suppression of social and economic rights could not properly be added to the generosity...
...How many Americans, workers, managers, pro- "old" political and civil ones, but he emphasized that the fessionals, are wondering whether their economic activity success of the synthesis depended on the larger vision of adds up to more than a string of paychecks...
...what they finally achieved was equivocal at best...
...foreign, $33...
...have come to think of the economy the way we think of our automobiles, It's a machine to get us somewhere, and if it isn't working right, well, that's a problem to 5 December 1986: 643 be dealt with -but not a moral or spiritual one...
...Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...They have Staff allocated more than a half million dollars for spreading and implementing the pastoral's message during the next three years...
...support, contrary as it was to stated U.S...
...tempted here...
...nudges closer to his Palestinian cohorts in Syria, and Saudi What is more, with the World Health Organization now Arabia vascillates between supporting Iran and Iraq, Jordan calling the AIDS epidemic "a health disaster of pandemic' and Egypt have been stunned by this American policy reversal...
...There is perhaps no more challenging aspect of the pastoral's fundamental principles than its call for the recogni- SECRET ON THE LOOSE tion of basic economic rights alongside the accepted political The snake has popped out of the can in Iran, and, though the and civil ones...
...unusual...
...The more sophisti- reprimand...
...Certainly they were working in the midst of in degree...
...Words genuine crisis in the hearts of many Catholics...
...Economy...
...Finally, the conservative pressures to keep the Vatican's action against Hunthausen off the agenda entirely were resisted...
...The last thing the Catholic church should critical role in the U.S.-Middle East relations: King Hussein of allow itself right now is to rationalize historical failures - Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt...
...Reagan and passes the proposed Arms Export BISHOPS EQUIVOCATE Reform Act, which would require Congressional approval of Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen spoke only briefly at all sales (with specific exceptions) of "sensitive weapons," a the annual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic lost check-and-balance that might have prevented the current Bishops, but he dominated the entire gathering nonetheless...
...The pastoral is implementation: securing them may require an arduous effort telling us that the economy is less like a mechanism and more at building a cultural consensus, at devising new institutions, like our families, that is, a set of human relations, in which at rethinking both private and public responsibilities...
...It sent a message which cannot be lost on Rome...
...Correspondence 642 Editorials 643 Cloud over St...
...A restrictive most important and most challenging...
...But it between Iraq and Iran and produce a victor...
...On the other hand, most of us have direct, forty-hour-a-week-or-more check on a U.S...
...The problem arises not because American Catholics are selfish, Publisher: Edward S. Skillin although none of us can be complacent about that, but because American Catholics are modern-and American...
...Canada...
...Does the top: cynical resignation to the dictatorship of the "bottom pastoral, therefore, condemn or endorse contemporary line...
...bishops labored hard to respond to the Hunthausen to inform the legislature will be possible because of an am- case...
...edged by now that Hunthausen's leadership in Seattle, if it "It was the best we could do," explained many bishops, differed at all from that of many other dioceses, differed only and maybe so...
...ment...
...Ministry to homosexuals By all accounts, the closed-door debate was exceptionally frank, even heated...
...M The interest in business ethics has its limits, however...
...Rather, it has already compromised khanded tolerance of anti-gay violence (note John J. McNeill's those bona fide moderates in the Arab world who play such a statement on p. 647...
...we are simply taxpayers-and potential U.S...
...We live in a `mixed' economic system Good News is always difficult to hear...
...That is the commitment of the U.S...
...Thatcher...
...citizens held in Lebanon...
...Th Books Critics' Christmas choices: Nina King, hierarchy may be divided on other issues...
...Instead, all prominence was given to effusions of about established church norms-indeed, might encourage papal loyalty and defenses of Vatican procedures...
...instances invited a variety of answers...
...Bishop the full body of bishops, two references to the justice of the George Speltz reacted in two phases...
...The bishops, then, preferred credibility in Rome to credibilNonetheless, in a dozen ways, large and small, a sizable ity among those who had hoped for a brave, or at least a majority at the Washington meeting reaffirmed the direction clarifying, word about the Hunthausen case...
...we black-listed for state-sponsored terrorism during the 1979 Economic rights may not lend themselves to similar modes of hostage crisis...
...mistakes the United States has ever-made in foreign policy," and William Safire said the episode gives Iran "the chance to show [the president] up as liar, softy, and dupe...
...and then proceeds at length to demonHer recently imposed sanctions against Syria for its role in strate the fact...
...It is widely acknowl- archbishop...
...Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, later in this issue, there is an ingrained resistance not so much to the pastoral's Janice Gates explicit teaching but to the very enterprise of bringing a religious perspective to bear Advertising Manager Ruth E. Taylor on the economy...
...The think of the economy as an impersonal, amoral mechanism, pastoral's critics were quick to attack it on philosophical and the moral and spiritual dimensions are inescapable...
...For reasons that R. Bruce Douglass and William J. Gould, Jr., expound Movies: Tom O'Brien Staff...
...If a the bread-and-butter pastoral decision making of bishops straightforward statement of support for Archbishop Huntthroughout the country...
...Too An economy that truly recognized basic economic rights, often, the moral and spiritual tensions of economic life are and not as passive entitlements to material provision but as dissolved in an acid of cynicism and resignation...
...If Americans were totally oblivious to the moral and spiritual tensions of their economic activity, there would not be a bull market in business ethics e courses and books...
...Or to put it which embraces Hunthausen's pastoral leadership and that of another way, the bishops preferred diplomacy over authority...
...Cloud, Minnesota), wrote an reader might note how this statement fell short of unqualified article for the diocesan newpaper on the question, "How endorsement of Rome's action: in truth, to get the approval of Should the Church Minister to Homosexuals...
...Nonetheless, the many disappointbad graces of Rome were the kinds of questions that constitute ing aspects of this statement cannot be brushed aside...
...action...
...proach in analyzing the U.S...
...Had the Ginn, Eliot Janeway, Jerome Rothenberg, Anne E. Patrick, Peter Steinfels, pope himself written the document, it would probably only have been stronger in Colleen O'Connor, Rosemary terms of the demands it put upon the American economy to focus and share its Deen, John F. Haught 661 tremendous creative capacities...
...They have raised the right questions, and in many vision...
...By and large...
...That 72 percent of those dinal Bernardin's letter is a model of compassion and morality polled by ABC News after the president's news conference at work...
...As Douglass and Gould point out, "what the bishops Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-33301 A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, think is problematic [the relationship between modern economic life and the Chrisis published biweekly, except monthly tian faith] the average American is probably even inclined to treat as perfectly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by natural...
...the power of decision making often find it a two-edged sword: Is winning the only thing...
...Editor: Peter Steinfels Catholic Conference...
...At the bottom active empowerments for communal participation, would be a of theheap: cynical resignation to being pushed around...
...missiles, sold at discount prices (Was this to side-step Con- thors deserve more pity than censure: the document is clearly gress...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., peace pastoral...
...The rest 5 December 1986: 645 of the church could be forgiven for not being impressed, for intention to intervene in the Hunthausen case...
...The snake is real...
...but they have It might be fair, however, to suggest that the bishops have achieved a balance between those specifics and the more implicitly answered the question about the economic system in fundamental, more lasting, and we believe more challenging a way parallel to their conclusion about the deterrence system: section on "The Christian Vision of Economic Life...
...foreign, $59...
...The lament of the Rust Belt worker learning that his job capitalism...
...Yet it has taken the Daniloff-Sacharoff preference - one would assume compassion would dictate exchange, the Reykjavik scramble, the exposure of the Libyan that the church extend its hand rather than point its finger...
...Boesky's million-dollar an ideological trap in which steel jaws of hard-and-fast definishenanigans: "Well, what can you expect...
...For it is precisely when choose between candidates representing continuity with the one genuine religious authority appears to be in conflict with current direction of the conference and candidates identified another that the teaching responsibility of bishops becomes with the Roman "crackdown," the former won...
...If the next Congress curbs the creeping executive privileges enjoyed by Mr...
...Collegiality further debate about those norms...
...Even as we economic rights remains, and remains audacious...
...Cloud: " !11011 Robert L. Spaeth 646 No time for silence: John J. McNeill 647 Outlawing tongues: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Reagan's staunchest European ally, Mrs...
...goals for the region) Perhaps the habitual Reagan critics need only hold their merits a long, slow look, a stark assessment...
...And why not...
...Congress will see to televised presidential appeal, no cosmetic re-write of events by that...
...fiasco may be regained...
...New York, N. Y. 10038...
...terrorism look more toothless than ever now that U.S...
...Fortunately, three vidualist, framework, and it recognizes the differences be- American hostages have been safely returned home through tween such rights and the traditional "negative immunities" eighteen months of secret U.S...
...Reagan's tough talk on terrorism has been undermined At the end of the Vatican's second lengthy instruction on at home and abroad by his own action, whether or not "ran- liberation theology (April, 1986), there appears the candid som" accurately describes the link between three separate admission that the document is not "complete" in its discusshipments of weapons and parts to Iran and the release of the sion of the themes of the theology of liberation...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...name, it was in fact largely a draft hammered out in a meeting of the administrative board-without, by the way, giving WHEN Father William Dorn, a member of the pastoral Archbishop Hunthausen any hearing or considering the re- staff of Christ Church Newman Center at St...
...Most Americans, $28...
...proportions" - one that could infect as many as 100 million The credibility of the Reagan administration is at a critical people in five years, and which crosses all lines of sexual juncture...
...Although Archbishop Hunthausen's documents dioceses, especially outside of the old urban centers of immi- had raised extremely pointed questions about the accuracy and grant Catholicism, a sound model for the future, or is it a fairness of Vatican proceedings, none of these were even symptom, as critics would have it, of a church "out of con- vaguely acknowledged...
...POSTMASTER: Send address experience with the economy-and we have opinions to match...
...Individual dioceses, parishes, religious orders, universities, Assistant Editors: David Toolan, Karen Sue Smith, Patrick Jordan and Catholic organizations are free to mount their own efforts, and one hopes they Production Editor: Anne Robertson will...
...648 Spirit of Seattle: Abigail McCarthy 650 'THE SEARCH FOR After the pastoral: R. Bruce Douglass & William J. Gould, Jr...
...651 A ]UST ECONOMY' Coming of age on the West Bank: Thomas M. Ricks 654 Music: David B. Noble 658 SOME THINGS just grow on you, and one of them, apparently, is the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching Verse: Leslie Jean Coulthard 658 and the U.S...
...Careyebrows of a nation of Reagan fans...
...economy is pragmatic and They are, quite properly then, delivering Good News...
...For one thing, it is too which is the product of a long history of reform and adjustgood to believe...
...Are the bishops serious about the statement they've so publicly and painstakingly put together...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in ing nuclear weaponry and deterrence...
...The difficulties are thus acknowledged, but the claim of There is another side to this story, of course...
...at stake in the Hunthausen case- was sent back to committee...
...BACK OF THE HAND Mr...
...On this occasion, the document on the use of general absolution-one of the issues bishops, regrettably, chose to forgo the challenge...
...The completion of a letter such as this is but the Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, beginning," the bishops recognize, "of a long process of education, discussion, and...
...conservative critics, their specific applications...
...Canada, $53...
...not even when the issues are posed in this general form...
...That is what millions of Catholics ried to last year's extraordinary synod: the American church is and non- Catholics whose interest in the internal politics of the "fundamentally sound...
...And no biguous phrase like "in timely~fashion...
...At the very different economy than America's today...
...The lid is off...
...One indication that they are, is explicitly economic...
...How do I chart my way between the laws of justice and charity and the laws of supply and demand...
...The appaing disaffection from Rome was equally significant...
...so, too, rent hostility of an established authority, Rome, to this relihis insistence that repressing painful questions only under- giously compelling form of pastoral leadership has created a mines the church's plausibility if not its very vitality...
...But the evolutionary in nature...
...It is in the spirit of this American pragmatic tradition of The revisions of the pastoral have served it well...
...For the truth is, as David Tracy recently noted, that the archThis response was signaled in Bishop James Malone's presi- bishop of Seattle in his pastoral actions has come to embody a dential address, when he repeated the conclusion he had car- genuine religious authority...
...Issued in Bishop Malone's WHAT ARE THE ISSUES...
...Should one risk gestures of compassion and tion or denying the bishops' very real solidarity with the inclusion even when they might contribute to uncertainty pontiff...
...CLOUD lic people-was something else...
...Those who enjoy human dignity within which it was set...
...sel") and endorsement, the document on the whole is not only The problem is not merely whether thousands of TOW inadequate, but untimely and ill-conceived...
...In the September 18 issue of the Saint Cloud cated.media reports stressed the bishops' disclaimer of any Visitor," the bishop said, "positions were taken on the matter Commonweal: 646...
...The conditions, in this case, are that the language and principles of Catholic social teaching with the system maintain its openness to questioning, to examination of touchstones and experiences of American liberal democracy alternatives, to change, and to democratic exploration of what (here we depart from the provocative view of Douglass and would be "a fuller systemic realization of the Christian moral Gould...
...support While there are aspects of the Vatican statement that deserve lacks credibility...
...many other dioceses rather than the direction of the critics...
...For another, it is too good to live up to...
...Do nice guys finish last...
...Our apThe bishops' pastoral replies that you can expect a lot more...
...Is the consultative, rela- was honored, if at all, as a platonic idea without institutional tively permissive pastoral style that has emerged in many realization...
...The Vatican's three U.S...
...tions were triggered to snap shut on the unwary...
...we changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...In contrast to the recent Vatican statement, it deserves November 19 disapproved of the arms sale is as telling as it is widespread emulation and implementation...
...have been in the past, will prove sufficient remedy...
...Poetry: Rosemary Deen The task will not be easy...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 21
